My Grandfather always used to tell us this story every Christmas after all the food was eaten and darkness crept in the topic always came around to ghost stories. My grandparents and their parents had had their fair share of supernatural experiences.

It was the year 1948 November my granddad Cyril Barry had just come out of the army he had fought for his country in Italy, North Africa and Holland during World War 2. He had spent the evening with some of his colleges at the legion Club in Street (Somerset). My grandfather admitted to having several drinks, but swears he was not drunk. He walked home alone his house was only 15 minutes away the time was 11.30pm when he left the club.

Most people had retired for the night, in 1948 with no television most people went to bed at 11.00pm. With no street lighting and very few house lights the walk home was almost in pitch blackness. The weather was also cloudy it had been raining so there was very little moonlight to navigate with. Halfway home my Cyril saw lights in the ground floor window of a house up ahead. Cyril decided he could do with a cigarette before he retired for the evening and as my grandmother wouldn’t let him smoke in the house he had better have one now. Cyril decided to use the ambient light from the window to roll a cigarette. He lit the cigarette and turned and glanced through the window that he had his back to. The sight before him made the hairs on the back of this neck stand to attention, my grandfather had seen numerous horrors during the war but the sight before him scared him more than any of those.

Sat at a large table in a large crimson room was a person with a goats head, the head had two horns each about 10 inches in length. The goats head was white it also had a hairy beard, the thing did not seem aware of my granddad outside. My granddad could not see anyone else in the room the thing appeared to be alone. My granddad ran all the way home, scared out of his wits and told my grandmother what he had seen.

The next day he retraced his walk home and found the house where he had seen the goat headed person. The house where he had seen the thing was empty it looked to have been empty for some time the table he had seen in the centre of the room was covered with a dust sheet and the crimson paint looked chipped and faded. My granddad tried to avoid passing this house from then on and took an alternative route home for several months until the house was bought and occupied.

My granddad was never quite sure what he had seen he thought that perhaps it was a devil worshiper, perhaps even the devil himself.