Vile piggishness
One Christmas morning back in the 1960s, or maybe earlier, a man from the village of Cawthorpe in Lincolnshire set out on foot for the pub in neighbouring Legbourne, intending to join “his cronies” for a festive drink. Walking by a gate to a particular plantation, he heard footsteps behind him. Fancying a chat with a fellow wayfarer heading in the same direction towards the pub, he slowed his pace to allow the other walker to catch up with him. He heard the footsteps drawing closer, then exactly parallel with him and then overtaking him. But no one was visible!
Scarcely had he absorbed this startling fact when a herd of pigs came dashing down the road towards him. Greatly startled and alarmed by their abrupt appearance, he was forced to leap aside on to the verge to avoid them careering into him. Regaining his balance sufficiently to look around, he could see no pigs. The herd had vanished as unexpectedly as it had appeared. He was completely alone on the empty road as before.
It should be emphasised that he witnessed this spectacle before reaching the pub. On arriving, he blurted out his story, half-expecting to be met with ridicule and disbelief – for this Christmas walker had witnessed an entire herd of one of the rarest forms of apparition – the ghostly pig.
When pigs feature in ghost stories there is usually an association with evil spirits
Humans have an unusual relationship with pigs. Winston Churchill: “Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.”
First domesticated in the Neolithic era, pigs have coexisted
