Why a Booktrail?
1988: A seven year old boy goes missing from the roadside in a forest
Changeling
What you need to know before your trail
On Christmas Eve in 1988, seven-year-old Alfie Marsden vanished in the Wentshire Forest Pass, when a burst tyre forced his father, Sorrel, to stop the car. Leaving the car to summon the emergency services, Sorrel returned to find his son gone. No trace of the child, nor his remains, have ever been found. Alfie Marsden was declared officially dead in 1995.
Elusive online journalist, Scott King, whose ‘Six Stories’ podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the disappearance, interviewing six witnesses, including Sorrel, his son and his ex-partner, to try to find out what really happened that fateful night. He takes a journey through the trees of the Wentshire Forest – a place synonymous with strange sightings, and tales of hidden folk who dwell there. He talks to a company that tried and failed to build a development in the forest, and a psychic who claims to know where Alfie is…
Locations
Reset- England - Cheshire
- A: Audlem - Parish Church
- B: Audlem - Audlem Baptist Church
- C: "Wentshire Forest"
- Wales - Wrexham
- D: Wrexham - St Marys Presbytery
Travel Guide
Wentshire Woods – straddling the border of England and Wales
This is a fictional setting and thank whichever God you may or may not believe in. You need to believe in something when you enter these woods. A man stops his car with his young son inside as he hears a funny knocking noise coming from the engine. His son is sitting inside. When he takes a look at the engine and then gets back in the car, the boy is gone…
Never found….seven years old and not a trace is ever found…
“Wentshire Forest straddles the border of England and Wales, bleeding into both countries like a green ink blog on the map. Predominantly oak, some of the rees at the forest’s heart are more than five hundred years old and the whole site is classed as ‘ancient woodland’. Wentshire Forest was a declining National Park with little tourism when it was purchased in 1999 by the Ministry of Defence. Wentshire Air Force now squats amid the trees. The woodland on either side of Wentshire Forest Pass is now enclosed by barbed-wire topped fences and the occasional security camera.
Wentshire Forest Pass is also a former Roman Road and weaves its way in and out of both England and Wales. Close by, a burial mound at the top of a hill revealed a Bronze Age skeleton known only as the “Wentshire cripple’, and this figure was thought to be a member of the People of the Forest ‘ there or the “Pobl y goedwig”
That’s not the only legend which lives on and haunts these woods. For there is also a Wentshire Witch…
And people who were there on the days before and after the boy went missing, and the time when the father once camped in the woods himself…several witnesses talk of hearing strange sounds, like tapping, when there was no one else around.
Building site workers nearby report strange sounds coming from just outside their cabin door…
But what do the Forest People know? And do you believe?
Changeling c) TheBookTrail
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
This is an early review I know but put this on your lists to be read NOW. It’s one of my best books of the year. Oh sweet all that is good in the bookshop – this is a brilliant read from start to finish. And what a finish! Totally taken aback. Didn’t see that coming at all!
The Six Stories is one of the best I’ve read in a long time and this is my favourite yet. I read it in daylight hours just to be on the safe side. Just as well – this book is creepy and then some. That forest might be fictional but it felt real, let me tell you! It’s all so beautifully crafted – the woods, the noises , the darkness, the fear, the unknown and those legends of changelings, fairy folk and the Wentshire witch.
Read each of the podcast stories slowly and soak it all in – it’s hauntingly good and superbly atmospheric. The writing is as top notch as ever and I really think Matt has surpassed himself this time. Wentshire Woods certainly felt very creep and real to me. Hauntingly atmospheric and lyrically pitch perfect.
Advice from the BookTrail? Put this on your wish list and buy the other two in the series. You might not be able to travel there for real but in your mind and heart and the deepest pit of fear in your chest, you can…..
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Changeling
Destination: Cheshire, Wales, “Wentshire Woods” Author/guide: Matt Wesolowski Departure Time; 1988, 2018
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