After asking my dad for some ghost stories of his childhood he remembered this specific one that he heard in primary school (elementary). It was based in his small village where he grew up, outside of Cambridge called St. Ives. It was based on a thousand year old Houghton Mill that was seen as a monument and preserved as a historic sight. The ghost story is a spooky story that the older kids would tell the younger kids on the bus to scare them and be funny. Haunting the kids, there was a sense of shaken up when walking past the mill in town.

GP “There was a story of the ladies who would mend the sacks for storing flour or grain at the Houghton Mill in Cambridgeshire, UK. It was a type of local legend that was passed down from the kids of the town to scare them into staying away from the watermill that was on the River Great Ouse, it was such a crucial hub for primarily grinding grain. The legend was based on the tasks of mending sacks and these women supposedly fell into the mill pond that powered the millwheel, they drowned and died. The reason they fell into the water was unclear and never confirmed but it was assumed that the women could have been caught off balance when they were working around the edge or a mishap on the structure. The story continues around the town that the mill is haunted by their spirits, and apparently the visitors and locals have heard some ghostly sounds around the mill and felt some eerie sensations like a ghost was present near the millpond. Being told this story in primary school led to my friends and I steering clear of the mill.”

Analyzing this haunted tale, I felt as though the idea of the ghosts presence is wildly seen through eerie feelings near the place of death or hearing sort of ghostly noises that would represent the souls that have died is such a common functionality of spirits reappearing in the real world. Hearing this story made me realize that ghost stories are passed down through ages and are told with a purpose, it was told to my dad in primary school from the older kids which would try to scare them into running past the old mill in town.