The entrance to Church Road (then called Bull Road), Vange, from Clay Hill Road, was firmly believed to be haunted.

 

This ghost was of a mischievous nature and was said to throw people over the hedge and into the fields.

 

The occupier of Basildon Hall was one who said that he had had this unpleasant experience. So strong was the belief that men leaving the Bull Inn after dark would not go that way alone, but waited for company.

 

There does not appear to be any story to account for the ghost, but it was a very lonely place with tall elms either side of the road and no houses in sight.

 

Strangely enough Ken remembers his father saying that, as a boy, he never liked that part of the road at night. Whether he had heard of the ghost or not, it seems as if there was something uncanny about that piece of road. 

 

A school now stands on one side and shops on the corner; some of the trees survive and mischievous spirits trouble no one.

​