I sat on Thorncombe Barrow, above the village of Bicknoller in the Quantock Hills in Somerset wondering if they would come tonight. I was waiting for the appearance of the Yeth Hounds, those strange ghostly creatures whom I believed had laid their curse on me many years before.

I first heard about the Yeth Hounds when I was a teenager. A gang of us had gone into the Carew Arms in the village of Crowcombe, which was frequented back in the sixties manly by hill farmers and old shepherds. Earthy men descended from generations of West Somerset folk who lived, worked and breathed the air of the Quantocks, men whose very souls were born out of the combes and covers on the hills. Men who knew no other life, nor had any desire to.

We were assembled in the public bar with its flagstone floors and roaring log fire throwing darts at the dartboard. We werent playing a game as such, merely messing around to pass the evening, laughing and joking amongst ourselves. The men would tell stories to each other, though sometimes I suspected they were for our benefit as well, when they got bored with the dominoes. Some of us had to walk home later in the night over the hill, and the stories served well to scare us half to death before we left for home. There was a story about a seven-headed monster that lived in Crowcombe combe, surviving on a diet of young lambs and deer. There was another about the ghost of Dead Womans Ditch, a grey apparition of a female figure who roamed the hilltops. However, the story that intrigued me most was the story of the Yeth Hounds.

According to the local characters in the pub, the Yeth Hounds appeared around the time of the full moon, accompanied by a rider on a black stallion. The whole apparition appeared black, as if in a silhouette and they were completely silent. Not a hoof fall or the bay of a hound would ever be heard. They would appear from nowhere and gallop noiselessly by any lone walker who happened to be on the hills in twilight. It was also said that anyone who happened to see the Yeth Hounds would later experience extreme bad luck after the sighting.

It was about three years after hearing the story that I actually believe I saw the Yeth Hounds, and it was to be an experience I would never forget. It was late October and I was walking my dog above Crowcombe, on the main track that runs the length of the hills. The sun had gone down and there was a distinct chill in the air, the Hunters Moon was already ascending like a giant red Chinese lantern in the sky. It was light enough to see, but only just. However, I liked to be on the hill at that time of the year. I liked to hear the roar of the rutting stags echoing around the combes below me. I was listening hard but all was silent. There were no stags to be heard that night. Then I noticed something coming towards me. It was just one shape to start with and I couldnt make out what it was but as it approached I realised that there was more than one shape.

I stood stock still on the track as it came closer and closer. Yet I still could hear nothing as I began to make out the outline of a horse and rider surrounded by several dogs with long curved tails. They were without doubt, hounds, a familiar sight in this part of the country, but they showed no colour. There were no light patches of white on them that should have been clearly visible in the moonlight. Everything about this spectacle, what ever it was, was black. I could make out no contours or features on either horse, rider or hounds.

I called the dog to me and caught hold of his collar for fear that he might take after the hounds and decide to run with them. However, he seemed to show no interest in them at all, as if they did not even exist. Suddenly they were level with me, passing by, their feet appearing not to touch the ground at all. I looked up to catch a glimpse of the face of the rider but he was looking away from me and all I saw was the bizarre outline of a hooded cloak. With the same they were gone. They seemed to fade into the darkness much more quickly than they had appeared and as they moved on silently down the track behind me they were soon lost from view.

I was shaking all over. The whole experience was weird and uncanny. I knew that whatever I had seen was not of this world yet I also felt that I had had no part to play in their appearance. It was if I just happened to be there at the time.

***

Several years later I left West Somerset and went to live in India with my husband Stephen. When we had married neither of us was of any particular religious persuasion but Stephen somewhere along the line became a born-again Christian. I still worshiped nothing in particular apart from the ground that Stephen walked so when he announced that he wanted to do missionary work in India I was only too glad to support him. We lived in a hostel in Calcutta with other Christian families and we had a daughter, then four years old, called Holly.

I enjoyed India and while I refrained from joining in with some of the Christian activities or any of the services I liked the people we lived with. They were jolly and amiable and very easy to get on with. I could always count on them when I needed the support of another human being.

Then one day Holly became ill. She had fallen in the street, badly cut her knee and the wound became infected. I wasnt too concerned at first because the nature of Stephens work brought us into contact with the type of human suffering that had to be seen to be believed. I knew we could get Holly into hospital where she could be treated properly. But Stephen would not let Holly go to hospital. He said the Lord would decide her fate and if we prayed, she would get better. If she did not get better it was Gods will.

Up to this point in our marriage Stephen had hardly ever so much as argued and yet now, this warm, comfortable home where I had felt so secure became, almost overnight, a hostile environment. Other members of the household began to imply that Hollys illness was Gods way of punishing me for not following his doctrine. They said they had had house meetings and consistently prayed for me since my arrival in Calcutta but I had not been converted to their form of Christianity. Then it was suggested that a dark, evil force was at work and that either I had a curse on me or worse still, I had made a pact with Satan.

The situation rapidly deteriorated and Stephen and I had the most fearful rows. The rows were never confined to our own room as Stephen insisted upon conducting them in front of the other residents so they could put their views in too and back Stephen up. In stead of feeling part of a loving extended family I now felt more alone than ever before in my entire life. Then, when Holly became seriously ill I gathered her into my arms and carried her through the blistering midsummer heat to a hospital. She was dead within three hours.

Stephen went into deep mourning and became unreachable. The rest of the household continued to ostracise me and I had no one to turn to. I lived in that intolerable situation for about four months when finally I knew I had to quit. Stephen, who rarely spoke to me by this time informed me he was going to travel to Tibet, alone, to find himself. I began to make plans to return to England when I happened to return to the hostel early one day having forgotten my money the day I went to book my flight. The house was quiet as all the residents were about their daily work and their children were at school. I went straight to our room, opened the door to find Stephen on the bed with a young Malaysian looking girl. They were not studying the scriptures.

Stephen explained to me that the young lady had been sent to him by God to make up for his loss, which had been brought about, through me, by the hand of Satan. My departure from Calcutta could not come soon enough.

***

So now, back in England, back in my beloved West Somerset I wondered whether I really had been cursed by the Yeth hounds. Deep down I knew it was irrational. The sights I had seen on the streets of Calcutta told me that. The deprivation, misery and suffering touches the hearts of all those who witness it. Yet I had to know for certain. Somehow I had come to the conclusion that if I were to see the hounds again I would find out, so I set about visiting the hills after sunset, in the hope of seeing them again.

I had been on Thorncombe Barrow for quite some time now. The sun had gone down, dusk was falling and a chilly breeze blew in from the Bristol Channel. I supposed I really ought to make my way back home but there was no one waiting for me and I had no agendas to keep. I watched, with a growing feeling of peace and contentment as the moonlight began to sparkle on the sea beyond. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes but opened them just as quickly when I felt two hands roughly grip my shoulders. Before I knew what was happening I felt myself being forced to lie flat on the ground and my clothes were being torn brutally from me. I might have screamed, I dont really know but I struggled hard against my attacker.

He was about thirty years old I guessed, and wearing cycling gear. He kept shouting to me not to scream and I wouldnt get hurt. I tried to plead with him to leave me alone but he said he was going to have me. He even said if I didnt struggle so much I may even enjoy it. He had pulled my skirt up and begun to tear at my underwear when he suddenly stopped and began to shrink away from me. The look of savage aggression in his eyes seemed to turn to sheer terror as he stared at something behind me. He released his left hand, which he had been using to pin me down and I was able to sit up and turn round. Coming up the side of the barrow from the track below us was the dark horse and rider surrounded by his Yeth hounds.

They are here! They have come! was all I could say. My assailant began to scream and groan, crawling through the heather on his belly as he tried to get away from the spectre before him.

They came closer and closer till the strange black creatures formed a circle around me. The rider too approached and drew up his horse beside me, but this time he turned to face me. He bent silently over me and looked down at me. At that moment the wind caught the side of his hood, taking it backwards off his face. I found myself staring into the hollow eye sockets of a skull; its bony angular features unable to portray any emotion. He stretched out a bony hand in what I took to be a gesture of compassion.

Thank you, I managed to say; though my voice was barely audible. Thank you for coming to me. I am not cursed - and I will never leave you again.

***