Miller’s Tomb
John Oliver built his tomb, known as the ‘Miller’s Tomb’, at Highdown Hill while he was still alive. It is said that he wanted to be buried in it upside down so as to...
Category: Folklore
Th’ Pob Hole, Springhead
A pit in a farmer’s field at Springhead called ‘Th’ Pob Hole’ was thought to be a dark place where a local witch named Nan o’ Pob’s committed suicide. Her ghost is said to...
Broadwater Midsummer Skeleton Dance Oak
‘There stood, and still may stand, upon the downs, close to Broadwater, an old oak-tree, that I used, in days gone by, to gaze at with an uncomfortable and suspicious look from having heard...
The Loch Light of Rannoch
In his book ‘The Peat-fire Flame’ (1937), Alasdair Alpin MacGregor refers to a strange experience around Loch Rannoch. ‘A phenomenon…..is associated with Loch Rannoch, where a light in the form of a ball sometimes...
The Chagford Pixies
According to Sarah Hewett in her ‘Nummits and Crummits’ published in (1900), ‘As a gentleman, late at night, was driving across the moor to Chagford, a village in mid-Devon, he was startled by the...
The Great Paw
A common story in the Highlands is recounted here by John Gregorson Campbell in his 1902 book ‘Witchcraft & Second Sight in the Highlands & Islands’. ‘In the big church of Beauly (Eaglais mhor...
The Apparition In A Dornoch Kirkyard
Dating from the13th century, the parish church in Dornoch is a Cathedral in name only and was historically the seat for the Bishop of Caithness until the 17th century. In his book The Peat-fire...
Fairies Foiling A Pig Theft
In her ‘Some West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868’, Mrs Latham recounts the following story. ‘There is an unromantic fairy-tale told in our nurseries the scene of which is laid in West Sussex, how,...
Osmotherley
According to The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England by Robert Charles Hope (1893). ‘The village of Osmotherley is seven miles from Northallerton in the Cleveland hillside. Tradition has it that Osmund,...
Major Peter Labilliere, Box Hill
‘According to local folklore, an eccentric sword-wielding officer, Major Peter Labelliere, roams the summit by his grave, where he was buried upside down, as instructed in his will, in 1800.’ [Surrey Life, ‘Surrey’s most...
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