17th Century Murder Replayed At Church Norton.

A Memory of Sidlesham.

The more I think back on this incident, the more bizzare and terryfying it seems. In 2001, around Oct/Nov, myself and a friend drove to the car park at Church Norton church at about 11:00pm. We were at a bit of a loose end, as 19/20 somethings can be, so decided to visit this quiet, south-west corner of Pagham Harbour with the aim of checking out the story of the grey lady. We'd heard various tales about a ghostly grey figure seen in the churchyard and that it even floated alongside cars as they left the car park.
We drove slowly into the car park, the stones crunched loudly under the tyres and we discovered that there were no other cars parked up. It seemed we were alone. We parked on the left with our bonnet pointed at a line of trees and our rear window facing the old castle mound. The entrance to the churchyard was about 30 feet away as we looked out of the driver side window. We decided to roll a cigarette each, so turned on the interior light and dug out the tobacco and papers from our pockets.
I was in the passenger seat and had turned slightly towards the middle of the car, with my back against the passenger side door. I looked up to speak to my friend, when the churchyard suddenly lit up with a white light, silhouetting the church gate and surrounding trees. This flash was quickly accompanied with a bang. The bang was almost more of a cracking sound, that echoed off the church and trees. I remembered thinking at the time that it sounded very much like a flintlock pistol or musket. Right after the short noise the light flickered and wavered (as if a small flame were present) and the illuminated area shrank down to a single point. A point in the churchyard.
My friend and I looked at each other and got a couple of whispered words out before being interrupted by a horrific sound. Directly behind the car the sound of a man groaning and howling with pain broke the silence. The noise started about 20 feet away from us and started to get louder and seemed to be coming closer. I'd never heard anything like it, it sounded distinctly human yet chillingly otherworldly, as if the voice issued from the depths of a well. My blood seemed to freeze, a strange sensation that i'd never experienced before or after. It was the feeling of genuine fear. It was just the two of us, ashen faced, and the agonised sound of this man that seemed to exist for an age in a pitch black shroud of silence. There was also not the slightest sound of footsteps to be heard - which I thought was impossible as the ground behind the car was all gravel!
It was clearly a male voice and it's pain was genuine. To hoax that sound would have been an extraordainary feat for anyone. The despair it conveyed makes me shudder today, 9 years on. Finally, with the groaning howl almost upon us, I turned to my friend and said, 'Jarrod, start the car!' This snapped him back from his own fixation with the sound, he turned the key, reversed to turn us towards the exit and we sped off in a shower of gravel out of the car park. We continued in silence back to Sidlesham and my house, where we rolled the cigarettes we were to have smoked in the churchyard.

In about 2008, 7 years approx after this incident, I was reading a book on Sussex hauntings. In this book I came across the tale of ghost that has been seen many times over the decades and centuries in the bar of the Crab and Lobster pub in Mill Lane, Sidlesham - about 1 and a half miles north of Chorch Norton church and also on the edge of Pagham Harbour.
It is said that this ghost is either Sir Robert Earnley or one of his men, Caviliers from the time of the English Civil War. They were reported to have been shot dead by Roundheads on the harbour's edge and dragged a mile or so to the pub in Mill Lane (there was a pub on the site of the Crab and Lobster back in the mid 17th century).
When I read this I felt a hint of the cold fear that had gripped me that night at Church Norton.
I had zero knowledge of the areas civil war history (Pagham Harbour was a staging post for Caviliers attempting to flee the advancing Roundheads in the 1640's) and certainly hadn't heard anything about anyone being shot as they waited or searched for a boat centuries before.
I firmly believe that what myself and my friend experienced that night at Church Norton in 2001 was an echo or some kind of replay of a 17th century murder. After learning about the events there in the 1640's, the bang/cracking sound and the flickering shrinking light fits perfectly with a flintlock discharged on a silent night. The terrible sound of agony we both heard, i'm sure, was made by someone who had received a fatal bullet wound to the stomach and had managed to stagger a ways before death.
I'm tempted to revisit the area at a similar time of night to see if anything occurs again but am reluctant to feel that sense of dread that all but paralysed us then. It still haunts me today.

Please! If anyone has experienced anything at this location that they cannot explain, then contact me at: jonryuken@yahoo.co.uk