Akenham Church has many rumors of strange happenings. It has been reported that the bells ring for no reason, and a ghost has appeared at its window. It is most known for a legend which has been passed down from generation to generation which says that the devil slumbers under a split gravestone and you risk his ire by running around the church thirteen times anticlockwise.

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With their enormous glowing saucer eyes, they haunt the village of Hethersett at night.

Nobody quite knows what these terrifying creatures look like, but there are many tales of the beasts.

Each storyteller has had their own version, and here is mine.

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Some say that on occasion a baby was taken from its parents by fairy folk and spirited away to live in ‘another world’.

At Dagworth Manor in Suffolk there came a visitor, a strange spirit who called himself Malekin who made the Manor his home for many years. Malekin was said to be a bright and clever spirit, but young and incorrigible. He spoke in many languages but always in the voice of a one-year old child.

The tale tells that the family of Dagworth Manor, a knight and his family, heard a voice in the upper rooms.

At first, they were afraid of what they heard, but soon the childish chatter began to engage them and they warmed to its owner. They began to communicate with the spirit and Malekin amused them with his funny ways and his tendency to gossip.

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Amber's story will send shivers through you!

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       Many years ago, when Dunwich was a bustling port and not the tiny hamlet it is today, a young girl, Eva, was out walking along its harbour walls. In the distance, she spied a ship with magnificent sails. Curious, she hurried towards the place where the ship was moored. 

           Securing the ropes of the vessel was a sailor who looked up from his task and saw Eva, with her rust-coloured hair plaited down her strong back and her cream dress tipped with black. He told her she was beautiful, a child of nature. He said that if she met with him that evening, he would bring her riches the like of which she had never seen. 

           Eva agreed and later that evening, she met the sailor as arranged. It was then that he told her he loved her. And again, later in the dead of night, and later still, in the dark of dawn.

But when Eva woke in the morning, the sailor was gone.

          On the horizon, the sailor’s ship was far away and slipping out of view.

Eva looked down at her torn dress and ran a hand through her tangled hair. Her heart ached for his words of love. In an anguish of sorrow for all she had lost, she reached inside her dress and ripped out her heart, throwing it towards the vanishing ship.

Today, if you walk along Dunwich beach, in amongst the pebbles and driftwood and pieces of brick, you might find a wooden heart. However much you look, don’t pick it up; its sorrow may become your sorrow.

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A farmer, who lived near Bury St. Edmund’s, had noticed that someone was stealing his wheat. Enraged, for he thought it was his competitor, he set a trap for the thief. He hid amongst the hay bales and waited until the moon had risen and owls hooted in the night.

To his surprise, he did not see the neighbouring farmer. Instead, before his eyes was a crowd of merry fairies...

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Stowmarket, Suffolk.

Dear Parishioners,

As I dip my pen, at the dawn of a new century, and on a day when so many of us reflect on our lives, vowing to make resolutions, I feel the time has come to share with you a tale that first enchanted me as a young child, some forty years ago. Linger on that word for a moment: enchanted. We Suffolk folk have long considered our cherished county to be enchanting, but let us focus on its essence of the magical, which lies at the heart of this tale.

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In Kesgrave, Suffolk you can find the grave of John Dobbs dated 1740. The solitary headstone, surrounded by iron railings, sits on a lonely grassy area next to Kesgrave Wood deep in the Suffolk countryside. It is said that anyone who disturbs his resting place will be chased away by his angry and bitter ghost. Many have spoken of the strange inexplicable sadness that fills the woods nearby.

John Dobbs was a shepherd and led a life full of loss and sadness. He lost his beloved wife, and then his two baby sons to the plague. John mourned for his loved ones and in a moment of grief, lost sight of a sheep in his flock. John wandered the fields for days in the hopes that he would find the lost animal, but he never did and fearing that he might face being deported for the crime of stealing, he took his life.

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At Lowestoft, in Suffolk, it is said that ghosts haunt the otherwise peaceful and grassy slopes of Bloodmoor Hill. Here, in 500 AD, Roman Britons were slain by a horde of marauding Anglo Saxons. There have been tales that a man, making his way home across the hill one foggy night several years ago now, heard the cries of warriors and the metallic clash of blades, as if the very battle itself was retold to him in a moment of ghostly fear. The truth of battle remains buried deep in the earth beneath the hill. Its story reminds us to live well today, because tomorrow is filled with uncertainty...

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Fishermen avert their eyes,

Few would confess to having seen one,

Believing that mermaids are harbingers of misfortune.

Near Felixstowe beyond the mouth of the river Orwell, many centuries ago, the Suffolk fishermen spoke of seeing a silver-tailed mermaid swimming up river.

At low tide, the Orwell is a shining bed of river-mud. It is here that the story ends, as the boats sway gently in the port and the fishermen sit in smoky bars, telling late-night tales of strange sights, while on the mud banks, under the light of the moon, the mermaid waits for the tide to return, so she can swim home, back to the endless sea.

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