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Jenny Randles – Supernatural Pennines

Nicola Peart was born in Keighley during the late 1970s. In 1983 she was bought a toy dog as many youngsters are at that age.

She announced that she would call it 'Muff' - the name of her dog when she was last alive and a boy.

Baffled, her parents asked what on earth she was talking about and Nicola described her life 'when Mrs Benson was my mummy' and how they lived in 'an old stone house at Haworth'. Her father had worked on the railway and was always coming home dirty. She (or rather the boy she was remembering) had been killed when he strayed onto the railway line and was struck by a steam train.

Unsurprisingly, the Pearts thought this was imagination.

After all the 5-year-old girl lived in one of the few areas where steam trains still ran on a daily basis. Keighley was the terminus of the branch line in fact. Moreover, a few years before her birth the movie The Railway Children had been filmed on the line. It was set around the time that Nicola seemed to be remembering and it had vivid images of a young child trying to prevent a train accident by standing on the line.

However, a shock awaited the family when they went with Nicola to Haworth - where she had never been before (at least not in this life).

Although they got lost, she led them straight to an old stone house that she said was her last home. Checks revealed that a family called Benson had indeed lived here. The father was a railway man and they had a son born in 1875 who had died as a child (cause not listed).