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Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales

Chapter 106: SPIRIT OF A LIVING MAN THROWING STONES.
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About This Book

A compilation of folk beliefs, tales, and customs gathered across western and mid-Wales from elderly informants and local tradition. It presents translated Welsh narratives and organized material on fairies, mermaids and water‑horses, ghosts, witches and wizards, omens, animal superstitions, and popular spells, alongside accounts of wedding, birth, funeral, inheritance and sheep‑shearing customs, divination practices, augury, and prophecies. The emphasis is on literal fidelity to oral testimony and on preserving vanishing traditions rather than offering theoretical interpretation.

SPIRIT OF A LIVING MAN THROWING STONES.

Mr. Thomas Stephens, an intelligent old man in the neighbourhood of Mydroilyn, in the Parish of Llanarth, Cardiganshire, informed me that between 60 and 70 years ago his father, John Stephens, when a young man, was coming home late one evening after spending a few hours of pleasant time with the young woman of his affection at a neighbouring farm. As he was walking along a lonely lane, to his great surprise, he heard the sound of some one throwing stones about in a field which he was passing by. When he looked around, he beheld the spirit of a man of his acquaintance who was well and alive, throwing stones with all his might in a field where stones were not to be found.

Spirit of a living man was sometimes heard without being seen, of this I was informed by an old man at Llanddewi Brefi.

In some ghost stories we find the spirits of the departed appearing to comfort the living.