Dering Wood’s eerie legends, infamous “massacre”, and modern-day ghost-hunting hoaxes make it one of Kent’s most intriguing paranormal locations, writes NEIL NIXON
Pluckley presides over the rest of Kent as a paranormal hotspot replete with legends and eyewitness accounts of a range of strangeness. Nearby Dering Wood is also a gruesome distraction, given the grisly nature of one of the tales that put it on the paranormal map.
Located south of Pluckley, on the way to Smarden, Dering Wood is a popular dog-walking destination and has been known to offer up the occasional sizeable crop of mushrooms.
There are random suicide, murder and lost traveller stories associated with the wood (which is too small to be a forest but does pack ancient trees and a quiet nature). But the money-shot tale giving it paranormal potency concerns the “massacre” of 1948.
The account appears in a few internet corners. The Creepypasta Wiki outlines the basics: “On the morning of 1 November 1948, twenty people from the nearby Maltman’s Hill area were found dead…” The deceased included eleven children, and in the terrifying tableau, the “bodies were formed into a massive pile of human flesh, but didn’t present any wounds.”
Stories of strange lights on the night and exactly fifty years to the day afterwards hint at some extremely bizarre elements to the collective carnage. Creepypasta is in line with others offering up the tale in highlighting inconclusive autopsies and presenting a contemporary local paper account from The Smarden Post as evidence.
Good gripping stuff, but also clickbait for the credulous rather than conclusive proof. Author Peter McCue is amongst those who have ripped the rant to shreds. You can check some of McCue’s points easily enough.
The front page of The Smarden Post presented online includes a postcode and cover price of 1p. British postcodes weren’t rolled out nationally until 1974 (when Smarden and its surrounds received them).
The letter p didn’t denote a single penny until 1971, when decimal currency replaced the old pounds, shillings and pence (LSD) system, in which pennies were followed by a lower-case letter d. You’ve likely guessed that The Smarden Post itself is an invention too.
That said, there’s paranormal fun and games to be had in Dering Wood and the place is alive with possibilities, as I’ve discovered recently. With clear days, a full moon and Halloween approaching, I went there with my wife on 30 October 2023. It’s a beautiful location when the autumn colours erupt in the trees.
We were walking one of the footpaths when we had a close encounter with a large white sheet tied to a small tree. Speculation on the significance of this seemed easy.
Dering Wood is popular with local youngsters, in search of ghostly encounters or just testing their courage. At night, people often avoid the car park towards the north end in favour of climbing over a double gate (opened occasionally during timber operations), and it was near this gate we found the sheet.
So, my guess admittedly, but… the point of positioning the sheet was surely to catch those youngsters within seconds of their entry into the wood. A full moon would be helpful. As the trespassers testing their bravery jumped from the gate, turned down the first dark path and immediately faced a glowing white shape in the trees.
Sharp intakes of breath and battles to avoid filling their collective underwear were the intended consequences of the hoaxers, along with adding to local legend. I’ve heard nothing, I’ll let you know if I do, but nice try either way. I chose to leave the sheet untouched.
I did, however, learn something around a year later. On a cold morning in the wood, as the sun broke through, I got a few pictures of ghostly shapes lingering low to the ground and posted them to Facebook along with an enigmatic statement about what they were and some hashtags.
I also showed the shots around at what was then a regular open-house meeting at Grimhilda’s Kitchen, Maidstone’s local “Emporium of Folk Curiosities” where – amongst other things – you can study witchcraft.
The pictures were taken seriously enough at the meeting, though some of the Facebook respondents found them funny. The crucial difference being one hashtag I’d included amongst the paranormal hashtags when I posted it. That hashtag was the truth, #steamoffapuddle.
Have you ever visited Dering Wood or experienced anything strange there? Share your stories in the comments below!
