Wheeled out once a year, a cenotaph souvenir

[venta]

Last time I wrote about Kirtlington Lamb Ale, mention was made of Christopher Lee in a dress.

I still didn't see him this year, but once again I did see the strange spectacle of little girls in white frocks and pink ribbons dancing round a lamb. This time I have photos (or will have, when the little plasticy film-things have the magic done to them). And however freaky little girls in white with pink ribbons are, the spooky pagan effects are spoiled when they're dancing in a school playground, in blazing sunshine, beamed on by a large crowd.

Last night, however, it was a different story.

After a large and fat barbecue, those of us too lazy to trot along to the ceilidh sat and drank beer or gin and tonic as the evening remained clear and finally cooled down to a sensible temperature. Around midnight, we dispersed decorously to our respective tents and caravans and I went to sleep somewhat swiftly.

I woke up with a start - someone not that far away was screaming. It was a hideous, continuous screaming without even apparent pause for breath as if the someone was terrified for their life. The noise seemed to be coming from the fields away from the village; it was incredibly loud, then stopped abruptly and completely.

It was just after three o'clock. I was out of my sleeping bag and putting my shoes on when it dawned on me - I'm a pretty heavy sleeper. Yet I could still hear Ben snoring in the next tent, and someone in the caravan on my other side snoring. Surely, if there had really been a panicked screaming, they would have been woken up? There was a fearsome cawing of birds from the same direction, then a baby crying somewhere else. Maybe that was what I'd heard ?

I couldn't quite believe I'd dreamed it, so carried on with my plan to do... something. The campsite was dark and still, lit only by a full - it would be full - moon. I could vaguely see people moving (in the other direction, away from where the screaming had been). I was starting to head over there when I began to wonder whether I was going to end up talking to someone half-seen in the gloom and unwittingly revealing to a bloodstained murderer that I was the only witness. This was not a consoling idea.

The people turned out to be teenage couples on the swings (at three in the morning?), two of them having something of an argument. It was the quiet kind, all bitten-off sentences and stony silences. They looked at me with the sort of contempt which a teenager can summon for someone who camps on a village green and perpetrates morris dancing, and I went my way without asking them if they'd heard anything.

At a loss, I went back to bed. Short of calling the police to say "I think I heard screaming. Somewhere over there. Or I might have dreamed it", I just couldn't think of anything useful to do.

This morning, getting up for breakfast, I asked Angi, "Were you woken up by..."

"Horrible screaming in the night?" she finished for me. She'd woken, decided that if it was real there would have been more unzipping of tents and banging of caravan doors as people came out to investigate, and concluded she'd dreamed it.

Someone else had reached the same conclusion as me, ie nothing she could usefully do, but rather faster and without leaving her sleeping bag. Someone else had thought it was laughter, and put it down to kids mucking around. Someone else again had thought it was an animal's cry, not a human's. Interestingly, in my (very small) sample of people asked, all the females had been woken by it and none of the males had.

So I apologise, but this tale has no end. This morning there were no police requesting statements, no horribly murdered bodies and no apparent evidence of anything amiss. No charred remains of large, wicker structures. I've heard foxes scream before, and the sound is surprisingly human; maybe it was that. Perhaps, in my half-asleep state, I mistook ordinary screaming and laughing for something more sinister. Other explanations were suggested - someone in that corner of the campsite having a nightmare, for example.

I don't expect I'll ever know what it was, though for the next couple of days I'll be checking local news carefully. I just hope I don't ever need to hear a noise like that again.

Please note, I wrote the above without using the word "bloodcurdling". It was something of an effort.

Comments

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

I apologise. It was me, once again realising there will never be another series of Twin Peaks to complete the story.

It happens every so often.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, in my (very small) sample of people asked, all the females had been woken by it and none of the males had.

All my baby books say that women are more easily woken than men by babies crying (and certainly the twins usually wake me before bateleur). I don't know if this is something about women's brains/ears and high pitch sounds but this made me think of it.

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

Foxes.
My one word suggestion, though a bit late in the year for the usual reason they're making horrible noises. The other animal famous for bloodcurdling screams are peacocks but usually in short bursts.

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

I second that

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mass hypnosis, I tell you. They can't prove a thng!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

(or, indeed, a thing.)

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

How do you pronounce "thng"? I say "th-nug".

Thnug as a bhug in a rhug.

[failmaster.livejournal.com]

The exact same thing happened to me in 1997 in while I was still lurking in the Florey Building after the end of term (when most people had left). I was woken by a protracted, blood-curdling scream from the Angel and Greyhound Meadow. My response was in fact to call the police on their non-emergency number and say something like 'I think I heard screaming. Somewhere over there.' They said they'd investigate.

I never found out what it might have been, and like you I spent the next few days scanning newspapers for any hint.

*mutters something about stuff beyond the ken of normal folk*