Viclore

Introduction

Another attempt at translation! This time I’ve done a story about a ghost in England, from Spanish into English. After my translation I’ve put a few thoughts about the story.

This story appeared in issue 475 of Duda (English: Doubt), a Spanish language magazine from Mexico which frequently discussed the supernatural. This issue was published on 6 August 1980, and can be found online at: http://revisteriaponchito.com/duda/475/.

My translation:

A Certainly Unusual Fence

Bob Clewson was a determined worker, healthy and happy. He felt secure in everything that he did and enjoyed his work. During the few months that he had laboured in the region of Church Stretton, in the county of Shropshire, England, he had felt annoyed by an opening in a fence on the walk between Church Stretton and Wenlock Edge.

In fact, this fence, or as we commonly call it: gateway, had absolutely nothing to do with him; it was not part of the farm on which he worked. But when he started to fence and make channels there, he took advantage of the first opportunity that he had to cover that gap which annoyed him.

After he did a good job of cleaning he was able to observe said gap: it seemed that someone had made it on purpose. It seemed strange to him that nobody had bothered to fix it until then, so he got to work, applying all the skills he had accumulated over many years. The work took no more than two hours, and afterwards he looked at the results with pride. Several days passed before Bob returned, but when he did, he got a big surprise: there was a gap again, as if he had never plugged it. His first reaction was anger and he stood looking at the opening muttering curses.

If he could put his hands on the person who destroyed his work, he would have been capable of attacking them. When he inspected the fence in more detail, he was astounded that he couldn’t find the remains of the material which he had used to fill in the gap.

He walked through the gap towards the forest to find what was beyond, and looked; but he couldn’t find any signs. Late it occurred to him that it had been raining, so there should have been footprints of the perpetrator of the crime.

“Why would someone have wanted to do something so senseless?” he asked himself. He couldn’t answer. He went home determined to discover the prankster. But his investigation didn’t have any result. So, the following day, forgetting his anger, he returned to fix the fence. This time he spent more time on his task, and did it with the most care to prevent it being destroyed again. Nonetheless, when another day passed, there again was again a gap and neither this time was he able to find footsteps or signs of cuts. As he was stubborn and didn’t like to be defeated, he persisted and returned to repair it.

Later he repaired it for the fourth time… and when he did it the seventh for to find it destroyed the following day, he finally gave up and was convinced that it was the work of something supernatural, although his friends rejected the idea. They assured him that there had to be some explanation, but some time after, when he went to the bar of a nearby town and engaged in conversation with an old man native to the area, he asked him to tell him the legends of ghosts that he knew of the region, he was convinced that he had effectively been fighting against a supernatural force.

The old man told him that many years ago a local man had killed another on the walk between Wenlock and Church Stretton, and had dragged the lifeless body through the fence to take it to the forest where he buried it stealthily. He fixed the fence carefully but the following morning a gap had appeared and the body was discovered.

Since then, the old man continued, there had been attempts to repair it… but, the following day the gap is always seen again.

My thoughts on the story

I had a little search online, and couldn’t find any mentions of a Bob Clewson in the Church Stretton/Wenlock Edge area. Annoyingly, the magazine doesn’t give any dates which would help me narrow down a search. As the magazine was published in 1980, it certainly isn’t a recent story; but without a year, it’s much harder to e.g. look at local records to verify if a person by that name existed at that time.

Searching online, I found a single reference to the story on The Paranormal Database, a project of documenting locations with paranormal and cryptozoological connections in the UK, Ireland and Channel Islands. The item here is unfortunately quite lacking:

Murder Gap

Location: Wenlock Edge – Gap in a fence along the road leading to Church Stretton (unlikely to still be visible)
Type: Other
Date / Time: Unknown
Further Comments: A son who murdered his father dragged the body through a hedge along this road to hide it. The following day, the hedge opened and revealed the body. From that day onwards, no matter what was done to close the gap, it would always be reopened by the following day.

Source: https://www.paranormaldatabase.com/shropshire/shrodata.php?pageNum_paradata=6&totalRows_paradata=158

No source is provided, so I have no idea where this story came from to be entered into the database. There’s the slight difference here that it was a hedge rather than a fence, and the additional information that it was a son murdering his father. This suggests that the entry may not have come from someone reading the Duda magazine. Still, how did the story end up being retold in a magazine in Mexico? Perhaps it appeared in a book/elsewhere which has been lost to the internet? Maybe Duda made up the story (adding the name to give authenticity), and someone else heard it and ran with it to contribute to the database? We may never know.

Update I’ve potentially found the source! See Here: Exploring the Clattering Gat Legend in Shropshire

The original text: