I dont know who else to ask

[Calne_Sam]

I dont post much and I am sorry if this is the wrong board, but I cant sleep for thinking about it and you are the only people I could think to ask. I took the two of them up the byway on Sunday, past the old ruin ground, you all know the field, the one with the manor wall and the stones, weve walked it a hundred times. A big clean 4x4 came up behind us very slow and just sat there, right on my heels, wouldnt pass. Then a man got out at the gate, all smiles, and said the path was closed and would I take the children back the way I came. There is no sign. The path is not closed, I have walked it since I was at school. He was not a farmer. He was very polite and I have never been so frightened in my life. I got the little ones back to the car and my hands were shaking on the wheel. Am I being daft? Tell me I am being daft. It probably looked like nothing from the outside. But I had my kids with me and something was wrong with it and I dont know who to tell.

[Cherhill_Bill]

youre not being daft sam. thats my top ground or near enough and theyve been sat on it the best part of two year now, ive said as much on here before and got told it was land agents. polite men, big clean motors, no farm about em, tell you a paths shut when it aint. dont you go up there again with the children, not because youve done owt wrong but because they bank on a person being too polite to make a fuss and youve more sense than to test it with the little ones in tow. i dont know what theyre minding up there. theres nowt but grass and a tumbledown barn and a few old stones. but theyre minding it like its made of gold and theyre getting bolder about it.

[E_Selwood]

[ This post has been removed by the administrator. ]

[E_Selwood]

The post above was Bill's, and I have taken it down, and I want it set on the record here exactly why, because I will not have it thought I did it willingly. Bill named the firm, and quoted from one of the letters he has had, which he is perfectly entitled to do, the letters being his own property and addressed to him. Within the day I had a message making it very clear that the material was to come off, and what would follow if it did not. I am one man and they are not, and I have a forum full of decent people I would rather keep out of the way of it. So I have complied, under protest, and I do not accept the grounds, and I have kept a copy of what was removed, as I keep a copy of everything now. Bill, I am sorry. You had every right to say it. That is rather the point. E.S.

[Honeystreet_Haunts]

This will sound like me drumming up business for the walks and I promise you it is not, I am genuinely shaken writing it. Somebody got into my lock-up on the industrial units over the weekend. Forced the door. And here is the thing, they didnt take the tools, they didnt take the gear that is worth something, the camera kit was sat right there. What they took was the box of old recordings. Years of it. The tapes and the two hard drives with all the walk audio, the EVP, the night sessions, twelve years of it, gone, and nothing else touched. Police were very nice and very clear there is nothing they can do about a box of old tapes nobody can value. Who breaks into a unit and takes the one thing in it that is worth nothing to anybody but me. I have been doing this a long time and I have never had anything like it. I dont mind telling you it has put the wind up me proper.

[Larkhill_Geoff]

I will add mine, for what it is worth, though I want to be the sceptic here as I usually am. I was out for the nightjars over the far side of the down, nowhere near where Sam and Bill mean, the other end entirely. The dog stopped dead on the track at last light and would not go on. Hackles up, the lot. There was a figure on the rise ahead, tall, stood square, not moving. I called out, the way you do, and it did not answer and did not move. The dog has walked that track a thousand nights and never once baulked. By the time I had got her turned and looked back it was gone off the skyline. Now. A roe deer stood broadside at dusk looks for all the world like a tall man, and the stillness is exactly what fools you, and I have flinched at worse with twenty years of knowing better. I will not tell anyone what I saw. I am only saying the dog knew her own mind about it, and she is not a fanciful animal, and I am still thinking about it a week on.

[Devizes_Mech]

right, before this lot runs away with itself. its land agents and a security firm and nothing more, and im saying it plain because somebody has to. sam, a heavy bloke told you a path was shut, thats rude and its probably a lie but its not the bogeyman. bill, theyre guarding a field because the owner told em to, legal and common as muck. mick, a lock up got done over by somebody after scrap who took the wrong box in the dark, happens every week. geoff, you said yourself its a deer. four ordinary things and youve sat em in a row and frightened each other half to death. dont get hysterical. thats exactly what gives a bully the run of the place. use your rights of way, dont engage with the heavies, and stop reading a horror story into some new fencing.

[WiltsMuseum_Col]

Sound advice from Mech in the main, and I would only soften it a little, because Sam plainly had a real fright and deserves better than being told she imagined it. These things do nearly always turn out to be money and bad manners. But it never hurts to be precise, and precision is half my trade, so let me be useful. Sam, whereabouts exactly were you when the vehicle came up on you, which gate, and roughly what time? And Bill, the men you see, is it always the same stretch, or do they move about the ground? The more exactly we can pin where and when, the easier it is to tell heavy-handed security from something that wants a proper word with the council. Bare facts, plainly set down, are worth ten worried threads. Send me the details if you would rather not put them up here.

[Marlborough_Nan]

I have read this thread three times and I have started to answer it twice and deleted it both times. I will only say I have come to think there is something in it. More than land agents. I was the daft old woman joining up dots that werent joined and I am not so sure now that they werent joined. But I wont say more on here. It doesnt feel safe to, and I cant believe I have just typed that about our own little forum. If anyone wants to talk about it properly, message me. I would rather it wasnt all out in the open. You look after those children sam. You were right to be frightened and dont let anybody tell you different .

[Quiet_Eric]

The best thing any of you can do is stop writing it down. I mean it kindly.