In a green lane called Petty Lane at Glowrowram, near Chester-le-Street, used to be seen the ghost of a woman. When approached, the figure would fall down and spread out like a sheet or a great pack of wool. When anyone went forward to pick it up, it would suddenly disappear. It startled both men and horses, and a Glowrowram farmer’s horse took fright as he was coming home late one night, and arrived at the stable door all in a tremble, though the farmer himself saw nothing.
The Glowrowram ghost often used to appear when the girls went out at night to milk the cows, and frighten them so dreadfully that they spilled the milk, though there was never a drop on the ground to be seen the next morning. The carters driving up the lane with coals would also have their carts upset. Although the ghost’s behaviour is that of a typical bogey, with its inheritance of shapeshifting and mischief from medieval demons, that the apparition was indeed the revenant of a woman seemed confirmed when, while digging up the ground to improve the road, they came on a woman’s skeleton. The ghost never walked after that.
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SOURCE:
Haunted England : The Penguin Book of Ghosts – Written by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson –
Copyright © Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson 2005, 2008