"mich" wrote in message ...
I have refrained from making a posting such as this before because I am
sure someone will take the p*ss!
I am not superstitious and I am not prone to being led by my emotions
generally.
[...]
There is a part of this garden which worries me. I can only describe it as
having a "presence".
Its spooks me. [...]

There do seem to be places like that. There doesn't need to be a
spooky reason: we are sensitive to lots of perfectly ordinary
impressions we can't identify the source of.

But why not get a dowser or two in to go over the whole garden, at
different times and without telling them exactly why or where? (You
might tell them you're interested in buried metal, or want an idea of
how the rock strata lie: something like that.) At the most everyday
level, there may simply be a high water table or an abrupt change in
the soil-structure there which lowers the local air-temperature and
humidity; or an underground watercourse, which some say can affect
your mood. (In the field below me you can just make out the original
course of the stream which now flows down a straight ditch to the
side: the soil there is certain to be different from the rest of the
field.)

Some dowsers, if they know you want to hear, will give you reports
very much like those of Chinese geomancers: it's up to you whether you
believe them! I'm open-minded on these things, but by no means
convinced, since the world modern science is constantly revealing in
measurable ways is quite poetic and mind-boggling enough to keep the
"spirit" side of me busy. I once asked a couple of dowsers what they
thought of a house somebody found spooky, and IIRC one said there was
a watercourse underneath and the other said it needed a coat of white
emulsion on the black exposed joists downstairs! The coat of paint
worked a treat.

How do mammals and birds react to the place? Do other people get the
same feelings as you do? (You might simply have set up a conditioned
response in yourself as a result of a couple of early coincidental bad
events or feelings in the area.)

You could check the maps for archaeological evidence. Perhaps you may
get the chance to have somebody do a geophysical survey with
ground-penetrating radar or whatever it is: that could reveal any
anomalies in the subsoil.

Maybe there's an underground electric cable running through: some
people may be unconsciously sensitive to field -- the question of its
possible health effects is still, I believe, open.

If I had a patch like that on my garden, I'd make it into a
low-maintenance shrubbery with lots of cheery winter-flowering things
and bulbs, and admire it from afar. There's no sense in forcing
yourself to spend time in a place you don't like, whether the reason
seems sensible to you or not.

Do keep us posted.

Mike.