ON the eve of Hallowe’en, historian Steve Chapples looks at the ghostly goings-on at one of Pendle’s most reputedly haunted places, Hobstones Farm on the banks of Lake Burwain at Foulridge.

Hobstones derives its name from the Saxon ‘hob’, meaning a hobgoblin or evil dwarf, while Burwain means burial ground and it is said that sheep and cattle refuse to graze in one particular field, where the burial site is believed to have been.

The farm, now converted to three cottages, originally dates from the 15th century and was a coaching stop on the turnpike road from Colne to Skipton.

It’s reported that a phantom coach and four have been heard and seen outside the building.

The farm is also believed to have been a Royalist stronghold during the Civil War and, said Steve, there have been sightings of a phantom army carrying pikes and swords wandering across the fields in the direction of Colne.

Another story is that in 1959 the tenant farmer was in the outside privy when the door flew open and there stood a dwarf monk holding a severed forearm – stone from the plundered Sawley Abbey is believed to have been used to build the farm.

The farmer and his wife encountered the apparition twice more before deciding to move out.

In the 1970s, Mr and Mrs Pat Berry lived there. One night the three-foot walls began to shake violently and the washer was flung across the kitchen. On it was a box of eggs. All the white eggs lay smashed on the floor, leaving just the brown ones untouched in the shape of a cross.

Milk bottles smashed and packets of lard and margarine flew across the kitchen. An antique wardrobe moved across the room.

On another occasion rocks and stones rolled down the stairs and panes of diamond-shaped glass from the mullioned windows blew out into the yard.

When Mr Berry went to find the glass, all he could see was a pile of powder.

One day there was a terrific pounding on the front door and all the couple could see was a giant fist.

Mrs Berry claimed that on three separate occasions she saw a cavalier in various states of undress in her youngest daughter’s bedroom.

Ghost hunter Terence Whitaker, of Burnley, once took a BBC film crew to photograph the exterior and interior of the property.

On his return to the Manchester studios none of the interior shots could be developed. Instead there were just hundreds of feet of blank tape!