Dorset

In July 1837 three-year-old Polly Alien was playing in the garden of her house near Blandford when she saw, and asked her mother to come out and see The tall woman in white who is coming down the hill opposite.’ She described the figure as coming down through ‘the Bache Gate’ and down the hill. Her mother told her that she was talking nonsense as nobody would be dressed in white in that area on a working day, but Polly and her sisters went to see if anyone was there.

They could see no one. At the time when Polly saw the apparition, her father, along with two other men, had been drowned while cutting weeds on the River Stour. it was after Polly had told her mother about the apparition that the local minister visited as it was his duty to tell Mrs Allen of her husbands death. Although the child’s reported seeing a tail woman when it was her father who had died, he himself was very tall, and it may have been the gliding motion that gave the impression of female grace.

Lord Halifax concludes his story with a point that he says may or may not be relevant: ‘Some six or seven months before he was drowned, John Allen came home one night from Blandford in exceedingly low spirit. As soon as he got into the house he sat down and cried bitterly for more than an hour. When his wife asked him what was the matter he replied that he had seen that which told him he should not be long here. He never would describe to his wife what it was he had seen, hut after that evening he suffered periodically from low spirits.

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