On the ancient downs of Dorset, near Sixpenny Handley, a series of prehistoric burial mounds have gathered some extraordinary stories.

Old local folklore claimed that strange music could sometimes be heard coming from beneath the barrows. Another story tells of a clergyman who rested upon one of the mounds and saw a crowd of little people, dressed in leather jerkins, dancing around him.

But Bottlebush Down is best known for something even stranger.

During the winter of 1927 or 1928, Dr R. C. C. Clay was driving home through the Dorset countryside when he noticed a horseman galloping across the downs beside his car. The rider was bare-legged, dressed in a long loose garment and appeared to be riding without bridle or stirrups. He waved a strange object above his head as he kept pace with Clay's car.

Then horse and rider vanished.

When Clay returned the following day, he discovered an ancient round barrow at the place where the apparition had disappeared.

Clay was not the only person said to have encountered the rider. Two women returning from a dance reportedly found themselves followed by a mysterious horseman, while an old shepherd apparently knew him simply as "the man on the horse that comes out of the opening in the pine wood."

In this episode of Ghost Tales by the Fireside: Dark Folklore, we travel to Bottlebush Down to explore its ancient barrows, fairy traditions, dancing little people and one of Britain's most remarkable stories of a possible prehistoric ghost.

Could an image from thousands of years ago still be riding across the Dorset downs?