The Mynydd Illtud Ghost

The Photograph Taken in February, 1992

Below is an extract from a commercial feature I had published in a “glossy” in 2007. The centrepiece was the photograph reproduced above. I am now re-using these in this blog without further comment other than to say I used this experience (heavily fictionalised) for one of the stories in The Eve of St Eligius, Proof Positive.   

The visit I made in February, 1992 was about the twentieth I’d made to Mynydd Illtud Common, near Libanus in the Brecon Beacons. This time, though, I wasn’t looking for any of the usual sights. I’d come in search of a ghost I’d been told about.

As usual, the land near the centre was well-tended, almost manicured. Even Bedd Illtud, the supposed grave of St. Illtud (it’s actually too old for that), roughly in the centre of the Common, was pleasantly situated on a quiet but accessible piece of moorland.

The short trek from the centre to the old church was a different prospect. I had to pick my way along boggy paths well furnished with shoe-sucking mud, brave the snarls of unwelcome from farm dogs and climb over a few broken stiles. One of these consisted more of rusty binding-wire than of wood. I collected a grazed hand by scrambling over. The mending of the stile looked to be a temporary and careless repair, lashed together by an unknown hand fifty or more years before.

I’d started my journey later than intended. By the time I reached my goal the sky was already threateningly low and brooding. It was with some sense of achievement I stood before the Church of St. Illtud, even though I’d seen it a number of times before on finer days.

The Church of St Illtud is an unremarkable nineteenth-century building. It had been built only in 1858, although almost certainly on the site of an earlier structure. Now it was abandoned and securely locked up. And it did look neglected indeed. The wooden shutters covering the windows were cracked and splintered; the stonework was flaking; many of the roof-slates were loose or missing. The whole had an unkempt look.

The building on that late afternoon in February looked ready to fall down. The wonder to me was that a church should have been built here at all. The congregation must have been pitifully small, even in the glory days eighty or so years before, and even if the people were drawn from all the farms in a wide radius.

Still, I knew I was looking at this with late twentieth-century eyes. When the site had been chosen years before, the builders would have had it in mind that this was the location of what was supposed to be the “Llan” of St. Illtud. “Llan” doesn’t simply mean “church” as is usually supposed (a direct translation would be “eglwys”) but “holy enclosure of a saint”. I saw it was quite possible to make out a dark circle among the rocks and trees.

The church was built in the centre of this circle. The oddest thing of all was that no significant vegetation, hardly even a blade of grass, grew within its circumference. I had been vaguely aware of this on my previous visits, but now seeing it in the now-fading late afternoon light was a distinctly eerie experience.

I circled the church, looking for the thing I thought I’d seen here a few months before. Sure enough, there was one shutter more broken than the rest, set high up in a side wall. I was just about able to peek through it by standing on tip-toe, but was disappointed to find I was barely able to make out the shapes of some pews and a pulpit in the interior gloom.

The light was now receding fast. It was almost twilight, but it seemed to me it would never be wholly light inside the church. Still, I’d come prepared. With both hands I lifted up my flash camera to the opening and took a shot. Then I left, glad to get away from this sombre place.

     *

Digital cameras weren’t a feature of life in 1992 and the best part of a week had passed before I received my black-and-white prints back in the post. By that time I’d forgotten all about the flash photograph I’d taken through the cracked wooden shutter. I was keener to see the shots I’d taken of the tumulus of St. Illtud and a few of the surrounding Brecon Beacons.

So it was something of a surprise for me to see this one, dark and grainy among the sharp and pristine pictures I’d taken earlier in the day. I could make out the pews, the pulpit and the interior church wall. The last seemed in surprisingly good repair in comparison to the crumbling exterior.

But then I saw, near the back of the Church, a white-garbed figure. The ghost of St Illtud, I immediately thought. I wished the photograph had been better illuminated, so that I could more easily make out exactly what it was I’d caught on camera.

Eventually, I decided all I’d photographed was no more than an image of a door in the screen-like structure. Now I’m not so sure. What do you think?