Research source

Near the Carmarthenshire border lies the little town of St

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 41
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

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 only

Near the Carmarthenshire border lies the little town of St. Govan's, which, a very few years ago, was much agitated by the pranks of a most inconsequent and noisy ghost. Selecting the abode of one of the quietest and most respected families in the place for the scene of its exploits, it proceeded with demonstrations that not only aroused excitement in the neighbourhood, but for a few days attracted considerable attention from the daily press. But in spite of close investigation no real solution of the mystery was ever arrived at, though the sceptical (and larger) section of the community at length dismissed the matter as a case of trickery in some shape or other, an explanation which, in the light of many reliable witnesses' evidence, was quite inadmissible to thoughtful minds, compelled eventually to relegate the strange happenings to that domain which M. Camille Flammarion has so happily called "L'Inconnu." The first brief report of the occurrences in a local paper ran (slightly altered) as follows: "Great excitement has been caused at St. Govan's during the past week, owing to the alleged appearance in the principal street of a ghost. It has taken up its abode (so the story goes) in the house of Mr. Moore ...

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This 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 only

Lattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.

Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.