This report was received from two serving police officers from Gwent Police whilst on duty in the area of Llanover.  It has been edited in some places to obscure the identity of the witnesses.

I'd like to report an incident to you that occurred last night.  It took place on the A4042 at Llanover between Abergavenny and Cwmbran at just after 5am this morning.  The conditions were fine, and visibility was very good.  It was still dark at this time.

Before I go any further I think I need to give you a bit of background.  I am a Gwent Police traffic officer; I was on a 7pm to 7am duty and was in company with my colleague.  We were driving a marked traffic car and were heading back to our HQ to finish the night shift by cleaning the car and doing some paperwork.

About 2 hours before we had been deployed to an incident in the Abergavenny area and had finished a debrief in Abergavenny Police Station about 10 minutes prior. I was the driver and my colleague was the front seat passenger. We weren't in any rush and were generally chatting as we drove along.  Due to the bit of excitement of the previous incident we were both wide awake and not suffering from the usual fatigue that you can sometimes get around that time of night.

We were driving southbound into the Llanover area, doing about 40mph, I had my main beam on.  At this point in the road on our nearside there is a wall that surrounds a property that runs almost the full length of the village. The wall is of stone construction and about 10 feet high.  There are one or two gateways and lodge houses in the wall.  The property it surrounds is substantial but I’m afraid I don't know any details of it.  The A4042 is an arterial route for us and we travel it regularly at all times.

We were driving up a slight rise in the road towards a brow in the road. It's not a particularly blind brow but due to the village location, there are double white line markings in the centre of the road.  I was looking directly out of the windscreen at the roadway. As we approached the brow, my colleague, PC A , suddenly shouted "Bloody hell, B , STOP STOP!!!"

I braked immediately, thinking he had seen something I had missed. The urgency in his voice was uncharacteristic for PC A.

I dropped to about 15 - 20 mph and said, "What is it? "He replied "Didn't you see that?" "See What?" "That, THAT, you just bloody hit him!"

PC A is a ' valley boy' and not the kind of man to panic, we're both firearms officers and I've never seen him as agitated as he was then.

I asked him what he was talking about and pulled over to the side of the road.  He told me that as we had approached the brow, there had been a figure standing in the middle of the road, directly ahead of us and that I had continued to drive at it, eventually driving into it, he later said that the car had struck the figure on my side of the car and he had seen the bonnet of the police car pass into the lower half of the figure and at that point he looked away.  He had seen it so clearly, he stated that, against all our training, he nearly grabbed for the steering wheel to avoid a collision.

He described the figure as being clad in a brown long garment with a hood which was up, the figure was facing away from us but he had the impression it was male.

I turned the car around and drove back past where he had seen the figure, there was nothing there. We went a little further and I then turned back to resume.  As we started back up that hill I said to show me where it was he had seen it.

PC A then suddenly flinched violently, went rigid and shouted "IT'S THERE...THERE!!!"

I slowed and asked, "Can you see it?" PC A's voice was, at that point, something I can only describe as being completely terrified

"YES YES.... B, IT'S RIGHT BY THE CAR!!!!"

I could tell he was absolutely petrified by what he could see but I couldn't see anything.  I felt the hairs on my arms go rigid and the car seemed to go icy cold but I have to say that may have been my reaction to PC A's panic.  We drove on and I looked over at PC A, he looked absolutely dreadful, I could see tears welling up in his eyes and he looked like he was going to be sick.

He said "B, B, you're going to have to stop, you've got to stop!"

Even though he was saying this, he didn't seem to be looking at me and was almost irrational in the way he was talking. As I drove on looking for somewhere to pull over, he suddenly said

"It's gone! It's gone!" and his body seemed to immediately relax. I pulled over and he told me that, this time the figure was standing more into the centre of the roadway directly on the double white lines, and we had passed alongside it.  He saw it exactly as before but this time he was suddenly overcome with a crushing feeling of dread, remorse, utter despair and, in his words, the feeling of what death must be like.  He said that he felt completely overwhelmed by this but as we reached a certain point in the road it suddenly vanished.  We didn't turn back this time, due to receiving a call to go to.  We went back out to the spot at about 6.15am and drove it again but this time he saw nothing.  We noticed that immediately opposite the wall on the other side of the road at the point where he saw the figure, was an old stone waterspout and watering point.