While Forsyth is a former RAF pilot and could have heard and adapted such a story (either with or without the intent to do so) no references or anecdotal evidence have been put forward to support such claims. Many have speculated references to preexisting RAF folklore. Written on Christmas Day 1974, and published near that time a year later, the idea came while trying to think of a setting away from the typical haunted homes, and seeing planes flying overhead. History įorsyth created this original work as a Christmas gift to his first wife Carrie after she requested a ghost story be written for her. The circumstances of how he is guided to a safe landing, and his subsequent efforts to identify the pilot who saved him, are the central themes of the story. Lost in fog over the North Sea and low on fuel, he encounters a De Havilland Mosquito fighter-bomber, which has apparently been sent up to "shepherd" (i.e.
The Shepherd relates the story of a De Havilland Vampire pilot, going home on Christmas Eve 1957, whose aircraft suffers a complete electrical failure en route from RAF Celle in northern Germany to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. The Shepherd is a 1975 novella by Frederick Forsyth.