I once, very early on in my mountain biking life, took on a far longer ride than I was ready for, lugging a tent and sleeping bag in a massive back-pack. Spent at the end of what turned out to be a 40 mile trudge, I collapsed on a dark, flat piece of land and hunkered down for the night, into a restless and disturbed sleep.

Maybe it was my exhausted mind but throughout the night there were strange sounds and breathing outside my tent – the unmistakable sense of a presence prowling around on the other side of the canvas, centimetres from me sleeping alone in the pitch darkness of a remote hillside.

Winnats Pass is a mystical place with many dark and foreboding stories. As it spills open into Castleton, the tourists stream in and out of Peak Cavern – the Devil’ s Arse. But legend has it that Beelzebub himself lived deep in the cavern, emerging late at night to prowl the fields and hillsides of Castleton to wreak his evil intent upon lost, weary wanderers. Maybe Lucifer had found his next unsuspecting victim. Maybe not..

Further up the valley, on the slopes of Mam Tor, folklore tells of a particularly pesky boggart throwing stones and causing landslides. There’s a reason Odin Mine is off limits….maybe he had wandered a little further down the hill in search of mischief.

Or maybe I was hearing the heart-broken cries of Alan and Clara, the lovers murdered on their way to Peak Forest Chapel in the pass, their bones found ten years later by miners sinking an engine pit. Dragged off their horses by local brigands, Alan was brutally killed, and despite begging for her life, Clara soon followed.

But over time, Alan and Clara had their revenge, and their killers came to some particularly gruesome ends. One – Nicholas, fell from a precipice (or was he pushed..?) close to where the bones were buried and was killed. Thomas B hanged himself, haunted by the guilt. John B, walking nearby, was killed by a rock falling from a cliffside, and the remaining killer, James A, was haunted by the murders and went quite mad – confessing the whole sorry business on his death bed 20 years later.

Alan and Clara perhaps had their justice, or may still forever be destined to pace an eternal wedding march in the valley, never to be betrothed.

It was a restless night in the tent. But morning came.

I blinked awake in the early morning light and stepped out of my tent – scattering a gathered bunch of sheep – my late night visitors.

Stretching awake in just my pants, I took in the view ahead of me….and was frozen, petrified to the spot.

Before it opens, the bus tours of Speedwell Cavern queue up just beside the small, flat, grassy piece of land near the entrance. That morning it was a pensioners’ special. Early bird discount to see the beautiful sights of the Hope Valley and Castleton.

Or a knackered scrawny mountain biker stretching in his Y-fronts.

Horrifying.

Happy Halloween.