I once heard a story about a woman belonging to a parish not far from my own home, who went with her husband to live in Glamorganshire, where he heard of work at Pontypridd, to which town he betook himself, leaving his wife at Dowlais. But a terrible accident happened in the mine where the man worked, and he was killed. His body was brought back to his wife's house at Dowlais, and as the coffin was carried into one of the upstairs rooms, it was carelessly allowed to knock noisily against the door. The widow afterwards told her friends that two nights before the accident happened she had been awakened in that very room, by a loud sound exactly like that caused by the bumping of the coffin, and could not imagine what had made such an odd noise. She was thenceforward convinced that a premonitory sound of the coffin being carried into the room had been sent her as a "warning."
There is a house I know very well in South Wales where a curious sound, always supposed to be of "ghostly" origin, used to be heard occasionally by a lady who lived there for a few years. She described it as the noise "of a person digging a grave," or using a pick-axe for that purpose, and said it was most horrible and gruesome to hear. It appeared to come from just outside the drawing-room windows, yet nothing was to be seen if one looked out. Other tenants have come and gone since that lady's time, and I have never heard again of the ghostly grave-digger. But mysterious footsteps have been heard in that house quite lately, and by three people who say they do not "believe in ghosts"; one of them, however, admitted to me that in spite of close investigation he was utterly unable to account for the soft footfalls he most certainly heard. But it may well be that invisible presences still linger about a place which in olden times was the site of a little settlement of monks, though nothing now remains but the name to remind us of the fact.[20]
[Footnote 20: There is a tradition connected with this house concerning a former owner who was a miser and died about a century ago, to the effect that his spirit is imprisoned within a certain rock on the coast about two miles away, where he is doomed to stay until he has picked his way out with a pin!]