Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Wales, I have learned, produces some of the niftiest little ghost stories.  This one was reported by “The Inter Ocean” on September 25, 1904:

Cable dispatch to The Inter Ocean. 

LONDON. Sept.-24. The ghost of Tondu, Glamorganshire, has reasserted itself in the most aggressive fashion. 

According to a correspondent of the South Wales Echo, a respectable resident of the district which the uncanny apparition haunts and terrorises was proceeding at midnight along a lonely, narrow roadway adjoining the deserted buildings and coke ovens of the abandoned Ynishawdre colliery, an ideal spot for ghosts, when he was actually attacked by the unnatural monster. 

The gentleman is muscular, but the sight which suddenly met his gaze at the far end of a tunnel-like bridge made him turn hot and cold. An exceptionally tall, cadaverous figure was standing there. A silent, motionless sentinel. It was shrouded in white, the orthodox garb of the genuine ghost. The head, as the frightened observer now describes it, was like a death's head covered with wrinkled parchment; the eyes were hollow sockets, in which was a cavernous glow. 

Suddenly the eerie thing advanced toward the trembling man under the bridge. It approached within twenty yards and then swiftly glided toward him with its long arms) outstretched. It clasped him as though in a vice, and then began an uncanny tussle in the darkness. 

The man could not grip. There seemed nothing more tangible than air, but he felt himself held as though in the folds of a python, and the glowing sockets were bent full upon him.

He turned to flee, but could not escape from the power that held him.  With a frantic effort he clutched again at this supernatural assailant, and it was gone. 

Women and children creep indoors when nightfall comes, and bands of stalwart men sally forth to lay the terror of Tondu.

Unfortunately, I found nothing more about this unusually aggressive ghost.