Mention of these ghostly horses and riders reminds one that Pembrokeshire--in common with several other…
- Date of account
- Published 1911
- Source
- Stranger Than Fiction: Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-lore
- Reference
- Stranger Than Fiction: Being Tales from the Byways of Ghosts and Folk-lore · selected passage 19
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
Mention of these ghostly horses and riders reminds one that Pembrokeshire--in common with several other districts in Great Britain and Ireland--possesses a good phantom coach legend, localised in the southern part of the county, at a place where four roads meet, called Sampson Cross
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyMention of these ghostly horses and riders reminds one that Pembrokeshire--in common with several other districts in Great Britain and Ireland--possesses a good phantom coach legend, localised in the southern part of the county, at a place where four roads meet, called Sampson Cross. In old days, the belated farmer, driving home in his gig from market, was apt to cast a nervous glance over his shoulder as his pony slowly climbed the last steep pitch leading up to the Cross. For he remembered the story connected with that dark bit of road, that told how every night a certain Lady Z. (who lived in the seventeenth century, and whose monument is in the church close by) drives over from Tenby, ten miles distant, in a coach drawn by headless horses, guided by a headless coachman. She also has no head; and arriving by midnight at Sampson Cross, the whole equipage is said to disappear in a flame of fire, with a loud noise of explosion. A clergyman living in the immediate neighbourhood, who told me the story, said that some people believed the ghostly traveller had been safely "laid" many years ago, in the waters of a lake not far distant.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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