We may think there’s nothing that unusual about the ‘typical British churchyard’. The lines of worn and lichen-spotted gravestones, the land made bumpy by centuries of burials, the narrow path winding between the tombs and the great dark bulk of the church looming over it all might seem so familiar as to hardly incite comment.

But churchyards can be the strangest and most gothic of places – outdoor emporiums of the weird, walled collections of the bizarre. What if I were to tell you that churchyards harbour oddities as striking as standing stones and stone circles, statues of pagan goddesses, smouldering footprints left by the Devil, ships’ figureheads acting as grave markers, and slabs on which corpses were laid so the vicar could check they were appropriately attired?

While researching my latest book – Church Curiosities: Strange Objects and Bizarre Legends (Shire/Bloomsbury) – I was constantly amazed by just how thoroughly odd the artefacts lurking in our churches and churchyards can be and how peculiar and intriguing the bits of folklore linked to them are. So read on to learn about ancient stones said to act as direct telephone lines to His Satanic Majesty, elaborate Victorian carts for transporting coffins, dinosaur footprints, and evidence of infernal games of leapfrog. Below are seven truly weird features of British churchyards.

Number One: Standing Stones and Stone Circles in British Churchyards

It’s strange to think that standing stones – objects associated with paganism – might lurk in the very Christian precincts of churchyards. Here and there, however, these enigmatic objects crop up. Evidence suggests many churches were built on pagan sites, with several – for instance – found within earthworks and henges, on manmade mounds or even topping barrows. This could have been a means of the new religion asserting its dominance over the old, of cleansing the neighbourhood of the influence of the old gods and of benefitting from any reverence the populace felt for such locations. Though the erectors of standing stones and builders of stone circles had disappeared long before Christianity came to these islands – and the stones were probably as mysterious to later pagans as they are to us today – it’s likely that these monuments still exerted awe over people’s minds. Taboos against damaging standing stones and burial mounds persisted into the 1800s, with one farmer on the Isle of Man recorded as sacrificing a calf before he dared disturb a barrow.

In Midmar Churchyard, Aberdeenshire, there’s not only a standing stone but an entire stone circle. The Bronze-Age circle, estimated to be around 4,000 years old, has a diameter of 17 metres, with some of the stones reaching 2.5 metres in height. This mysterious ring – whose stones contrast oddly with the later Christian grave markers – is one of Scotland’s best-preserved recumbent stone circles. In ‘recumbent’ circles, the largest stone is positioned ‘lying down’, with the two tallest stones usually flanking it – an arrangement that has led to descriptions of the Midmar Circle as ‘fanglike and demonic’. The Midmar area appears to have been a site of religious importance, as two more stone circles lie to the east and south-east of the village and other standing stones scatter the locality. Many of these stones are of a similar date and one of the other circles is also recumbent.

Midmar Stone Circle, in Midmar Kirkyard, Aberdeenshire – fanglike and demonic? (Photo: Silent Earth)

A Welsh church – St John the Baptist’s, in Ysbyty Cynfyn, Ceredigion – may have been built inside a stone circle. The round churchyard wall incorporates several standing stones, with two even serving as gateposts. More stones litter the churchyard and nearby fields and the church is ringed by a low earthen bank, all of which suggest a once significant monument. The current church is 19th century, but in the Middle Ages a hospice run by the Knights Hospitaller stood on the site. The Welsh Ysbyty translates as ‘hospital’.

A large standing stone in the wall of St John the Baptist’s Churchyard, Ysbyty Cynfyn, Ceredigion. (Photo: Scribblah)

Near the porch of St Twrog’s Church, Maentwrog, Gwynedd, is a standing stone that St Twrog apparently hurled from the Moelwyn Mountains to crush a pagan altar. The handprint of St Twrog – who seems to have boasted characteristics of both a saint and giant – is said to mark the stone. A superstition claims that if you rub the stone, you’ll one day return to Maentwrog. Another belief states that the stone indicates the grave of Pryderi, a legendary king from the Welsh cycle of myth the Mabinogion.

Standing stone in St Twrog’s Churchyard, Gywnedd – hurled by the saint or the gravestone of a mythical king? (Photo: The Modern Anitiquarian)

A 1.75-metre-high standing stone – which may have once been even taller as its upper section seems to have been broken off – guards the porch of St Gwrthwl’s Church, Llanwrthwl, Powys. The stone – which may be over 4,000 years old – might have prompted St Gwrthwl to build the first church on the site to take advantage of its spiritual associations.

The most famous – and imposing – standing stone in a British churchyard, however, has to be the Rudston Monolith, which looms next to All Saints’ Church, in Rudston, East Yorkshire. The monolith – a towering eight metres – is Britain’s tallest standing stone. The gritstone megalith – which weighs in at 40 tonnes – was studied by the antiquarian, early archaeologist and druid-obsessive William Stukeley (1687-1785). Stukeley dug around the stone and concluded it went as far into the ground as it protruded above it. Stukeley also claimed he’d found human remains buried around the monolith, indicating it was a focus of human sacrifice. Though such assertions might be far-fetched, the Rudston Monolith may well have been the centre of a ‘ritual landscape’. Henges, barrows, earthworks and traces of ancient settlements dot the vicinity and three cursuses – long, manmade trenches or ditches – converge towards the monolith. The monolith dates from the early Bronze Age or late Neolithic times, meaning it would have been set up at least 2,500 years before its site became a place of Christian worship. The name ‘Rudston’ – probably meaning ‘cross stone’ – hints at a pagan monument being adapted for Christian uses.

The Rudston Monolith in Rudston Churchyard, East Yorkshire – Britain’s tallest standing stone. (Photo: Stephen Horncastle)

Such a huge and bizarre artefact has, unsurprisingly, generated legends. One tale claims the monolith was a missile hurled by the Devil to demolish All Saints’ Church. Divine intervention deflected this diabolical projectile and the monolith embedded itself harmlessly among the graves. Another piece of folklore states the monolith dropped from the clouds, squishing some sinners who were desecrating the churchyard. This story might have grown out of garbled memories of a meteorite that fell at the nearby village of Wold Newton in 1795, landing with a colossal bang and missing a labourer by just ten yards. Though the Rudston Monolith isn’t a meteorite, its gritstone doesn’t match up with the rock types of the immediate area. The monument must have either been carved from a glacial erratic or dragged from 10-to-20 miles away, an astounding achievement considering the technology of the time. Yet another local tradition maintains there’s a dinosaur footprint on the megalith’s side, but this long-held belief was debunked by a 2015 English Heritage survey.

Number Two: Seafarers’ Graves in British Churchyards

Surrounded by ocean, Britain has long been a seafaring country and a number of churchyards reflect this fact. Unsurprisingly, Cornwall – with its miles of rugged and dangerous coast – hosts some unusual monuments honouring those who earned a hazardous living on the waves.

In the village of Morwenstow, a most unusual carving can be seen in the churchyard – a woman holding up a shield and brandishing a sword. In 1843, a Scottish ship named the Caledonia went down close the village, with 40 crew members perishing. Their bodies were interred in Morwenstow’s clifftop churchyard and the ship’s figurehead – salvaged from the wreck – was set up as their grave marker. Legend says if you walk too close to the figurehead at night, its sword will slash at you. The figurehead now in the graveyard is a replica – the worn original has been moved inside the church.

The figurehead of the Caledonia, in Morwenstow Churchyard – a grave marker for the ship’s unfortunate crew. (Photo: Easymalc’s Wanderings)

Another nautical ‘tombstone’ can be found in the churchyard of the Cornish village of St Mawgan. In 1846, 10 sailors were found frozen to death, drifted ashore in a boat. The boat’s stern was carved with their names and set up to mark their resting place.

In St Mawgan’s Churchyard, Cornwall, a boat’s stern serves as a grave marker for a group of sailors found frozen to death. (Photo: I Walk Cornwall)

At Veryan, Cornwall, 19 German sailors from a ship that sank in 1914 are buried in a single line head-to-toe, in a grave that’s an incredible 40 metres in length. The grave is thought to be the longest of its type in Britain.

A sailors’ grave – containing 19 crew members buried head-to-toe – in Veryan Churchyard, Cornwall. (Photo: CornwallLive)

Number Three: Lychgates in British Churchyards

I’m sure you’ve noticed that many British churchyards have a porch-like, pointy-roofed structure over their entrance. I suspect you might have also wondered about the purpose of these unusual buildings. These porch-like constructions are known as lychgates and once had a rather macabre function.

‘Lich’ is Old English for ‘corpse’ and corpses were laid under the lychgate to await the priest before funerals. The first part of the funeral service was also conducted beneath the structure. You can still see seats at the sides of some lychgates for pallbearers and mourners. In the Middle Ages, before mortuaries were widespread, bodies could be kept under the lychgate for up to two days. The lychgate would keep the rain off and the seats would have no doubt been a welcome feature for those watching over the corpse.

Medieval lychgate in St George’s Churchyard, Beckenham, South London. (Photo: Wheeltapper)

Under some lychgates are low, long platforms known as lych-stones. The lych-stone was where the body – sometimes coffined, sometimes just shrouded – rested. Between 1666 and 1814, an official – usually the parish priest – was obliged to inspect the corpse as it lay there. This was to ensure the body was wrapped in a woollen shroud. It was a legal requirement that corpses be dressed in this way – a measure introduced to protect the wool trade. (In many places, however, it seems this rule was ignored.)

Though most medieval lychgates have rotted away, a few can still be seen, such as at St George’s Church, in Beckenham, South London. St George’s 13th-century lychgate is thought to be England’s oldest. At St Euny’s Church, Redruth, Cornwall, is a remarkably long lych-stone. It was designed to support three coffins because accidents in the local tin-mining industry sometimes necessitated multiple funerals.

Long lych-stone in St Euny’s Churchyard, Redruth, Cornwall (Photo: Tim Green)

Number Four: Funeral Biers in British Churchyards (and Churches)

In and around certain churchyards, you might spot small, curious house-like structures. In St George’s Churchyard, Beckington, Somerset, is a building just one metre high with gothic-looking double doors while opposite St Peter and St Paul’s Church, Ospringe, Kent, stands a puzzling construction – with arched doorway and slit window – looking like some ominous stone-built garden shed. These ‘gothic garages’ are known as bier houses and once stored funeral biers – the four-wheeled trolleys that transported the bodies of parishioners on their journey to the grave.

A bier house opposite St Peter and St Paul’s Churchyard, Ospringe, Kent (Photo: Penny Mayes)

Many parishes had their own bier and these elderly implements can still be seen in certain churches and churchyards. Some churches have found creative uses for these objects. At Norton, Powys, a bier displays leaflets, notices and collection boxes whereas a bier in Balsham, Cambridgeshire, supports a scale model of the church. At Harvington, Worcestershire, and at Hampsthwaite, Yorkshire, biers have done duty in the churchyard as bases for floral displays. Fine Victorian briers can be seen at the Old Church of St Bartholomew, Botley, Hampshire; at St Lawrence’s Church, Evesham, Worcestershire; and at All Saints’, Holdenby, Northamptonshire.

 

A fine Victorian funeral bier in Botley Old Church, Hampshire (Photo: Helen Banham)

 

Victorian funeral bier in St Lawrence’s Church, Evesham, Worcestershire. (Photo: Richard Croft)

 

Bier supporting a floral display in Hampsthwaite Churchyard, Yorkshire. Unfortunately, in 2013 vandals made off with the wheels. (Photo: Hampsthwaite Village)

Number Five: Goddesses in British Churchyards

In Braunston-in-Rutland, in 1920, it was decided that the doorstep of All Saints’ Church needed replacing. The worn stone was levered up – to reveal a most curious carving on its other side, an image that had spent unknown centuries being pressed into the mud by the feet of generations of worshippers. The carving is of a female figure with protruding eyes, rubbery lips, a sticking-out tongue, ‘double nose’ and pert breasts. This intriguing character now leans against the church’s tower.

The mysterious Braunston Goddess, in Braunston-in-Rutland Churchyard (Photo: SiGarb)

Though the carving has acquired the title the ‘Braunston Goddess’, it’s not known what period she comes from or what she was intended to represent. She isn’t a gargoyle and bears little resemblance to any known style of carving though she does have some slight similarities to Sheela-na-gigs and ‘hunkie-punk’ church grotesques. There have been several attempts to explain the sculpture – that she’s a medieval ‘guardian’ of the type placed over doorways and windows to frighten off evil spirits or that she might depict a queen or even a whore. Others suggest the ‘goddess’ may pre-date the church and that she could be a fertility symbol or Celtic deity. A different hypothesis is that she might have functioned as a tribal boundary marker, placed on a border that roughly corresponded to the modern frontiers of Rutland and Leicestershire. Unless more evidence appears, however, the origins and purpose of this ‘goddess’ will remain questions we can only guess at.

Though it’s debatable whether the Braunston Goddess is a remnant of pagan antiquity, another churchyard ‘goddess’ in the British Isles is undoubtedly pre-Christian. Just outside the gate of St Martin’s Churchyard, Guernsey, stands La Gràn’Mère du Chim’tière (or Grandma of the Cemetery). This five-foot-five-inch statue – modestly robed though with rather prominent breasts – was probably sculpted in the Neolithic era, between about 2500 and 1800 BC. La Gràn’Mère – who may well have been carved from a standing stone – was probably also reworked in Roman times, between 100 BC and 100 AD.

Locals have long had a tradition of leaving flowers and coins around the sculpture, but these devotions so infuriated a pious churchwarden that he insisted La Gràn’Mère be destroyed. The statue was broken in half, but this so incensed the locals that they had her repaired with concrete and she continued to receive their reverence. Even today, La Gràn’Mère is a popular addition to wedding photos. The church La Gràn’Mère guards sits on the site of a Neolithic tomb shrine and the churchyard boasts two springs, one of which is said to have healing powers. But is La Gràn’Mère an entirely benevolent entity? In Folklore of Guernsey, Marie De Garis writes, ‘Looked at during the daytime, La Gràn’Mère wears a very benign look, but photographs taken by flashlight at night reveal quite a different aspect. She then looks a fierce and malevolent object.’

La Gran Mere, St Martin’s Churchyard, Guernsey. The crack indicates where she was broken in half in 1860. (Photo: Peter Kenny)

Number Six: Devil’s Footprints in British Churchyards

Many difficult-to-explain oddities in churches and churchyards – ranging from ‘witch’s cauldrons’ to the missing tips of steeples – have been blamed on the Devil, but perhaps the most dramatic mementos the Evil One has left are his smouldering footprints. In certain churchyards, you can still see these footprints today.

Legend claims that one night the Devil tried to steal a bell from the tower of St David’s, in Lanarth, Ceredigion. His efforts, however, awoke the vicar who drove him off. The Fiend leapt down into the graveyard and landed on a stone, upon which he left his fiery footprint.

The Devil is also held responsible for a 38-centimetre footprint which marks a stone near the gate of St Mary’s Churchyard, in Newington, Kent. As at Lanarth, the Evil One was determined to steal the church’s bells. He scaled the tower, put them in a sack and leapt down, landing on a stone with great force, thereby branding it with his demonic imprint. The bells, though, jolted from the sack and rolled into the nearby Libbet Stream. All attempts by villagers to retrieve the bells failed. An aged witch said that only four white cows would be able to tug the bells out. Four white cows were found and harnessed up and seemed to be successfully pulling the bells free. An onlooker, however, made a comment about a black spot on one of the cow’s noses. The bells tumbled back into the stream, disappeared beneath the water and have never been seen since. Local folklore claims the stream bubbles at the spot the bells sank and that the stone with the Devil’s footprint will spark if struck by a pebble.

Devil’s footprint found just outside the gate of Newington Churchyard, Kent, England. (Photo: Mapio)

Newington’s notorious stone is actually a prehistoric mudstone. Some locals say the stone was moved in the 1930s, after which a series of unfortunate events afflicted the village until the stone was moved again and placed next to the church. According to one superstition, if you rest your finger on top of the stone and walk around it three times, it will bring you good luck.

Number Seven: Devilish Stones in British Churchyards

A number of other unusual stones in and around British churchyards have connections with His Satanic Majesty. In Bungay, Suffolk, a mysterious rock known as the Druid’s Stone stands in St Mary’s Churchyard. Local folklore asserts this stone is a portal for contacting the Devil. If you’d like a direct line to the Fiend, you must either run around or knock on the stone 12 times. The Druid’s Stone is probably a glacial erratic brought to Bungay in the last ice age.

The Druid’s Stone, in Bungay Churchyard, Suffolk – a portal for contacting the Devil? (Photo: Ashley Dace)

At Marston Moreteyne, Bedfordshire, an intriguing stone stands in a field next to the parish church, also called St Mary’s. Legend says that one Sunday the Devil jumped down from the church then joined some local lads in said field, who were desecrating the sabbath by enjoying a sneaky game of leapfrog. The Devil enthusiastically participated in their sport and all were having a merry time until a hole in the ground opened, into which they all leapt and were never seen again. The stone indicates the place they vanished. This stone – sometimes referred to as the Devil’s Toenail – is actually a small Neolithic standing stone, a rarity in Bedfordshire. St Mary’s has a detached bell tower, a fact also blamed on the Fiend. The Devil tried to steal it, but – finding it too heavy – dropped it in the churchyard.

The Devil’s Leap Stone – also known as the Devil’s Toenail – in a field near Marston Moreteyne Churchyard, Bedfordshire, England. (Photo: Orion Air Sales)

More Oddities and Weird Artefacts in British Churches and Churchyards

The above items represent just a few of the thoroughly weird artefacts and peculiar tales I came across while researching my new best-selling book Church Curiosities: Strange Objects and Bizarre Legends (Shire/Bloomsbury). The book is bursting with examples of Britain’s eccentric heritage, ranging from golden balls placed on steeples by occultist aristocrats, to vampire graves, dragon-slaying swords and spears, and spooky collections of funeral effigies. Church Curiosities also explores bone crypts and secret tunnels, examines the mummified skulls of well-known statesmen, and highlights such oddities as preserved hearts hidden in pillars, the graves of beloved church cats, door knockers modelled on demons’ faces, burn marks left by black hellhounds, and ceremonies involving choirboys being suspended upside-down over the Thames. The book’s already hit the number one best-seller spot in three Amazon categories.

If you’d like to immerse yourself in a world of fascinating, disturbing, charming and deeply unusual artefacts, grab your copy of Church Curiosities now.

Get Church Curiosities Now

(This article’s main image – showing the Rudston Monolith – is courtesy of Colin Frankland)

The post 7 Really Weird Objects in British Churchyards appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

It’s easy to see why this phenomenon so startled the people of Devon. In some villages, almost every homestead had been visited and the hoofmarks went right up the sides of houses and over roofs. They meandered through churchyards and gardens and across fields, sometimes disappearing before starting again a few metres further on, as if the diabolical being had leapt or even flown. Sometimes they’d stop on one side of a haystack and continue on the other, without any hay being disturbed. Elsewhere, the creature had squeezed through tiny holes in hedges or jumped tall fences or impossibly high walls. Two witnesses claimed the footsteps had stopped at the entrance to a pipe just six inches in diameter then reappeared at the other end, a feat many felt had to be supernatural as no animal large enough to produce such prints could have wriggled through that tube. The prints apparently halted before the Exe estuary – a two-mile-wide span of water – then casually started again on the opposite bank.

Many gardens and fields were marked with mysterious single lines of ‘Devil’s Footprints’. (Photo: Claire Witham) 

There was also the sheer length of the beast’s damnable journey. Though accounts varied, it was estimated that the being must have walked between 40 and 100 miles on the night of 8th-9th February – an accomplishment no earthly creature could manage. The footprints seem mainly to have been concentrated in south and east Devon, travelling from Exmouth to Topsham then across the Exe to Dawlish and Teignmouth. Some stated that the prints had appeared as far south as Torquey and Totness, as far north as the outskirts of Exeter and as far east as Weymouth in Dorset. The Devil’s Hoofmarks did, however, show some variation. Within some the impress of a horseshoe could be seen; other hoofprints boasted claw marks, lending credence to the notion of their infernal origin.

Map of Devon – the Devil’s Footprints appeared mainly in the south and east around the Exe estuary.

News of the Devil’s Footprints soon spread through Devon and beyond. Articles appeared in The Times and in the local press. The Illustrated London News published a series of letters speculating about what could have caused the demonic imprints. These reports betray the terror – mingled with curiosity – that many locals felt. Residents, sometimes in armed groups, followed the footprints. Some traced the marks for miles, though without discovering much that could explain them. It’s, however, claimed that one local hunt tracked a mysterious beast to a wood near Dawlish. The huntsmen sent in the hounds to corner the creature, but the dogs soon ‘came back baying and terrified’.

The Western Luminary and Family Newspaper stated the footprints had created ‘an uproar of commotion’ while according to The Times a ‘considerable sensation has been evoked in the towns of Topsham, Lympstone, Exmouth, Teignmouth and Dawlish, in the south of Devon … the superstitious go so far as to believe that they are the marks of Satan himself … great excitement has been produced among all classes … many superstitious people in the above towns are actually afraid to go outside their doors after night.’ A letter in Woolmer’s Exeter and Plymouth Gazette said, ‘The poor are full of superstition and consider it little short of a visit from old Satan or some of his imps’. The Western Times related that Exmouth had been ‘thrown into a state of alarm, in consequence of a report that the town and neighbourhood had been visited in the night by no less a person than his Satanic Majesty, and that the marks of his feet were distinctly to be seen imprinted on the snow.’

Various sketches of the Devil’s Footprints made by eyewitnesses, from the papers of the Devon vicar the Reverend H.T. Ellacombe

Not everyone agreed the Devil’s Footprints had supernatural causes. Journalists, naturalists, clergymen, and the more educated who looked down on their superstitious neighbours were soon coming up with theories to explain the sinister occurrence. Later writers have also tried to identify who or what made the marks. Possible culprits have ranged from untethered balloons, to swans clad in padded shoes, to badgers, otters, and escaped kangaroos and monkeys. Some have blamed weird weather patterns; others have suggested UFOs and sea monsters. Some have seen a human influence at play – from attempts by austere Protestants to frighten religious opponents to Romany Gypsies on stilts creating the marks to scare off rival bands of Travellers.

The Devil’s Footprints were certainly a strange case. Let’s look at the explanations that have been put forward and try to make some sense of this diabolical conundrum.

Donkeys, Badgers, Cats – Could an Ordinary Animal Have Made the Devil’s Footprints?

Accounts from the time describe the Devil’s Footprints as between three-and-a-half and four inches long and around three inches wide. The marks were mainly in single file, rather than alternating to the left and right as the prints of humans and many animals would. The distance separating the marks was small, between eight and 16 inches, suggesting either short hops or an almost mincing gait. If these marks could have been made by some land animal rather than ‘His Satanic Majesty’, we must enquire if any creature common in the British Isles might have produced them.

Most of the marks were cloven and traces of horseshoes were found within some so we should start by asking whether the imprints may have simply been left by donkeys or ponies. People at the time noted that the marks indeed looked like the hoofprints of such animals. The Western Luminary and Family Newspaper described the marks as ‘exactly, in shape, like a donkey’s hoof’ while The Times stated ‘the impression of the foot closely resembled that of a donkey’s shoe’. The possibility that such a creature might have left the prints, though, was quickly dismissed due to the layout of the marks. As The Western Luminary put it, they were ‘evidently done by some two-footed animal’.

Might humble donkeys have made the Devil’s Footprints in Devon? (Photo: The Donkey Sanctuary of Canada)

But donkey prints can be deceptive. According to the researcher Theo Brown, ‘donkeys are the only animals that plant their feet in an almost perfect single line’, a fact that has led her to conclude that at least some of the Devil’s Footprints were made by such creatures. Though this might seem an easy answer to our mystery, the idea the prints were left by donkeys conjures up some tricky questions. Human steps weren’t seen alongside the Devil’s Hoofmarks and it’s unlikely that people would have led or ridden donkeys in the thick of a winter night through gardens and churchyards and across expanses of private land. Most of these theoretical donkeys must have, therefore, strayed and several such beasts would have needed to escape simultaneously to produce the quantities of marks seen. Also, there’s no way that donkeys could have trotted up the walls of houses or slithered through narrow pipes. And the creatures are unlikely to have walked over roofs.

We might also question why country people wouldn’t have recognised donkeys’ trails. To this objection, it might be said that significant falls of snow are uncommon in south Devon, an area with one of the most temperate climates in Britain. Might locals, agitated by the less explicable marks – such as those going up houses – have then seen the prints of stray donkeys in the unfamiliar snow and decided they were more sinister than they actually were? In opposition to this idea, we must consider a letter sent to The Illustrated London News by a correspondent calling himself ‘South Devon’, who gave the impression of being an veteran countryman who’d also spent time in Canada and who’d ‘much experience of tracking wild animals and birds upon the snow’. South Devon claimed that on the morning of 9th February the prints of well-known creatures were recognisable as ‘the snow bore the fresh marks of cats, dogs, rabbits, birds and men clearly defined’ and that – unlike the Devil’s Footprints – they excited little comment. South Devon did admit that the Devil’s Footprints ‘were the perfect impression of a donkey’s hoof’, but stressed that ‘foot had followed foot in a single line’ and that no known animal walks in a ‘line of single footsteps, not even man’. This suggests South Devon – and perhaps others in the area – were actually unaware of how donkeys’ hoofmarks can appear in snow.

A sketch of the Devil’s Footprints – sent in by the correspondent ‘South Devon’ – which appeared in The Illustrated London News

Though stray donkeys might well have made some of the hoofmarks, they can’t account for them all. Another creature accused of making the diabolical imprints was the humble badger. Also in a letter to The Illustrated London News, the well-known naturalist Richard Owen put the blame on this seemingly innocent animal. Owen emphasised that badgers are not only nocturnal but can travel significant distances while looking for food, especially in winter. Badgers also have long claws and claw marks were spotted in some of the Devil’s Hoofprints. The pawprints of badgers are, however, staggered and the creature has quite a large tread, meaning it would almost certainly leave a double line of marks. It’s also somewhat comical to imagine stout and sturdy badgers scaling walls, strolling across rooftops, and springing over haystacks and high fences.

Trails of animals that may have been mistaken for the Devil’s Hoofmarks: a. Whitetail deer; b. Cottontail Hare; c. Fox; d. Badger; e. Otter

Another everyday animal blamed for the Devil’s Footprints was the cat. On the morning of 9th February, the tenant of Aller Farm in Dawlish discovered that the night’s strange weather had distorted some pawprints his cat had left in the snow. Snow had come down heavily around midnight, but towards dawn there’d been a slight thaw and some rain. The temperature had then dropped again and there’d been a frost. Such melting and refreezing had warped the steps of the unassuming moggie ‘into the shape of a small hoof, with still the impression of the cat’s claws enclosed’. The tenant reported this to the Reverend Edward Fursdon, the vicar of Dawlish, who presumably noted it down.

The association of cats with the Devil’s Footprints is an interesting one. Cats can spring considerable distances, perhaps accounting for some of the (smaller) breaks in the lines of imprints. They’re also excellent climbers, which could maybe explain some of the marks on the sides of houses, although such prints would be unlikely to be in single file. (Also, except where snowdrifts had accumulated, the prints on house sides are likely to have been muddy ones rather than stamped in snow and so would have been recognisably feline.) Cats, though, have certainly been known to saunter across roofs. And while cats don’t create trails as linear as donkeys’, the prints of cats – and other animals like foxes – can give the impression of being in single file. Devon’s farms and villages in the mid-1800s no doubt contained lots of cats so the distorted tracks of domestic moggies might account for some of the Devil’s Footprints. It’s unlikely, however, that many cats would have taken it upon themselves to embark on journeys miles long through the snow.

More Possible Culprits for the Devil’s Footprints – Hopping Mice, Otters, Squirrels, Toads, Monkeys and Kangaroos

Yet more animals have been identified as possible creators of the Devil’s Footprints. On 8th March 1855, the Exeter Flying Post suggested the key to the mystery might be found in the form of the lowly toad. The paper reported that a Torquey man had followed a curious trail through his garden and found a large toad sitting by a tree stump at its end. It’s, however, unclear if it was the toad that made the tracks or if it just happened to have positioned itself where they stopped. It’s also uncertain whether the Devil’s Footprints did indeed extend as far south as Torquey despite what some claimed. Toads have webbed feet so it’s unlikely their trails would match the descriptions of the Devil’s Footprints unless weather conditions had substantially distorted them. The creatures can, though, presumably hop through pipes – perhaps providing an answer to the conundrum of the six-inch tube.

Comparison of eyewitnesses’ sketches of the Devil’s Footprints, made in Devon, England, from the papers of the Reverend H.T. Ellacombe

Other animals skilled at hopping, springing and jumping have been accused of making the diabolical marks. The Inverness Courier newspaper argued the Devon prints were made by a hare, as similar marks found near Inverness were thought to have been created by a hare or polecat. It remains unclear, however, whether such creatures really did leave those puzzling tracks near the Scottish town.

Rats, mice and other rodents sometimes engage in hopping and so have been viewed as possible causes of the Devil’s Footprints. In a letter to The Illustrated London News, one Thomas Fox wrote that he’d found tracks in his brother’s garden similar to those in Devon and suspected rats may have made them. In the 1950s, the zoologist Alfred Leutscher stumbled upon similar markings in Epping Forest. Leutscher knew that certain animals – including rabbits, hares, squirrels, mice and rats – sometimes leap with all four feet together. If there’s sufficient snow, their traces can resemble hoofmarks and Leutscher argued this effect is enhanced if the impressions thaw then refreeze. He believed only one animal, though, would have been the right size to make the Devon marks – the wood mouse – and claimed to have observed tracks left by this creature in Epping Forest that matched descriptions of the Devil’s Footprints. But – though wood mice might have made some of the Devon imprints – it seems unlikely that wood mice or other rodents would hop for such long distances rather than walking or scurrying or that single creatures could have made the trails that Devon villagers followed for miles.

Thomas Fox’s sketch of ‘rat prints’ in his brother’s garden – might this animal have left the Devil’s Footprints?

A more outlandish explanation for the Devil’s Footprints involved a hopping creature of a more exotic type. There were claims two kangaroos had left the marks after escaping from a private menagerie in Sidmouth. A Reverend G.M Musgrave seems to have been the first to put forward this idea, expounding it in a sermon. A letter to the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette outlined how ‘on Sunday last, the Rev. Musgrave, delivered one of his usual eloquent discourses in Lympstone Church, and in speaking of Satan as a tempter, who was continually besetting our path, though invisible, aptly alluded to this mysterious visitor who had left behind him visible evidence of his presence and expressed it as his opinion that the foot-prints were those of the kangaroo: but it must have been a busy animal indeed to have played up such pranks as this creature has done.’ Though kangaroos could have bounded over certain obstacles, even these incredible creatures would have struggled to get onto rooftops or leap high walls. Kangaroo prints are in no way similar to hoofmarks and the distance bounced by kangaroos certainly exceeds 16 inches, the maximum span recorded between the Devil’s Footprints. While there were indeed two kangaroos in the Sidmouth menagerie, there’s no evidence either of them escaped.

The Reverend Musgrave later admitted he came up with the kangaroo story to calm his congregation, who’d been terrified by the Devil’s Footprints. In March 1855, he sent a letter to The Illustrated London News: ‘the state of the public mind of the villagers … dreading to go out after sunset … under the conviction that this was the Devil’s work … rendered it very desirable that a turn should be given to such a degraded and vitiated notion … and I was grateful that a kangaroo served to disperse ideas so derogatory.’

Illustration of the tracks of a jumping wood mouse by Alfred Leutscher in his book Tracks and Signs of British Animals (1960). Might weather conditions have merged such marks into the Devil’s Footprints?

An even more incredible suggestion was that the marks were left by a monkey that had escaped from a menagerie or circus. A monkey might have had the agility to climb walls and skip across roofs, but a single monkey couldn’t have left so many footprints in one night and – again – there’s no evidence of such a creature absconding around the time the Devil’s Footprints appeared.

A more sensible notion is that otters caused some of the marks. Cold weather might have driven such creatures away from their frozen rivers and streams in search of food and all the places where the Devil’s Footprints were found were within half-a-mile of such watercourses. Even in the mid-1800s, otters weren’t common creatures so many country people may have not recognised their trails. The two witnesses who saw the prints near the pipe suspected an otter might have squeezed through it and they noticed the creature that had made the marks had slunk under low branches, like an otter would. In addition, crossing the Exe estuary would have probably not presented much of an obstacle to these semi-aquatic animals. Though some of the demonic prints may have been made by otters, it’s unlikely these creatures could have left them all, especially those running up walls or over rooftops.

Animal prints in Rupert Gould’s book Oddities (1928): a. Thomas Fox’s ‘rat prints’; b. Hind foot of an otter; C. Badger’s hind foot; D. One of the Devil’s Hoofmarks

It may be that a variety of animals were responsible for the Devil’s Footprints. Their marks may have been made somewhat more uniform by the thawing and refreezing action of the weather (though the extent of the similarity of the prints still raises questions). Early 1855 did see exceptional cold – the winter had been so intense that ‘the thermometer was one degree lower than has ever been known before by the oldest inhabitant’ and stretches of the rivers Exe and Teign froze over, allowing games and even a feast to be held on the ice. Such conditions could have driven animals to adopt unusual behaviours, travelling further in their search for food and leaving longer trails. These trails – in the excitable minds of some – could have merged into evidence of an epic trek, a journey so outlandish it could only have a supernatural explanation.

There are still many questions, however, about the Devil’s Footprints so we’ll leave behind the animal realm for now and look at the activities of birds, balloons and humans.

Might Birds Have Been Responsible for the Devil’s Footprints?

It might seem a rather obvious assertion that birds were to blame for some of the prints. Most bird species would have no trouble flapping over haystacks, walking across roofs, entering walled gardens or clearing the Exe estuary. Smaller varieties could have navigated pipes and got through holes in hedges. There’s also evidence that the freezing weather caused flocks of seabirds to come inland, which could explain why similar prints were found across a large area. The breaks in the lines of prints may have been caused by birds flying short distances before coming down and walking again.

The problem with this argument is that the feet of birds – whether clawed or webbed – leave prints that in no way resemble hoofmarks. Some have claimed the birds’ feet might have iced up, giving their tracks an unusual shape. One Reverend H.T. Ellacombe did apparently notice flurries in the snow around some of the Devil’s Footprints – flurries iced-laden birds may have created by beating their wings as they tried to take off. But it’s improbable that even iced-up bird feet would have left impressions like hoofmarks. It is possible, though, that already agitated observers – viewing, from some metres away, bird prints on roofs distorted by thawing and freezing – could have seen them as grim evidence the Evil One had visited.

Could birds have caused Devon’s Devil’s Footprints? (Image: Greg Williams)

An entertaining, though improbable, suggestion is that a domesticated swan sporting padded shoes caused the Devil’s Footprints. An escaped – and very much exhausted – swan is rumoured to have been caught at St Denis, near Paris, five days after the Devon footprints appeared. A silver collar round the swan’s neck showed it had come all the way from Germany, from ‘the domain of Prince Hohenlohe’. The bird’s feet were apparently padded to stop it damaging ornamental gardens and lawns. Swans can fly large distances, but it’s unlikely that even the most vigorous swan would have crossed the channel, flown all the way to Devon, left hundreds of thousands of footprints in one night then headed back to the Continent. A whole flock of such birds would have needed to abscond to produce the amount of prints seen.

Could a Stray Balloon Have Left the Devil’s Hoofmarks?

According to the novelist Geoffrey Household (1900-1988), an experimental balloon produced the Devil’s Footprints. The balloon, kept at the naval base Devonport Dockyard, somehow got free and set off on a journey across the countryside. The balloon carried two shackles on the end of its mooring ropes and these caused the balloon to continually dip down. It was these shackles – making frequent contact with the snow – that pitted Devon with its trail of curious marks. Household’s source was one Major Carter, a local man who’d heard the story from his grandad, an employee at the Devonport base. Carter’s grandfather told him that the incident had been hushed up because the balloon had damaged conservatories and shattered greenhouses and windows. The balloon finally ceased its flight at the east Devon town of Honiton.

Might an experimental balloon like this one have caused Devon’s Devil’s Footprints?

The balloon theory would explain how the Devil’s Footprints had got on roofs and how the entity that made them had bounded over haystacks and walls. It could also account for the gaps in the trails and the crossing of the Exe, during which the shackles would have presumably just hit water. It’s likely, however, that the balloon’s mooring ropes would have left marks in the snow too and there are no records of any such imprints. The balloon also would have probably sooner or later become tangled in a tree, bush, hedge or other obstruction. It seems more likely that the balloon story was invented after the appearance of the Devil’s Footprints as an attempt to explain them.

Might the Devil’s Hoofmarks Have Their Origin in a Religious Dispute?

One explanation for the Devil’s Footprints is that they were left as a hoax, a somewhat sinister prank arising out of disputes within the Church of England. The Church at the time was divided between High-Church followers of the Oxford Movement and more puritanical Low-Church Anglicans. The Oxford Movement – put simply – sought to reintroduce medieval elements into Anglicanism, with a stress on ritual, vestments, incense and the beauty of worship and the belief that religious services should be whole-body experiences rather than just appealing to the intellect. To more radical Protestants, this smacked too much of Catholicism and they wanted more focus on the Bible and sermons, with churches and ceremonies kept plain and austere.

Some suspect the Puritans – feeling their opponents were basically in league with the Devil – used the snowfall as an opportunity to frighten them. With some sort of implement – perhaps a horseshoe attached to a long pole – they made trails in the churchyards of vicars who supported the Oxford Movement, as well as across the landscape more generally. The use of such an implement might explain the marks going up houses, emerging from pipes, and on either side of undisturbed haystacks. It could also account for the similarity of many of the imprints. If an implement had been employed, however, one might expect all the Devil’s Footprints to be identical – which they weren’t – though thawing and refreezing may have distorted some.

The main objection to such a theory lies in the sheer number of marks – it would have taken a conspiracy of hundreds of Puritans to produce so many. What’s more likely is that – noticing the commotion the Devil’s Hoofmarks had caused – some Puritans took advantage of the uproar to make a religious point. This might explain the prints found in Topsham Churchyard on 13th February – several days after the bulk of the marks had been discovered on the morning of the 9th. Ominously, the tracks at Topsham went up ‘to the very door of the vestibule’. Though the vicar at Topsham was High Church, not all the churches where prints were found had vicars who adhered to the Oxford Movement. At Dawlish, a more Puritan parish, hoofmarks led ‘from the vicarage to the vestry door’ and prints were discovered ‘all over the churchyard and between the graves’.

Interestingly, the trauma of religious disputes does sometimes give rise to alleged experiences of the supernatural. For instance, a vampire legend in Croglin, Cumbria, may have its roots in the religious conflicts that arose around the time of the English Civil War. The Croglin legend even includes rumours of a vampiric bat flying out of the tomb of an unpopular clergyman.

Might the Devil’s Footprints Have Been Made by Gypsies on Stilts?

According to the autobiography of Manfri Frederick Wood In the Life of a Romany Gypsy (1973), the Devil’s Footprints were made as part of an elaborate plan hatched by Gypsies to frighten off rival travelling groups. Rather than Devon, Wood places the incident in Somerset though he admits, ‘I am not sure about the exact area or even the approximate date when this occurred – but it is a true story as I got it from one of my uncles and it filled the newspapers at the time and caused a great sensation.’

Wood goes on: ‘That night, as everybody in the area found first thing in the morning, the Devil walked right across the county of Somerset. Only it wasn’t the Devil at all but some seven Romany tribes using over 400 sets of measure stilts with size-27 boots at their base. The whole operation took over 18 months to plan and prepare.’

The issue the Romanies had was they felt their territory was being overrun by Didekais (people of part-Romany heritage) and ‘Pikies’. (‘Pikey’ is generally a derogatory term for Gypsies and Travellers, but in Wood’s account it probably refers to non-Romany travelling people.) The idea was to frighten away these competing groups by exploiting their fear of ‘the Mulo’. According to Wood, in Gypsy lore a Mulo is a vampire-type figure that ‘came out of its tomb every night as the dead man’s double’ and would also emerge for half-an-hour at high noon. Gypsies had once been so terrified of the Mulo that they ‘made a point of stopping at a camping site in time to get out of the Mulo’s way inside their tents or wagons. So the old Gypsies years ago never travelled at noon and were out of sight by dusk.’ Some Gypsies, though, saw the Mulo not as a revenant of a dead man but rather as the Devil in the deceased man’s guise.

Wood states that, having long ago converted to Christianity, most ‘of the pure Romanies in this country no longer bother about Mulos and travel at any time of the day or night’ whereas ‘a good many of the Didekais and Pikies are still very particular about keeping out of the Mulo’s way. In our family, the belief in Mulos was a very useful weapon for clearing an area more or less permanently of Pikies.’

A group of Gypsies in the snow – could Romanies have created the Devil’s Footprints?

The ‘measure stilts’ the Romanies used ‘consisted of a pair of step ladders that could be lengthened or shortened by means of slides and hinges. They were joined at the top by a wheel. The bottom of the step ladder stood in the great big boot and the man operating the stilts stood on one of the ladders and joggled about on it to make as deep a foot impression as possible. Then he would either swing the second ladder over the top by the wheel – if there was enough head room – or … he would raise the ladder by the slide and move it forward in one “Devil’s stride”. Either way, he got an exact measure of a stride, as the measure stilts were constructed so they could not over- or under-stride the three yards it was meant to do.’ In order to avoid being spotted when on public highways, the stilt-walkers would ‘throw a sheet over the whole works so the Devil would be seen walking rather than a man with ladders.’

The Romanies made it look as if the Devil had walked ‘right across Somerset in as straight a line as possible’, which even meant that ‘his footsteps had to go straight up one wall’ of any building in his path then ‘over the roof and down the other wall. The stilt-walker could not walk up walls – he had to straighten out his stilts to turn them into a long ladder and then make a muddy line of “devil’s strides” … Halfway over the top, he had to hoist the ladder up and swing it right round, and without too much noise, to the other side of the building. This was the snaggiest part of the whole business as it required exceptional strength and poise.’

Apparently, ‘the route was planned very carefully and every part of it studied … When the plan was put into operation, it went off without a single hitch … The next day, the Devil’s Footprints could clearly be seen along the whole route. It put the fear of God into all the locals – but that was not the point of the exercise. For the next few years it kept the area free from Pikies and Didekais who swore blind it was a Mulo that had crossed and they were not going to take any chances.’

As strangely fascinating as this account might be, this explanation for the Devil’s Footprints has flaws. Wood places the incident in Somerset rather than Devon (though he admits his memory may be faulty with regards to location). The size-27 boots the Gypsies attached to their stilts would have produced prints far bigger than the Devil’s Footprints and of a different shape. The stride between the marks left by the Romanies would have also been much larger. In addition, the Romanies made their trail in a straight line whereas many of the Devon tracks meandered. It’s difficult to believe that 400 people traversing the countryside on stilts wouldn’t have set dogs barking or that at least some of them wouldn’t have been apprehended or had accidents. There’s also no evidence – as far as I know – of Gypsies elsewhere using similar techniques to clear areas of rivals.

One detail might, however, hint that stilt-walkers could have left some of the marks. In 1889-90, the journal Notes and Queries discussed the Devil’s Footprints and one correspondent claimed that the impression of ‘a point of a stick’ had been left at lengthy but regular intervals besides the prints. Could such sticks have helped stilt-walkers balance? This detail was, however, reported decades after the footsteps appeared and the fact the stick-marks were regular wouldn’t fit with someone using such an implement whenever they feared they might topple over.

I suspect that the Devon incident entered Gypsy folklore and that the telling of the tale became ever more elaborate and ever more intertwined with Romany history as the years passed. Or perhaps – like the Puritans above – the Romanies heard of the Devil’s Footprints and hoaxed more marks (though on a smaller scale than claimed) to serve purposes of their own.

Could the Devil’s Footprints Have Been Formed by Weird Weather Patterns?

Another possible cause for the Devil’s Footprints was proposed by the Scotsman J. Allan Rennie. Rennie suspected the footsteps had been made by a strange weather phenomenon, one he claimed to have witnessed. In 1924, in northern Canada, Rennie saw a line of mysterious tracks in the snow while crossing a frozen lake. His companion, ‘a French-Canadian dog skinner’, became agitated, blaming the prints on a monster called the Windygo. So disturbed was the dog skinner that he deserted Rennie’s expedition. Not long afterwards, it was Rennie’s turn to be petrified. He saw tracks approaching him in the snow though no visible creature seemed to be making them:

‘The tracks were being made within 50 yards of me – 20 – 10 – then smack! I shouted aloud as a large blob of water struck me in the face. I swung around, brushing the moisture from my eyes, and saw the tracks continuing across the lake.’

When he’d recovered from the shock, Rennie reasoned that the prints had been caused by ‘some freakish current of very warm air coming into contact with the very low temperature which had set up the condensation.’ Rennie claimed to have observed similar tracks in Kent in 1939 and in Strathspey, Scotland, in December 1952 and January 1953.

Did a strange weather phenomenon cause Devon’s Devil’s Footprints? 

If such a phenomenon does exist, it could explain the Devon marks left in difficult-to-access places like rooftops, and presumably walls and high fences wouldn’t present obstacles to currents of air. The prints Rennie observed, however, travelled in straight lines rather than meandering as in Devon and were bigger than the Devon marks. Those Rennie saw in Canada looked as if snowshoes had made them while the marks in Strathspey were 19 inches long, 14 wide and 7 feet apart. Furthermore, meteorologists are dubious about whether air currents could produce such tracks. Those the naturalist and author of Animal Legends (1995) Maurice Burton consulted declared such claims ‘impossible’.

So What’s the Conclusion – What Did Cause the Devil’s Footprints?

This post shows that an incredible range of causes have been suggested for the Devil’s Footprints – from kangaroos, to stray balloons, to hopping mice, to Devil-obsessed Puritans to Gypsies teetering on stilts. But even more outlandish ideas have been proposed. In 1972, one George Lyall, writing in Flying Saucer Review, asserted a UFO had made the prints, by hovering over Devon and firing laser beams at the snow, apparently as part of a measuring exercise. The ex-navy officer Rupert Gould, on the other hand, put forward the idea that an unknown sea creature had emerged from the ocean to leave the marks. Gould’s theory mainly relies on the fact that all the prints appeared close to the sea or the Exe estuary. He also noted that pony-like footprints had once been found on the Antarctic Kerguelen Islands, at a time when that territory had no land animals.

Leaving aside the more offbeat suggestions, might we attempt a hypothesis for the Devil’s Footprints? No one explanation is completely satisfactory, but perhaps a combination of some of the ideas above could go some way towards accounting for the diabolical marks. I suspect most of the footprints were left by a variety of animals. Stray – or ridden – donkeys are likely to have created some, hence the hoofprints with horseshoes. Other marks could have been caused by creatures such as cats, otters and badgers or by the hopping of toads, mice, rats and other rodents. The thawing and refreezing that occurred on the night of 8th-9th February might have then distorted these prints into hoof-like shapes. Additional marks – also distorted and seen from a distance – could have been left by birds, which might account for some of the prints on roofs and on opposite sides of high walls and haystacks. The extreme cold weather might well have driven animals to stray from their regular territories and travel farther in search of food, meaning prints appeared where they wouldn’t normally. Though the correspondent South Devon claimed that the marks of ordinary animals were also visible in the snow and caused no excitement, these could have been left after the melting and refreezing that distorted earlier steps.

Marks in snow made by a red squirrel – could some of the Devil’s Footprints have been left by hopping rodents? (Photo: Fortpelhamfarm)

Observing the commotion these unusual prints provoked, human pranksters could have then created more over the next few nights. The activities of such people might account for those marks leading ominously up to churches or walking straight up house walls. The hysteria the Devil’s Footprints triggered also likely led to descriptions of them being exaggerated and over the years memories of the phenomenon were probably embellished further.

Even eye-witnesses at the time may have been prone to exaggerate. South Devon, for instance, rather than being a mature countryman was later revealed to be the 19-year-old William D’Urban, who’d go on to be the first curator of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum at Exeter. D’Urban was responsible for getting certain notions into the press: that all the marks were ‘exactly the same size and the step the same length’ (which, as we have seen, wasn’t quite true), that the prints extended for 100 miles (others estimated it was more like 40), were in a straight line (they often meandered) and were found as far south as Torquey and Totness. South Devon also mentioned a 14-foot wall being jumped and prints on the roofs of houses. It’s possible that youthful enthusiasm gave extra colour to South Devon’s account and some of his contemporaries did dispute his claims. The Reverend G.M. Musgrave (he of the ‘kangaroo theory’) wrote to The Illustrated London News about South Devon’s assertions: ‘The outline accompanying your intelligent correspondent’s recital of the circumstances hardly conveys a correct idea of the prints in question.’

As for the excitable account of hounds being terrified by a sinister creature near Dawlish, suggestions have been made that the passage of time has in fact enhanced a different tale – that of the hunt closing in on nobody more threatening than a village idiot. This imbecile – who was fond of ‘decking himself in layers of chicken and goose feathers’ and roaming through woods imitating animal noises – was almost lynched by the nervous party. With regards to the footprints’ audacious crossing of the Exe, the river is two miles wide only where it meets the sea. It can be waded across in places at low tide and may have even been frozen on the 8th-9th February, meaning many animals could have crossed it without occult help.

Phenomena similar to the Devil’s Footprints have been observed elsewhere, suggesting that certain combinations of circumstances may produce marks like those seen in Devon. In 1922, the Daily Mail reported that tracks ascribed to the Devil had appeared in Norfolk and the Cotswolds, including on rooftops. In January 1855, prints similar to a deer’s were discovered on the walls and roofs of several pubs near Wolverhampton. (The fact only pubs were targeted might suggest local moralists were responsible.) In 1957, cloven prints – 12 inches apart – were found in a Hull back garden. Prints found in Belgium towards the end of World War II are said to have run for two miles ‘in a dead straight line’. In March 1855, The Times reported that hoofmarks manifested annually in the snow on a certain hill in Russian Poland. Locals blamed the hoofmarks – which, if no snow had fallen, would appear in the hill’s sandy soil – on malign supernatural influences. Though the Devon case is the most famous – and seems the most extensive – example of mysterious footprints, the fact it isn’t the only one could indicate that natural conditions – with perhaps some added human hoaxing – may occasionally result in such spooky occurrences.

Mysterious tracks sketched in Belgium towards the end of World War II by Eric Frank Russell

But What If the Devon Footprints Really Were Left by a Devilish Creature?

By peering into English folklore, we can see why Devon locals decided the Devil had taken a night-time hike across their county. The single lines of prints suggest a hopping motion while the clearing of haystacks and high fences indicates spectacular jumps. The Devil has long been famous for his hops and leaps. Near Frensham, Surrey, three hills known as the Devil’s Jumps were apparently created by Satan kicking up mounds of earth as he bounded across the countryside. The London demon Spring-heeled Jack – who terrorised that city in Victorian times – was said to leap improbable distances, jump fences and bound onto rooftops thanks to springs hidden in his boots. Indeed, some blamed Spring-heeled Jack for the Devil’s Footprints.

Our nightmares of leaping devils don’t, however, seem to have completely faded, even in modern times. According to an article on the British Paranormal Website, in 2007 a well-respected couple from Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex – a teacher and businessman – were driving home from a restaurant at about 10.00 pm on an especially dark night. Passing a wood, they became aware of movement in the undergrowth and thought it was a deer. Suddenly a strange creature leapt from the trees. The couple described it as a cloven-hoofed, very thin and bearded biped. This Pan-type figure trotted into the middle of the road, stared at the couple and unleashed a cry ‘half-way between a tyre’s screech and a cow’s moo’. The creature then disappeared back into the wood with a ‘movement like that of a stop-motion figure from an old claymation movie, being both disjointed and angular.’

The couple saw this character near a gorge called the Devil’s Dyke, an area that’s been the location of many ‘devil sightings’. The article’s writer, A.L. Cuin, states the couple ‘are known personally to me and they are definitely not the kind of people to indulge in fantasies and then make them known. They are convinced by what they saw and will accept no challenge to their account.’ Make of that what you choose.

(This article’s main image is courtesy of Flower. An excellent summary of the Devil’s Footprints phenomenon, and copies of primary and secondary sources, can be found in this resource edited by Mike Dash.)

The post The Devil’s Footprints – Devon’s Diabolical Hoofmarks in the Snow appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

Sometimes the dog is headless. Sometimes it merely appears before you ominously; at other times it follows or pads around you, sometimes with the sound of dragging chains. Sometimes the beast is silent; at other times packs of black dogs hurtle over moors or fens, barking and howling in a frenzied hunt. The creature is associated with electrical storms and is notorious for haunting crossroads, prisons and the sites of gallows and gibbets. The beast has worked its way into Britain’s literature, with Emily and Branwell Brontë, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle and J.K. Rowling among those inspired by black dog legends.

In different parts of the country, the black dog has different names: Barghest, Gytrash and Padfoot in Yorkshire; Moddey Dhoo on the Isle of Man; Old Shuck in East Anglia; Yeth or Whist Hound in Devon; and Gwyllgi – or ‘dog of darkness’ – in Wales. While these manifestations of the black dog archetype have their dissimilarities, they no doubt represent variants of the same haunting presence – the hulking, burning-eyed cur whose apparition has long been dreaded.

Phantom black dogs are rumoured to haunt many parts of Britain. (Image: tardust777)

But how do the antics of this petrifying pooch differ around Britain? Where might the legends of black dogs come from and what dark obsessions deep in the human psyche could they symbolise? How far back does the folklore of these fearsome creatures go? And does the black dog belong in a superstitious past or has anybody glimpsed it in recent decades?

I’ve selected seven black dog legends to look into. While it might generally not be a good idea to walk alone over moors or venture down unlit urban snickleways late at night, you might be even more reluctant to do so after reading these accounts.

Number One: the Black Dog of Newgate Prison, London

From 1188 to 1902, Newgate Prison was one of London’s most notorious features. Evolving from cells in a gatehouse in the city walls, the prison was at various times extended, burnt down, demolished, rebuilt, reformed and allowed to fester, but the stories coming out of the jail were always grim, not to say horrific.

In the ill-lit, badly ventilated, overcrowded, filthy jail disease spread rapidly. Warders beat, abused and extorted inmates, sometimes even chaining them to walls and leaving them to starve. Lice and bedbugs were so prevalent, you could hear them crunch under your feet. While having financial means could secure you a modicum of comfort, the jail’s worst conditions saw people chained in the basement in what was basically a sewer. Newgate did, however, have a bar and the prisoners who could afford it seem to have been perpetually drunk. The stench from the jail was so bad that passers-by clasped vinegar-soaked handkerchiefs to their noses. Newgate was demolished in 1904 and the Old Bailey now occupies most of its site though some cells are preserved in the cellar of a nearby pub.

The exercise yard in Newgate Prison by Paul Gustave Dore

It’s perhaps inevitable that such a sinister institution evolved its own black dog legend, with its canine ghost darkly symbolic of centuries of suffering. The story goes that in the reign of Henry III (1216-1272), a scholar accused of sorcery was sent to Newgate to await trial. Unfortunately for him, his imprisonment coincided with a terrible famine that was sweeping through England, a famine so bad it had prompted some inmates of Newgate to resort to cannibalism.

The weedy scholar, unable to defend himself, soon fell victim to these depraved inmates and was killed, dismembered and gobbled up. Shortly afterwards, prisoners began seeing the spectre of a huge black dog padding the jail’s corridors, a spectre they became convinced was the sorcerer come back to take revenge on those who’d eaten him. Sure enough, the dog began to hunt down and consume those responsible for that crime.

The remaining prisoners who’d scoffed the sorcerer were so terrified they plotted to break out of the jail and managed to escape by murdering some guards. But while they were free of Newgate, they were not free of the dog. One-by-one, the black dog sought them out, killed and ate them.

The first written evidence for this story appears in a publication with a woodcut cover, dated 1596 and entitled The Discovery of a London Monster, called The Blacke Dogg of Newgate: Profitable for all Readers to Take Heed by. The legend is probably, however, older than this. The pamphlet’s author is one Luke Hutton, an inmate of Newgate who claimed a stranger – ‘a poor thin-gut fellow’ – had once narrated the tale to him in the Black Dog Public House. Upon concluding his terrifying account, the stranger tells Hutton the legend is untrue, saying the only black dog in Newgate is ‘a great blacke Stone standing in the dungeon called Limbo, the place where the condemned prisoners are put after their judgement’ against which some anguished felons have dashed their brains out.

An illustration from a 1638 edition of the book ‘The Discovery of a London Monster Called the Black Dog of Newgate’

Hutton appears to have written the pamphlet as a morality tale, to draw attention to prison conditions and the behaviour of his fellow inmates during a period in which life in Newgate was especially appalling. Hutton dedicated the booklet to the Lord Chief Justice John Pophame in the hope its moral message might help secure his release, which it seems to have done.

Despite such scepticism, the black dog has been sighted in and around Newgate over the centuries, especially on evenings before executions. Within the prison there was once an alleyway called Dead Man’s Walk – the snicket acquired its name because condemned criminals walked down it to their executions. The names of all the convicts who plodded this grim passage were etched into its walls and many were buried under its flagstones. Dead Man’s Walk was demolished along with the rest of the prison in 1904. Where it ran is, however, close to Amen Court, a precinct attached to St Paul’s Cathedral containing canons’ houses. Part of Amen Court is bounded by what was once a wall of Newgate.

Amen Court is said to be haunted by Newgate’s black dog. The spectre appears as a shapeless black form which glides around the court and nearby streets and slithers along the top of the prison’s remaining wall. The ghost gives off a disgusting stink and is often accompanied by the sound of footsteps dragging, a noise reminiscent of prisoners trudging to their deaths.

Amen Court with the former wall of Newgate Prison on the left – does the black dog’s ghost slither along its top? (Photo: Knowledge of London)

Number Two: the Barghest of Yorkshire – a Sinister Black Dog and Herald of Death

A particularly ominous black dog – the Barghest – can be found in the folklore of Yorkshire and north-east England. The Barghest heralds death. If a Barghest lays down across the threshold of your house, it’s a sign you’ll pass away soon.

If a person of local importance is about to die, the Barghest will appear and all the other dogs of the neighbourhood will fall in behind it in a kind of funeral procession, barking and howling mournfully. If, while the Barghest is leading its solemn parade, anyone obstructs it, the dog will gouge them with its claws, leaving wounds that never heal. In his Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders (1879), William Henderson recalled that his ‘informant, a Yorkshire gentleman, lately deceased, said he perfectly remembered the terror he experienced when a child at beholding this procession before the death of a certain Squire Wade, of New Grange.’

A Barghest is said to haunt Troller’s Gill, a lonely limestone gorge south-east of Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales. A ballad – The Legend of Troller’s Gill – is recorded in William Hone’s Everyday Book (1830). This folksong tells of a man who clambered up to ‘the horrid gill of the limestone hill’ to try to summon the Barghest with ritual magic. The man’s body was found with uncanny maul marks on its breast. Another Barghest was rumoured to prowl a tract of wasteland called the Oxwells between Wreghorn and Headingly Hill, near Leeds.

Some argue ‘Barghest’ comes from the term ‘Berg-geist’ meaning ‘mountain ghost’; others claim the name derives from  ‘Bur-ghest’ or ‘town ghost’. Perhaps both etymologies are right as the Barghest seems equally comfortable in the countryside and the city. It’s whispered that a Barghest haunts York, preying after dark on lone wanderers in the city’s winding narrow alleys, known as snickleways. With its massive jaws and yellow fangs, the dog devours these wayfarers.

Might a phantom black dog haunt York’s narrow snickleways? (Image: VAMzzz)

A Barghest is rumoured to roam Whitby, the coastal town that appears in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In the Whitby section of the novel, the Count transforms into an enormous black dog – a beast that may have been inspired by local Barghest legends. The Barghest also roves the moors around Whitby – locals say if you’re unlucky enough to hear its chilling howl at night, it means death is coming soon. Soon claim you’ll pass away before dawn.

Though usually depicted as a large shaggy black dog with blazing red or green eyes, the Barghest has shapeshifting powers. In Northumberland and County Durham, the Barghest can appear as a type of household elf. A Barghest that lived close to Darlington could manifest as a headless man who’d vanish in a flash of flame, a headless woman, a white cat and even an unearthly rabbit. The Barghest can also make itself invisible. Perhaps this shapeshifting ability is reflected in the fact some think its name originates from ‘Bar-geist’ or ‘bear ghost’. Others, though, maintain – again referencing the animal’s links with death – that ‘Barghest’ comes from ‘bahr geist’, meaning ‘ghost of the funeral bier’.

Some say the Barghest is accompanied by the sound of rattling chains and that – like vampires – the beast can’t cross running water.

A Barghest was said to haunt the treacherous moors around Whitby – monuments and way markers had the function of helping travellers keep their bearings in thick fog. (Photo: Whitby Gazette)

Number Three: the Gytrash of Northern England – an Ambiguous Shapeshifter with a Brontë Connection

The Gytrash is a black dog that lingers by the lonely moorland and marsh roads, forest paths and high passes of northern England. Often malevolent, the dog delights in leading travellers dangerously astray, but sometimes it can be helpful, guiding them onto safe tracks.

Like its cousin the Barghest, the Gytrash is a shapeshifter and can appear as a crane, mule or horse. In its equine aspect, the Gytrash is known in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire as the Shagfoal – a phantom horse, mule or donkey with burning eyes. In this form, the creature is utterly wicked. The Gytrash could be partly a personification of the dangers that plagued travellers in the days of substandard unlit roads, highway men, and unreliable maps and methods of transport.

The Gytrash – again, like the Barghest – can be a portent of doom. According to the English Dialect Dictionary (1898-1905), the Gytrash could adopt the guise of ‘an evil cow whose appearance was formerly believed in as a sign of death.’

The most famous mention of the Gytrash – and possibly the first ever committed to print – occurs in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Before Jane’s first meeting with the Byronic hero Mr Rochester – out in a lonely country lane – she’s reminded of the spooky tales she’s heard of this black dog:

‘As this horse approached, and as I watched for it to appear through the dusk, I remembered certain of Bessie’s tales, wherein figured a North-of-England spirit called a “Gytrash”, which, in the form of a horse, mule or large dog, haunted solitary ways, and sometimes came upon belated travellers, as this horse was now coming upon me. It was very near, but not yet in sight; when, in addition to the tramp, tramp, I heard a rush under the hedge, and close down by the hazel stems glided a great dog, whose black and white colour made him a distinct object against the trees. It was exactly one form of Bessie’s Gytrash – a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head … with strange pretercanine eyes … The horse followed – a tall steed, and on its back a rider. The man, the human being, broke the spell at once. Nothing ever rode the Gytrash: it was always alone.’

Jayne Eyre encounters the ‘Gytrash’ – a ghost legend says can appear as a black dog or horse.

And so these fearsome Gytrashes turn out to be Mr Rochester’s utterly ordinary horse and harmless dog, Pilot. Charlotte Brontë uses the scene with the ‘Gytrash’ to subtly mock the overly romantic and gothic associations Jane will soon attach to Rochester. Having said that, Rochester is in some ways like the Gytrash: a dark, haunted, ‘spectral’, often solitary character prone to shifting shape and generating illusion.

It’s also interesting that Jane’s formed her ideas of the Gytrash from the stories of her maid, Bessie. In Victorian culture, servants were often assigned the function of transmitters of folklore, reflecting the notion that – in a world scarred by industrialisation and filled with mechanical progress – the ‘lower orders’ still retained a vital connection with the mythic past. Jane says, ‘All sorts of fancies bright and dark tenanted my mind: the memories of nursery stories were there amongst other rubbish; and when they recurred, maturing youth added to them a vigour and vividness beyond what childhood could give.’

Charlotte wasn’t the only Brontë whose literary output was influenced by the Gytrash. Branwell Brontë wrote a short story called Thurstons of Darkwall. Branwell’s tale – based around Ponden Hall, a real-life house which may have been a model for Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights –  features a Gytrash. The story emphasises the Gytrash’s shapeshifting capabilities. In addition to appearing as a black dog, the spectre can take the form of ‘an old dwarfish and hideous man, as often seen without a head as with one’, as well as a calf and even a flaming barrel. Branwell’s phantom was based on an apparition that people claimed to have witnessed on the wild and isolated moors around Haworth.

Number Four: East Anglia’s Old Shuck – a Devilish Black Dog and Destroyer of Churches

Old Shuck – also known as Black Shuck – is a terrifying, even demonic, phantom in the form of a black dog that haunts Norfolk, Suffolk, northern Essex and the Cambridgeshire fens. Sometimes Old Shuck attacks wayfarers; sometimes the dog’s appearance foreshadows deaths – either of the person who glimpses it or of someone close to them. The term ‘shuck’ may derive from an old word for ‘devil’ or ‘fiend’ or from a word meaning ‘terrifying’ or it might simply refer to the shagginess of the dog’s coat.

The first mention of the name ‘shuck’ in print comes from an 1850 edition of the journal Notes and Queries, in which the Reverend E.S. Taylor writes about ‘Shuck the dog fiend’, stating, ‘This phantom I have heard many persons in East Norfolk, and even in Cambridgeshire, describe as having seen as a black shaggy dog, with fiery eyes and of immense size, who visits churchyards at midnight.’

East Anglian black dog legends, however, go back far earlier. On Sunday 4th August 1577, a fiery demon in the form of a black dog appeared at Blythburgh Church, Suffolk, during a tremendous storm ‘consisting of raine violently falling, fearful flashes of lightning, and terrible cracks of thunder, which came with such unwonted force and power … the church did as it were quake and stagger.’ A service was taking place and the dog sprinted up the aisle, killing a man and boy, badly burning a man’s hand, ‘blasting’ other congregants, and bringing the church steeple crashing down through the roof. As the fiend exited the church, he left burn marks and incisions from his flaming talons on the doors.

The front cover of the 1577 pamphlet ‘A Straunge and Terrible Wonder’

The demon then headed over to St Mary’s Church in Bungay. Here, in an assault described in the pamphlet A Struange and Terrible Wonder (1577) by Abraham Fleming, this ‘black dog or the divel in such a likeness’ was soon ‘running all long down the body of the church with great swiftnesse, and incredible haste’. The dog ‘passed between two people as they were kneeling … occupied in prayer … (and) wrung the necks of them both at one instant cleane backwards, in somuch that … where they kneeled, they strangely died.’

Not content with this slaughter, Old Shuck continued the carnage. A piece of local verse states: ‘All down the church in midst of fire, the hellish monster flew, and passing onward to the quire, he many people slew.’ Like at Blythburgh, the dog left scorch marks on the door of St Mary’s.

The accounts of Old Shuck’s rampages in Blythburgh and Bungay are probably overdramatic memories of a catastrophic storm. It seems Abraham Fleming put his booklet together from exaggerated oral testimonies. Fleming worked as an editor for several London printers so it may have been in his interest to make sure his rendering of the story was suitably spectacular. The burn marks on the churches’ doors – still referred to as ‘the Devil’s fingerprints’ – are more likely to have been inflicted by candles.

Burn marks on Blythburgh Church door, supposedly left by Black Shuck. (Photo: Atlas Obscura)

Legends of spooky black dogs in this part of England have, however, persisted over the centuries. In Highways and Byways in East Anglia (1901), W.A. Dutt describes Old Shuck as a being who ‘takes the form of a huge black dog, and prowls along dark lanes and lonesome field footpaths, where, although his howling makes the hearer’s blood run cold, his footfalls make no sound.’ Dutt ascribes a curious feature to Old Shuck: ‘You may know him at once, should you see him, by his fiery eye; he has but one, and that, like the Cyclops’s, is in the middle of his head.’

Encountering Black Shuck will ‘bring you the worst of luck: it is even said that to meet him is to be warned that your death will occur before the end of the year. So you will do well to shut your eyes if you hear him howling.’

An artist’s impression of Old Shuck, based on W.A. Dutt’s description. (Image: Mattias Thatch)

Despite all this, Old Shuck, like other black dogs, can be ambiguous and there have been accounts of the creature being companionable and guiding lost travellers.

But do legends of Black Shuck belong firmly in the past? The poet Martin Newell – while doing research for his epic poem Black Shuck: The Ghost Dog of Eastern England – talked to East Anglian locals. He was surprised by how many believed the legends and claimed to have seen Black Shuck.

‘Ah, you’re writing about that now, are you?’ a Norfolk shopkeeper stated. ‘Well, be careful.’

A woman Newell spoke to said she’d seen Black Shuck near Cromer in the 1950s when coming home from a dance and a man told him he’d spotted the dog while crossing marshes near Felixstowe. Newell also found a newspaper article from the 1930s about a midwife who – cycling on a winter night near the Essex village of Tolleshunt Darcy – had been followed by Old Shuck. However fast she pedalled through the country lanes, the black dog kept up with her. Eventually, the apparition vanished.

Number Five: the Isle of Man’s Moddey Dhoo – a Sinister Black Dog That Haunted Peel Castle

According to a legend recorded by the English poet and topographer George Walden (1690-1730), Peel Castle on the Isle of Man was once haunted by a Moddey Dhoo. ‘Moddey Dhoo’ simply means ‘black dog’ in the Manx language and this specimen apparently looked like a giant shaggy-haired spaniel. Though such a creature might sound somewhat comical, all who came into contact with this entity soon realised there was something otherworldly and sinister about it.

The Moddey Dhoo had been seen in every room in the castle, but – during the reign of Charles II – it began frequenting the guard chamber. As soon as the guards had lit the candles in the evening, the black dog would come padding along a certain corridor and into the room, where it lay down before the fire in front of all the soldiers. Then, as day began to break, the Moddy Dhoo would rouse itself and trot off back down the same passage.

Was Peel Castle home to the phantom black dog known as the Moddey Dhoo? (Photo: July Wind)

This corridor – via an ancient church – connected the guardroom with the captain of the guard’s quarters. The soldiers had to walk along it to return the castle’s keys at the end of the night. After the dog started padding down the dark narrow passageway, they never did this alone, but always went in twos.

The guards had been in the habit of drinking ale and telling stories to make their nightshift pass more quickly, but after the dog began visiting their room, they became more sombre. Still, they pretended to ignore the apparition and after some time grew accustomed to the presence of the phantom pooch, though they were still unsettled by it.

One soldier, however, became too relaxed around the strange spaniel. One night, he got drunk and boasted loudly that he’d be the one who’d take the keys back to the captain in the morning and that – moreover – he’d do it by himself. He wasn’t scared of any dog, whether normal or supernatural. It wasn’t even the soldier’s turn to take the keys and his friends tried to talk him out of his mad plan, but – when daylight started to appear – he snatched the keys from their hook and strode out of the guardroom. The Moddey Dhoo got up calmly from its place by the fire and followed him.

A couple of tense minutes passed before the most terrifying screams and wails resounded from the passage. The soldiers wanted to help their comrade, but were all too frightened, and soon they heard someone staggering back towards their room. The door swung open and their colleague tumbled in, his face utterly white and contorted with terror, his eyes bulging with fear. The man was unable to speak so he couldn’t tell his friends of the horrors he’d endured. He soon sickened and a few days later was dead. As for the black dog, no one ever saw it again anywhere in Peel Castle.

There seems to have sometimes been a tradition in Britain and Scandinavia of burying black dogs in graveyards or in the foundations of churches in the hope their ghosts would protect such sites from evil spirits and the Devil. The Moddey Dhoo’s corridor ran through an old church and excavations there in 1871 uncovered the grave of a bishop who’d died in 1247. At the bishop’s feet was the skeleton of a large dog.

Though the Moddey Dhoo may have disappeared from Peel Castle, phantom black dogs have been seen elsewhere on the Isle of Man. A black dog that haunts a field near Ballmodda is termed an ‘ordinary Moddey Dhoo’ in contrast to the headless variety, one of which is said to appear in a farm lane in Ballagilbert Glen. A Moddey Dhoo – which, according to some, is as big as a calf and has burning plate-sized eyes – has been spotted at Milntown Corner on the outskirts of Ramsey.

Number Six: the Black Dogs of the South West – Yeth Hounds, Whist Hounds, the Devil’s Dandy Dogs and The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles may be based on black dog legends from the south west. (Image: Visit Dartmoor)

Devon folklore states that large black dogs known as Yeth Hounds are the souls of children who passed away before they could be baptised. The Yeth Hound – which is headless – wanders through woods at night howling.

Another species of Devon black dog is the Whist Hound. Though some regard them as similar to Yeth Hounds, they seem more sinister. They hunt in packs across Dartmoor and it’s rumoured the huntsman is the Devil himself. Whist Hounds are said to haunt Wistman’s Wood – a spooky high-altitude tangle of moss-covered oak trees – as well as the area surrounding the Dewerstone, an Iron-Age hillfort on a rocky outcrop above the River Plym. Any mortal dog who hears the horrendous howling of the Whist Hounds soon dies.

A different Devon legend claims the spirit of Sir Francis Drake – as a punishment for his obsession with the occult – is forced to drive a black hearse coach through the night between Taverstock and Plymouth. Headless horses pull the coach, which is followed by demons and black headless hellhounds. This story could be a variant on the wild hunt motif, in which a mythological figure leads a band of phantom huntsmen and yelping spectral dogs. Those who, in various places, are made to lead the hunt – usually as a penalty for some sin – include Cain, the Devil, King Arthur, King Herod, Odin and Herne the Hunter. The black coach could be viewed as a relatively modern addition to this ancient archetype.

Yet another piece of Devon black dog folklore tells of an aristocrat named Richard Cabell. Cabell, a ‘monstrously evil man’ and a squire of Buckfastleigh on Dartmoor’s southern fringe, is – among other crimes – rumoured to have murdered his wife and sold his soul to the Devil. When he died, local people were relieved, but they soon realised they were far from free of the wicked squire.

Cabell had been an obsessive hunter and it seems he saw no reason why death should interfere with his enjoyment of this pastime. On the night of his burial, a pack of ghostly black dogs came across Dartmoor to stand howling at his tomb. Cabell’s ghost began leading these dogs – in his own version of the wild hunt – over the moors at night, especially on the anniversary of his death. If Cabell didn’t feel like going out hunting, the dogs hung around his grave, disturbing Buckfastleigh’s residents with howling, barking and unearthly shrieks. Determined to quieten Cabell’s evil soul, his neighbours laid a heavy slab over his grave and built a ‘prison-like’ mausoleum above it, a plan which appears to have been successful. Even to this day, Buckfastleigh youngsters dare each other to stretch their arms through the mausoleum’s barred window and touch Cabell’s tomb while hoping his wicked spirit won’t seize them.

Some say Arthur Conan Doyle heard about this legend while visiting a friend in the area and that this prompted him to write his Sherlock Holmes mystery The Hound of the Baskervilles. Apparently, Baskerville was the name of one of the coachmen at the house he stayed at. Set mostly on Dartmoor, the book tells the story of a devilish dog – ‘an enormous coal black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen’ – that has for many years haunted the aristocratic Baskerville family. This haunting began as a punishment for the debased behaviour of Hugo Baskerville, a character with similarities to Richard Cabell. The dog appears just before the deaths of the family’s heirs, deaths which are often disturbingly premature.

An illustration by Sidney Paget from The Hound of the Baskervilles

It’s not clear, however, how such apparent influences square with Doyle’s own statements. When asked about the origins of his novel, Doyle said, ‘My story was really based on nothing save a remark of my friend Fletcher Robinson that there was a legend about a dog on the moor connected with some old family.’ Bertram Fletcher Robinson, a Daily Express journalist, explored Dartmoor with Doyle, supplying him with local legends and accounts of Devon oddities. Doyle paid him a third of the profits from the serialisation of the novel in gratitude.

Some, on the other hand, claim the influences for The Hound of the Baskervilles came from outside the south west. Doyle once holidayed in North Norfolk, near Cromer, an area where legends of Black Shuck are well-known. During his trip, he stayed at the pre-Gothic Cromer Hall, which in many ways matches Doyle’s fictional Baskerville Hall. Another possible source of inspiration was Crowsley Park in Oxfordshire. The gates to this estate feature statues of hellhounds with spears through their mouths while another fearsome dog can be seen above a lintel on the front of Crowsley Park House. This estate was owned by the Baskerville family and a daughter, Florence Baskerville, married one of Doyle’s friends. Perhaps all these things came together with the legends Doyle heard in the south west to inspire his idea of a hellhound-haunted family.

As for Richard Cabell, the mausoleum supposedly put up to quieten his unruly spirit contains Cabell family tombs older than his. It’s unlikely, therefore, to have been built after his death. Cabell is also unlikely to have killed his wife as she’s mentioned in his 1671 will.

If we travel further west, we’ll find black dog legends in Cornwall. Black dogs in that county have been known to haunt tumuli, lonely roads and the scenes of tin mining accidents. Dark-coloured canines also feature in Cornish versions of the wild hunt. The vicinity of the village of St Germans is haunted by a pack of dogs that belonged to a wicked priest named Dando. Dando was a keen huntsman who regularly committed the sacrilege of hunting on the Sabbath. He was also a heavy drinker who – after one Sunday hunt – declared that if his companions couldn’t give him enough booze he’d go to hell to get it. A strange huntsman stepped forward and offered Dando a drink before seizing and dragging him down to the netherworld. Dando’s Dogs can still be heard on Sunday mornings, running after game or seeking their lost master.

Phantom black dogs allegedly roam the moors 0f south-west England. (Image: Ghostly Activities)

Another legend – sometimes confused with that of Dando – concerns the Devil’s Dandy Dogs. Satan himself is in charge of this pack and his dogs are not just phantoms but genuine flame-breathing hellhounds. This terrifying hunt roams the moors and any travellers who hear it are urged to kneel and pray that the Dandy Dogs don’t come in their direction. Black hellhounds are also rumoured to pursue Jan Tregeagle, a damned soul who escaped from hell. Jan is said to have once haunted the eerie Dozmary Pool high on Bodmin Moor, where – on stormy nights – his shrieks could be heard along with the howls of the infernal dogs chasing him.

Number Seven: the Church Grim – a Guardian Spirit in the Form of a Black Dog

Legends from Britain and Scandinavia state that certain churchyards are haunted by a ‘Church Grim’, a spirit that usually appears as a large black dog. Rather than being a malevolent entity, the Grim protects the churchyard from all who would desecrate it, including vandals, witches, warlocks, thieves and even the Devil.

A tradition, apparently, once maintained that the spirit of the first person to be buried in a churchyard would be tasked with guarding it. In Scotland, the last person buried in a cemetery would have to be its guardian until a new interment took place. To save the spirits of the departed from these onerous duties, a large black dog would be buried either in the churchyard or in the foundations of the church itself, especially under its cornerstone.

Some say the black dog’s ghost tolls the church bell at midnight on the eve of the death of a local resident. During the funeral service, the clergyman might spot the Grim staring out from the church tower and from the dog’s behaviour be able to tell if the deceased will go to hell or heaven. The Church Grim is also associated with stormy weather. Though normally manifesting as a black dog, the Grim has been known to take the form of a horse or pig.

Honourable Mentions from Britain’s Many Black Dog Legends

Black dog legends are widespread across the UK and versions of this myth have been recorded in almost every English county. Yorkshire, especially, seems a centre of black dog folklore. As well as the Barghest and Gytrash, there’s the Padfoot. You might encounter this creature close to Leeds, Wakefield or Bradford. It apparently follows people with a soft padding sound, sometimes augmented by the clanking of chains. A harbinger of death, the Padfoot can let rip a roar like no earthly animal. You shouldn’t attack or try to speak to the Padfoot – doing so will put you in its power. A man who once kicked the dog found himself seized by the supernatural hound. Pulled through a ditch and hedge, the man was dragged all the way back to his house before being dumped under a window.

Yet another black dog that roves Yorkshire – and parts of Cumbria – is the Cappelthwaite. This dog first appeared on a farm near Milnthorpe, Cumbria. He lived in a barn called Cappelthwaite Barn, from where he got his name. The dog was helpful to the farm’s residents, rounding up sheep and assisting with chores, but was malevolent and mischievous towards everyone else. The dog was eventually expelled by the local vicar and has since roamed the countryside. Though the Cappelthwaite prefers the form of a black dog, he can materialise as any four-legged animal.

Some particularly curious black dogs are known as Gabriel Hounds. They are hounds with human faces that fly yelping through the air and are heard far more frequently than seen. If they hover noisily over a house, it’s a sign death or calamity will afflict those living there. Some say the dogs are spirits of unbaptised infants; others that Gabriel, their owner, must lead them across the sky as a punishment for hunting on a Sunday. Legends of Gabriel Hounds may have evolved from flocks of night-flying geese, whose honks can sound like dogs barking.

Not all ghostly black dogs are evil, however. The Gurt Dog of Somerset is a friendly, protective beast. Mothers in the Quantock Hills once let their children play unsupervised as they felt the Gurt Dog would look after them. The dog also guides and defends travellers.

Various legends speak of benevolent black dogs. Manx folklore relates the tale of a fisherman who wanted to get to his boat, but met a black dog on the way who – however much the fisherman tried to dodge around it – refused to let him pass. The fisherman eventually gave up and returned home. That night, a terrific storm blew up that would have pulverised his ship. A number of tales have solo travellers passing through dark and lonely woodlands who suddenly find a black dog accompanying them. The dog doesn’t leave them until they exit the forest. The travellers later invariably find out that bandits have been watching them and would have murdered and robbed them if not for the presence of the dog. Tales of guardian black dogs seem to have become more common around 1900, perhaps showing the influence of late Victorian sentimentality.

Ghostly black dogs have been known to guard travellers in lonely woodlands. (Photo: Holy Stones and Iron Bones) 

A benign black dog is said to have haunted a farmhouse near Lyme Regis, Dorset. The dog never caused any trouble, but one night the farmer got drunk and attacked the dog with a poker. He chased it into the attic, where the creature escaped by jumping straight through the ceiling. The farmer struck at the dog as it disappeared and – at the spot where his poker crashed down – he found a hidden hoard of gold and silver. The man used this loot to set up an inn – a bed and breakfast, called The Old Black Dog, claims to stand on its site today. The black dog still prowls a nearby lane – pet dogs wandering down this road have mysteriously vanished. Black dogs in Scotland are also believed to guard treasure. If you dare to move a standing stone near the village of Murthly in Perth and Kinross, you’ll uncover a treasure chest protected by a black dog.

Cannock Chase,  a spooky tract of countryside in Staffordshire, is reputedly haunted by a number of black dogs, such as the Hednesford Hellhound and the wonderfully named Slitting Mill Bastard. Local folklore alleges Cannock Chase has also played host to UFOs, werewolves, big cats and even Bigfoot.

The sites of gibbets seem popular hangouts for black dogs. Such an animal has haunted Galley Hill, near Luton, Bedfordshire, since lightning set fire to a gibbet in the 18th century. In Tring, Hertfordshire, a chimney sweep was hung in 1751 for drowning a woman he suspected of witchcraft. His corpse was then suspended in chains from a gibbet. The sweep’s ghost is said to haunt the spot where the gibbet stood in the guise of a black dog and you can sometimes hear the clattering of his chains. The dog once appeared before two men in a flash of fire – the size of a newfoundland, it had blazing eyes and long fangs.

Black dogs also sometimes haunt tumuli. One has been sighted around the Six Hills, a group of Roman barrows in Stevenage, Hertfordshire – mounds, folklore asserts, the Devil constructed.

A particularly frightening black dog is the Welsh Gwyllgi – known as the ‘Dog of Darkness’ or ‘Black Hound of Destiny’. The dog – described as a huge mastiff or black wolf with noxious breath and burning eyes – appears to individuals after dark, especially on isolated roads. Glimpsing the dog is a prediction you’ll suffer a horrendous death.

Where Might Britain’s Black Dog Legends Come from and What Could Account for Them?

Though Britain has an especially high concentration of black dog legends, the menacing ghostly black dog is an archetype found in many regions of the world. Tales of phantom black dogs have been recorded in Belgium, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, the United States, Mexico, Central America and Argentina and more stories could probably be found of these spooky canines in other parts of the planet.

The archetype also seems an old one. The earliest-known written record of a black dog legend is from France – in 856 AD, one manifested in a church even though the doors were shut. The oldest document attesting to black dogs in England is from 1127. It describes a wild hunt that haunted the surroundings of Peterborough Abbey. The huntsmen ‘rode on black horses and black he-goats and the hounds were jet black with eyes like saucers and horrible’. It’s likely black dog legends go back quite some time before these sources, however.

Most black dog legends cast the beast as some sort of harbinger of death or messenger from the otherworld. The more sinister black dogs are associated with the Devil and hell; others are linked to tormented souls forced to conduct wild hunts. The dogs predict death for those who see them or – less commonly – guard people from such a fate, but in both cases the animals know the spectre of death is near. The connection with death could account for them haunting graveyards and gibbets. The black dogs’ deathliness is also emphasised by the fact some are headless and drag chains – both of which are general characteristics of ghosts.

The ability of black dogs to pass between the otherworld and this one might explain their manifesting at liminal spaces like crossroads and tumuli. Folktales describe ancient barrows as entrances to other realms and crossroads have long been seen as spots at which one reality might intersect with another. The ambiguous nature of the black dog is also expressed in its shapeshifting.

But why, we might ask, are dogs associated with death? This largely comes from their scavenging habits. Though dogs can certainly hunt, they often prefer to feed on carrion, a tendency that has likely linked them to decay and death in the popular mind. Another scavenger with similar folkloric associations is the raven – a bird notorious for banqueting on battlefields and haunting gallows and gibbets. This bird’s links with executions seem to have been a powerful factor connecting ravens in legend with the Tower of London. The colour black – in the case of both the black dog and the raven – is also symbolic, being a colour of death and mourning in Western cultures.

If we delve back beyond folklore and into mythology, we can also find dogs associated with death, the underworld, and liminal spaces and thresholds. The entrance to Hades is guarded by Cerberus, a multi-headed dog whose eyes – according to some accounts – flash with fire. The gate of the gloomy Norse underworld Hel is guarded by Garmr, a terrifying blood-bespattered wolf or dog. Some equate Garmr with Fenrir, the ferocious cosmic wolf who – by bursting out of his chains – will help usher in the Viking end times Ragnarok.

Vase showing Cerberus, the guardian of the Greek underworld – was he a prototype of the ghostly black dog?

In Welsh Myth, the Cwn Annwm are the hounds of the lord of the otherworld, Annwm. These dogs – rather than being black – are white with red ears. Celtic culture associated the colour red with death and white with the otherworld. Annwm leads his dogs in a wild hunt, especially at liminal ‘turning points’ of the year, such as Christmas and midsummer.  To hear the dogs howling is a portent of death and the hounds are sometimes thought of as escorting souls to the next life.

Dogs have been domesticated for thousands of years and many of their traits can be found in black dog legends. Dogs can be companionable; they can work at useful tasks, protect humans and guard property; but – encountered under the wrong circumstances – they can be vicious and dangerous. The wolf has not been completely bred out of the species. All this probably helps account for the ambiguity and unpredictability of black dogs in folklore. How many of us would shudder, even today, if – walking alone on a remote, twilight path – we were to see a large, unaccompanied dog padding towards us or silhouetted, staring in our direction, down the road?

(This article’s main image is courtesy of the London Fortean Society.)

The post Britain’s Black Dog Legends – 7 Spooky Canines & Hellhounds appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

You’d not be the only person to consider them spooky. Known as ‘Devil’s chairs’, ‘haunted chairs’ or ‘witches’ chairs’, these pieces of graveyard furniture have generated the weirdest and most alarming legends. Those unwise enough to sit in them are variously said to hear spirits; to see the Devil; to invite misfortune, tragedy or mental illness; or to gain their desires, though often at the expense of exchanging their souls. Some Devil’s chairs, apparently, even enable you to travel back through time.

But what, we might ask, are these chairs even doing in cemeteries? Why would they have been put there if they could be used for such abominable purposes?

The chairs – mostly from the 19th century – were originally not thought of as spooky at all. Called ‘mourning chairs’, they were installed so people would have somewhere to sit when visiting loved ones’ graves. Some are found in touching locations, such as by the graves of children – obviously set up so parents could spend time there. A few ‘mourning chairs’ weren’t even intended to be used as benches or seats, but are rather tombstones sculpted to resemble such structures.

As time went by, however, mourning chairs fell out of fashion, with people tending to linger less at gravesides and unremarkable park-style benches being provided for anyone needing to rest. New generations didn’t know what the strange stone chairs were for and – thanks to changing architectural trends – their gothic designs began to seem sinister. Stories sprang up – especially among youngsters – about the chairs being portals to contact the Devil, witches or spooks. Groups of young people started visiting the chairs at night, especially at Halloween. The braver dared each other to sit on the accursed artefacts, despite all the chilling consequences promised for those doing so.

In the United States, an elaborate folklore has grown up about Devil’s chairs, a folklore that has twined all kinds of superstitions and macabre tales around these once innocent objects. Though certain common patterns of myth can be discerned, each ‘Devil’s chair’ has its own legends. I’ve therefore chosen seven of the most infamous to investigate. We’ll then explore where the bizarre beliefs and practices around Devil’s chairs might have emerged from.

Number One: Devil’s Chair, Lake Helen-Cassadaga Cemetery, Cassadaga, Florida

What might well be America’s most famous Devil’s chair, in Cassadaga-Lake Helen Cemetery, Florida. (Photo: Orlando Adventuring)

Unlike the intricately carved specimens found in some cemeteries, this Devil’s chair at first seems disappointingly plain. It’s a redbrick bench built into a redbrick wall that surrounds two gravestones. The tombstones’ inscriptions face the chair, each commemorating a woman named Thatcher. The only thing that really seems disturbing about the site are the pentagrams and words like ‘Lucifer’ scratched into the wall and bench.

This Devil’s chair is probably, however, America’s most famous. Every Halloween and on any Friday the 13th, large numbers of young people descend on the cemetery and try to sit in the chair, to the great annoyance of nearby residents. Residents and police guard the graveyard on these nights, turning back or arresting young adventurers. Youngsters have been accused of vandalising gravestones, throwing paint at houses and bothering locals by asking if they can direct them to Casper. The police have detained hundreds over the years.

Several legends are attached to the chair. One claims that if you leave a can of beer on the bench and come back the next morning, you’ll find the beer has been drunk – according to some, without the can having been opened. Another piece of folklore states that if you sit in the chair at midnight, you’ll meet the Devil himself, who’ll be quite happy to chat with you. Some claim the Evil One built the chair and that the things he’ll whisper to you in the witching hour will haunt you forever. Others maintain that if you lower yourself onto the seat, the Fiend will appear to you at midnight some time in the next few days, wherever you might be.

What no doubt adds to the attraction of this Devil’s chair is the fact that Cassadaga, the small town about two miles down the road, has been home to a community of spiritualists since around 1875. Sometimes called the ‘Psychic Capital of the World’, the town boasts a spiritualist church, mediums who’ll do readings for you and new-age shops. It seems the community has vacillated over recent decades between using the influx into the town around Halloween to boost the local economy and resenting the invasion of often rowdy tourists with ghoulishly stereotypical ideas about the place. But attempting to make it to the Devil’s chair by midnight is considered a no-no by virtually everyone.

The story locals tell about the ‘Devil’s chair’ is more poignant than legends of beer-guzzling demons, but no less spooky. In 1926, a 90-year-old man lost his wife and daughter in a house fire. The man, who had no other relatives, had the bench built next to their graves so he could spend as much time as possible near their burial places. He’d visit every day, sitting for hours on his chair. (He’d had the names carved facing the seat so he could gaze at them.) After some time, locals began to view him as eccentric. Though some mocked him, most were tolerant of the grief-stricken aged man.

About 11.00 pm one Halloween night, two youths – perhaps forerunners of the many who’d later descend on the graveyard – were sneaking around the cemetery. They spotted the old man crying on his bench and – concerned about him being there so late – went to tell the police. The police officers looked at them in shock and confusion.

‘What are you talking about?’ one said. ‘That old man passed away a few days ago.’

Number Two: Devil’s Chair (Baird Chair), Highland Park Cemetery, Kirksville, Missouri

This ornate, lovingly sculpted and moss-speckled chair – with the word ‘Baird’ chiselled into it – is associated with a terrifying legend.

The Baird Chair, a famous Devil’s chair in Kirksville, Missouri. (Photo: David Oaks)

Local folklore contains dire warnings for those foolish enough to sit on the chair at midnight or on certain nights like Halloween. The first time you sit on the chair, you’ll suffer a string of bad luck. If you’re crazy enough to go back and sit on it again, a curse will be placed upon you. But the scariest fate awaits those deranged enough to park themselves on the Devil’s chair a third time. If you do so, an undead hand will emerge from the adjacent grave, seize you and – ignoring your screams – drag you down to hell. Other legends, however, say those who sit in the Baird Chair will be rewarded for their courage.

The seat isn’t actually a traditional mourning chair, but rather serves as a tombstone. John C. Baird was a stone mason and businessman, dealing in marble funerary monuments along with his partner, a Mr Grassle. It seems that Grassle, on a trip to Italy, saw a carved chair among some ancient ruins. Admiring its workmanship, Grassle sketched it and sculpted his own version when he got home. Grassle couldn’t, however, help adding some typical Victorian features – such as the ‘memento mori’ symbol of a discarded piece of fabric draped over the seat’s back, representing us slipping out of our ‘fleshy garments’ when we die.

Grassle and Baird showed off the chair at their marble workshop to draw in customers. In 1891, the Kirksville Weekly Graphic enthused over the ‘mosaic chair that attracts general attention. It is the latest product of Mr Grassle’s chisel.’

It seems Baird and his wife decided the impressive piece of sculpture should be used for their own monument. Mr  Baird, however, couldn’t have been buried before 1914 as in that year he’s listed as one of the elders of the local Presbyterian church.

Number Three: Witch’s Chair, Brookside Cemetery, Tecumseh, Michigan

Would you sit in the witch’s chair in Brookside Cemetery? (Photo: Dawn Dubois)

Brookside Cemetery is a somewhat spooky and atmospheric graveyard – dating back to 1853, it contains many old settlers’ tombs. If you were to walk towards the back of the burial ground, you’d find the Stacy family plot, which includes an ornate granite mourning chair.

The Stacys were prosperous – Mr Stacy was a judge and he and his wife Mary had five children. After the judge died, Mary visited his grave every day for 17 years, sitting for hours on the granite seat.

The chair’s connection with witches comes about because one of the Stacey children, Loanna, never married and came to be considered the ‘town spinster’. Old widows and spinsters – often being both needy and vulnerable – tended to be resented in their communities. Scapegoated for things that went wrong, they were sometimes accused of causing these misfortunes through witchcraft.

In Tecumesh, a number of occurrences led to Loanna being labelled a witch. The fact she long outlived her parents and siblings generated suspicion. A spate of locals getting sick and their farm animals mysteriously dying also saw fingers jabbed toward Loanna.

A ghost – some say Loanna’s, some say Mary’s – has been spotted on the granite seat. People have also seen Loanna floating through the corridors and halls of the family mansion, which still stands in the town. But what does local folklore claim will happen if you’re rash enough to sit on the ‘witch’s chair’? The answer is simple – shortly afterwards, you’ll die.

The Stacy mansion – said to be haunted by the ‘witch’ Loanna’s ghost. (Photo: Aurora Momcilovich)

Number Four: Witch’s Chair, Southside Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois

Southside Cemetery – a creepy burial ground of moss-covered tombstones, elaborate grave markers and subsiding mausoleums – is a place of much legend and folklore. Its proximity to the Vermilion River has seen the graveyard flooded and coffins borne off downstream. The cemetery also hosts a ‘goblin tree’ – during the day the tree simply appears old and knotted, but at night reveals the outline of a hideous evil face.

It’s not surprising that such a location boasts a witch’s chair. The chair is said to mark the grave of a witch hung for murdering her own child. Some say that if you stand on the grave at midnight, you can hear the crying of the witch’s baby. Another legend states that if a young person sits in the chair and reads the epitaph carved upon it aloud, they’ll die before their 18th birthday. This pleases the child killer resting under the soil.

Apparently, on Halloween night in 1975, a youngster visited the cemetery with a friend. He sat in the chair and started reading out the epitaph, but – before he could finish – the back of the chair broke off and tumbled to the ground. The terrified youths sprinted from the graveyard. They were, however, curious enough to go back the next day. The chair was whole again, with no signs of any ruptures. According to another piece of folklore, if you sit in the chair and rub the arms, you’ll hear the witch scream.

A bit of sober investigation soon dispels these myths. There are no records of anyone being hung for child murder or a witch in Pontiac around the time the grave’s occupant died. And it would actually be impossible to read out the tomb’s inscription as most of the words carved on the concrete chair have worn away, with much of the damage probably caused by overexcited teenagers. The words ‘Perry’ and ’49 years’ are visible, along with – possibly – the word ‘missed’. If the ’49’ refers to an age, the woman would have been a little old to be the mother of a new born. But such facts haven’t stopped generations of youngsters daring each other to sit in the ‘witch’s chair’ and spreading outlandish tales about it.

Number Five: Devil’s Chair, Greenwood Cemetery, Decatur, Illinois

Greenwood Cemetery in Decatur, Illinois – allegedly one of the most haunted graveyards in America. (Photo: a grave interest)

Greenwood Cemetery is said to be one of the United States’ most haunted. Originally a Native American burial ground, the graveyard was used by settlers in the early 1800s and would later see masses of Civil War dead interred. Though once an attractively wooded, garden-style cemetery, the bankruptcy of the company that ran it led to the graveyard becoming overgrown and neglected in the 1920s. Gangs roved it after dark and cults carried out bizarre rituals there. Maybe this long and sometimes sinister history has fuelled the graveyard’s reputation as a centre of ghostly occurrences.

People have spotted spook lights and witnessed phantom funerals. A young woman who was engaged to a bootlegger but died before she could marry him was buried in her wedding dress and is said to haunt the cemetery in her bridal attire. Voices, crying and screams have been heard from a mass grave used for the burial of unclaimed bodies from a demolished mausoleum. Another mass grave – of Confederate soldiers, some of whom were rumoured to be not quite dead when they were interred – was disturbed when a nearby river flooded. Soon afterwards, reports began of ghostly lights, glimpses of phantoms in Confederate uniform, and moans and wails coming from the mound where the bodies salvaged from the river were reburied.

Greenwood Cemetery also, as you might expect, contains a Devil’s chair. This mourning chair is of a naturalistic design, with its stone carved to resemble a tree trunk and branches. The name ‘Houston’ is etched into the seat. The chair would have simply been used for family members to sit on when visiting the next door grave, but the object’s straightforward purpose hasn’t stopped the most incredible legends growing up.

The Devil’s chair in Greenwood Cemetery, Decatur, Illinois. (Photo: a grave interest)

Stories claim those who sit on the chair will die within one year or bring bad luck upon themselves. On the contrary, other tales state that those brave enough to place their backsides on the seat will be rewarded with good luck or riches. Another legend asserts that if you sit on the chair at certain times – midnight or Halloween, presumably – the Devil will appear and grant you anything you desire. But you can only enjoy his munificence for seven years. At the end of this period, the Evil One will return and demand your soul as payment.

The engraved seat of the Devil’s chair in Greenwood Cemetery. (Photo: a grave interest)

Number Six: Devil’s Chair, Union Cemetery, Guthrie Center, Iowa

Local legend says that if you have psychic abilities and sit in this chair, you’ll hear the dead talk. Other folklore, however, states that sitting in the seat will result in bad luck. More disturbingly, several stories link the chair with the Devil. He’s said to appear in it every Friday the 13th and – more puzzlingly – every Friday the 17th, at precisely 3.00 a.m. on both dates. Some claim that if you position yourself upon the seat, the Fiend will grant you magical or psychic powers, but only if he likes you and feels he has a great use for you. If you experience strange smells in the vicinity of the chair, it’s a sign the Evil One’s close by.

The ‘Devil’s chair’ is located between two graves though its uncertain which it belongs to. It’s similar in design to the Baird Chair, but is cast from cement rather than carved from stone. Though the Union Cemetery opened in 1885, it seems all the wild stories connected with the dastardly chair only go back about 35 years.

The Devil’s chair in Guthrie Centre, Iowa. (Photo: Blackhawk Paranormal Investigations)

Number Seven: Devil’s Chair, Congress Park, Saratoga Springs, New York

Saratoga Springs – a resort town in New York State – has quite a collection of ghosts. Civil War phantoms have been spotted on the site of the Battle of Saratoga, a few miles from the town. But many of Saratoga’s spooks have more to do with pleasure than conflict. Saratoga – thanks to the fame of its medicinal springs – became a popular tourist destination in the late 1700s. Visitors also flocked to Saratoga for less wholesome reasons as the area gained a reputation for casinos and horseracing.

One of the town’s most glamourous venues was the Canfield Casino, built by a boxer called John Morrissey in the late 1800s. Now a museum, the Casino, however, seems reluctant to let go of its hedonistic past. Spectres of the guests who drank and gambled there have been seen as has the ghost of John Morrissey. Visitors have smelt mysterious wafts of cigar smoke. A woman in Victorian attire is said to wander the building – in 2007 she walked up to a group of tourists and asked them a question. An upsurge in hauntings apparently occurred between 2007 and 2010, a phenomenon some blamed on an exhibition at the museum featuring the clothes of prominent Victorian ladies. An unseen entity slapped a glass out of a guest’s hand while another sent the lid of a rubbish bin sailing through the air. The lid landed between a museum volunteer and employee.

Perhaps a strong connection with the past accounts for the legends centred on Saratoga Springs’ Devil’s chair. This Devil’s chair is unusual as it isn’t in a cemetery. It can be found on the corner of the city’s Congress Park. The chair was intended to be the corner stone of a Presbyterian church, but the Presbyterians found out about plans to build a casino right next to their new house of worship. Believing gambling to be the Devil’s work, they fled, but left behind some stones, one of which was chair-shaped.

The Devil’s chair in Saratoga Springs can supposedly transport you back in time.

It’s said that if you sit on the chair, you’ll be transported back to the early 1900s. Perhaps this means you can join in the good times Saratoga enjoyed before an anti-gambling law of 1907 brought them to an end. Maybe the Devil’s chair would also enable you to teleport back to the present, leaving any gambling debts in the past. Some claim, however, that the chair will only transport you if you’re a teenage girl and sit on it after midnight.

Honourable Mentions and More Devil’s Chair Folklore

The examples above are just some of the Devil’s chairs found across the United States. While some cemeteries have removed so-called ‘Devil’s chairs’ due to them being magnets for vandalism and anti-social behaviour, quite a few of the chairs that remain are surrounded by interesting folklore.

Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse, New York, contains a child-sized Devil’s chair and legends have grown up around the Duncan Monument in Fletcher Cemetery, Ohio. The spooky-sounding Empty Chair in Hope Cemetery, Barre, Vermont – an armchair-like structure with the name ‘Bettini’ carved into it – has, unsurprisingly, generated local myths.

The spookily named ‘Empty Chair’ in Hope Cemetery, Barre, Vermont. (Photo: Stacy Artis)

A number of Devil’s chairs are said to exist in the cemeteries of New Orleans, including a wrought-iron Devil’s Throne. Apparently, the legendary voodoo master Dr John sat in this chair, thereby learning many rituals and the secrets of zombification. Texas is home to some particularly horrifying Devil’s chairs. If you sit on a certain cemetery seat in Galveston, you’ll have visions of all your family members suffering terrible deaths. If a couple sit on a Devil’s chair in Marshall and one asks the other to marry them, the pair will be married, but only for one day after which they’ll die.

Another chair in Marshall is known as the Devil’s Hot Seat. Anyone who sits in it is thereafter unable to tell a lie so all their dirty secrets are spread throughout the state. This chair is greatly feared by criminals, politicians and lawyers. Maybe the most terrifying Devil’s chair in Texas is in Jefferson. Anybody sitting in it will immediately lose control of their bowels. More seriously, they are then said to be cursed to lose a limb or suffer a lifetime of disability. Somewhere in Houston there’s rumoured to be a Devil’s footstool. If you lower yourself onto this child-sized bench, you’ll gain immense popularity but at the cost of giving Satan your soul.

A Devil’s chair in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is reputed to have had tragic consequences for those who constructed it. The man who made the chair lost both his hands so his son finished it off, losing three fingers in the process. One of the men who delivered it to the cemetery lost an arm while another delivery worker who sat in the chair to check its strength died on the spot. If a visitor to the graveyard touches the chair, they’ll lose the finger they prodded the seat with.

In Ocean City, New Jersey, local folklore says a Devil’s chair was once stolen from a cemetery. The thief was detected when they were found sitting in the chair dead in the middle of the street. A Devil’s chair in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, however, seems more benign than most of its counterparts. If a woman struggling to get pregnant sits in the seat, she’ll be expecting within a year.

The Duncan Chair in Fletcher Cemetery, Ohio – legend says that if you sit in it, you’ll die before the year is up. (Photo: Julie Ette) 

A complex knot of folklore seems to have grown up around Devil’s chairs in general, a folklore whispered through high schools and colleges and bandied about on social media. You should never, apparently, let a single drop of blood fall on such a chair as this will allow the Devil to drag you straight down to hell. For this reason, women should never sit on a Devil’s chair during their periods. The Devil will also claim your soul if you are presumptuous enough to ask him to appear rather than waiting for him to manifest at his pleasure. And you must never sit in such chairs and mock the Evil One – if you do, you’ll drop into a deep depression and be dead in seven days.

Devil’s chairs are notorious for bringing on mental illness. A psychic who sat in the Baird Chair is said to have lost her ability to speak and is now in a psychiatric hospital, having never come out of the trance she fell into. You should never have your photo taken when sitting in a Devil’s chair as it will be the last photograph of you ever made. Pregnant women especially should avoid sitting on these seats – as the child they’re carrying will be cursed. Rumour has it that the mother of a serial killer unwisely perched on such a chair. And, most importantly of all, you should never have sex on a Devil’s chair – any child you conceive may grow up to be the Anti-Christ!

Just to make things more confusing, though, some myths state that any curses associated with a Devil’s chair will not apply to the person who sits in the seat, but rather the one who dared them to do it.

So it appears an incredible tangle of folklore has enmeshed itself around items that were once simply intended to be grave markers or functional cemetery furniture. What’s more astonishing is that this folklore is quite new – in many cases just a few decades old. But what might have inspired such legends and what could have prompted them to spread so quickly in the modern United States? We’ll go searching for answers in the next sections.

Haunted or Cursed Chairs Are Common in Folklore

Though the folklore around Devil’s chairs in American cemeteries is far from ancient, older legends can be found that predict tragic or at least magical consequences for those sitting in ‘cursed’ or ‘haunted’ seats.

The Busby Stoop Inn, Yorkshire, England, was once home to an infamous chair. According to local folklore, anyone who sat in it soon died. The chair is said to have been the favourite seat of the pub’s landlord, a notorious criminal who was hung in 1702 for battering his father-in-law to death. Before going to face the rope, the landlord was allowed one last drink in his pub and he, of course, enjoyed it in his beloved chair. When he got up, he cursed the seat and there are numerous tales of people foolish enough to have sat in the chair who met their ends soon after.

A cursed chair that was once housed in the Busby Stoop Inn, Yorkshire – sitting on it meant death. (Photo: TheHauntedPalace)

In England, there are even natural features of the landscape known as Devil’s chairs. In Shropshire, a rocky outcrop – the Devil’s Chair – is the subject of local legends. Some say the protrusion was built by the Fiend himself or that he was carrying a load of rocks in his apron and lay down for a rest. When he got up, his apron strings snapped and the rocks tumbled out, forming the Devil’s Chair and the smaller outcrops surrounding it. Apparently, you can still smell brimstone coming off the rocks on hot days. On Midsummer’s Night, Satan is said to seat himself on the Devil’s Chair and summon his local supporters – witches and wicked spirits – who then select their king for the next year. In Ulverston, Cumbria, there’s a feature known as the Devil’s Armchair – a chair-like rock formation big enough for four adults to sit in. Whether it’s natural or manmade is not known.

There are various legends of haunted household chairs, which will inflict consequences on those brash enough to sit on them. People sitting in such chairs might feel an intense chill or suffer nausea or hot sweats. The chair might start vibrating or even throw them out. Others receive tragic news on the day they sit on the seat. Some chairs won’t let a person sit in them unless their death is approaching. Certain chairs supposedly scoot around floors with supernatural energy.

A 200-year-old ‘chair of death’ – kept in the Baleroy Mansion, Philadelphia – is alleged to have killed four people who sat in it and will kill anyone else reckless enough to do the same. The chair – said to have once been owned by Napoleon – is apparently haunted by a young woman called Amanda, who appears in a red haze. The chair is thought to have been constructed by an evil warlock in the 18th or 19th century. The Baleroy Mansion is viewed as one of the most haunted houses in the US, with manifestations of ghosts, angels, demons and jinn being reported.

The Devil’s Chair, part of the Stiperstones, Shropshire – does the Fiend seat himself upon it at Midsummer? (Photo: Jeremy Bolwell)

On the island of Torcello, near Venice, is a stone seat known as the Throne of Atilla. Probably a magistrate’s or bishop’s chair, this seat is actually thought to have been made around 100 years after the death of the famous king of the Huns. A legend says that if a young woman sits in the seat, she’ll marry within a year; another piece of folklore asserts that all who sit in it will return one day to Torcello.

These examples show that folklore about magical or sinister chairs is widespread and that much of it predates the Devil’s chair legends of America’s cemeteries. The stories above all link certain chairs with the Devil or ghosts and/or claim there are consequences for people who sit on them. In this way, these tales are similar to the legends that have arisen in connection with chairs in US graveyards. Could it be that older myths have been resurrected or reapplied to express the concerns, fears and desires of modern American youngsters? Might these older folktales and archetypes have transferred their focus to previously innocuous cemetery benches and grave markers?

But we still might ask why such a process should have occurred. Why would American youths bother to build up such elaborate legends about their local graveyards and why – considering what these legends say – would they even want to sit on Devil’s chairs? Most of the folklore promises dire results for those who park themselves on these benches and – even when good things are guaranteed – this is often at the price of trading in one’s soul. The answer might lie in a phenomenon that’s been labelled legend tripping.

Devil’s Chairs and Legend Tripping

Legend tripping is an activity in which groups of young people visit spooky or threatening places – such as caves, tunnels, graveyards and old houses – associated with tragedies or the supernatural. Engaging in legend tripping is a way for youngsters to demonstrate their daring and courage as well as their independence from parents, teachers, preachers and other authority figures.

Legend tripping is often linked to a phenomenon called ostentation, in which people act out pieces of legend and folklore or the contents of books or films. Ostentation is a kind of game in which the borders between reality and fantasy become fuzzy. Going to a creepy cemetery at night and ‘role playing’ local legends by sitting on ‘cursed chairs’ is a copybook example of both ostentation and legend tripping.

Bill Ellis, an American academic specialising in the occult who has studied legend tripping, sees it as having positive features, such as encouraging creativity and providing a fairly safe outlet for rebellious feelings. Ellis argues legend trips are ‘ways of expressing independence from adult norms and the kind of social mores that govern people in school, society or church. It’s an opportunity to go visit the Devil’s half-acre, which I think people have to do to prove they’re not social robot adults.’

Ellis states, ‘The irony is (legend trips) are so commonplace. But when they come to the attention of some crusader, who starts talking to the police, they begin to think it’s Satanists teaching this stuff to kids. So these things go from trivial to “a menace that threatens our country”.’

Examples of legend tripping can be found in many parts of the world – and the results have occasionally been dramatic. In the 1950s, hundreds of children invaded a Victorian cemetery in Glasgow determined to hunt down a vampire. This incident led to media panic, debates in Parliament and even a law being passed to limit the availability of American horror comics. In 1970s London, rival groups of young people suspected a vampire was lurking in Highgate Cemetery. The case got into the press and a TV programme was made, resulting in a mass invasion of the graveyard one Friday the 13th.

Rather than vampires, American youngsters seem to have fixated on long-disused mourning chairs and have woven a hysterical though impressive mythology around them. I also can’t help thinking that the rise of the horror film genre in the 1970s and 80s added to this trend. It’s interesting that the same period witnessed the rapid growth of Christian fundamentalism, which must have made all the associations of mourning chairs with the Devil even more thrilling.

But can legends of Devil’s chairs be completely dismissed with these rational arguments? I wonder how many of us would feel rational looking at the gothic contours of an empty beckoning seat in a midnight cemetery while remembering all the terrifying lore we’ve heard.

As a young researcher, Bill Ellis sat on the Stone Couch, an allegedly cursed roadside bench near the town of Weatherly, Pennsylvania. Some say a hex was put on it by a Native American woman whose baby died there. The first time you sit on the couch, you’ll hear an infant crying.  The second time, you’ll receive a ominous warning, like being involved in a non-fatal car wreck. After the third time, you’ll die.

Ellis sat on it twice – and after the second time lost much of his hearing. He didn’t sit on the bench again. He saw no reason to take the risk.

(This article’s main image shows an ornate bench in Lake View Cemetery, Seattle, Washington. Photo: Joe Mabel)

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The Devil asked Tartini to give him a music lesson, which the maestro did, demonstrating to the Evil One the magnificent skill he’d built up through years of learning, practice and performance. Tartini then passed the Devil his violin to see if the Fiend could reproduce any of what he’d been taught.

The Devil confidently took up the instrument and Tartini was astounded when he began to play with incredible virtuosity, delivering a performance which was powerful and intense, but exquisitely tasteful and executed with the most breath-taking precision. The Devil’s playing easily surpassed even Tartini’s brilliance. Tartini stared at the Fiend, his mouth dropped open, time seemed to halt as the most amazing music poured from the violin.

The story is recounted in Giuseppe Tartini’s own words in Jerome Lalande’s book Voyage d’un François en Italie (1769):

‘One night I dreamed I had made a pact with the Devil for my soul. Everything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play.

How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy. I felt enraptured, transported: my breath failed me and I awoke.’

But how did this nocturnal vision affect Giuseppe Tartini? Was his experience of soul selling merely a bizarre dream or did it spill over into his waking life, adding a sulphurous tinge to his music? And is there any evidence Tartini genuinely entered into a diabolical pact, bartering his soul for success, fame and musical mastery?

Giuseppe Tartini Tries to Recreate the Devil’s Fiendishly Good Composition

The moment he woke up, Tartini reached for the violin lying by his bed, eager to recreate the Devil’s tune. Tartini was probably in that state in which the worlds of wakefulness and dream mingle, in which sleep’s fantastical logic floats above the solid and prosaic. With the Devil’s notes echoing faintly in his head, Tartini’s drowsy fingers fumbled on the strings as he strove to delve back into his dream.

However, as Tartini put it, his attempts were ‘in vain! The music which I at this time composed is indeed the best I ever wrote … but the difference between it and that which so moved me is so great that I would have destroyed my instrument and said farewell to music forever if it had been possible for me to live without the enjoyment it affords me.’

Out of his efforts to remember the diabolically brilliant tune, Tartini did produce an impressive – and technically demanding – piece of music: his Violin Sonata in G Minor, otherwise known as the Devil’s Trill Sonata. But while – from the hundreds of compositions he wrote in his lifetime – this piece would remain Tartini’s favourite, he felt it was ‘so inferior to what I heard that, if I could have subsisted by other means, I would have broken my violin and abandoned music forever.’

Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata was apparently just a pale reflection of the music Satan played in the violinist’s dream.

The Devil’s Trill Sonata (Violin Sonata in G Minor)

Lasting around 16-and-a-half minutes, the Devil’s Trill Sonata contains three movements and boasts haunting and expressive melodies.

The sonata is below so – if you dare – you can have a listen. As someone relatively unschooled in classical music – and knowing next to nothing about the violin – I’m going to try to describe how this piece strikes me on a simply emotional level.

The Devil’s Trill Sonata starts off gently, with sombre tones evoking a beautiful desolation. Sweeping chords – mournful yet bewitching – resonate soulfully. There’s something heart-breaking here, a sweetly bitter nostalgia. But now there’s fast high-spirited playing, like notes are springing, jumping, twisting in the air. We hear a certain hope, a lightness, the joy of expectation as notes skip and dance around one another. Yet darker shades creep in, perhaps there’s some foreboding or fear of failure amongst the longing and glee.

As the Devil’s Trill Sonata goes on, emotions conflict. Dark tones intrude upon wistful memories; sinister surges overwhelm sweet recollections. The despondency’s getting deeper, as if there’s – sometimes – an acceptance of some dolorous fate, as if the violin’s sobbing. But an echo of thunder now grows. Something’s gathering energy, mounting chaotically to a discordant peak before taking a plunge into melancholy. It’s heart-rending, as if you know something wonderful has been lost and can never be recovered.

The violin continues with its dirge then things briefly liven up – is some hope rising? – before the sonata dips back into gloom. The violin laments darkly before cheerier notes once more leap – perhaps joyful memories are again being revived. These memories – these hopes – quiver before tumbling into a pit of anguished emotions: emotions that jar, that strive against one another. These quarrelling impulses grow quieter – as if they’re dropping deeper into darkness – before they struggle up to be heard more loudly again. Finally, the Devil’s Trill Sonata reaches a state of resignation, a resolution from which dolefulness overflows.

I can’t help feeling this sonata tells the story of the Devil himself. Satan was the highest, the most luminous, the most glorious angel in Heaven and was also – intriguingly – the angel in charge of music. But, according to the Bible and Christian folklore, Satan became swollen up with pride. He mustered an army of a third of Heaven’s angels and rebelled against God’s rule. God dealt swiftly the upstart and his minions, driving them out of Heaven with the help of his loyal angels, with the Archangel Michael brandishing a sword and chasing the Devil and his followers down to Hell. Banished forever to this infernal prison, cut off from all hope, severed from God’s love, the rebels face a bleak and tormented eternity.

Satan falls after he is cast from Heaven, depicted by Paul Gustave Dore.

Maybe the melancholy at the start of the Devil’s Trill Sonata shows Satan lamenting his fallen state while the happier notes recall the joys of his magnificent old home in Paradise. Perhaps the leaping, athletic notes then take us back to the giddy hopes of Satan’s planned rebellion. Such notes, however, mingle with sombre tones, which could betray the dread of the revolt not working out. Then we have the thunderous fall – representing the driving of Satan and his supporters from Heaven – followed by more lamentations for what’s been lost, lamentations spiked with upsurges of misplaced hope. We experience the Devil’s inner strife – a struggling of anger, arrogance, self-pity and regret – before a tortured acceptance, brimming with sadness, ends the piece.

That’s my take on it, anyway. I apologise for any errors caused by my musical ignorance.

The Devil, to his horror, wakes up in Hell in an illustration by Paul Gustave Dore for John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

The ‘Suspiciously Successful’ Career of Giuseppe Tartini

As well as penning the Devil’s Trill Sonata – by any judgement an incredible piece of music – Tartini had a very successful life and career.

Giuseppe Tartini was born in 1692, in the town of Pirano, in the Republic of Venice. After moving around between several Italian cities, he withdrew for a number of years of solitary study devoted to the violin, emerging with new thoughts on strings, the bow and bowing techniques, ideas which would have an enormous influence on generations of violinists.

Tartini’s playing emphasised both technical mastery and poetic, emotional nuances. It was claimed Tartini produced a magical impression on his audiences, helping his fame spread across Europe.

At just 29, Tartini was appointed director of the orchestra at the Basilica of St Anthony in Padua, a position he retained for the rest of his working life. He played for emperors and nobles, composed for the Pope, and set up a violin school which drew students from many countries.

Proclaimed by the Italians as ‘the finest musician in the world’, he was referred to by the French as ‘the lawgiver of the bow’, and it was said ‘he doesn’t play, he sings on the violin’. In addition to his musical achievements, Tartini seems to have burned with a Faustian desire for knowledge – he owned an impressive library containing books on many subjects, and was intensely curious about philosophy, religion, harmonics, acoustics and mathematics. Giuseppe Tartini died in 1770.

Giuseppe Tartini, depicted with his violin and books

So, Giuseppe Tartini enjoyed a life enchanted by a dazzling talent. His was a life animated by an almost demonic thirst for learning, a life garlanded by praise and crowned with the most astonishing success. A superstitious person – hearing about Tartini’s dream – might be tempted to think the Devil did appear to him that night and that Tartini really did agree to exchange his soul for such gifts.

Tartini is far from the only musician suspected of making a diabolical transaction of this type. To examine whether Tartini’s triumphs might have been granted by the creature that manifested in his bedroom, let’s compare his story with the legends of some other musical soul sellers.

How Might Giuseppe Tartini Fit into the History of Devil-inspired Musicians and Soul Sellers?

Other characters in musical history have been linked with soul-swapping legends. One individual alleged to have struck a demonic deal was the virtuoso violinist Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840). Reports of Paganini – a gaunt pallid figure who often dressed in black – speak of his flaming eyes and of devils appearing onstage at his concerts. It was claimed he could play on broken strings or play 12 notes a second. During one performance, apparently, the Devil made lightning strike Paganini’s bow. Following Paganini’s death, it took the Church 36 years to allow him burial in consecrated ground.

The violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini was rumoured – like Tartini – to have sold the Devil his soul.

Another famous soul seller was the American bluesman Robert Johnson (1911-38), who – according to legend – walked to a Mississippi crossroads with his guitar on his back to meet the Devil at midnight. Standing in the darkness, Johnson played a tune. A finger tapped his shoulder and he handed his guitar to the Evil One, who also gave a brief – and no doubt brilliant – performance. The Devil handed the instrument back and the pact for Johnson’s soul was sealed. Modern musicians – like Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page – have also been accused of participating in diabolical bargains.

Maybe people suspect incredible talent or virtuosity must have superhuman origins. Perhaps this is especially so in music, given the Devil’s longstanding connection with this area of the arts. Such tales may also reflect a longing on the part of creative people themselves to overcome the sheer hard work, the frustrations, the wrong turns, the inevitable imperfections that bedevil (pun intended) the creative process, to overcome them and produce that elusive work of shimmering excellence.

Another supposed soul seller was the brilliant bluesman Robert Johnson.

But Tartini’s story doesn’t fit neatly into this narrative. With the musicians mentioned above, rumours of their devilish pacts were circulating while they were at the summit of their careers. There’s evidence Robert Johnson even encouraged the gossip about his demonic deal to boost his emerging fame. As we’ll see below, it was different with Tartini.

It Took Tartini Years to Confess to His Diabolical Dream

Tartini – a reserved and serious-minded person – kept his encounter with the Devil secret for a long time. He didn’t tell anyone about his dream until he gave an interview to the French astronomer Jerome Lalande a few years before he passed away. Lalande included it in his book Voyage d’un François en Italie, published in 1769. Also, the sheet music for the Devil’s Trill Sonata wasn’t published during Tartini’s lifetime. It only appeared in 1798, almost three decades after his death. It’s said to have been discovered in Rome by the French violinist Pierre Baillot, who brought it to Paris in 1791.

So Tartini didn’t reveal the story of his dream until shortly before he died and didn’t seem to want to publicise the Devil’s Trill Sonata. This is despite believing it was the best piece he’d ever composed. Tartini wrote at least 200 sonatas and concertos, many of which he had no hesitation about putting into print.

Tartini may have wished to keep his strange experience secret from his employers at St Anthony’s, churchmen who would have disapproved of him interacting with the Devil, even in a dream. He may also have feared ridicule, religious scandal and the resulting loss of reputation or livelihood. But, perhaps, recognising his life was approaching its end and having retired from St Anthony’s, he didn’t want the story to be lost.

It’s interesting that Tartini chose an astronomer to confide in about the Devil’s Trill Sonata. He’d been corresponding with scientists from a number of fields for several years and he might have preferred to narrate his incredible tale to a level-headed man of science rather than an overly romantic artist or dogmatic priest. There was also the advantage that – since Lalande was French – the book would be published in a foreign country and language, delaying the impact of any controversy.

Did Giuseppe Tartini Really Sell the Devil His Soul in Exchange for Musical Brilliance?

It’s unlikely that Tartini believed he’d sold his soul. By his own admission, his Devil’s Trill Sonata was just a pallid copy of the jaw-dropping music Satan had played. This suggests that – even if one were to believe in such possibilities – the soul-trading ceremony just took place in Tartini’s dream and wasn’t enacted in the waking world. There’s no indication of Faustian contracts signed in blood and – while Tartini considered breaking his violin in frustration – there’s no evidence he thought of summoning Satan back to trade in his soul.

In addition, although Lalande claimed Tartini composed the Devil’s Trill Sonata in 1713, musical historians feel that – due to its stylistic innovations – it couldn’t have been written before about 1745, years after Tartini began to enjoy success. This would remove any need for Giuseppe Tartini to make a career-boosting pact with Satan. (Unless, of course, we assume the Devil enabled Tartini to make a musical leap many years ahead of his time.)

There is, nevertheless, something uncanny about the piece that emerged from Tartini’s dream – the wrenching depths of emotion that it enables a wooden box and four strings to convey, the way it transports you somewhere a little different, the unsettled feeling you have after hearing it. There’s something unusual, perhaps creepy there, as Tartini himself recognised.

Interestingly, a curious annotation appeared in the earliest printing of the Devil’s Trill Sonata. At the place in the third movement where the Devil’s Trill itself begins, there’s a note that states: ‘The Devil at the foot of the bed’.

The Devil’s Trill Sonata with the note ‘the Devil at the foot of the bed’. Did Tartini write this comment?

This note evokes images of Satan appearing to a nightcapped Tartini, perhaps in a cloud of sulphur-tainted smoke. While it’s not certain that Tartini wrote this comment, we know Tartini did annotate his manuscripts. He tended to do so in code, scribbling bits of secular poetry in their margins. The fact he wrote in code shows both his concern for privacy and perhaps a worry that his ecclesiastical employers might disapprove of some of his sentiments. The statement about the Devil, however, is not encoded. Could Tartini – if it was indeed him who wrote it – have never intended this chilling note to be glimpsed by anyone else? Could it be an acknowledgement – at least – of how much he was both shaken and inspired by his dream?

Whatever the truth might be, the Devil’s Trill Sonata has been influential in the history of music. The piece formed the basis for Chopin’s Prelude No. 27 and had a decidedly diabolical influence on Cesare Pugni’s 1849 ballet Le Violin du Diable (The Devil’s Violin).

Giuseppe Tartini may not have felt he did true justice to what he heard in his dream, but what he did manage to put together has been appreciated ever since and has left a whiff of brimstone wafting down the centuries.

(This article’s main image shows Tartini meeting the Devil in his dream and receiving the inspiration for his Devil’s Trill Sonata.)

The post Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata – Soul Selling, a Violin Genius & a Diabolical Dream appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

Local folklore claims the lake is bottomless and that a tunnel connects it to the sea, 10-and-a-half miles (16.9 kilometres) away. The lake’s name even means ‘drop of sea’ in Cornish.

If you were walking high on Bodmin Moor, near Altarnun, Cornwall, and came across Dozmary Pool, you might feel puzzled that this pretty tarn – shimmering mirror-like in a pleasantly rugged landscape – could have attracted such legends.

But if you were to linger and stare at the pool, you might get a sense of the uncanny. If clouds were to slide over the sky and shroud the sun, the placid lake might start to look melancholy, sinister. The moorland around Dozmary Pool could become eerie and bleak, the dark hills above it threatening.

You might then give some credence to the tales about Jan Tregeagle, a fugitive from Hell and Cornish version of Faust. You might begin to half-believe the stories of the Lady of the Lake, of King Arthur’s sword Excalibur being cast into Dozmary Pool, and of curses woven and knotted into ‘witches’ ladders’.

In 1893, the writer Robert Charles Hope stated, ‘The pool is the theme of many marvellous tales, which the peasants most implicitly believe. It is said to be unfathomable and the haunt of evil spirits. Begirt by dreary hills, it presents an aspect of utter gloom and desolation.’

So let’s wade into this apparently bottomless store of myth, rumour and legend and see what we can discover about Dozmary Pool.

Dozmary Pool, the Lady of the Lake and King Arthur’s Sword Excalibur

Is Dozmary Pool the resting place of King Arthur’s sword Excalibur? (Photo: Jessie Lilac)

At the start of his kingly career, Arthur is said to have come to a lake and rowed out into it. A hand thrust up from the waters – belonging to a mysterious damsel, the Lady of the Lake. The hand of this beautiful enchantress was clutching a sword, the famous Excalibur, which she bestowed on Arthur.

King Arthur brandished the magical sword throughout his tumultuous reign, hacking and slashing at numerous villains, enemies and giants. Various legends have given Excalibur incredible properties – that its blade ‘gave light like 30 torches’ and could blind opponents, that it could ‘slice through iron as through wood’, that it had been forged in the mystical land of Avalon, and that any warrior wearing Excalibur’s scabbard wouldn’t lose of drop of blood.

But even this wondrous sword couldn’t protect King Arthur against treachery. Arthur’s antagonistic half-sister – the witch Morgan Le Fay – stole his scabbard, leaving him vulnerable to wounds. Then, while Arthur was fighting in France, his nephew – and son – Mordred rose up against him. Mordred seized Arthur’s throne and – in a somewhat Freudian fashion – married Arthur’s wife Guinevere. After hastening back to Britain, Arthur and his knights fought several battles against Mordred and his followers, with the final and most bloody being the Battle of Camlann.

After that battle, as King Arthur lay fatally wounded – again, in good Freudian fashion, thanks to Mordred – he called upon his faithful servant Bedivere. Arthur told Bedivere to throw Excalibur into a nearby lake, which many believe was the very lake he was presented with the wonderful weapon from. Bedivere tried to do as commanded, but – bewitched by the beautiful, gleaming sword – it took him three attempts. When he finally hurled it over the lake, Bedivere was amazed to see a hand shoot up from the waters, catch the sword and majestically sink with it below the waves. The Lady of the Lake had reclaimed Excalibur.

According to some accounts, a black boat then appeared, bearing – some say – magical ladies and queens, among them (a presumably repentant) Morgan Le Fay and even a (presumably dried off) Lady of the Lake. Carried into the boat, Arthur was taken to the Isle of Avalon, where his wounds would be tended and where he would lie in a centuries-long sleep that hovered between death and life. This weird coma, many assert, gives King Arthur the option of waking one day and returning when England really needs him.

The trouble is that the medieval writers of Arthurian romances, like Geoffrey of Monmouth and Thomas Malory, neglected to mention where this lake is. Neither can its location be found in the Celtic and French chronicles Geoffrey and Thomas based their works on. But certain legends point to Dozmary Pool as being the place. Perhaps this is due to the air of doleful mystery that surrounds the lake, with the stark moors and sombre hills recalling the sadness of Arthur’s murder and the lamentable departure of England’s legendary king. Maybe it’s easy to imagine the Lady of the Lake poking her arm up from Dozmary Pool’s grey, eerie and – supposedly – bottomless waters.

Over the centuries, eager mythographers have made attempts to connect Dozmary Pool with sites of reputed Arthurian importance, sites legend has linked with the 5th-and-6th-century era during which Arthur is rumoured to have reigned. About 10 miles from Dozmary Pool is the hamlet of Slaughterbridge, where a bridge spans the River Camel. Some legends claim this is where the Battle of Camlann took place, with Arthur and Mordred lunging and swinging at each other on the bridge and the river running red with blood. The closest lake to Slaughterbridge is the enigmatic Dozmary Pool. So, if the battle did occur there, Dozmary Pool’s the only lake into which Bedivere could have tossed Excalibur, even if 10 miles might have been a bit far for the wounded Arthur to stagger. There are reports of locals unearthing armour and other relics of war around Slaughterbridge.

Slaughterbridge, Cornwall – the site of King Arthur’s last battle? (Photo: Andy F)

Near Slaughterbridge is the ‘Arthur Stone’, which some say marks the king’s grave. (Assuming, that is, that Arthur wasn’t carried off by the funereal barge to Avalon.) This stone – part of whose worn inscription, some believe, spells out ‘Arty’ – attracted a visit from the Arthur-obsessed poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson, whose Idylls of the King repackaged Arthurian legend for a Victorian readership.

The Arthur Stone, Cornwall – does its mysterious inscription honour Britain’s legendary monarch? (Photo: visitcornwall)

Above Dozmary Pool, lies King Arthur’s Common, upon which stands King Arthur’s Hall, a mysterious rectangle of stone ruins and earth banks. Not far away, there’s even a King Arthur’s Bed, a large rock boasting a strange man-shaped hollow. Another nearby site is Castle Killibury, a collection of earthworks some link to a place called Kelliwic, one of King Arthur’s courts. Here, some legends say, Mordred provoked the events that culminated in the Battle of Camlann, by dragging ‘Gwenhwyvar (Guinevere) from her throne’ and kidnapping her.

Tintagel Castle – a cliff-perched, sea-battered stronghold about 20 miles from Dozmay Pool – is said to be the site of King Arthur’s conception. Arthur’s dad Uther, having taken a fancy to the lady of the castle, had sneaked into her bedchamber disguised – by Merlin’s trickery – as her husband.

Dozmary Pool certainly has a brooding atmosphere. But, if we clear the mists of legends and overly keen conjectures from our eyes, any role for the pool in Arthur’s narrative starts to look shaky. The armour and other artefacts discovered around Slaughterbridge – rather than being remnants of the Battle of Camlann – probably come from a separate battle that took place around 800 C.E. As for the Arthur Stone, researchers have proved it has no King Arthur connections – its inscription in fact commemorates a ‘son of Magarus’. King Arthur’s Hall – being Neolithic or Bronze Age – is too early to have hosted the meetings and festivities of the knights of Camelot. The man-shaped depression in King Arthur’s bed was likely just sculpted by harsh moorland weather and Castle Killibury is actually an Iron-Age hillfort.

The dramatic ruins at Tintagel are the remains of a castle built in the 1230s – long after Arthur’s time – though there is some evidence for a royal settlement at Tintagel dating to the early Middle Ages. As for Dozmary Pool itself, it doesn’t have any islands – and so can put forward no candidates for the Isle of Avalon. A more likely contender for Avalon is Glastonbury Tor, which was once an island surrounded by marshes.

The King Arthur sculpture at Tintagel Castle, the supposed site of the king’s conception. (Photo:visitcornwall)

But the legends connecting King Arthur to Dozmary Pool have persisted up to modern times, with a recent incident demonstrating the strength of the notion that the lake is Excalibur’s resting place. In 2017, a seven-year-old schoolgirl from Doncaster, Matilda Jones, was paddling in Dozmary Pool when she told her father she’d spotted a sword.

Her Dad, who’d told his kids about Dozmary Pool’s Arthurian associations while driving south for the family holiday, said, ‘She was waist deep when she said she could see a sword.’

‘I told her not to be silly and that it was probably a bit of fencing, but when I looked down, I realised it was a sword. It was just there lying flat on the bottom of the lake.’

Matilda and her father pulled a rusted, four-foot, regal-looking weapon from the bed of Dozmary Pool. According to some King Arthur legends, whoever possesses Excalibur is England’s rightful monarch. It’s unlikely, however, that Matilda will be crowned just yet. The sword she found isn’t thought to have an age of more than 20 or 30 years.

Mr Jones said, ‘I don’t think it’s particularly old. It’s probably an old film prop.’

Dozmary Pool, the Witch’s Ladder and Bubbles Filled with Curses

Dozmary Pool is associated with a sinister magical device known as a ‘witch’s ladder’. A witch’s ladder was a cord or string with cocks’ or pheasants’ feathers woven into it. Each feather represented a specific curse or spell, each of which was intended to cause the witch’s victims aches, discomforts and pains. What appeared to be a witch’s ladder was discovered in the attic of an old house in Wellington, Somerset, in 1878, a discovery which sparked a blaze of interest and controversy among Victorian academics and folklore enthusiasts.

Does a witch’s ladder – knotted with curses – lie in Dozmary Pool? (Photo: Into Cornwall)

The device’s connection with Dozmary Pool comes from a novel by Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924), a Devon priest, antiquarian and folklorist. In Mrs Curgenven of Curgenven (1893), Baring-Gould described a witch weaving a ladder from black wool and white and brown thread, tying in cocks’ feathers every two inches, and saying, ‘There be all kinds o’ aches and pains in they knots and they feathers … ivry ill wish ull find a way, one after the other, to the jint and bones and head and limbs o’ Lawyer Physic.’

The witch then cast her ladder into Dozmary Pool, in the belief that – as the water gradually rotted it and undid the knots – the curses would be unleashed. Some say that when you see bubbles rising to Dozmary Pool’s surface, it means one of these hexes has been released into the world.

Dozmary Pool and the Damned Spirit of Jan Tregeagle

Reputed to be one of the wickedest men to have ever lived in Cornwall, Jan Tregeagle’s crimes were rumoured to include murdering his wife and son and acquiring an estate by tricking an orphan out of his inheritance. A steward under the Duchy of Cornwall in the 17th century and a magistrate, Tregeagle was notoriously hard on his tenants and infamous for enriching himself at their expense. He was even said to have made a Faustian pact with the Devil, trading his soul for even more wealth. After Tregeagle’s death, the locals felt great relief, but any respite from Jan wasn’t destined to last.

There are several versions of the Jan Tregeagle legend, but the basic story is as follows. After Tregeagle died, there was a court case involving some tenants he’d helped swindle. At one point in the trial, a defendant shouted, ‘If Tregeagle ever saw it, I wish to God he would come and declare it!’

Any laughter this remark triggered was soon silenced. Thunder boomed, lightning flashed, a stench of burning brimstone filled the court, and the shade of Jan Tregeagle – pale, transparent, but undoubtedly resembling the man he was in life – appeared in the witness box. Gasps resounded, some witnesses and spectators fled, but the judge stayed calm enough to question the apparition. Tregeagle’s ghost admitted forging a document and justice was served in the tenants’ favour, but Jan’s spirit then begged not to be sent back to Hell, pleading for protection from the demons waiting to whisk him there.

A local vicar took pity on him, possibly influenced by the fact that – shortly before he died – Jan Tregeagle had hedged his bets by donating land to the Church. The vicar decided to set the frightened soul impossible tasks to keep it busy till Judgement Day. Jan’s first job was to empty Dozmary Pool.

Dozmary Pool, Cornwall – a haunt of the damned spirit of Jan Tregeagle? (Photo: Amanda King)

Emptying a bottomless lake would be difficult enough, but – to make sure Tregeagle would be kept at this labour until the Day of Doom – the vicar told him to empty the waters using a limpet shell with a hole in it. According to legend, wicked supernatural beings cannot cross living water, so – as long as Jan stayed in Dozmary Pool and worked on his task – the demons couldn’t get him. They instead massed on the shore – along with their black, red-eyed hellhounds – eager for any chance to snatch his soul and carry it back to the infernal regions.

As he laboured – lashed by moorland gales and tormented by storms – Jan suffered terribly. On windy nights, his screams and moans resounded around Dozmary Pool and echoed across Bodmin Moor. But such tortures were preferable to those awaiting Tregeagle back in Hell.

One night, however, as an especially savage storm thrashed Dozmary Pool, Jan Tregeagle could stand it no longer. He dashed from the tarn and the demons and hellhounds set off after him, their shrieks mixing with the howling winds. As the devils and their hounds couldn’t pass over the pool, they had to go around it, giving Tregeagle a head start.

Jan made for Roche Rock – a granite outcrop, near the village of Roche, crowned by a 14th-century chapel dedicated to St Michael. Desperate for refuge in this holy sanctuary, Jan tried to crash through one of the chapel windows, but became stuck, unable to slither through the narrow arch. Though his head was safe in the chapel, the demons and hellhounds clawed at his body.

Roche Rock, where Jan Tregeagle fled after escaping Dozmary Pool. (Photo: themagicofcornwall)

Jan’s screams and groans alerted the priest who’d set him to work in Dozmary Pool. With the help of two saints, the priest transported Tregeagle to Gwenor Cove. Here he was given the task of weaving a rope of sand from the beach, which he was then commanded to take to Carn Olva. As each day the tide destroyed Jan’s work, this job – like his labours in Dozmary Pool – appeared unachievable. But the crafty spirit found a way to complete the chore – one cold night, Jan poured water over the rope and it froze solid. A group of exorcists and holy men, however, ordered him to weave another rope – and this time forbade him to approach water. It’s said that on dark nights, you can still hear Jan Tregeagle’s howls of frustration mingling with the wind.

Another version of the legend states that the people of Padstow became so disturbed by Jan’s wails that they called on Saint Petroc. The saint bound Jan with a huge chain and set him to work carrying sand from Berepper Beach across the Cober Estuary to Porthleven, ordering him to continue until only rock was left at Berepper. This task was also impossible because whenever the tide came in, it replenished the sand.

One day, however, as Tregeagle was carrying a bag of sand across the estuary, a demon tripped him, making him drop his load. The sand fell into the river, forming the shingle barrier known as Loe Bar. The water trapped behind the bar became the freshwater lake of Loe Pool, rendering the town of Helston’s harbour useless by cutting it off from the sea. This so infuriated the locals and their priest that they banished Tregeagle to Land’s End.

Did Jan Tregeagle create Loe Bar, separating Loe Pool from the sea? (Photo: CornwallLive)

It’s said that Land’s End is still haunted by Jan Tregeagle, whose task is now to sweep sand from Porthcurno Cove into Mill Bay. You can still hear his wails of anguish among the shrieking gulls, the crashing waves and moaning winds.

Are the cliffs, rocks and coves around Land’s End haunted by the restless spirit of Jan Tregeagle? (Photo: Chris Combe)

What Could Explain the Strange Legends Attached to Dozmary Pool and the Demonic Tales of Jan Tregeagle?

Perhaps there’s something about Dozmary Pool’s situation – as an isolated oasis in bleak moorland – that’s encouraged legends to affix themselves to it. One legend, we can say, is false – the pool isn’t bottomless. Cattle can be seen wading in Dozmary Pool, even close to the centre, and the lake dried up completely in 1859 and 1976. Also, during these droughts, no tunnel to the sea was revealed.

The story of Jan Tregeagle echoes common motifs in myth and folklore. Tregeagle’s pact with Satan for worldly wealth and success mirrors legends of other soul sellers like Faust, the violinists Giuseppe Tartini and Niccolo Paganini, and the blues musician Robert Johnson.

The – seemingly – impossible tasks Tregeagle is set recall the Labours of Heracles and punishments imposed on wicked mythological characters. In Greek myth, King Sisyphus was forced to spend eternity pushing a boulder up a hill only to see it roll back down. For killing their husbands on their wedding nights, the Greek Danaids had to spend the hereafter attempting to carry water in sieves. In English folklore, one of the murderers of Thomas a Beckett – William de Tracey – is, like Tregeagle, condemned to weave ropes of sand, in his case on the beach at Woolacombe, Devon. Whenever his rope is finished, a black dog with a ball of fire in its mouth appears and breaks the rope up.

Perhaps the Jan Tregeagle legend also stems from shadowy memories of some Celtic god that loomed over the landscape. And Tregeagle does seem a personification of brute natural forces – the winds that bellow over Bodmin Moor, the storms that lash Dozmary Pool, the dangerous tides and waves of Cornwall’s craggy coast. In an isolated farmhouse or coastal cottage, as the wind wails, as thunder reverberates and waves smash, one could suspect the spirit of Jan Tregeagle is tearing around outside, chased by shrieking demons and howling hellhounds.

The Jan Tregeagle legend may also be linked to the folklore of giants. The activities of giants were used to explain mysterious structures like stone circles, burial mounds and Roman roads as well as natural oddities like Loe Bar. Cornish giants were apparently responsible for constructing the tidal island St Michael’s Mount. The large boulders around the island in Mount’s Bay were rumoured to have been left after a fight between two giants. A giant is said to have built the ‘rocking stone’ at Zennor – a huge boulder balanced on a small outcrop – to lull himself to sleep. Robert Charles Hope refers to Tregeagle as ‘a grim giant’ who ‘has been connected in Cornwall with a real person, the dishonest steward of Lord Robartes at Lanhydrock, where a room in the house is still called Tregeagles.’

The island of St Michael’s Mount and rocks in Mount’s Bay – the work of giants? (Photo: Amateur with a Camera)

The hellhounds recall the legend of another wicked south-west bigwig – the squire Richard Cabell, whose spirit is said to roam Dartmoor at night, accompanied by black, red-eyed dogs: a story that inspired Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles. Legends of black dogs with glowing eyes are common throughout Britain, in tales of creatures such as the Barghests of Yorkshire and East Anglia’s Old Shuck.

The Tregeagle legend could also be a Cornish version of the Wild Hunt, a phenomenon during which a mythological figure leads a brigade of phantom huntsmen and demonic dogs across the sky. Those said to lead a Wild Hunt – usually as a punishment for some sin – include Odin, the Devil, Cain, King Arthur, Herne the Hunter and Sir Walter Raleigh.

As for the holy men and priests of the Jan Tregeagle story, their miraculous powers may reach back to legends of Catholic and Celtic saints, which Cornwall – like Brittany across the Channel – is especially rich in. Perhaps their powers even recall those of earlier magicians – the druids and shamans of pagan times.

As Robert Charles Hope suggests, existing legends – of giants, demons, black dogs and wonder workers – could have coalesced around a notorious real-life figure. What began as a ghost story or morality tale may have become more outlandish as the years passed.

The myths attached to Dozmary Pool might reflect its importance to humans and nature. A post-glacial lake, Dozmary Pool feeds the River Fowey and both pool and river have long been vital water sources. Today, Dozmary Pool’s waters also supply the massive Colliford Lake reservoir. At the end of the 19th century, Sabine Baring-Gould described Dozmary Pool as ‘abounding in fish’ and being surrounded by the remains of Stone-Age flint workings. When the pool dried up, Neolithic arrow heads were discovered, suggesting the site has been a centre of human activity for centuries. Dozmary Pool’s bed and margins provide a home for rare plants and it’s an important site for migratory birds. Dozmary Pool forms part of the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Perhaps the Arthurian Lady of the Lake is an echo of a nymph or water goddess that once personified this crucial body of water.

Unusual or vital features of the landscape can inspire the strangest tales and this certainly seems the case with Dozmary Pool. This attractive tarn may well continue to act as a mirror for human hopes, terrors, desires and needs for some years to come.

(This article’s main image, showing Dozmary Pool, is courtesy of Paul)

The post Cornwall’s Dozmary Pool – King Arthur’s Sword, Damned Souls, Witches & Hellhounds appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

There it is, a little battered, but looking as if a knowledgeable practitioner of magic could soon get a fire going and start brewing a potion in it. Authentically aged and well-used, it’s just the sort of cauldron you could imagine the Weird Sisters cackling around on Macbeth’s blasted heath.

But what’s an item many would associate with witchcraft doing in a place of Christian worship? Unsurprisingly, many legends have grown up around this incongruous object – a heap of intertwisted tales involving a chaotic collection of characters.

The cauldron has been linked to the Devil, Saxon chieftains, Celtic and Norse gods, a witch’s cave, burrowing monks, fairies, broomsticks, rustic peasant knees-ups, prehistoric burial mounds, healing waters and sacred wells. Let’s try to unknot this convoluted mass of myth and find out why this cauldron stands in St Mary’s Church, Frensham.

A landscape of woods and heathland surrounds the village of Frensham, which lies near the towns of Farnham and Guildford in Surrey’s commuter belt. (Photo: weesam2010)

Some Say the Frensham Cauldron Once Belonged to the Fairies

Near Frensham are three hills known as the Devil’s Jumps. A person climbing the highest of these – Stony Jump, formerly also called Borough Hill – would have once encountered an outcrop of rock crowning its summit. A deep crack scarred this rock and – if you whispered down into it – it was apparently possible to make contact with a colony of fairies that lived inside the hollow hill.

These fairies seem to have been a reasonably benevolent and human-friendly variety of the little folk, because they loaned out utensils to anyone who needed them. All you had to do was scale the hill, knock on the rock, whisper into the crack and tell the fairies what you wanted to borrow. A voice would then issue from deep within the hill, telling you when and where to collect the object and when it should be returned.

One day somebody asked to borrow a cauldron. He duly found the cauldron waiting at the appointed time and in the designated spot, but made the error of bringing it back late. Enraged, the fairies refused to accept it. They announced they would never again lend any implements to ungrateful humans and that night ‘the people saw a great fire’ though they later found no evidence any heathland had been burning.

The fairies inflicted a special punishment on the cauldron’s borrower. They cursed him to be followed by the cauldron wherever he went. The stands of its tripod morphed into legs and it pursued the man everywhere.

Driven into anxiety by having his every movement dogged by an animated cauldron, the man’s mental and physical health crumbled. He eventually sought sanctuary in St Mary’s Church, where he collapsed and died. The cauldron had, of course, followed him in there and so it remained in the church.

St Mary’s Church, Frensham, Surrey, said to house a ‘witch’s cauldron’ (Photo: Edward Simpson)

As the historian Keith Thomas shows in his Religion and the Decline of Magic, fairy lore was widespread in England in the early modern period and Middle Ages. And there are certain things about the Frensham area that may have especially linked the local landscape to fairies. Though fairies were often thought to inhabit the insides of hills, they were also frequently believed to live in burial mounds. Four such mounds stand on Frensham Common. In addition, Neolithic arrow heads are often found around Frensham. Known as ‘elf bolts’, such artefacts are seen as weapons of fairies in folklore.

Fairy legends associated with the burial mounds on Frensham Common may at some point have transferred themselves to Stony Jump (Borough Hill) or intermingled with existing tales connected to that landmark. One version of the cauldron story has the borrower knocking on ‘a great stone lying, of a length of about six feet’ across the mouth of a cave on Stony Jump. Though such barriers are a widespread feature of burial mounds, there’s no evidence such a stone has ever existed on Borough Hill. Local folklore also claimed that ‘some have fancied to hear music’ coming from the Borough Hill cave and music issuing from barrows is a common characteristic of fairy legends. Even the name ‘Borough Hill’ suggests a possible connection with burial mounds and therefore fairies. The term ‘borough’ can refer to burial mounds as well as to hills, ancient earthworks (also considered places of fairy habitation) and human settlements.

Round barrows on Frensham Common, Surrey – could they have contributed to local legends of fairies and cauldrons? (Photo: Simon Burchell)

Perhaps the fairy lore around Frensham was used to explain why such a strange object as a cauldron was kept in St Mary’s Church. We know this link had been made as early as 1673, when the antiquarian John Aubrey recorded the belief that ‘an extraordinary great cauldron or kettle’ in Frensham Church had been transported there by the fairies long ago. This idea seems to have persisted down the ages. It’s mentioned in Nathanial Salmon’s Antiquities of Surrey, published in 1736. A 1985 article in The Farnham Herald – entitled Condemned to Be Chased by a Three-Legged Cauldron – has a man recounting a version of the legend he heard in his 1920s boyhood.

But, alas, anyone wishing to climb Stony Jump today to whisper to the fairies would have little success, even if the fairies were still inclined to help us humans out. Stony Jump is now private property, its rocky outcrop has been flattened and a house has been built upon it. How the fairies have reacted to this indignity is not known.

The Frensham Cauldron, Mother Ludlam’s Cave, a White Witch and the Devil

According to some legends, it wasn’t the fairies who were responsible for placing the cauldron in Frensham Church, but a local ‘white witch’ – or folk healer – called Mother Ludlam. Mother Ludlam’s home was said to be Mother Ludlam’s Cave, located in a sandstone cliff above the River Wey in Moor Park, near Farnham, Surrey.

Mother Ludlam, like the fairies, lent out utensils to her neighbours. One version of the story claimed that anyone needing to borrow an item had to go to Mother Ludlam’s Cave at midnight, turn round three times and three times repeat their request. They also had to promise to return the article within two days. (The fairies were more liberal, sometimes allowing people to keep objects for a year.) Another take on the legend said people merely had to go to the cave and drop a coin into Mother Ludlam’s cauldron, after which they could borrow whatever implement they desired.

Mother Ludlam would sometimes even loan out the cauldron itself, the cauldron she used to brew her potions and cook her concoctions of healing herbs. In the simplest version of her legend, Mother Ludlam became enraged when somebody borrowed her cauldron but didn’t bring it back. The offender – terrified by the witch’s fury – took refuge in Frensham Church, which is where the cauldron stayed.

More elaborate accounts bring the Devil into the scenario. One story states the Fiend visited Mother Ludlam’s Cave in disguise and asked to borrow her cauldron. Mother Ludlam, however, spotted his hoofprints in some sand and refused his request. The Devil stole the cauldron and the witch set off in pursuit – according to some tales – bestride her broomstick.

As Mother Ludlam chased him, the Devil made three great leaps. Each time he touched the ground, he kicked up some earth, forming a small hill. These hills, the Devil’s Jumps, can still be seen today. The Devil dropped the cauldron – or kettle – on the last of these hills, which is why it’s called Kettlebury Hill or just Kettlebury. As the Devil fled, he landed one more time, forming the natural amphitheatre known as the Devil’s Punchbowl, a small valley close to Gibbet Hill.

The Devil’s Jumps, near Frensham, supposedly created by the Devil as he fled with Mother Ludlam’s cauldron. (Photo: Peter S)

After recovering her cauldron, Mother Ludlam placed it in St Mary’s Church, where it would be protected from Satan’s grasping claws.

The Mother Ludlam legend is recorded in an account written down in 1869 and also from an interview with a local lady who lived until 1937. Though the Mother Ludlam legend likely stretches back earlier than these dates, it seems the version with the fairies is the more ancient one and that later stories then linked the cauldron to Mother Ludlam. Could Mother Ludlam have been an interesting local character and herbalist whose fame later appended itself to an older tale?

The Devil’s Jumps and the Norse God Thor

There’s an alternative account as to why the three hills are known as the Devil’s Jumps. Apparently, the Devil would amuse himself by leaping between their summits. He did this so often he annoyed the Nordic god Thor, who hurled a huge stone at the Fiend, which became the rocky outcrop on Stony Jump.

It’s possible that the introduction of Thor into this whole tangle of myth is a romantic, early 20th century addition, but a nearby village does have the name of Thursley, suggesting a local connection with the god.

As for the Devil, tales of him adding features to the landscape and leaping around are commonplace in Britain. The Colwell Stone – a large chunk of limestone in the centre of Colwell, Cornwall – was apparently put there by the Devil. The Fiend is also said to have created the whole of the Cotswolds by tipping a wheelbarrow of earth upon the land. With regard to his leaps, he’s reputed to have sprung down from the spire of Newington Church, Kent, leaving a smouldering 15-inch footprint on a stone near the churchyard gate. At Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire, he jumped down from the church before joining some lads in a game of leapfrog. A hole in the ground opened into which they all leapt and they were never seen again. Perhaps the Devil’s leaping abilities have lived on in later folkloric characters, such as the Victorian London demon Spring-heeled Jack. In Victorian times, the Fiend also got the blame for the Devil’s Footprints: a miles-long trail of hoofmarks in single file left in the snow across Devon in 1855, a trail that appeared to have been made by a hopping demon.

Unusual landscape features – like boulders dumped by glaciers and oddly shaped outcrops – often attract strange tales. Another one from Frensham states that there was once a boulder on one of the Devil’s Jumps that a person in need of any object – even a yoke for oxen – could approach. The person just had to touch the boulder, pray and promise to return the item. One day someone requested a cauldron, but – as the loaned implement was then kept in Frensham Church for too long – it couldn’t be given back and the boulder’s lending capabilities ceased. It’s not clear if this ‘boulder’ was thought to be the same chunk of rock Thor hurled.

Mother Ludlam’s Cave, Holy Wells and a Long History of Healing Waters

Mother Ludlam’s Cave, once home to her famous cauldron? (Photo: Weydonian)

The name Mother Ludlam’s Cave (also known as Mother Ludlum’s Cave and Mother Ludlum’s Hole) may have interesting origins.

Suggestions for its etymology include a Celtic term meaning ‘bubbling spring’, and the area around the cave is thought to have been home to a spring known as the Ludewell. The name may also derive from a Saxon king called Lud, who is said to have washed in the Ludewell’s waters to heal his wounds after a battle.

But – according to the writer of semi-legendary history Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1095-1155) – Lud (or Ludd or Llud) was a ruler of Celtic Britain and London’s founder. Lud is linked to the mythological Welsh figure Lludd (or Nudd) Llaw Eraint and the legendary Irish King Nuada. Both these characters are thought to have emerged from memories of the Celtic god Nodens, who – among his other attributes – was a god of healing. A temple to this deity is said to have stood near Ludgate in the City of London. (Geoffrey states this is where King Lud was buried. It’s not uncommon in myth for gods to be associated with earthly kings.)

It seems the Ludewell spring was thought to have medicinal properties. It could, therefore, have been regarded as a holy well by pre-Christian peoples and perhaps linked with the healing god Nodens (aka Lud). This association could have survived in the name Mother Ludlam – also a healer – and become mingled with memories of a much later herbalist.

All this is, of course, speculation. Other possible origins for the cave’s name are the Saxon words for ‘meeting place’ and ‘loud’, perhaps in reference to the stream that ran from the Ludewell. But it’s interesting to think that some sort of connection with healing may have lingered around the cave from Celtic times through to Saxon warriors bathing their wounds through to an early modern herbalist brewing her potions in a cauldron.

The cave’s associations with pure and curative waters do seem to have continued into the Christian era. Nearby, on the banks of the River Wey, stand the picturesque ruins of Waverley Abbey. Walter Scott visited the ruins while researching his biography of Jonathon Swift and was enchanted – this experience may have inspired the title of his famous book Waverley. The abbey also inspired Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel Sir Nigel.

Waverley Abbey, Surrey, one of whose monks enlarged Mother Ludlam’s Cave (Photo: Antony)

Founded in 1128, the abbey appears to have relied on the stream issuing from the Ludewell for its drinking water. However, this source dried up around 1218. In response, a monk called Symon searched for a new source, probably expanding Mother Ludlam’s Cave in the process, until he found – according to the Annals of Waverley Abbey – a ‘living spring’. With ‘much difficulty and invention, labour and sweating’ he enlarged it and – through an ingenious system of channels – brought its waters to the abbey. The monks christened the new spring St Mary’s Well. The original Ludewell probably started off in a cavern – a little above Mother Ludlam’s Cave on the cliff – known as Father Foote’s Cave (see below).

The esteem in which the monks held their new well – which probably boasted the same health benefits as the Ludewell – can be seen in the name they gave it (St Mary’s is also the name of Frensham Church). Healing wells in the Middle Ages were often named after saints and some became sites of pilgrimage.

St Mary’s Well had healing associations in quite modern times. The political radical William Cobbett (1763-1835) recalled that in his boyhood Mother Ludlam’s Cave contained ‘basins to catch the little stream’; ‘iron cups, fastened by chains, for people to drink out of’; and ‘seats for people to sit on, on both sides of the cave’. So it seems at that time the cave was a venue for people to imbibe medicinal waters. After revisiting the cave in 1825, however, Cobbett complained it was in a dire condition, with the seats torn up, the basins and cups gone, and ‘the stream that ran down a clear paved channel now making a dirty gutter.’

A depiction of Mother Ludlam’s Cave from 1785

What has all this, we might ask, to do with the cauldron in Frensham Church? The Mother Ludlam story was likely an invention to explain the presence of that unusual object in St Mary’s, but it’s worth pointing out that cauldrons have long had connections to healing, religion and magic. In Celtic times, cauldrons were crammed with votive offerings and left at holy sites. A story of King Arthur has him travelling to the Welsh Otherworld to steal a cauldron that could only be heated by the breath of nine virgins and would never cook food for a coward – a possible early source of the Holy Grail legends. A cauldron possessed by the Welsh hero Bran the Blessed is said to have had the power to revive dead warriors cooked in it overnight, though in the process they lost the ability to speak. In Frensham, can we see some tangled links between mythical notions of cauldrons, religious and magical sites, and caves and springs associated with healing?

The Gundestrup Cauldron (made between 200 BCE and 300 CE) – a silver vessel decorated with Celtic motifs discovered in a Danish bog. (Photo: Rosemania)

Mother Ludlam’s Cave was made into a grotto, probably during the 18th century, and in Victorian times an ironstone arch was added to its entrance, perhaps indicating a revival in the attraction of its medicinal waters after the desolation William Cobbett witnessed. In 1962, a roof collapse reduced the cave’s length from 200 feet (61 metres) to 192 (58.5 metres) and another collapse occurred in 1976. Today the cave is a roost for a number of bat species, with efforts being made to encourage the rare greater horseshoe bat to take up residence. Perhaps Mother Ludlam’s Cave can continue to be a place of healing, but for nature rather than humans.

Father Foote’s Cave

Father Foote’s (or Fooke’s) Cave – a small cave located above Mother Ludlam’s – also has a story attached. An old man named Foote – after staying for some time at the Seven Stars Inn in Farnham – is said to have dug the cave out of the cliff and made it his home. One day in 1840, Father Foote was found lying next to a stream, obviously unwell, and was taken to Farnham Workhouse, where he died. His last words were: ‘Take me to the cave again!’

It’s likely the cave is older than this, however. The cave may well have been the source of the original Ludewell, though it is now completely dry. The cave apparently has side alcoves that look manmade, perhaps suggesting it too was once frequented for its waters. I’m tempted to think that the ‘Father Fooke’ figure might have arisen from a folk memory of a saint or hermit or even water spirit once associated with the cave and the healing waters of Ludewell, whose legend was perhaps grafted onto stories of a much later person. I cannot, however, claim any evidence for such an assumption.

Father Foote’s Cave, a little above Mother Ludlam’s Cave on the cliff and maybe the source of the Ludewell. (Photo: BabelStone)

So Where Did the Cauldron in Frensham Church Really Come from?

As entertaining as the above stories are, I think we can discount the tales of the cauldron being borrowed from fairies or being placed in the church by a white witch after she’d snatched it back from the Devil. The cauldron’s origins are really quite simple and practical.

The cauldron was almost certainly used to brew ale for weddings, church festivals and other social occasions in the Middle Ages. The cauldron is made of hammered copper and is nineteen inches (48 centimetres) deep and three feet (91 centimetres) in diameter – a common design for medieval ale making.

Though it may seem strange today, churches were once venues for drinking parties – festivities known as ‘parish ales’. Parish ales had a number of subcategories – the church ale (which raised money from the sale of food and beer to maintain the church building), the leet ale (which took place on the manorial court day, a kind of village fete), the lamb ale (held at lamb sheering time), the Whitsun ale (held at Whitson) and the bride ale (a wedding feast that raised money for a newly married couple).

In addition to drinking beer, these events included plenty of feasting, as well as dancing, games and sports, activities that took place either in the churchyard or on the village common. Most churches would have had a cauldron to brew the ale and the profits from selling the beer were a vital source of income.

The poet Francis Beaumont (1584-1660) wrote:

The churches must owe, as we do all know,

For when they are drooping and ready to fall,

By a Whitsun or church ale up again they shall go,

And owe their repairing to a pot of good ale.

During the Reformation (1517-1650), parish ales aroused the disapproval of Protestant leaders, who disliked drunkenness and frivolity being associated with the Church. Though parish ales were never banned, they became less common, often being limited to Whitsun. In some places, the custom gradually faded away while in others parish ales continued in some form until quite modern times.

At Frensham, the parish ale custom probably declined, but the cauldron remained in the church. Wondering what the strange object was, locals are likely to have created stories, stories that meshed with existing tales of fairies, witches, the Devil’s shenanigans and healing wells.

The chroniclers who wrote down these legends – while charmed by them – quickly dismissed such yarns. Writing in 1673, John Aubrey could clearly see the cauldron was ‘an ancient utensil used by the villagers in their love feasts.’ In his Antiquities of Surrey (1736), Salmon refuted the suggestion the cauldron had been brought by fairies, insisting the object was ‘used for the entertainment of parishioners at the weddings of poor maids.’

Despite its non-mystical – though I hope not uninteresting – origins, what fascinates me is how such a complex knot of folklore has been woven around the Frensham cauldron, pulling in tales from various eras, cultures and traditions. Around this kitchen implement stories of Nordic gods, Saxon heroes, sacred wells, Victorian paupers, folk healers and Celtic myths have all been entangled, as well as – of course – legends of the Devil and his fondness for landscape architecture. It’s incredible how such a humble device has managed to get enmeshed in such diverse tales, in such a ravel of imagination and myth.

(This article’s main image – showing Mother Ludlam’s cauldron in Frensham Church, Surrey – is courtesy of BabelStone)

The post The Strange Cauldron of Frensham Church, a White Witch & the Devil appeared first on David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen.

‘For God’s sake, bring me a light!’ the man shouted. ‘For we have caught Spring-heeled Jack here in the lane!’

Jane hurried into the house and rushed back bearing a candle. As soon as she handed the candle to the policeman, however, he flung off his cloak to reveal ‘a most hideous and frightful appearance.’

His eyes glowed like ‘red balls of fire’, and – as she trembled with terror and shock – Jane saw that he wore a large helmet and tight-fitting clothes that resembled white oilskin. The man opened his mouth and vomited a stream of blue-and-white flames in the direction of Jane’s face.

The man sprang forward, grabbed Jane and – placing her head under his arm – tore at her gown with claws that were ‘of some metallic substance’. Miss Alsop screamed, managed to slip away and ran back towards the house. The man bounded after her, caught her on the steps, mauled her arms and neck with his metal talons and wrenched out some of her hair. But Jane’s shrieks had alerted one of her sisters, who came running to help. After a short but intense struggle, the man fled.

This incident was widely reported in the newspapers, even making it into The Times. Far from being seen as an isolated attack, for those living in and around London, the Alsop case fitted into a pattern of bizarre assaults perpetrated by a man – or phantom or demon – known as Spring-heeled Jack.

Some described Spring-heeled Jack as a ghost, some as a bear, an armoured man, a devil; others suspected he might be a dissolute aristocrat. As well as his flaming breath and burning red eyes, many claimed he had the astounding ability to spring or leap great distances, bounding over walls and hedges and even onto house roofs.

But who was this strange entity who terrorised the London area – and other parts of the country – throughout the Victorian age and beyond? Was Spring-heeled Jack just one person or several, could there have been any supernatural element involved, and how does Jack fit into an urban folklore rich with ghosts, devils and sadists – beings that many genuinely believed haunted the dark and narrow streets of 19^th century Britain?

Let’s see what we can discover about the peculiar phenomenon of Spring-heeled Jack.

Spring-heeled Jack Terrorises London and Its Suburbs

The first sightings of Spring-heeled Jack occurred in 1837. In October that year, Mary Stevens, a servant girl, had been walking along the edge of Clapham Common. A tall figure jumped at Mary from a dark alley. He grabbed hold of her, tore at her clothes with claws and forced kisses on her face. His hands felt ‘cold and clammy as those of a corpse.’ Mary screamed and the attacker fled. Her cries alerted several locals, who searched for her assailant, but could find no one.

The next day, a similar figure sprang in front of a carriage. The carriage crashed and the coachman was badly injured. According to witnesses, the figure then escaped by leaping over a nine-foot (2.7-metre) wall while emitting a stream of high-pitched laughter.

News of this strange attacker soon spread through London and the surrounding settlements, and it wasn’t long before this sinister being was christened ‘Spring-heeled Jack’. The idea arose that his leaping abilities might be due to springs hidden in the heels of his boots, with newspapers like The Morning Chronicle crediting him with ‘spring shoes’.

Jack, however, didn’t always stick with his tall, jumping, metal-clawed persona. In early September 1837, a ‘ghost, imp or devil’ in form of ‘a large white bull’ was rumoured to have attacked a number of people, especially women. Over the next two months, Jack was said to have appeared in the guises of a ‘ghost, bear or devil’ in over twenty villages around London. In – the suitably named – Cut-throat Lane, Isleworth, a carpenter called Jones was attacked by Spring-heeled Jack clad in armour. Jones resisted and a fight began, but two more ‘ghosts’ joined the fracas on Jack’s side and carpenter was severely beaten.

Rumours of Spring-heeled Jack were soon terrifying London

Jack is said to have haunted St John’s Wood in late December 1837 and early January 1838 dressed in armour and in the guise of a bear. On the western edge of London, he put in an appearance as a devil armed with iron claws, with which he attacked a blacksmith and several women. There were rumours Jack had been seen climbing over the walls of Holland Park and Kensington Palace at midnight to dance ‘fantastic measures on the wooded lawns.’ A woman in Dulwich had been ‘nearly deprived of her senses’ by the sight of a ghost ‘enveloped in a white sheet and blue fire’ and a nine-year-old boy from Hammersmith had been ‘terribly frightened’ by a glimpse of Spring-heeled Jack in the shape of a bear.

Stories of Jack’s assaults kept circulating. According to one account, a servant girl, Polly Adams, was attacked on Shooter’s Hill by a man who vomited fire in her face and attempted to rip her clothes off. She suspected the man was a gentleman who’d tried to seduce her earlier the same day. London’s outskirts swarmed with rumours of a man who’d hide in unlit lanes before springing out at travellers. After accosting them, he’d escape with the most incredible leaps, sometimes clearing hedges and gates with just one bound.

With the metropolis humming with tales of this strange predator and the populace’s fear and agitation intensifying, the authorities felt they had to be seen to take action.

 Spring-heeled Jack’s Outrages Prompt London’s Lord Mayor to Act

On 9^th January 1838, the Lord Mayor of London announced – during a public session at the Mansion House – that he’d received a letter from ‘a resident of Peckham’. A part of the letter read:

‘It appears that some individuals (of, as the writer believes, the highest ranks of life) have laid a wager with a mysterious and foolhardy companion, that he durst not take upon himself the task of visiting many of the villages near London in three different disguises – a ghost, a bear and a devil … The wager, however, has been accepted and the unmanly villain has succeeded in depriving seven ladies of their senses, two of whom are not likely to recover …

At one house the man rang the bell, and on the servant coming to open door, this worse than brute stood in no less dreadful figure than a spectre clad most perfectly. The consequence was that the poor girl immediately swooned and has never from that moment been in her senses.’

Spring-heeled Jack in his guise as a devil

Though the Lord Mayor was sceptical of such reports, members of his audience told him that ‘servant girls around Kensington, Hammersmith and Ealing tell dreadful stories of this ghost or devil.’ The revelations from the Lord Mayor’s meeting were reported in The Times on the same day and in a number of other papers on January 10^th. On the 11^th, the mayor showed another meeting – packed with anxious citizens – a heap of letters detailing similar ‘wicked pranks’ committed in and around London.

One correspondent claimed Jack had frightened several women into ‘dangerous fits’ in the Hammersmith area and another asserted that in Brixton, Stockwell and Vauxhall people had even died of fright upon encountering the monster. One writer claimed Spring-heeled Jack had been spotted several times in Lewisham and Blackheath. Another complainant stated that a servant girl in Forest Hill had been sent into fits by a figure in a bear’s skin.

There were especially strong rumours about a gang of aristocratic ‘rascals connected to high families.’ Letters alleged ‘that bets to the amount of £5,000 are at stake upon the success or failure of the abominable proceedings’ and that the ‘object of the villains is to destroy the lives of not less than 30 human beings! Viz eight old bachelors, 10 old maids and six ladies’ maids, and as many servant girls as they can, by depriving them of their reason, and otherwise accelerating their deaths.’

The mayor still thought the hysteria around Spring-heeled Jack had inspired the ‘greatest exaggerations’ and said he doubted that ‘the ghost performs the feats of a devil upon earth’. But he promised that the man responsible for these ‘pantomime displays’ would be apprehended and punished. The mayor instructed the police to search for the culprit and offered rewards for information leading to his capture.

Spring-heeled Jack Gains More Infamy and Commits Fresh Crimes

In spite of the mayor’s determination to catch Spring-heeled Jack, reports of fresh outrages kept coming in. On 20^th February 1838, the attack on Jane Alsop occurred and on 28^th February another young woman, Lucy Scales, was the victim of a similar assault. Lucy and her sister were walking through Limehouse, passing along Green Dragon Alley, when they saw a person in a large cloak standing in that narrow thoroughfare.

As Lucy passed the person, he vomited ‘a quantity of blue flame into her face’, temporarily blinding her. Lucy fell to the ground and began having violent fits, which would go on for several hours. Lucy’s assailant, who hadn’t attempted to touch her, then strode away. He was described as being tall, thin and of gentlemanly appearance, to have been carrying a lamp similar to those used by the police and to have been wearing some sort of headgear.

A few days later, in East London’s Turner Street, off Commercial Road, a servant boy responded to a vigorous knocking on his master’s door. He opened it to see a man wrapped in a cloak. The man threw his cloak back to reveal a bizarre costume and hideous features similar to those that had confronted Jane Alsop. The boy screamed so loudly it caused the man to flee. As the man turned to run, the boy is said to have noticed the letter ‘W’ embroidered on his cloak as part of an ornate, aristocratic-looking crest.

After the attacks on Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales, a number of suspects were arrested and questioned, but all were let go. The man most strongly suspected of being Spring-heeled Jack was one Thomas Millbank, a carpenter who lived near the Alsops. Millbank – who had apparently made drunken boasts of carrying out the Alsop assault and had been wearing white overalls and a greatcoat on the day it occurred – escaped being charged because the police were convinced he had no ability to breathe fire. Millbank had also been drunk on the night of the attack and Jane and her sister insisted their assailant was sober.

Spring-heeled Jack, as depicted in a penny dreadful of 1890

The assaults by Spring-heeled Jack – or, due to his growing fame, those imitating him – went on. On 28^th February 1838, a well-dressed man informed the landlady of the White Lion pub in Vere Street that he was Spring-heeled Jack. The man then produced a club and swung it at a group of women. A man dressed in a cloak seized hold of a lady in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and slapped her face, and in Islington a blacksmith called James Priest was arrested after attacking a number of females. Priest was given three months’ hard labour. In March, two tall men in dark cloaks – their faces painted with ochre – frightened a boy in Westmoreland Mews. In Kentish Town, a youth was cautioned after being caught with a mask with blue glazed paper arranged around its mouth – paper meant to mimic Jack’s flaming breath. A Kilburn man was fined four pounds after pulling off several pranks wearing a bearded mask and sheet.

Spring-heeled Jack was also becoming more active outside the capital. In April, a woman was attacked on the cliff tops at Southend by a ‘gentleman’ who ripped her clothes and shoved grass into her mouth, prompting the local paper to run the headline ‘Spring-heeled Jack at Southend’. On 14^th April 1838, an article in the Brighton Gazette claimed that a gardener in Rose Hill, Sussex, had been terrified by a being ‘in the shape of a bear or some other four-footed animal.’ After startling the gardener with a growl, the ‘bear’ had scaled a wall and trotted along it on all fours before leaping down and chasing the gardener. The ‘animal’ then clambered over the wall and made its escape. This incident was picked up by The Times, with the newspaper commenting, ‘Spring-heeled Jack has, it seems, found his way down to the Sussex coast.’

Spring-heeled Jack, meanwhile, was turning into a figure of urban legend. As well as his frequent appearances in the newspapers, sensationalist pamphlets about his exploits were published and plays about him performed at cheap theatres. Three pamphlets were rushed out – claiming to be based on fact, but probably also including some fictional embellishments – in January and February 1838. A play of 1840 – Spring-heeled Jack, The Terror of London – depicted Jack as an outlaw driven to attack women because of a betrayal by his own sweetheart. In some Punch and Judy shows, the devil character was rechristened Spring-heeled Jack.

The Years Pass, But Spring-heeled Jack Keeps Appearing

Despite his rising fame, reports of encounters with Spring-heeled Jack began to dwindle. In 1843, however, there was a fresh surge of sightings across the country. Jack was spotted in Northamptonshire, where he was described as ‘the very image of the Devil himself, with horns and eyes of flame.’ In East Anglia, Spring-heeled Jack was held responsible for a series of assaults on the drivers of mail coaches.

In 1845, Jack apparently bounded up to a prostitute – Maria Davis – on Jacob’s Island, a notorious South London slum located where the River Neckinger met the Thames. Jack is said to have grasped Maria in his claw-tipped hands and belched his trademark blue flames into her face. He then lifted her above his head before flinging her into one of the open sewers – called Folly Ditch – that ran through the neighbourhood. Maria struggled vainly before she sank beneath the foul waters.

In July 1847, Spring-heeled Jack was alleged to have committed a number of outrages in Teignmouth, Devon, ‘disguised in a skin coat, which had the appearance of a bullock’s hide, skullcap, horns and mask’. The ensuing investigation resulted in one Captain Finch being convicted on two counts of assaulting women. Some also blamed Spring-heeled Jack for the strange phenomenon of the ‘Devil’s Footprints’ – a 40-mile-long line of mysterious cloven hoof marks, mostly in single file, that appeared in the snow in Devon overnight in 1855. Whoever made the hoofprints seems to have been able to jump over rivers, haystacks and houses with ease.

Sightings of Spring-heeled Jack once more decreased until there was another panic in the 1870s. In 1872, the News of the World reported that Peckham was ‘in a state of commotion owing to what is known as the Peckham Ghost, a mysterious figure, quite alarming in appearance.’ This spectre, the paper claimed, was actually ‘Spring-heeled Jack, who terrified a past generation.’ The ghost was said to be tall and dressed in white. There were references to the phantom having a flaming face, the ability to leap fences and a fondness for wearing spring-heeled boots. In Sheffield, local residents began glimpsing a ‘Park Ghost’, who would also come to be identified with Spring-heeled Jack.

In one of his most infamous escapades, Jack was accused of harassing soldiers at the large military base in Aldershot, Surrey. At Aldershot’s North Camp one evening in March 1877, a sentry saw a strange figure emerge out of the darkness. The sentry shouted a challenge, but the figure strode straight up to him and slapped him several times across the face, with an icy corpse-like hand. Other soldiers fired at the intruder, but their bullets had no effect. The figure then vanished into the darkness ‘with astonishing bounds.’ More incidents occurred in April and the soldiers grew so unsettled that sentries were given live ammunition and told to shoot the ‘night terror’ on sight. But Jack would return to torment more sentries at the end of the summer. At Aldershot, Spring-heeled Jack is even said to have leapt the Basingstoke Canal – a channel 15 paces across.

In the autumn of 1877, Spring-heeled Jack appeared in Lincoln, wearing the skin of a sheep. A mob chased him, but with his usual bounds and jumps, Jack escaped. Jack apparently leapt distances of 20 feet or more as he sprang across rooftops and he even bounded right over a Roman monument called Newport Arch. A few citizens shot at him, but Jack seemed impervious to their bullets.

A somewhat sensationalist illustration of Spring-heeled Jack – in the guise of a bear – in Lincoln

In 1888, in the Everton district of Liverpool, Spring-heeled Jack was spotted on the roof of a church and – in 1904 – there were reports of him in the same city, in nearby William Henry Street. Here he is said to have taunted residents by bounding 25 feet up onto house roofs then jumping down into the street again. Locals described him as sporting a mask, long boots and a black cloak.

After the incident in William Henry Street, Jack seems to have faded into history and folklore, but I’ve found one reference to a hunt for Spring-heeled Jack in Glasgow as late as the 1930s. It’s not known if Jack was accused of committing any crimes against Glaswegians, but – interestingly – Glasgow seems to have been a frequent venue for ‘monster hunts’ in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The city saw searches for hobgoblins, banshees, maniacs and even a being known as the Gorbals Vampire, who was said to haunt Glasgow’s Southern Necropolis.

So Who, or What, Might Spring-heeled Jack Have Been?

A number of explanations have been put forward to account for the strange phenomenon of Spring-heeled Jack. Read on for ideas about mad marquesses, phantom attackers, mass hysteria, ghosts, devils and notions about how Jack might have sprung, evaded bullets and breathed fire.

Could Spring-heeled Jack Have Been the Consequence of an Aristocratic Bet?

The Marquess of Waterford in 1840. Could he have been Spring-heeled Jack?

Even at the time of his first assaults, most people didn’t consider Spring-heeled Jack to be a supernatural being, but rather an individual – or individuals – in disguise who had a macabre sense of humour. Many – like the writer of the letter to the Lord Mayor – suspected Jack’s outrages were perpetrated by a group of noblemen as part of a wager. Popular rumour pointed to the young Irish aristocrat the Marquess of Waterford as the main culprit.

The Marquess was frequently in the news for his drunken brawling, violent practical jokes and participation in outlandish bets. The term ‘paint the town red’ comes from an episode involving the Marquess and his friends. After finding some red paint lying around in Melton Mowbray, they went on a drunken rampage, daubing houses and pubs while beating and painting red any police officers who tried to stop them. 

There’s evidence the Marquess of Waterford might have been Spring-heeled Jack. The Marquess was famous for his disdain towards women. He already had a reputation for amusing himself by ‘springing on travellers unaware, to frighten them’ and he is known to have been in London around the time of the first Spring-heeled Jack assaults. The Marquess was noted as a sportsman, boxer and equestrian so – though no human could have performed Jack’s more outlandish feats – an athletic man like the Marquess may have been able to leap surprising distances and bound over gates. The boy in Turner Street, apparently, noticed a ‘W’ on Jack’s cloak as he fled.

As well as having the sadistic character and physical capabilities to undertake at least some of Spring-Heeled Jack’s crimes, the Marquess had the money and resources. In the days before mass public transport, few commoners would have had the cash or time to criss-cross London and its suburbs in the way Jack did, but this would have been less of a challenge for a nobleman in a coach. Wealth would also have been needed to procure items like suits of armour and bearskins. Many – including the authorities – felt a whole group of noblemen might be involved and there’s some evidence Jack didn’t act alone. Three men beat Jones the carpenter and Jane Alsop’s father suspected his daughter’s assailant may have had a helper.

The lull in Jack’s activities after 1839 could have resulted from the bet being fulfilled or those posing as Spring-heeled Jack becoming alarmed by the attention the press and police were focusing on the case. Imitators or spreading mass hysteria could then explain the later incidents.

The Marquess of Waterford may have carried out the earlier assaults – like those on Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales – but he couldn’t have been the perpetrator of Spring-heeled Jack’s later outrages. Around 1842, the Marquess seems to have reformed. He married and settled down in County Waterford, where he apparently led an exemplary life before dying in a riding accident in 1859.

Was Jack’s Legend the Product of Press Sensationalism and Mass Hysteria?

Even at the time of the early Spring-heeled Jack incidents, there was a certain amount of scepticism from the authorities and press. While many accepted that Jack’s escapades may have resulted from a sinister wager, some sightings of ‘Jack’ and some of the powers ascribed to him were suspected of being the product of an over-excited popular imagination.

Investigations by journalists showed that the glimpses of Jack in the form of ‘a large white bull’ were caused by nothing more uncanny than a white-faced heifer. Some of the accounts of ‘ghosts’ were shown to stem from the sight of a police officer in a white uniform on a horse. The reports of Jack scaling the walls of Kensington Palace to dance on its lawns were found to be inspired by an unrelated episode from 1822. As Jack’s fame expanded, it seems that a number of sexual assaults, crimes and acts of hooliganism – which, while distressing for their victims, weren’t exceptional in themselves – were added in the popular mind to Jack’s reign of terror. In addition, pranksters, criminals and sexual predators appear to have mimicked aspects of Jack’s legend to disorientate and terrify their victims.

Though some pressmen may have been sceptical about Jack, others were less so. The more outlandish accounts of Jack’s escapades in Lincoln, for example, come from The Illustrated Police News, a publication that reported crimes in a sensationalist and sometimes exaggerated manner.

There was also the influence of the numerous plays and penny dreadfuls churned out about Jack. These may have reminded people about Jack’s legend at times when it was fading from the collective memory. The play Spring-heel’d Jack or the Felon’s Wrongs was staged in 1863 while 1867 saw the release of the penny dreadful Spring-heel’d Jack, the Terror of London, A Romance of the Nineteenth Century. Another 40-part penny dreadful was published in 1863 and reprinted in 1867. Could these plays and publications have resurrected Jack in the popular mind and helped inspire the outbreak of sightings in the 1870s? More plays and pamphlets appeared between the mid-1880s and early 1900s. Could these have contributed to the reports of Jack’s final outrages around the turn of the century?

Spring-heeled Jack in the 1867 penny dreadful series ‘Spring-heeled Jack: The Terror of London’

Certain incidents weren’t even seen as the work of Spring-heeled Jack until declared so by the press. The case of the ‘Peckham Ghost’ of 1872 was extensively covered by two local papers, but they simply described this entity as a ‘ghost’ and made no mention of Spring-heeled Jack. The Peckham incidents were only linked to Jack – no doubt helping to reawaken memories of him – by the national papers The News of the World and The Illustrated Police News.

Later writers may also be guilty of exaggerating Jack’s legend. Mike Dash – in his excellent long essay Spring-heeled Jack: To Victorian Bugaboo from Suburban Ghost – suspects Peter Haining, the author of the 1977 book The Legend and Bizarre Crimes of Spring-heeled Jack, of embellishing or even making up a number of incidents. Dash has found absolutely no contemporary reports of the attack on Polly Adams on Blackheath and suspects Haining’s account of it may be an attempt to push his theory that the Marquess of Waterford was Spring-heeled Jack. Dash even suspects that the aristocratic ‘W’ seen on Jack’s cloak in Turner Street might be an invention of Haining’s.

Dash has also been unable to find any contemporary references to the murder of the prostitute Maria Davis, an incident that features prominently in Haining’s book. Dash suspects the Maria Davis story may have come from a woodcut showing two men in a boat apparently recovering a prostitute’s body from Folly Ditch. A closer examination rather suggests they are collecting drinking water.

Are these men pulling a body from Folly Ditch or just collecting water?

 Alarming – though not particularly uncanny episodes – have sometimes been incorporated into the Spring-heeled Jack myth. The stories of Jack’s activities in Liverpool in 1904 seem to have their source in the behaviour of a mentally ill man. 60 years after the events, a Mrs Pierpont, who had lived in the neighbourhood all her life, said ‘Jack’ was a local man who ‘was slightly off-balance mentally …. He had a form of religious mania and he would climb on to the rooftops of houses crying out: “My wife is the Devil!”’

‘They usually fetched police or a fire-engine ladder to get him down. As the police closed in on him, he would leap from one house roof to the next. That’s what gave rise to the Spring-heeled Jack rumours.’

It does seem, however, that some of the Spring-heeled Jack incidents really did occur and really were something out-of-the-ordinary, especially the assaults on Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales. But even here, there seem to be some discrepancies about what Jack actually did. Jane and her sisters, for instance, insisted that Jack had breathed fire while two eye-witnesses – men called Richardson and Smith – maintained that Jack didn’t belch any flames.

Smith said, ‘I saw no light but that of a candle’ and Richardson reportedly stated that the assault on Jane didn’t ‘impress him with the idea that it had been so furious as he subsequently saw it described in the newspapers.’    

What Could Explain Jack’s Leaps, Fiery Breath and Other Startling Characteristics?

Some of Jack’s outlandish attributes – his ability to make massive leaps, his fire-breathing, his metal claws, his apparent imperviousness to bullets – seem so impressive that people have wondered whether he was in some way supernatural or not of this world. Later writers have speculated that Spring-heeled Jack might have been an alien – perhaps from a planet with stronger gravity than our own – or that he could have been a demon summoned, deliberately or accidently, by occultists.

During the Victorian era, Jack was mostly seen as human though the frequent references to him as a ‘ghost’ or ‘devil’ do suggest some suspected his powers might have uncanny origins. But could there be any rational explanations for the astounding abilities Jack was credited with?

Spring-heeled Jack’s Fiery Breath

One of Spring-heeled Jack’s most alarming features was his fire-breathing. Only four incidents, however, are said to have involved Jack belching flames – the Polly Adams and Maria Davis attacks (which might not have occurred) and the assaults on Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales. As we’ve seen, there’s some debate about whether the Alsop assault involved fire, but – assuming Jack did breathe fire during the attacks on Jane and Lucy – how could he have managed it?

It’s likely Jack used a fire-breathing trick of the kind performed in circuses and at carnivals, by filling his mouth with a flammable fluid and spurting it onto a flame. This could explain the blue-and-white colour of Jack’s fire. In the attacks on Jane and Lucy, Jack needed a flame to pull off his trick – he asked Jane for a candle and he was holding a lamp when he assaulted Lucy. In both attacks, he is said to have held the light at the level of his chest, which is what fire-breathers do. The police at the time suspected Jack was using some sort of carnival technique and they talked to circus fire-breathers to try to work out how he could have done it.

This sort of stunt would be very dangerous. Because the slightest breeze can result in the flame igniting the liquid while still in the fire-breather’s mouth, the trick is usually only performed indoors. The evenings when Jack attacked Jane and Lucy seem to have been calm, but perhaps the hazards of such a prank meant Jack wasn’t keen to undertake it more than twice. After the attacks on Lucy and Jane, he may have decided to lay aside the flame-spurting part of his repertoire or given up his attacks altogether, to be replaced by lesser imitators incapable of fire-breathing. Jack’s costume of a helmet and white oil-skin may have been designed to lessen his risk of injury if an accident did occur.

It’s unlikely that Jack breathed fire straight into his victims’ faces. This would have resulted in horrendous injuries, but there’s no record of Jane or Lucy receiving burns and Lucy is said to have only been blinded temporarily. If Jack did breathe fire, the reports of him vomiting flames directly into faces are probably exaggerations. 

Spring-heeled Jack’s Leaping Abilities

What could explain Spring-heeled Jack’s incredible leaps?

If attempted by humans, Jack’s most spectacular leaps – jumping over high walls and down from roofs – would have led to smashed ankle bones.

In the earlier accounts of Spring-heeled Jack, his leaps – while impressive – are often less incredible than those of his later career. Sometimes, he didn’t leap at all. Following the attack on Lucy, Jack just strode off; after the assault on Jane, he merely ‘scampered away across the fields.’ But Jack’s leaping abilities were soon emphasised. This could have been the result of exaggerations among the public – as in the 1904 Liverpool case – or in the press, as in the Illustrated Police News account of Jack in Lincoln. Some of his most spectacular jumping feats don’t appear until they’re featured in accounts written years after the incidents they proport to describe. There are no contemporary records of Jack leaping the Basingstoke Canal – such a claim doesn’t appear until 1907, three decades after the events at Aldershot.

An interesting account of Spring-heeled Jack was given by a lady who claimed to have seen him fleeing across Tooting Bec Common. The lady observed Jack ‘jumping over good-sized furze bushes and clumps of grass with no apparent effort, though she came to the conclusion that any greater leap would have been impossible. He was doing far more than any ordinary man could have accomplished without mechanical aid, but nothing resembling the exploits with which he had been credited by rumour. Had a good horse been near, he could have been overtaken, but as it was, he escaped, the mist and gathering night helping him.’

Might Jack have been a vigorous and athletic young man, whose leaping feats, though astonishing, didn’t become superhuman until they were exaggerated?

It’s also unlikely that Jack wore spring-heeled boots. Such boots would only be of use on firm, fairly even ground and many of Jack’s exploits took place on the rougher terrain of parkland, heaths, fields, county lanes and badly paved city alleys. In addition, springs wouldn’t have been powerful enough propel Jack over high walls and houses.

Jack’s Talons and Imperviousness to Bullets

Spring-heeled Jack’s metal talons are easy to explain – they could have been fitted to specially designed gloves. What’s more puzzling is Jack’s apparent ability to deflect bullets.

In Lincoln, (assuming Jack was fired at and such accounts aren’t exaggerations) the locals’ pot shots may have missed or been deflected by Jack’s sheepskin. But in the Aldershot case, it seems stranger that Jack could have dodged the bullets of trained soldiers.

When Jack first appeared at the base, the shots fired at him were blanks. Jack was fired on with real bullets when he turned up again in April 1877, but escaped harm thanks to poor shooting on the part of startled sentries.

The Times reported, ‘A soldier, in his excitement, loaded his rifle, fired but missed his aim. From here, the ghost went towards the military cemetery and in a similar manner attempted to frighten a private … and was fired at again, but without being hit.’

By the time Jack returned at the end of summer, the guards were no longer using live ammunition. According to the Illustrated Police News, sentries had ‘been ordered to fire on the ghost, and were loaded with ball, but this precaution being lately given up, Jack pursued his old tactics on Friday last …’

This suggests Jack was aware of the order to use live rounds and also knew when that order was rescinded. This leads one to suspect Jack had inside knowledge of the workings of the camp and was probably a soldier stationed at Aldershot.

It’s likely the Aldershot Jack was a young, athletic army officer fond of playing pranks on his fellow soldiers. Some serving at Aldershot had their suspicions about Jack’s identity.

A retired colonel, looking back 30 years later, said, ‘The pranks were popularly attributed to a lively young officer of the Rifles … a very big, powerful man, extraordinarily active … he certainly was not convicted of them and I do not know that he ever acknowledged himself to be Spring-heeled Jack.’  

Spring-heeled Jack’s Legend Could Be Built on Strong Urban Traditions of Ghosts, Devils and Phantom Attackers

The tales of Spring-heeled Jack could have been influenced by earlier urban legends of ghosts, devils and bogeys. Jack’s outrages likely reawakened such terrors in the collective mind. These terrors then became linked to Jack’s myth, strengthening it further.

London has a long folklore of ghosts haunting its streets – pale, human-like entities that assault lone travellers. In 1803-4 and again in 1824, a being known as the Hammersmith Ghost was said to rove the city’s western fringes. This spectre – suspected to be the spirit of a local suicide – was accused of attacking pedestrians. The ghost had similarities to Spring-heeled Jack. He was described as being very tall and dressed in white clothes, over which he wore a long dark coat with shiny buttons. Other descriptions have the ghost sporting a cow-skin, horns and large glass eyes. Like Jack, the Hammersmith Ghost was good at outrunning and evading pursuers and several of his victims were said to have died of shock. Another famous urban spectre was the Southampton Ghost. This phantom was said to be 10 feet (3 metres) tall and – like Spring-heeled Jack – fond of jumping over houses. Jack’s ‘ghostly’ aspects can also be seen in the fact he never seemed to age. He was just as athletic and vigorous in the 1870s as when he first emerged in 1837.

Spring-heeled Jack in the guise of a ghost

Another ‘ghostly’ or ‘devilish’ aspect of Jack was his ability to manifest in different forms. In addition to his spring-heeled persona, he could appear as a white-sheeted ghost, a bull, a bear, a devil or ‘an unearthly warrior clad in armour of polished brass’. Sometimes Jack even mixed his personas – for example, appearing as an armoured man draped in a bearskin and sporting horns.

This drew on an old tradition that evil spirits often disguised their identities, including by masquerading as animals. So it would have seemed less puzzling to the Victorians than to us that Jack could assume different forms while remaining the same entity. Jack’s flaming breath and occasional cloven hooves also drew on traditional representations of devils and demons. The animal hides Jack sometimes sported reflect ancient associations between animal skins and fertility, especially the skins of bulls. Such associations emphasised Jack’s sexually predatory characteristics. Jack’s sexually aggressive imitator Captain Finch wore a bull’s hide.

Spring-heeled Jack’s devil-like aspect is depicted by the sensationalist ‘Illustrated Police News’.

Spring-heeled Jack also fits into the tradition of ‘phantom attackers’: criminals that – though human – are so sadistic and strange they have an aura of the uncanny or demonic. One of Jack’s predecessors was the London Monster, a man reported to have stabbed over 50 women between 1788 and 1790. Some accounts of the Monster claimed he had knives attached to his knees, others that he hid blades in bunches of flowers, which he then encouraged women to smell.  

Another assault by a ‘phantom attacker’ is said to have occurred in 1826. A young man walking down Commercial Road at midnight was attacked by a cloaked and masked individual with cloven hooves for feet. The attacker grasped the man and squeezed him against his body, which seemed to be on fire. During his desperate struggles, the badly burned victim pulled the mask away to find his assailant was his younger brother.

Many of Jack’s characteristics seem to stem from universally held architypes of springing, devil-like, sometimes fire-breathing characters who leap out of the darkness to attack or terrify their victims. Accounts of Spring-heeled-Jack-like creatures can be found in various parts of the world. In 1926, a ‘ghost’ plagued Bradford’s Grafton Street. The ghost – described as tall, athletic, ‘glowing’ and ‘on springs’ – escaped his pursuers by bounding over rooftops.

In 1951, a tall, thin, cloaked spectre haunted a housing project in Baltimore. This highly athletic entity was fond of leaping onto rooftops and scaling high walls. A being known as the ‘Black Flash’ or ‘Phantom’ menaced Provincetown, Cape Cod, from 1938 to 1944. Black Flash was said to jump incredible distances and spit blue flames. He had eyes like balls of fire and some suspected he wore springs on his feet.

During the Second World War, a ‘Spring Man’ was rumoured to roam the blacked-out streets of Prague, leaping at passers-by from alleyways. In the 1950s, white-clad, hopping, mannequin-like creatures caused a panic in East Germany. In 2001, mass hysteria was sparked by a ‘Monkey Man’, who apparently attacked people in Delhi at night. Victims described the Monkey Man as having glowing red eyes and metal claws. He was said to wear a helmet and tight-fitting clothes and to be capable of leaping four storeys.

So What’s the Conclusion? What Could Account for the Strange Phenomenon of Spring-heeled Jack?

I suspect there was a ‘real’ Spring-heeled Jack – active around 1837 and 1838 – and that this Jack was definitely human. The original Jack was probably responsible for the assaults on Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales and for some of the other outrages that occurred around that time. It’s likely Jack and his cronies were young rich men – possibly engaged in a bizarre wager – and that Jack was exceptionally athletic. Jack may have also been capable of fire-breathing tricks.

The sheer strangeness of Jack’s assaults caused an upsurge of mass hysteria, rumours, exaggerations and press sensationalism. Pranksters aped some of Jack’s actions while crimes carried out by ordinary criminals and sex offenders were blamed on Spring-heeled Jack, further fuelling his notoriety. Penny dreadfuls and lurid plays amplified Jack’s fame as did embellishments by authors writing years after the events.

Jack’s antics dredged up archetypes of devils, ghosts and sadists from the collective memory, adding even more sinister colour to his legend. At times of panic, trauma or uncertainty, such archetypes can indeed coalesce around certain folkloric figures, figures that soon take on aspects of the myth-drenched past. Examples of such beings that have – like Jack – incongruously appeared in relatively modern epochs include the Highgate Vampire, the Manchester Mummy and the Cardiff Giant.

But perhaps Spring-heeled Jack – as an updated ‘devil’ or ‘phantom’ – was also a personification of the injustices and cruelties of the Victorian era, representing the tendencies of the rich and powerful to prey on lower social classes and men to prey on women. In addition, Jack – with his iron claws, metal springs and chemical breath – could be seen as a spectre of the emerging machine age, personifying the dangers of urban life in a rapidly industrialising country.

Though Jack’s fame has faded somewhat, he has featured over the years in comics, novels, TV programmes, video games and films. In parts of Britain, he has lingered on as a bogeyman figure, threatening to spring in through the windows of children who refuse to go to bed. One Exeter man recalled:

‘My maternal grandmother, who died at an advanced age, was accustomed to tell me, when I was a little lad, uncanny stories about Spring-heeled Jack, who, she asserted, was the Marquess of Waterford. The monster was credited with hiding at night in dark and lonely places and, when some chance pedestrian came along (by preference a solitary female), Spring-heeled Jack would suddenly leap out at one bound, and pin his unlucky victim to the ground.’

(This article’s main image is courtesy of Fortean Slip, from YouTube)

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