About 1671, parson Symonds, who officiated at Garsdon church in north Wiltshire in south west England, was riding home late one night when a spectre leapt up behind him. The spectre rode parallel to him until they came to the parsonage, where it jumped off. The apparition then turned to face Symonds, and “gap’d at him”. Symonds identified the ghost as that of John Estcourt, a gentleman who had died about two years earlier.

Halloween is all about witches and ghosts. In English scientific circles in the second half of the 17th century, there was a discussion about whether such things existed and how their existence could be proved.

The Royal Society, founded in 1660, was the country’s principal scientific institution. Joseph Glanvill, a Royal Society fellow, investigated spirits and witches. His Saducismus Triumphatus (1681) aimed to prove their existence by cataloguing cases in detail. He argued that denying them was to deny God’s existence.

Symonds’ haunting was recorded by that of another of the society’s fellows, John Aubrey, in a survey of Wiltshire’s natural world. Aubrey agreed with Glanvill that the supernatural deserved serious study and directed his readers to Saducismus, but he thought Glanvill somewhat gullible.

Aubrey was born in 1626 at Easton Piercy, a few miles from Garsdon. I have edited John Aubrey’s Natural History to mark his 400th anniversary.

This natural history of Wiltshire was begun in 1656 and was the first English county survey of nature to be attempted – although by the time he finished it, decades later, other surveys had already been published. It was an important scientific work, and in 1691, acknowledging that, the Royal Society had the Natural History copied and added to its library.

Its subject matter is highly idiosyncratic, and Aubrey sometimes goes off on tangents. He covers swan-sized dragons in north Africa in a chapter on birds and the existence of giants in a section called “Men and Women”. Almost at the end of the text is a chapter titled “Accidents” that records extraordinary events, including supernatural ones, like the haunting of Symonds.

Aubrey has long been seen as naive, partly because of Miscellanies (1696), the only book he published, which recorded tales of the unexplained. In the Natural History, he was clear:

Though I myselfe never saw any such things, yet I will not conclude that there is no truth at all in these reports. I believe that extraordinarily there have been such apparitions: but where one is true, a hundred are figments.

He also documented exposed frauds, such as Katherine Waldron, who pretended to be bewitched and endured pins being driven into her flesh to prove it. As the objective of natural history at this time was to gather evidence from which new scientific theories could be developed, Aubrey’s method in chronicling cases was entirely in keeping with the aims of scientific enterprise.

So, Aubrey was neither uncritical nor dismissive about Symonds’ story. Symonds was “a lusty strong fellow”, presumably not someone nervous or hysterical and prone to flights of imagination. His position as a churchman also gave authority to his testimony. Yet Aubrey noted a French saying that drunk men saw devils, a sceptical observation that cast doubt on the account. But he concluded with a strange detail: it was corroborated by the parson’s horse, “that trembled and sweat, when he came home and continued to do so the next day, and would not eat his oates”. The horse could not lie or get drunk; its fear, manifest in the trembling and sweat, was genuine.

Aubrey recorded another anecdote about a night ride. It concerned Sir Ralph Bankes’ valet:“a briske young fellow”, who, riding late over Badbury Warren, Dorset, discerned something that looked black, which, as he approached, became bigger.

Feare came upon him, and he protested his haire stood on end: but thought he, I have but a life to lose and I will see it, be it spirit or not.

The valet spurred his horse and came to the place, only to find the apparition was “a heap of horse dung”.

In Symonds’ haunting, the truth of the spectre could not be tested; but witnesses were recorded, and their testimony weighed. In the valet’s case, the witness tested the truth of the ghost himself and found it was a pile of dung.

Aubrey applied the same empirical method throughout his Natural History to both natural and supernatural phenomena. He assembled evidence with care, tested it if he could and resisted easy conclusions. It’s an approach worth remembering this Halloween when fantastical tales hit your social media feed. A phantom may prove to be a load of poo.

Louise Ryland-Epton's work on John Aubrey was supported at an early stage by a David Walker Memorial Visiting Fellowship in Early Modern History at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.This article draws on ghost stories recorded in John Aubrey’s Natural History, which she edited for Hobnob Press.

It’s 50 years since the intense heat of the 1976 drought hit the UK.

The country’s worst drought for 200 years, and one of the most severe ever, left reservoirs dry, cracked land, and melted tarmac on roads. For 15 consecutive days, temperatures hit 32°C in parts of the country. The record temperature for a June day was equalled, and still stands (for now).

What became known as the “drought of the century” resulted in the UK’s driest 16-month period for more than 200 years.

In that summer of 1976, people struggled to go to work on public transport in searing heat, wildfires sprang up in paper-dry woods and forests, farmers battled to save their harvests , and it was reported that 400 spectators were treated for heat exhaustion at Wimbledon in one day.

Weeks and weeks without rain led to national appeals to save water. An emergency powers bill, announced on July 3 1976, gave the government extra power to ration water use.

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Read more: Think before you flush: expert advice on how and when to save water at home

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In south-east Wales, Yorkshire and north Devon, people queued for water at standpipes in the street, while other areas experienced interruptions to their water supply. Meanwhile, food prices went up as farmers’ crops and garden vegetables died in the hot weather.

But the public of 1976 learned to cope with these unusual weather conditions, and per-person use of water dropped from an estimated 190 litres per day in 1972 to 95 litres in 1976. This was a generation with direct or family experience of the hardships of the second world war – including following government restrictions on food, clothing and fuel rationing, which finally ended in 1954.

Some of them had also experienced extreme weather in preceding decades, such as the significant droughts of 1949, 1955 and 1959 – as well as the “great freeze” of 1962-3, which caused an estimated 90,000 excess deaths.

These experiences, plus a public that was generally more trusting of government policy, meant compliance with restrictions was high.

What would happen today?

The environment, the economy and society have all changed since 1976. But drought risk is increasing.

The UK’s population has grown from 56.2 million in 1971 to 69.5 million in 2025. By 2021, one in six residents of England and Wales were born outside the UK, an increase of 2.5 million since 2011.

In 1976, 78% of the UK population lived in urban areas, increasing to 83% by 2024 – or from 43.7 million in 1976 to 57.6 million in 2024. This is also a population that experiences less time spent in nature than previous generations.

But compared with 1976, the UK is now more likely to experience higher summer temperatures, protracted heatwaves and drier soils.

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Read more: England’s sewage spills: why citizen scientists want to test for pollution themselves

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Our array of washing machines, dishwashers, power showers, pressure washers and paddling pools means we have come to expect water to be in our taps, regardless of what is happening to the weather and environment or our rivers.

When taps do not run, there is considerable frustration and anger, as has been experienced in the South East Water region during 2025 and ’26. Importantly for any government struggling to deal with a drought, trust in privatised water companies is low. This follows legal cases over sewage spills, worries about declining water quality, and perceptions of failing regulation.

During the UK’s 2018 heatwave, trust and willingness to act was seen to be dependent on the belief that water companies were also doing their part to reduce water consumption. But a 2023 survey by Ofwat on customer trust in these companies found 47% of respondents felt their water provider put the interests of its shareholders and owners first. Trust fell to the lowest level in a decade.

Around 60% of households now have a water meter, compared with none in 1976. But while smart meters are good at identifying leaks and tracking water use, reports suggest many consumers do not yet check them regularly to reduce use.

Another challenge is how to reach the public with updates and requests to reduce water use. Communicating about a drought is very different to 1976, when news channels were limited to BBC TV and radio, ITV and independent radio and print newspapers.

News is now widely consumed through social media as well as other media channels. But misinformation also spreads quickly through social media.

How can the UK prepare?

In preparing for the next major drought, the first and fundamental change required is to stop thinking of the UK as a wet country. London, with 690mm of annual rainfall, is drier than Rome’s 878mm and Paris’s 720 mm.

We, as consumers, should also start to think about how we do or don’t value water in our everyday actions. It’s important that households understand, and reduce, how much water each uses. If nothing changes, by 2055, the nation will need up to an additional 5 billion litres of water per day.

A 2020 survey found that 46% of respondents believed their household used less than 20 litres a day, while 17% said they consumed between 20 and 39 litres a day, and 15% thought they used 40 to 59 litres. The reality is between 135 and 150 litres per person, per day.

The biggest challenge for any current government and the water sector generally is likely to be gaining public trust in heeding national requests to save water.

New policy proposals for infrastructure investment, improved regulation, greater fairness and enhanced environmental resilience aim to reset confidence in the water sector as a whole. But as water bills rise to pay for this investment, and if issues around water quality and sewage pollution continue, it may not reset the balance of public trust.

Nonetheless, we should all also start to value water more, and use less, in order to adapt to a climate where intense droughts are an increasing risk in the UK.

Kevin Collins receives funding from the Environment Agency, Affinity Water, and UKRI.