I have not personally witnessed any of the above.

In June 2010 I heard from Paul Blackmore.....and here is his account of his brother's disastrous experience on Chanctonbury Ring...

"Morning Valerie, the story is from when we were young teenagers and we are all now in our thirties and some have just entered into their forties!

We had told our Mum that we were going to go out camping (you could just go off and do those things in those days).  She obviously enquired as to where we were going. Sheepishly we told her that we were going to camp up on the Downs.  Mum instantly replied that we were NOT to camp in Chanctonbury Ring. As enquiring young teenagers, we asked Mum why? She stated that she didn't want us camping in the ring as she knew of it to be haunted and steeped in myth & legend!

So off we all set on our BMX bikes, knowing all too well that now Mum had forbidden us to stay in the Ring, we were going to challenge her authority and dispel any myths and
legends and be awarded with the medal of honour as having defied her belief and come out unscathed!?

We hid our bikes in the field and with all of our camping gear on our backs we made the ascent to the Ring via the long path to the top past the big rope swing, to which we
played on for a while before setting off again.

So we got to the Ring and we tried to pitch our tents. I say tried, as the pegs were so hard to penetrate into the ground. Was this the first sign that we should consider
camping outside of the Ring?

Eventually we pitched the canvas and set about venturing down to the dew pond and the immediate vicinity to just wile away the time.

So night time fell and we were all joking about the devil and ghost stories. One of our friends had a panic attack in one of the tents and this spooked us all, he was desperate
for air and became very claustrophobic inside the small area. His shrills were very frightening and having been woken by his screaming, we were all very on edge.

The night passed and I think we all lightly slept with one eye open, just in case anything was lurking!?

Morning rose and we all exited the tents jubilantly that nothing had happened and that we had succeeded in dispelling the myths.

So we packed up and got ourselves ready to depart. I can't remember who, but someone suggested we descend to the bottom via the steep path!!

We were all in a line and my brother was distinctly at the back of the orderly line, hanging onto the barbed wire fence as the drop was so steep.

Then we just saw thus blur come past us on the right... It was my brother and he was falling and bouncing down the slope at an ever incresing velocity. He was bouncing as he
was building up speed and bouncing higher and higher as if he were a rubber ball!

With dread and trepidation we got down as quickly as we could expecting the worst when we arrived at the bottom.  The girls in the group were screaming and you could sense
everyone's fear. We came to his aid and his face was covered in blood. We sought help and we found a travelling hippy camp, we think there had been some sort of festival close by?

They saw my brother pouring with blood and falling in and out of consciousness. They were so calm and sat him in chair like a throne. They got him to smoke some belladonna
from a big indian style pipe. The image was so funny but he was suddenly becoming very relaxed and pain free. Then they started picking a vast array of leaves, grasses and flowers as if they knew exactly what they were doing?? It was mystical and magical and as if we were all dreaming this. Then they used a pestle and mortar to pulverize the
concoction of wild plants etc in with a spirit (smelt like petrol) of some sort which was fetched from their bowtop wagon. They plastered his face with this green mush and it
amazingly stemmed the blood flow and they instructed us to
take him to hospital.

We peddled back and then sought medical attention at Worthing Hospital. When we got there the doctors could not believe what they saw on his face! They were so impressed
with the mixture and how it had stopped the bleeding. My brother had sustained fractured cheeks, jaw, nose and serious cuts and lacerations.  Astonishingly he had no
serious damage to his person.

What came out when he was fully conscious was that he said he was pushed from behind!!!! He said he felt a hand on his shoulder and that he was definitely pushed!!! But he was
the last in the line and and so when we told Mum she when crazy!!! She said it was the spirits for camping in the Ring and that we should not have done so!! To this day my
brother has not returned to the Ring and when I have revisited the site I feel a certain presence and eerie feeling. I have never seen a bird inside the Ring, do they know something we don't???

Hope you like the account?
Kind regards, Paul".

Super story, Paul.   Cissbury Ring is only a short distance away and I am there every day and I don't get any strange stories from that area.

Clapham Woods is another spooky place..... and dogs are reputed to have vanished in its depths! I always keep a careful eye on my two.... and nothing has happened to me in that neck of the woods.............yet!

Thank you again and I do appreciate the trouble in putting pen to paper for me. So many surfers have stories but they can't be bothered to sit down
and relate them for me.

Paul replied...."Valerie .....it's an absolute pleasure to share our experience and will look forward to seeing it on the website. I am confident that something is at work there but could never prove it I'm sure!? I only hope that this story might prompt others to come forward??  Many thanks, Paul".

THE DEVIL RIDES AGAIN?  REVELATIONS FROM ANDREW MILES...."Dear Valerie.... Paul's Chanctonbury Story....I was enthralled by Paul's chilling and detailed account. Chanctonbury Ring -- even to this day, from here in distant Ontario, the name still echoes ominously.

My brother Richard, back in 1979, experienced something equally weird at the Ring. On leave from the Royal Marines, Richard was at that time a fearless soldier and a marksman. For a joke he got together with some friends to camp under the beeches at Chanctonbury. They had heard the same nonsense that Paul's mum had warned about. That the place was haunted, that unknown forces lurked among the trees, that evil spirits followed and teased human visitors. To my brother and his friends this all sounded like moonshine and they set up camp under the Ring without incident.

Once the campfire was going brightly they enjoyed bottles of beer and Richard was the center of attention, sharing stories of being a Marine in Deal, doing thirty mile marches with full kit and sleeping under torrential rain on Dartmoor. When the fire went dim and the bottles ran out everyone crawled to their canvas.
Just as Richard entered his tent he thought he saw, some distance away in the gloom of the trees, a bluish-white blob of light, moving back and forth in the woods. He thought nothing of it and retired to his sleeping bag.

During the early hours of the morning, when the sky above was still studded with stars and dawn was still hours away, and the fire was out, everyone was awakened by a flash and a bang. Military instinct caused dreaming Richard, the Royal Marine, to jump up and reach for his rifle. Surely that was a thunderflash. But he was camping and sleeping, and his rifle was back at barracks.

But everyone had heard the strange bang and came bleary eyed out of canvas to see what was going on. Richard, being a natural leader, said that they were under attack by a friendly enemy and the best thing to do would be to go back to sleep. Everyone obeyed.
Jokes with thunderflashes, blanks and smoke bombs were commonplace among the Marines, especially during leave when comrades followed each other from pub to pub, looking for an oppurtunity to pounce. But this was Chanctonbury Ring, high up on the Downs. Who would protract such a joke? Surely there was some drunken sod doing this, military or otherwise.

In the morning Richard and his friends awoke and looked at each other, with tired expressions. They had all had a rather sleepless night. But at least they had survived.
Chanctonbury Ring surrounded them and the shadows were long as the sun lazily rose and brightened.
They walked about, stretching limbs and yawning. And then they all saw it.

Hovering above the ground, perhaps thirty feet away, was a ball of light, about the size of a tennis ball. It was electric blue and dazzling to the eyes. Suddenly it floated towards them and then shot up into the trees with a flash and a bang. And then it was gone, leaving everyone blinking with disbelief.

To this day my brother Richard does not know what he saw. Perhaps it was ball lightning, perhaps it was a very clever joke played by his military friends or perhaps they had all had too much beer.
Whatever it was, it was extremely strange. It happened to my super-skeptic brother, it happened to his friends. It happened at Chanctonbury Ring.

All the best, Andrew".