A QUIRKY summer festival in a Northwich village has inspired a horror story by a neighbouring writer.

Moulton Crow Fair fired the imagination of Kingsmead man Alan Fleet who has published his novella 'Beware the Crow Fair' as an E-book this week.

Alan said: "I had so many ideas about British traditions with fetes and festivals, you don't know where to stop.

"But the crow fair, I thought 'I can do something with that'.

"Why look elsewhere for inspiration when you've got this on your doorstep? You could research all over the country and not find something so odd.

"I remember it from the 1970s and my parents remember it from when they were kids in the 1920s.

"The scarecrow is the scariest scarecrow I've ever seen."

Alan, who worked in off-shore oil exploration for 30 years and only started writing in earnest in the 1990s, now has three novels, five short stories, a collection of memoirs and four screenplays to his name, as well as making three short films.

He was fascinated by age-old traditions that communities keep alive, even if their origins are long forgotten.

The inimitable crow dance is performed by village men, whose identities are disguised, and dates back to out-of-work salt workers in the 1920s who won so many competitions at fetes and fairs across the area that organisers eventually just paid them to perform.

In 'Beware the Crow Fair', about a student whose research of pagan traditions takes her to an obscure island, Alan has developed an imagined background to this history.

"The true history of the crow fair was lost to people and they were just dancing because they've always danced," he said.

"I've given it a very sinister origin but not based it in Moulton, I've based it elsewhere in England.

"The Moulton Crows do come up in the book as the main character researches things, so they do get a good mention.

"The book is like a typical British horror film with a shocking twist.

"It's not gory, it's more a traditional gothic horror."

This year's crow fair takes place at Main Road playing field on July 11.

Alan's book is available for £1.99 on amazon.co.uk