Typical of West Sussex, a sleepy village is not the place to expect UFOs, gray creatures in shiny overalls, big black cats, or even the ghosts so popular in England. However, by visiting Clapham Wood today, you can hear the story of unexplained phenomena that have been happening here for several decades. This village consists of one street, which is called the Street, along which there are four dozen houses, a post office, a shop and a cafe. The only noteworthy attraction is the Church of the Holy Virgin Mary, built in the XIII century, standing on a hill near the village. Behind this church there is a small forest, crossed by paths, which will be discussed below. Here you can meet dog owners walking their pets, as well as vagrants.
On the site of modern Clapham, people settled in the days of the Saxon conquest. For three hundred years, the land belonged to Shelley, a family of large landowners, to which belonged also Percy Bysshe Shelley, the romantic poet.
Over the past three decades, Clapham Wood's reputation has taken on a sinister character. Enthusiasts of the "Sussex Society of Parapsychologists" often come here. In the 80s, several eyewitnesses saw a strange glow in the night sky and silvery flying saucers over the forest. It was then that ufologists first visited Clapham. The famous English ufologist John Murphy said that Clapham Wood, together with Chanktonbury and Kissbury, where UFOs were also observed, form a triangle emitting energy of an unknown nature.
Murphy and his associates spent several nights in a row in 1989 on duty in Clapham Forest, hoping to detect the appearance of a UFO. They experienced an inexplicable bout of nausea, as well as the feeling that an invisible force was pushing them, forcing them to leave the forest. Local residents said that in the forest sometimes you can see clots of gray fog, which vaguely resemble a human figure in shape and dissolve when approaching them.
The local homeless man, whom everyone called the Old Man Darcy, who had lived in a forest hut for several years, left the village forever, saying that "he cannot get along with the hellish creatures."
As the months passed, UFOs in Clapham no longer appeared, and UFO interest in the area gradually faded. However, in 1991, a strange new phenomenon occurred in Clapham Forest. Three dogs, which were walked by the owners, fell off the leashes. Two of them disappeared forever, and the third, a one-year-old Basset Hound, was found at the edge of the forest in a semi-paralyzed state. The newspapers wrote about this case. Owners of the dogs noted that their pets, when approaching Clapham Forest, become strangely aggressive, bark and break off the leash.
Over the next ten years, in the vicinity of Clapham, there was a Glitch of five strange deaths. In 1992, 46-year-old retired Royal Navy officer Peter Goldsmith visited Clapham Wood to visit his distant relative. He was in excellent physical shape and was absolutely healthy. He was last seen on August 10, 1992 near the forest, carrying a large bag in his hands. A few days later, his body was found without visible damage in the forest. The coroner, who suspected a violent death, sent the body to a pathologist. He established the cause of death - sudden cardiac arrest. It is not clear only what could have caused the stop. According to experts, such a reaction can be caused by a sudden strong fright.
In August of the same year, 19-year-old unemployed idiot Rob Darshot disappeared from Clapham. A few months later, his half-decomposed body was found in a blackberry bush. It was in such a state that the pathologist could not establish the cause of death.
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In the summer of 1993, a couple looking for a runaway horse found the body of pensioner Leon Foster in the forest. Three months earlier, Foster's wife had reported his disappearance to the police.
The next year, misfortune befell 80-year-old Reverend Neil Snelling, a former vicar. On the eve of All Saints' Day, he was returning to Clapham Wood through the woods after visiting a dentist whose office was in the nearby village of Chactonbury. Snelling's decomposed body was found a year later. In the last two cases, it was also not possible to establish the cause of death, the most probable is sudden cardiac arrest.
In 1995, Miss Gillian Matthews, a 37-year-old woman with mental illness who was in the care of her sister Anne Manson, died near the forest. Ann went to the store for half an hour, and when she returned, Jill was gone. Miss Manson went with a neighbor to look for the missing woman. They found Gillian dead just two hours after her disappearance. She was lying on her back by the side of the road that bends around the forest. Her eyes were closed, and an expression of peace was imprinted on her face. The woman was holding a bouquet of cornflowers in her hands. And again the pathologist made a conclusion - cardiac arrest. This despite the fact that Miss Matthews, despite her mental illness, was absolutely healthy physically and had a wonderful heart.
After this incident, articles appeared in the press, the authors of which suggested that a sect of Satanists "Friends of Hecate" was active in the vicinity of Clapham. Hecate, the three-headed goddess of Greek mythology, is a central figure in the Satanic Wiccan cult. The Friends of Hecate were accused of several atrocious murders in Worthing. However, it should be noted that in Clapham, the handwriting of the criminals, if they were criminals, was quite different.
In December 1995, an anonymous letter came to the local police station, stating that the Friends of Hecate had been using Clapham Forest for their sinister rituals for the past ten years. However, the following month, interviews with the leaders of the sect appeared on the pages of the local press. They said they were not involved in either the killings at Clapham Wood or the disappearance of the dogs there.
Parapsychologists again became interested in unusual phenomena occurring in Clapham Wood. Tony Newton, a reporter and regular contributor to The Inexplicable Near Us, came here. He was often seen in the forest, dressed in camouflage, armed with cameras and night vision devices. According to Newton, there is an anomalous zone in Clapham Wood. Whether Newton found anything in the forest is unknown. In early 1997, he stopped his research. And in March 1997, a tornado, unusual for these places, swept over the area, which uprooted and knocked down several centuries-old trees in Clapham Forest. After that, the strange phenomena stopped. People and dogs no longer disappeared, no one saw the fogs. However, residents of Clapham Wood continue to bypass the forest.
Maria BUUK