HISTORIAN and author Jack Nadin takes a look at supernatural happenings around Burnley.

A ‘boggart’ is Lancashire’s very own ghost, you won’t find them anywhere else.

At the Todmorden Road end of Towneley Park in Burnley, for instance, you can still find Boggart Bridge.

The first of our boggarts was said to have haunted Barcroft Hall, a local yeoman’s house at Cliviger, which was built in 1614.

The ‘Barcroft Boggart’ was a helpful little fellow by all accounts, until he donned a pair of clogs!

Extremely friendly, he assisted in all the chores attached to the general farm work and labours of the household.

One dark winter’s evening snow began to fall, and the farmer shouted out to his sons to bring in the sheep to the barn for shelter.

The words had no sooner left his lips, when he heard a squeaking little voice call out: “I’ll do it, I’ll do it”.

A short time later, the little voice was heard to say: “I’ve done, I’ve done, but I had some trouble with that small brown ‘un”.

On rising the next day, the farmer found that the ‘small brown ‘un’ was, in fact, a large hare.

Everyone was aware of the good work the boggart performed around the house, he did no harm and the family, although they had never seen him just accepted him.

However, curiosity got the better of one of the farmer’s sons, and late one night he bored a hole in the ceiling of the room where the boggart performed his good deeds.

Peering through the hole he saw a wrinkled, withered old man, bare-footed, happily sweeping the floor.

The son got an inclination to reward the old man, and made him a tiny pair of clogs, which he placed besides the fireplace.

After that day nothing went right, pandemonium and mischief was the order of the day.

Pots and pans were broken, the farm animals became sick and lame, and cows refused to give milk. To cap it all, the farmer awoke one morning to find his prize bull walking on the farmhouse roof.

At this last act of mischief, the farmer’s patience gave way and he was determined to leave the luckless farm to its resident mischief maker.

The family should have remembered that no boggart would do harm – until he had received a gift.

Another story relates to Extwistle Hall at Roggerham, which dates from around 1580 and was the home of the Parker family.

Folklore tells of a Captain Robert Parker, who one night in the 17th Century had attended a Jacobite meeting.

As he crossed a bridge on his walk home he heard the incantations of a goblin funeral and curiosity got the better of him.

Intrigued, he hid in some nearby bushes as the procession drew ever nearer and the glow of the moon lit up the brass nameplate on the coffin.

To his terror it revealed his own name and he took it as a warning against taking involvement with the Jacobites, so he withdrew his support and refused to take any part in the failed uprising of 1715.

We should also remember that Brownside going up towards Worsthorne is reputed to be named after the Brownies that played beneath the bridge there.