Are there any Ghostly beings haunting the highways and byways of Canvey Island - now or in times gone by?

There used to be a Viking who roamed the Point area looking for his ship. Apparently he'd got cut off from the main force when King Alfred's brother's army destroyed the Danish camp at Benfleet, about where the railway bridge over the old Church Creek stands.

Haven't heard of him being seen lately, though!

Strange you should come up with this tale. When I was a child, we used to come over from Leigh in a motor boat and picnic on Canvey Point. It was at one of these picnics that the boatman told my grandmother there was the remains of a Viking ship somewhere off the point.

When I lived in Benfleet, I heard tell that if one looks closely at the heavy wooden doors of the church, once can see dried skin around the head of the nails - supposed to be the skin of Vikings when they were nailed to the door.

Anymore ghostly accounts?

When I lived at Hooton's Stores in the 50's and early 60's we definitely had something there. As a child, I found it very difficult to walk through the connecting passage from our bungalow to the back of the shop. It felt a bit eerie. I always ran through there to the front of the shop if I was on my own. Then, on one occasion, I saw something. It was nothing special, just a young boy: what we would call a teenager today. He was dressed in what at the time I thought of as "old-fashioned clothes" just like the picture on the Quaker Oats packet. I think that was due to the large white ruffled collar that could be seen. This was in the back part of the shop behind the shelving that separated the shop counter from the rest of the area which was for storage and the paraffin pump. Anyway, there was nothing scary about this; he just walked across the back area of the shop. However, he then walked through the wallpaper rack (years ago, wallpaper had to be trimmed in a machine that we had and then stored before sale.)At this point, I turned and ran away back to my bedroom in the bungalow!

Years later, I was talking about this to my parents. Before I could tell the detail of what I had seen, Dad then proceeded to say exactly the same things that I had seen. So, two of us had experienced exactly the same phenomenon.