In February 1964, a local newspaper buzzed with reports of a ghostly figure—a red monk—seen walking through the morning mist on Church Lane towards the graveyard. Between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., witnesses swore they saw the apparition, with one person even claiming to have cycled straight through it.

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The mystery deepened when the local reverend, Bernard Lloyd, began hearing unexplained footsteps in the church porch and received a call from a worried resident who heard the eerie "clink of spades" in the graveyard. Despite their investigations, no source for the sounds was ever found.

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Though some years later, a claim was made that a group of friends had used a projector to fake the sighting, the story of the red monk of Church Lane has persisted. Even decades later, as late as the 1990s, the tale was still being passed down in local schoolyards, proving that some legends are too captivating to ever truly fade.

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Some later accounts added quiet details of their own. A few visitors reported seeing a monk‑like figure inside the church itself, drifting through the porch or across the aisle in the same reddish gown described in the 1964 sightings. Others spoke of footsteps in the empty building at night, or of a presence that seemed to move just out of view. These smaller reports never grew into full stories, but they echoed the old legend closely enough to keep the sense that something lingered around Holy Cross long after the first sightings faded.

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