The Shaw Road ghost.

In 1961, a ghost was seen in the Shaw Road area by numerous people and although seen at different places, times and dates the description of each was very similar. Sheila Smith, of 32 Shaw Road, said at the time,
"I was walking along Shaw road at ten o'clock at night when I saw someone walking towards me. I didn't recognise him, but was about to say good night when suddenly I realised with horror that it wasn't real. It wore dark clothes of forty years ago, and it seemed to have only rudimentary features under something like a trilby hat. It glided towards me under a street lamp, and in a second it disappeared. I know it wasn't a shadow, and it was far too close to me to be imagination. I was absolutely petrified and ran up the road towards two people I could see and then my sister came along and I clutched hold of her all the way home." Her Mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Smith, commented : "I've never seen anyone look as bad as Sheila did that night, but then I know what she felt like because I've seen the same figure myself. It was at about the same spot in the road, again after dark, when I sensed that someone was overtaking me. I glanced over my shoulder as this same black figure, hatted and robed but without feet, glided past me. It went through a hedge and simply disappeared.
First to see the figure was probably Rosemary Booth of 18, Shaw Road, who worked in Hazell's drapery shop near her home. "I was on the riverbank as dusk was turning into night," she said, "when suddenly this thing appeared. It was transparent, and I could see a tree through it. It seemed to float over the grass towards the tree, and when it got there it vanished. I can tell you I daren't go any nearer that tree and I came home very frightened indeed."
Mrs. Edna Dales of 8, Shaw Road, was faced with the apparition in her dark back garden. "I was with our dog, when without a sound this figure, with its collar turned up and a hat on its head, and black all over, floated over the garden fence and across the grass. It went straight through the opposite hedge and vanished into the night. Brandy, our Labrador, would normally have gone for anyone in the garden after dark, but he didn't take the slightest notice."
It was on the same night that Mrs. Dale's daughter Janice saw the ghost near the Multisignals mast. "I was with a friend when I turned round and saw a man just like my Mother told me about afterwards. I told my friend to look, but by the time she did it had gone."
Shaw Road and its environs is built on what was known for many years as Dr. Shaw's Field, and he was apparently a doctor who lived in a large house at the Fenside Road end of the field, and left this country for South Africa 120 years prior to these sightings. But while he was here he was notoriously awkward over a right-of-way that ran through the field from the Witham Bank to Boston West --could it have been Dr Shaw?.....................