Thriller Thur...erm...Friday: Vol 3 (Tomorrow Is Another Day...)

Okay, so yesterday I was busy at work (well, I wasn't really, but I was distracted by other things on the interweb that I shall leave for another post on another day) and didn't get around to posting my Thriller Thursday story. I figured, no big deal, approximately 4 people per day read this site, so no one will notice. Well, as soon as I got home I was berated by one loyal reader and even supplied with a story to tell that I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ABOUT!! So, here's Thriller Thursday a day late, just for you, sis.

When I was a senior in highschool I opted to take a trip to England, Scotland, and Wales with my family and some family friends rather than partake in the drunken debauchery that supposedly took place in Cancun--you know with all 12 people that actually went there. I've never regretted that decision and it is part of what made me far more well traveled between the ages of 17 and 18 than I've been in the last 6 years of my life. It is also where my love for British history was fully realized and I learned of the restorative powers of a miniscule glass of mead and potted meat. (Yes, potted meat... It's meat. In a pot.) It was also the site of a few little ghostly encounters experienced by various members of my family. (And also the site of the London street where my dad almost stepped out in front of a speeding vehicle and I screeched out in alarm and then dubbed him "YOU BIG BABY!!", a quote which has gone down in family history.)

One of our evenings was spent at Ruthin Castle, a gorgeous medieval fortress in Northern Wales located near many unpronounceable towns of which you may or may not have heard. After we dropped off our luggage in our rooms and waved hello to the deer grazing mere leaps and bounds from our windows, we headed out to wander the grounds before dinner. There were gorgeous gardens and grottos to take in and passageways that led to such savory locations as the drowning pit and dungeons, and my sister and I were having a glorious time playing investigators. We came upon a grotto with a large imposing gate which of course only made us want to get inside. We pushed and shoved, but the gate was either rusted or locked shut and we couldn't get passed. Since there was plenty left to explore we didn't worry too much about it and instead began to move on from that location.

However, as we turned to leave, my mom and my sister swear up and down this actually happened, the gate began to slowly swing open on it's own. They alerted us to the fact that the gate had opened of it's own accord, so we went in and were surrounded on all sides by tall stone walls covered in ivy and in the center a pile of stones and boulders. My parents pulled out their camera and my sister and I exercised our theatrical abilities, pretending that we were at a grave site as we draped ourselves over the stones as though we were in mourning and staged ourselves as ghosts. It was great fun, but we didn't really think anything of it and we eventually moved on to the drowning pit.

That night, after dinner, we were back in our rooms watching tv and reading through the literature provided about the castle. One of the brochures was a guidebook to the grounds and we looked through it to find all the places we'd been that afternoon. We found the gated grotto in the brochure and looked up what it had been--and it turned out that the pile of rocks we'd been playing all over really was an unmarked grave. Specifically, the grave of The Grey Lady, a murderess and wife of the second in command of the castle hundreds of years ago. The story goes that she discovered her husband was having an affair with a local woman and she proceeded to take care of the situation in the most logical of manners--the hacked the woman to death with an ax. The lady was subsequently executed for her crime and buried on the grounds as the bishop would not allow her to be laid to rest in consecrated grounds. She is now known as the most commonly seen ghost at Ruthin Castle.

So, the skeptics out there would say that after pushing on the gates they eventually gave way on their own and opened from a slight breeze that blew through. I would counter that we pushed against that gate with all our might and it gave no sign of budging until we were already quite a few steps away and moving down the corridor. I'm convinced that The Grey Lady just wanted us to find her grave and sure enough we did. But hey, call me crazy--you certainly wouldn't be the first!

Comments

ooo! That was so fun! Let's go back and test our hypothesis ;)

Posted by: Brittany | October 20, 2006 at 11:35 PM

Spooky story. Being gray all those years made her yearn for a little excitement, so she opened the gate. Thankfully she was friendly....and didn't make you go crazy after watching a vcr tape and then drag you into a well.

(Yeah, your comment cracked me up. You probably didn't know it, but I have a love hate relationship with Simara. Mostly hate. I'm 'scert' of her!)

Posted by: shpprgrl | October 21, 2006 at 10:34 PM