Time Warp :: STANTA Entry Point
The South Norfolk military training ground is a haven for wildlife, ghosts, and UFOs...
Parked on Wyrley’s Belt.
A lane next to STANTA, British Army training area.
Tranquil.
Sheep in the field.
Sun slowly setting.
Hardly ever hear gun fire or incendiary.
You’re not allowed in due to risks from unexploded munitions.
Though I’ve been on a tour.
It’s a land teeming with wildlife, ghosts and UFOs.
About seven miles from Thetford, the Stanford Training Area was established in 1942 and comprises 30,000 acres. To set it up, it was necessary to permanently evacuate the villages of Buckenham Tofts, Langford, Stanford, Sturston, Tottington, and West Tofts.
These were communities that went back generations and were largely untouched by modernity.
Suddenly gone.
A ghost land of memories.
Bombed out buildings.
Churches still standing.
Perhaps no bad thing.
Had the villages never been evacuated, the whole area would have expanded with housing developments, likely an Aldi and Tescos, takeaways, petrol stations, youths on street corners smoking weed, widened roads, Amazon Prime deliveries, endless traffic.
The ghosts don’t want that.
Nor do the wildlife, which STANTA is a haven for.
Toads cross the nearby road during migration season, rabbits scamper, deer follow the age-old routes.
The track up to Frog Hill beckons you to follow it.
To stand at its pinnacle.
To enter the time warp into past times.
To linger a while with the shades of bygone days.
The gods of yore are remembered too within the mysterious mounds — tumuli — scattered all over the heath land that makes up the training ground.
Out of them come the anomalies.
The woodwoses, the cryptids, and the UFOs.
Or perhaps they don’t come from the mounds at all. Perhaps the mounds merely remind us that reality is stranger than modern people are willing to admit.
One winter a few years back, I sat in my car late at night.
Sandwich.
Coffee.
Slowly and silently across the darkened skies came a flotilla of UFOs, hulls glowing dark red, like a reconnaissance patrol checking me out, the man who observes the liminal realms.
And then one late afternoon during summer, the strange cryptid creature emerged from the woods, size of a pony, but doglike, with an elongated face, as if from Alice in Wonderland.
An amused look on its face as it surveyed me.
And observer watching an observer.
Today is just another day of me being drawn to this realm of ghosts.
To sit in my car.
Observing.
I decide to check my tyres with the battery pump I keep in my boot.
All good.
Maybe pump a bit of air into the front right tyre.
As I do so, a white car pulls up:
”You alright, need any help?” the young driver asks, his mate in the passenger seat looking on.
That’s real life.
Ready to help if needed.
I said, “Nah, I was having a coffee and sandwich, relaxing, then thought it was about time I checked my tyre pressures… cheers for asking, though.”
⟡◌◯⟡⟡