John Clare did not believe in ghosts. He tried hard to believe in them, and failed. Will o’ the wisps were another matter, and they frightened him all his life.
He had reason. One night he and a neighbour went out to look for the ghost of an old woman who had drowned in a well and was supposed to be walking in a white winding sheet. Nothing came. On the way home, though, a light rose in the north east over Eastwell green. Clare took it for a meteor, then for a lamp in a window, and then it began to dance, up and down, before gliding away like a man on horseback carrying a lantern. A second light came up out of the south east on Dead Moor. The two of them closed the distance, met, danced a sort of reel together, then chased each other back and forth like children before merging into one and dropping into the ground.
Another night, coming back from Ashton after courting, one came straight at him. He held on to a stile post and let it come. It leapt as if it were listening to him, then flared up with a crackle like burning straw. In the light of it his own hands looked huge and white, the rushes stood up like whips, the bushes climbed into the sky, and the darkness closed round in a black circular wall. He was certain that one step forward would drop him into a bottomless pit. When it darted off he ran the whole way home.
The alewife at the Exeter Arms told him she had counted fifteen of them at once from her upstairs window, dancing in and out on Eastwell moor.
Where: Helpston and the flat ground towards Maxey. Best on a misty November night.
