Category: Fiction

I’ve extracted the text from the booklet The Boiled Egg Lady and Other Local Legends of East Bristol which I found on an online auction site earlier this year. It doesn’t seem to have been reprinted; Bristol Libraries don’t have a copy; and I have not been able to track down the authors.

Introduction

This small monograph was compiled by members of the St Philips Folklore and History Society in order to record that which would otherwise be lost. As members of the community, these are stories we have heard ourselves in pubs, clubs, schools and butcher’s shop queues. You may choose to dismiss them as nonsense but, true or not, they carry a flavour of the place – and of the fears and anxieties of the people who live and work on and around the Marsh.

C.F. Rawlins, Editor, August 1993

The 598 Man

Mass hysteria, or something more sinister? In the summer of 1988 multiple people in St George reported an encounter with a strange man driving a yellow Bedford van. Strange because he spoke as if through gritted teeth, had a heavy black beard, and an oddly immobile face.

Usually encountered at dawn, he would pull up alongside young men walking to work, or to school, and ask for help. Assuming he needed directions, they were surprised to be asked: “One piece of information, please – does the number five nine eight mean anything to you?” Of course they all said no, and after a moment, the 598 man drove away. What would have happened if someone did know the number?

On two occasions, he was said to have stopped a little further along the way, where a younger man appeared from a side street or alleyway and jumped into the passenger seat before the van sped off.

Charlie Grabknuckle 

This is the name given to a mysterious bogeyman figure said to lurk beneath the many railway arches and tunnels that cover the industrial landscape of St Philips Marsh.

The great game for children between the wars was to find a gap in a fence or in brickwork and dare each other to insert a hand, inviting Charlie Grabknuckle to take it. Invariably, a child already secreted in that place would play the part of Charlie, seizing the proffered hand and refusing to let go.

After the war, the myth of Charlie metamorphosed and he became a more sinister character, supposedly able to pull any child through a gap, however small, by breaking their bones. Thus tenderised he would, of course, eat them.

It can be no coincidence that, over the decades, many unfortunates and outcasts have indeed been found living beneath those railway arches – or, worse, been found dead.

The Boiled Egg Lady

In November 1957 the Bristol Evening Post reported that children at a junior school in Brislington were playing truant because they were afraid of ‘the Boiled Egg Lady’.

The initiating rumour was that an old woman had offered hard boiled eggs to two boys on their way to school, inviting them into her house. Within days, several other children had reported encountering the same woman, and the story became embellished. Now, there was a shadowy figure waiting in the house – supposedly the woman’s son, an escaped murderer. Police actually spoke to an elderly woman who lived in one of the terraces off the Feeder Road, at a house identified by one of the two boys who started the rumour. A childless widow, she had been in the habit of speaking to children on their way to school, and was heartbroken when asked to stop doing so. 

That was that, until a decade or so later when stories about the Boiled Egg Lady once again began to circulate, only now the story had evolved, inspired more by that evocative phrase than by anything in fact. The landscape had also changed, with mass demolition of terraces, schools, churches and factories, creating something of an eerie wasteland.

By 1968, teenagers were daring each other to traverse this space where, in the dark, the Boiled Egg Lady would be waiting for them. In this version, she took the form of a seductive young woman in a red dress. Any young man who stopped to speak to her would be asked “Do you think I’m pretty?” Of course, she was, so they would answer “Yes.” She would then remove her long dark hair – a wig – and with fingertips prise open the top of her completely bald head to reveal… Who knows? Because of course her victims fled before they could see, or were found dead.

There is no concrete record of any such incident, although several children did die playing on wasteland and construction sites during the 1960s and 1970s. Even now, it can feel a melancholy place at night.

Scarecrow Hill

Perhaps it was a prank, or perhaps a project by an art student. Whatever lay behind it, the discovery of fifteen rather horrible scarecrows on a slope at Netham Park on the 3rd of September 1974 caused considerable upset. They were found at dawn and soon a crowd from the neighbourhood had gathered to see the sinister scene. They seemed authentic enough, crafted from wood and jointed with grubby string, and decked out in old clothes of considerable vintage. Weatherworn and decayed, they seemed to have been outdoors for many years, but certainly not in this spot. Council park keepers came and took them away the same day.

That wasn’t the end of the story, however, for when the scarecrows were examined by police, several items of their clothing were found to belong to people who had gone missing or been murdered in and around Bristol in the preceding decades.

Since that time, individual scarecrows have sometimes appeared on the slope. Some theorists have noted that their appearance often coincides with the first anniversary of the disappearance of some person or another. They are promptly taken away and rarely discussed, though their number, including the original fifteen, is now said to be close to thirty.

The Blitz Babies

This story goes back to the end of World War II when Bristol was still half in ruins and its people were psychologically scarred from the experience of German bombing. It has been connected with various former bomb sites in Barton Hill and Lawrence Hill. Many of those sites were left uncleared and undeveloped until the 1970s. Throughout the 1960s, people reported hearing babies crying on these sites and, assuming they’d been abandoned, would scramble over rubble and through weeds in search of these unfortunate children. Of course they found nothing. 

In one account, two children did find a baby, blackened by fire, screaming furiously. When they returned with police to examine the site, bones were found beneath the soil – far beneath the soil, long buried. There are, of course, those who point out that foxes can sound a lot like crying babies, and perhaps that’s all the blitz babies were.

In some of the council housing blocks built on these former bombsites, tenants have reported cold spots, eerie atmospheres and, yes, the sound of babies crying at night. If not foxes, then perhaps thin partition walls are to blame in this instance.

The Naked Swimmer

This is the newest of the local myths or legends in this collection, having emerged as recently as 1979. Where the Feeder Canal meets the River Avon at Netham Lock there have been frequent sightings of somebody swimming, naked, beneath the dirty water. Only beneath, however, for this curious swimmer never seems to need to surface.

Police investigated the first sighting as a potential case of indecent exposure and arrested a man found sunbathing on the manmade protuberance that marks the entrance to the canal. He insisted he had not been swimming and had worn swimming trunks at all times.

One rumour is that the so-called Naked Swimmer is actually some amphibious creature or reptile, rather than a human. An albino seal, perhaps, or a white-bellied crocodile, escaped from some private collection.

Another theory is that it was invented by some enterprising parent to deter children from paddling in the hazardous waters where stomach bugs are as big a risk as underwater obstacles.

Hairy Jane of Combfactory Lane

Walk backwards up Combfactory Lane between midnight and four in the morning and you’ll be sure to bump into Hairy Jane – literally so. Nobody has seen her but many have felt her long hair tangle around their limbs and throat, until they tear themselves free and flee.

There are too many stories, none of them in agreement, about her nature or origin. In one version of the tale, she escaped from a travelling circus, where she was an exhibit in the sideshows, and survived on the streets by capturing and eating cats or rats. In another, she was employed at the comb factory that gave the narrow cut through its name until her hair began to grow and didn’t stop. A slight variation on that account has it that her impossibly long, unruly hair became caught in one of the comb cutting machines and she was dragged to her gory death.

Spiderman Bridge

The story goes that, on dark winter evenings, people passing through the short, unlit tunnel beneath the railway line at the bottom of Cole Road hear a voice: “Spare a little change?” But there’s nobody there. Until, that is, they look up and see a bearded man in ragged clothes splayed against the red brick above, clinging on with filthy fingers and toes.

The Unscheduled Stop

Bus drivers working out of Lawrence Hill depot have for many years told new recruits about the danger of making unscheduled stops, however much a passenger might insist. There are good operational reasons for this, of course, but stories have also circulated for years about what might happen to a poor driver when such a stop is made.

For example, one veteran – we’ll call him Ted – tells of being asked to stop his bus near Avonvale Cemetery. The passenger, a young woman, asked nicely, and as it was late, and there was freezing fog, he decided to be gallant. No sooner had she departed the now empty bus, however, than another passenger boarded – an old man with pale, drawn features and a shabby black suit. He paid for his ticket with a handful of dirty old coins and took a seat near the driver. Bill could see him quite clearly in his rear view mirror. As the bus neared the junction with Church Road, Bill glanced back again and was startled to note that the passenger had gone. Pulling over, he got out of his cab to check in case the old man had slumped or fallen. He found only a length of filthy white cloth of the type used to wrap corpses.

Ted also talks of a colleague, a friend of a friend, who stopped in much the same place thirty years before, when flagged down by a man carrying a heavy package. After a few stops, this passenger departed the bus by the back door. A few moments later, the conductor shouted for the driver to stop. The man had left his package on the bus – with blood oozing through the brown paper. When opened, it was found to contain no less than twelve human hands, of various sizes and colours, and in varying degrees of decay.

Others

Many other stories are known only in passing and are still being researched by the Society. We should be grateful to hear from anyone who can tell us about:

• The Phantom Social Worker (St George, 1950s)
• The Avonvale Ghoul (St George, c.1968)
• The Underground Theatre (Lawrence Hill, 1920s)
• The Fox Tail Man (Easton, 1920s)
• The German Lodger (Lawrence Hill, 1940s)
• The Men in Blue Suits (Pile Marsh, c.1956)
• Bonfire Billy (Barton Hill, 1960s)

---

Look, I put ‘Fiction’ right up there in the title of the post. I just think Bristol ought to have more decent ghosts and urban legends, so I made some up.

But perhaps some of them will take, if they make it into the rumour mill.

Or maybe someone will message me to say that, actually, they saw Bonfire Billy themselves – that poor young man who decided to sleep in the Barton Hill bonfire stack one cold November, not realising that it was due to be lit that very night…

In the late afternoon, slow-moving cloud came in off the mountains and burst over Maxton City. Main Street had just been macadamed the year before and the rain turned it into a stream.

Dan Todd used the storm as an excuse to drop into the Turkey Inn on his way home from the newspaper office. He had already dawdled and detoured. He was avoiding the road home, and the one-pot dinner he knew was being kept warm on the stove.

That damn black pot. The thought of it made his gut hurt. Hazel always did use too much salt, and never trimmed the fat off the meat. Which would be fine, which he could live with, if she cooked it long enough for the damn fat to render out, but damn her, she never did. It just stewed like white rubber, and then he wouldn’t sleep with it sitting on his gut.

The Turkey was an old wooden building, one of the oldest in Maxton. In recent years, however, the old half-height saloon doors had been replaced with shining new ones in chrome and glass. They looked out of place but a travelling salesman from the city had dazzled old Jim with talk of modernisation, hygiene and glamour. It was true that  they kept the dust out in summer. Dan pushed his way in and let the door swing behind him.

The bar was gloomy, and downright dark towards the back. Jim ought to have switched on the lamps, what with the storm having made it so dark outside, but he always waited until six o’clock. It was a point of principle.

The barroom was long and thin. The counter was of polished wood with big cut glass mirrors on the wall behind. A row of stools lined the bar and there were wooden booths with benches along the opposite wall. There was a cigarette machine, a gum machine, and a cardboard sign that said ‘Please pay when served’.

Music was coming from a radio on the counter, a big city dance band strangled through a small speaker. Dan didn’t recognise the song but could hear somebody crooning about the moon and loneliness.

Dan took off his hat, revealing fine, fair hair, and slapped the felt brim firmly against his hand. Rainwater scattered on the floor. He hung the hat on the stand by the door. Then he shook off his coat and hung that up, too. He used his handkerchief to wipe raindrops from his spectacles as he approached the bar.

‘Beer, if you please.’

Jim was a round, blank-faced man bald except for tussocks of hair above his ears. He poured a mug of Old Joe’s Lager Beer and placed it on a napkin on the bar.

Dan glanced along the counter to the only other customer.

He was a hunched, miserable looking man in a heavy plaid jacket with a sheepskin lining. His head hung over an almost-empty beer mug that was clutched in his thick, dark hands.

Dan had few friends. He didn’t need them. But that night, he wanted to talk, and he heard himself saying: ‘Buy you a beer, friend?’

The man looked up.

Dan had never seen such eyes. They were like those of a whipped dog, or a seasick stowaway. The whites were the colour of slow-baked cream.

‘Had a couple already,’ he growled.

Dan began to turn away.

‘Could handle another.’

Jim looked at Dan, who nodded. As Dan lifted himself onto a stool, Jim placed the beer in front of the stranger.

‘Obliged to ya,’ said the stranger. He pushed his spent glass away and lifted the fresh one, glittering with dew, in Dan’s direction.

‘Name’s Dan Todd,’ said Dan. ‘What do I call you?’

The man on the other stool turned slowly to look over his shoulder, the movement creaky and apparently painful. He turned back and glanced at Dan from under black, unruly brows.

‘Call me Grant.’

‘That your first name or your last?’

Grant took a long gulp of beer and rubbed foam from his stubble-covered upper lip.

Now he was settled next to Grant, Dan could detect a musk about the man that he didn’t like. Men often had a smell after a day’s work. Heck, even he needed to shower after a day baking in that miserable office which the old man insisted on keeping sealed like a diving bell. Grant’s smell, though, was rotten, as if he was sick and didn’t yet know it. It came out of his pores and in his breath whenever he turned a little towards Dan.

‘Hope you don’t mind a little company,’ said Dan, hoping that Grant would send him away.

‘I ain’t a big talker but I don’t mind listening,’ said Grant.

‘You might regret saying that, friend,’ said Dan with a dry laugh. He took his beer mug in his strong right hand and sipped a little. ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind.’

Grant rolled his yellow eyes towards Dan and waited.

‘Well, it’s just that, oh, well, a fellow gets so damn bored.’

‘Bored how?’

‘See, the thing is, I’ve never lived anywhere but Maxton,’ said Dan. ‘I didn’t even go to college, and I missed the war. Started writing for the paper when I was fourteen and I’ve been there ever since. I suppose it’s been quite different for you?’

‘I know the road, that’s true,’ said Grant. ‘Six states and five countries.’

With a sigh, Dan said, ‘Gosh. Doing what?’

‘Picking fruit. Crewing boats. Driving trucks. Peeling taters.’

‘I should have done all of that before I married,’ said Dan. ‘I should have done everything. Are you married?’

‘Was.’

‘Then you know how it is. The same conversations, the same dinners on the table, the same old flower arrangement on the stand in the hall.’

Grant grunted.

‘Sounds tough.’

Before Dan could reply Grant shivered as if an earthquake had shaken his body.

‘Got a fever?’ asked Dan, leaning back in his stool. ‘Get caught in the storm?’

‘Hungry, mostly,’ said Grant. ‘Ain’t eaten today.’

Dan waved a hand at Jim. The barkeep had slunk away to the far end of the bar to watch the rain on the glass but saw the movement from the corner of his eye.

‘Couple of sandwiches,’ he said.

Jim nodded and disappeared through a door into the kitchen.

‘You was saying about your wife,’ said Grant. ‘Them flowers in the hall.’

Dan knew he wasn’t really interested. It was just that he’d rather hear Dan talk than talk himself. Dan rubbed a hand through his damp hair and pushed his glasses tight to the bridge of his nose.

‘I shouldn’t have said anything,’ said Dan. ‘It’s not gentlemanly.’

‘You was saying about the dinners and the conversations.’

There was a suggestion of bitterness in Grant’s voice now. Jealousy, perhaps, Dan thought.

‘I don’t mean to complain,’ said Dan. ‘I don’t mean to boast either. We’re just like any other couple that’s been married five years. Not sick of each other, exactly, but—’ Well, he thought, maybe sick of each other is exactly right. ‘I like apple pie but I don’t want to eat it every damn day.’

Grant finished his beer in a single long pull as Jim returned with two thin, greasy sandwiches. Nobody came to the Turkey to eat. Grant flicked at one sandwich with a dirty nail, peeled back the bread, let it drop.

‘Another beer,’ Grant said.

‘Put it on my tab,’ said Dan. ‘I’ll take another, too.’

There was a sudden change in the air in the bar and the door made a booming sound as it was thrown open. Two men entered, followed by a gust of wind carrying about equal amounts of dust and rain.

Both were dressed in hunting clothes, plaid shirts and woolen caps, but Dan noticed immediately that they were wearing polished black city shoes.

‘Howdy,’ said one of the men with a broad, childlike smile. He was grey-haired, lean and tall. He looked everywhere but at Grant.

His companion was younger with rough red hair and a sharp jaw. His big teeth didn’t quite fit in his mouth. He looked directly at Grant and thereafter his eyes didn’t move from the shaggy figure at the bar.

‘What’ll it be?’ asked Jim.

‘Two beers,’ said the older man.

‘Not for me,’ said the other, still staring at Grant. ‘Coke, if you have it, or root beer.’

They took seats at the end of the bar, one looking at Grant, the other pointedly not.

‘My wife was a wonder,’ growled Grant, almost under his breath.

Dan turned so that his back blocked Grant from view. He did not know why he did this, only that he did not like the young red-haired man, not at all.

‘Not too good with the flowers or conversations but–’ He gave a low, howling whistle. ‘She was sure nice to be around. Sure knew how to make a feller feel like a million dollars.’

‘Then why did you leave her? Or let her go?’

Their conversation was now being held at a whisper and sounded more conspiratorial than perhaps they knew.

‘Somebody killed her,’ said Grant. He took hold of the beer glass in front of him and gave it four quarter turns with his dirty fingertips until it was back where it started.

Dan swallowed.

‘Somebody?’

‘Not me,’ said Grant, wearily. ‘Somebody. Something. They never did find out.’

‘Something? Who do you mean, “they”?’

Dan glanced towards the two men at the end of the bar and then back at Grant.

‘Who are those men?’

‘I ain’t never seen ‘em before today.’

‘Well, I just don’t know what to think,’ said Dan. He took a mouthful of beer, struggled to swallow, as if he’d forgotten how.

‘Don’t think nothing. We’ll finish our beers and then I’ll walk out of here. They’ll follow me and something will happen, who knows what. But it won’t matter none to you because you’ll be home with that wife of yours soon enough, feeling glad you ain’t me.’

For the first time, Grant laughed. It was a rough, raw bark.

‘The grass is always greener, they say,’ said Grant, ‘except there ain’t nobody looking at my lawn and wishing it was theirs.’

Grant drank some beer. He and Dan sat in silence for a minute before he drank the rest.

As he pushed back the stool it scraped on the boards and the two detectives, or special agents, or whatever they were, looked sharply in Grant’s direction. There was no jollity in the older man’s face now, and the younger man looked ready to wrestle a mountain bobcat.

Grant didn’t offer to shake Dan’s hand, which Dan was glad about, having seen his filthy nails and the blisters on his palms.

‘See you around,’ Grant said as he pushed past and headed for the bar’s front door. On the mat, he pulled up the collar of his plaid jacket and retrieved a woollen hat from his jacket pocket. He pulled the hat on tight, and low over his eyes. Then he stepped out into the blue evening light.

The moment the door was closed, the older of the two detectives threw a bill on the bar.

‘Keep the change.’

They rushed out into the street after Grant.

At last, when it was just Dan in front of the counter and Jim behind it, the two men spoke.

‘Policeman, I reckon. They believe he killed his wife,’ said Dan.

‘No smoke without fire,’ said Jim. ‘That feller stank of Folsom.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Dan.

‘Some reporter,’ said Jim with a smile.

Jim checked his watch and switched on the lights. They filled the empty bar with queasy yellow light. The dance band on the radio finished with a flourish and a soap company spokesman began talking about how to avoid ‘scummy dishpan film’.

‘I’d better be going,’ said Dan. He looked at his glass of beer but didn’t finish it.

---

When he stepped outside he found the sky clear, the storm having blown on clean through the valley, and dusk coming on. There was a full, round moon rising faintly above the spikes of the ponderosa pine trees on the foothills.

Main Street was quiet, in that just-scrubbed silence that comes after a storm, and Dan could hear his own footsteps on the sidewalk as he tramped towards home. He was crying, just a little, because of the cold air in his eyes, he told himself, though he was thinking of Hazel and how sweet it would be to sit with her in front of the radio, even if there was nothing to talk about.

He could tell her about Grant, he supposed, but he wouldn’t. It would scare her, in lots of different ways.

The next morning Dan left his house under a cold, clear sky, feeling rested and fortunate. He passed the fine old houses on the street, each spaced apart with room for a paddock or orchard, and smiled. Some had cars or pickup trucks parked outside, none of them new, but all well cared for and clean.

As he neared the end of the road, he saw that there were big black cars parked along the edge of the forest that led into the foothills. There were men in uniform, too. As he came closer, Dan saw Pete Nachel, the Sheriff, and two of his deputies. Pete was a tall man with a moustache whose points reached his jaw, like Wyatt Earp. His hat was trimmed with a gold cord. There were men from out of town, too, in black suits and black hats.

‘Morning, Dan,’ said Pete as Dan approached. ‘Hear any trouble here last night?’

Dan stopped and peered into the trees.

‘Walked this way at about six thirty yesterday evening and all was well. What’s the problem?’

Pete looked towards the out-of-towners who were busy supervising a photographer.

‘Couple of G-Men dead in the gully. Followed one of them public enemies up this way. Been tracking him for months. Man named Grant.’

Dan swallowed hard and licked his dry lips.

‘Golly. And he shot ‘em?’

Pete pursed his lips and shook his head slowly.

‘Well, no. They’re cut up pretty bad. They say he done it with a knife. In a frenzy, they say. That’s how his wife got it.’

‘Did they find a knife?’

Pete squinted and tipped his head to one side.

‘Well, maybe it was a knife, maybe it wasn’t.’

‘What do you mean?’

Pete took off his hat and drew his long fingers through his thin hair.

‘This is still wild country round here, Dan, and I say an animal done it.’ He nodded firmly. ‘Biting and tearing, damn near minced… Yes, an animal. Can’t be nothing else. A man couldn’t have done it, not like that.’

Dan stood silently, staring down into the darkest part of the forest, and thought to himself: Old Grant never did eat that sandwich, hungry as he was.

Main image: Yreeka, California, by Lee Russell, 1942, in the public domain via the Library of Congress.