“It wasn't just cold, it was horrible - a clinging, dank cold that seemed to wrap round me...” – Norfolk’s church where an author felt “invisible evil” claims another victim.

Weird Norfolk previously brought you the story of author Joan Forman, who revealed her most chilling personal experience had been in a church in Norfolk.

Her story was from the autumn of 1971: she had moved to Norfolk from Lincolnshire in January of the same year and had not had time to explore much of the county.

It is possible to work out which village she is speaking of when she describes feeling frightened and oppressed by “active and evil hostility” but it is home to many and Weird Norfolk does not reveal locations in such circumstances.

Joan described driving and finally finding a quaint Norfolk village complete with pretty cottages, a village green and a welcoming church. She and a friend parked on the road near the green and walked to the church.

The whole story is here but to cut a long story short: inside the church she felt: “…a sense of dampness and cold, then I recognised it as something more. There was an oppressive quality in the atmosphere, and whatever the oppression was, grew.

“By the time we stood in the chancel, the sensation of oppression had changed to one of active and evil hostility. It was almost insupportable.”

The pair left the church and hurried to the car where they found it covered in thick, sticky green liquid, the consistency of congealed blood.

A few days after this story appeared in the EDP, Weird Norfolk received an email from a reader who recounted something terrifyingly similar happening at the same church.

“I was immediately transported back many years, to a day when I was following my favourite pastime, known to its devotees as Church Crawling,” said the woman, who asked not to be named, but who we will call Anne.

“I looked up the church I had visited on the tatty lists I keep to remind me of the places I go to, and after a short search I found it. I was there in 1996, and it was almost certainly in the spring, as it's fairly early in the list for that year.

“I had read Joan Forman's book a long while before this; as you say, it was published in 1974. Like you, she doesn't name the village.”

Anne, realising where the church in question was (speculation is expected, confirmation will not be given) decided to visit after having seen several other churches the same day.

“I finally arrived, thinking, like everyone else, that it was a most attractive village. I also parked my car near the green, but, as I recall, not very near the trees,” she wrote.

“I walked across to the church, and entered - as always, glad and grateful that it was open. I walked down the nave - was it really that cold? It hadn't seemed particularly chilly outside.

“I walked on, and remember thinking that it wasn't just cold, it was horrible - a clinging, dank cold that seemed to wrap round me. I never reached the chancel. I simply turned on my heel and left, shutting the door securely, and walked back to my car.”

Anne, who has given talks about churches both to groups and as part of a lecture series, has visited hundreds of churches across Britain and is a practising Christian.

“I had never encountered an atmosphere like that,” she said.

“On that day I returned to my car, and was about to insert the key in the lock, when I thought, 'what on earth has happened?!' It was covered with drops of sticky gunk.

“I tried to prise it off with an exploratory fingernail, and only succeeded in making a smeary mess. Rubbing it with a cloth made it worse.

“So: I read your article with more than a passing interest, because my experience was not merely similar to that of Joan Forman, it was absolutely identical.”

Strangely, Weird Norfolk has been told one other tale about the church that follows a similar – if less terrifying – pattern and a fourth from a reader who felt nothing inside the church. Three reports from women, one from a man: perhaps this entity offers a warmer welcome to men than to the female of the species.

* Do you have a story for Weird Norfolk? Email stacia.briggs@archant.co.uk