What is a Stig?

There was somebody there – or something.  But what?  What do you think it could be?

Tommy, who had sneaked a peek at the picture on the cover of the book, thinks that ‘one of the boys threw a piece of flint; it cracked and it hit Barney.  Barney did not see them.’

Sharukh had the idea that it was something; ‘lots of pieces of chalk and Barney thought that was a person’.

Leon thinks a somebody.  ‘I think he saw a person.’

 

Aabis, remembering what we had said about people digging for chalk, thinks ‘it was a man that was about to find a crystal’.

Thomas picked up on the reference to old man’s beard.  ‘I think it was an old man with a long beard,’ he tells us.

Tatiana thinks that ‘Barney saw a bear because animals live in caves like bears’ (sic).

 

However, Virginia thinks ‘it is three ghosts and I think that he saw a shadow’.

Shani too liked the idea of something fantastical.  ‘I think it’s a witch that tied Barney up.’

Raamy thinks ‘he saw the shadow of a monster’.  A pretty scary-looking one at that!

Chloe wasn’t sure.  ‘I think there was a troll, because trolls live underground.’

Or maybe a ‘rabbit because rabbits like to dig’.

Owen thinks ‘it was the bicycle because maybe when he fell in he hit the bicycle and then it flipped up and went out of the pit’.

Sivert too had the bicycle in mind.  ‘I think he saw an old tree and an old bike.’

What do you think it was?  Was it a somebody – or a something?  Was it a Stig (whatever one of those is)?