Fact or Fiction - 18

The stories about the ghost walk, haunting and Batman's house, Here - were all...

TRUE - I made it easy on myself.

I didn't see any ghosts (apart from that cat) and Trev really did stop someone's tricks by holding the glass tight.

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Today's story revolves around Halloween and one of the adventures I got myself into loads of trouble for... and the kids that came along with me.

Way back in the mists of time, I had a push-bike - a bicycle - and in the summer we went all over the place on it.

I wasn't allowed to go off the street, and of course, I never did. Yeah, right!

Not too far from my house is the stately house 'Hardwick Hall'. We went there relatively often in the summer months because it was somewhere to head for.

It wasn't quite so popular a destination as we came up to winter because we needed lights on the bikes and not every kid had them.

I had the lights, it was the batteries I had the problem with...

Halloween fell in the mid-term break this particular year and we decided that we'd have a jaunt over to the Hall and not worry whether it was getting dark or not by the time we made it home.

Only kids with bikes AND lights could come on this trip, so a few had to drop out. (Just for the record, it wasn't my idea for the rule... I wouldn't want to deceive anyone into thinking I was ever a responsible kinda kid).

The lanes to the hall are real country lanes - all twisty-turny with few or no passing places if a vehicle came the other way.

It didn't matter to us, we were riding along in the bright sunlight, we'd have our fun and get home before we even needed the lights...

We'd got sandwiches and bottles of pop and our coats of course. The coats were soon tied around our waists with the sunlight and the exertion of riding the bikes.

Because we were all in the 'bigger' range of the kids, we were going at quite a pace.

We played by the lake a little and caught our breath. Then we headed up to the hall. We wouldn't be able to get into the hall itself, I think you have to pay for entry, but we'd have a great time exploring - I really don't remember what we thought would be so different to when we last went there in the summer.

Someone found a way into the old ruin next to the hall, just outside the perimeter wall and of course, we went inside. We took our bikes so they wouldn't get 'pinched' and in we went.

We took longer than anticipated exploring the old ruin and it started to get cold. A damp drizzle started too and we decided we'd better get started off for home.

The light went fast and soon we needed to use the lights from our bikes just to see where we were going. We made our way back through the ruin to the entrance and found a door... a locked door.

"That door wasn't there when we came in," someone said.

Most of us agreed. We'd not noticed a door.

Except, someone had noticed a door and they piped up. "Yeah, the door was pushed all the way back into the shadows, it was difficult to spot it, but it was there," he said.

Oh shit... we were in real trouble. Back then, there were no such things as mobile or cell phones - hell, neighbours came to our house to use the phone rather than go to the public phone box - and we had no way of letting anyone know we were there!

Also, there was no way we could climb out - and even if we could, it would mean a long walk home without the bikes.

Some of the younger kids were getting scared and we were all tired, cold and hungry. We had no way of attracting attention, we were stuck and we were going to be in SO much trouble!

Finally, our shouts (crying) and flashing our lights around the walls inside the ruin caught someone's attention and someone came to let us out.

He was not a happy chappy - we'd dragged him out in the cold and wet evening, leaving his evening meal and warm fireside.

We got growled at, accused of vandalism and threatened with trespass - I think that was because he was worried because he'd not bothered to check the building was empty when he locked it up.

We had a horrible ride home - as I said, cold, wet, hungry and we knew we'd cop for it when we did get back.

All in all, one of those adventures I'd rather forget...