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Three Figures from the Past

Mary Barrington (a member of the Council of the Society for Psychical Research) related the story of a couple she referred to as Mr and Mrs Allan and their experience in the summer of 1954. During a day out the couple visited a church in Wootton, Surrey.

As they left the churchyard they climbed a hill to a bench to eat their lunchtime sandwiches. As in so many cases of ‘altered scenery’, the Allans had both felt a depressing dark mood throughout the day and this per sisted, making lunch no great pleasure for them. Suddenly the air became silent, bird song stopped and Mrs Allan became aware of three figures behind her although she never looked to see them.

Despite this, she maintained she could describe them as wearing black clerical clothes and that they were figures from the past. Quite unnerved, they left the area; further on they lay down on the grass and fell asleep. Their next clear recollection was of arriving at Dorking and taking the train home, though they have no memory of how they reached Dorking. This experience prayed on Mrs Allan for some years and later she and her husband made several attempts to locate the hill and the bench that they had been sitting on. Despite several visits to the church they could never match the lie of the land to the way it had been on their first visit. No locals could think of any nearby similar topography.

A suggestion as to the possible identity of the three men was given by an entry in the writings of seventeenth-century diarist John Evelyn who commented that on 15 March 1696 three would-be assassins of King William had been executed; this entry follows comments on a sermon delivered at Wootton Church. However, the three men were not at Wootton Church at the time of their execution — the only connection is in the mind of John Evelyn — and so this possible explanation is a complex one indeed. Essex | France | Wiltshire | Wiltshire | Cornwall | Devon | Devon | Devon | Essex | France | France | Hampshire | Indonesia | Ireland | Isle of Wight | Italy | Kent | Lancashire | London | London | London | London | Norfolk | North Yorkshire | Norway | Norway | Oxford | Oxford | Phenomena | Salop | Suffolk | Surrey | Surrey | Unknown | Warwickshire | Wiltshire |