THE HEADLESS GHOST
Localities where any fatal accident has happened, or murder been
committed, are frequently supposed to be haunted by that uncanny
apparition known as 'the headless ghost.' Many curious tales are still
told by the peasantry of this mysterious spectre, whose weird movements
have long been the subject of comment. Sir Walter Scott, it may be
remembered, speaking of the Irish dullahan, writes: 'It puts me in
mind of a spectre at Drumlanrick Castle, of no less a person than the
Duchess of Queensberry--"Fair Kitty, blooming, young, and gay"--who,
instead of setting fire to the world in mama's chariot, amuses herself
with wheeling her own head in a wheelbarrow through the great gallery.'
But it has often puzzled the folk-lorist why ghosts should assume this
form, although the idea is by no means a modern one, for, as Dr. Tylor
has pointed out,[145] a people of wide celebrity are Pliny's Blemmyæ,
said 'to be headless, and accordingly to have their mouths and eyes in
their breasts--creatures over whom Prester John reigned in Asia, and
who dwelt far and wide in South America.' Stories, too, like that of
St. Denis, who is said to have walked from Paris, _sans tête_, to the
place which bears his name, show that the living, as well as the dead,
occasionally managed to do without their heads--a strange peculiarity
which Kornmann, in his 'De Miraculis Vivorum,' would attempt to account
for philosophically. Princess Marie Lichtenstein, in her 'History of
Holland House,' tells us that one room of this splendid old mansion
is believed to be haunted by Lord Holland, the first of his name, and
the chief builder of Holland House. To quote her words, 'The gilt
room is said to be tenanted by the solitary ghost of its just lord,
who, according to tradition, issues forth at midnight from behind a
secret door, and walks slowly through the scenes of former triumphs
with his head in his hand. To add to this mystery, there is a tale of
three spots of blood on one side of the recess whence he issues--three
spots which can never be effaced.' Such a strange act, on the part of
the dead, is generally regarded as a very bad omen. The time of the
headless ghost's appearance is always midnight, and in Crofton Croker's
'Fairy Legends of Ireland' it is thus described:
'Tis midnight; how gloomy and dark!
By Jupiter, there's not a star!
'Tis fearful! 'tis awful! and hark!
What sound is that comes from afar?
A coach! but the coach has no head;
And the horses are headless as it,
Of the driver the same may be said,
And the passengers inside who sit.
According to the popular opinion, there is no authority to prove that
headless people are unable to speak; on the contrary, a variation
of the story of 'The Golden Mountain,' given in a note to the
'Kindermärchen,' relates how a servant without a head informed the
fisherman (who was to achieve the adventure) of the enchantment of
the king's daughter, and of the mode of liberating her. There is the
Belludo, a Spanish ghost mentioned by Washington Irving in his 'Tales
of the Alhambra.' It issues forth in the dead of night, and scours the
avenues of the Alhambra, and the streets of Granada, in the shape of
a headless horse, pursued by six hounds, with terrible yellings and
howlings. It is said to be the spirit of a Moorish king, who killed
his six sons, who, in revenge, hunt him in the shape of hounds at
night-time.
In some cases, as it has been humorously observed, the headless ghosts
of well-known persons have continued to set up their carriage after
death. Thus, for years past, it has been firmly believed that Lady Anne
Boleyn rides down the avenue of Blickling Park once a year, with her
bloody head in her lap, sitting in a hearse-like coach drawn by four
headless horses, and attended by coachmen and attendants, who have, out
of compliment to their mistress, also left their heads behind them.
Nor, if tradition is to be believed, is her father more at rest than
she, for Sir Thomas Boleyn is said to be obliged to cross forty bridges
to avoid the torments of the furies. Like his daughter, he is reported
to drive about in a coach and four with headless horses, carrying
his head under his arm.[146] Young Lord Dacre, who is said to have
been murdered at Thetford, through the contrivance of his guardian,
Sir Richard Fulmerston, in 1569, by the falling of a wooden horse,
purposely rendered insecure, used to prance up and down on the ghost of
a headless rocking-horse.
Another romantic story is told[147] of a large field at Great Melton,
divided from the Yare by a plantation, along which the old Norwich road
ran. 'Close to the edge of where the road is said to have run is a deep
pit or hole of water, locally reputed to be fathomless. Every night
at midnight, and every day at noon, a carriage drawn by four horses,
driven by headless coachmen and footmen, and containing four headless
ladies in white, rises silently and dripping wet from the pool, flits
stately and silently round the field, and sinks as silently into the
pool again.' The story goes that long, long ago, a bridal party driving
along the old Norwich Road were accidentally upset into the deep
hole, and were never seen again. Strangely enough the same story is
told of fields near Bury St. Edmunds, and at Leigh, Dorsetshire.[148]
Another Norfolk story, amusingly told by the late Cuthbert Bede,[149]
informs us how, 'on the anniversary of the death of the gentleman whose
spectre he is supposed to be, his ghostship drives up to his old family
mansion. He drives through the wall, carriage and horses and all, and
is not seen again for a twelvemonth. He leaves, however, the traces
of his visit behind him; for, in the morning, the stones of the wall
through which he had ridden over-night are found to be loosened and
fallen; and though the wall is constantly repaired, yet the stones are
as constantly loosened.' In the little village of Acton, Suffolk, it
was currently reported not many years ago that on certain occasions
the park gates were wont to fly open at midnight 'withouten hands,'
and that a carriage drawn by four spectral horses, and accompanied by
headless grooms and outriders, proceeded with great rapidity from the
park to a spot called 'the nursery corner,' a spot where tradition
affirms a very bloody engagement took place in olden times, when the
Romans were governors of England.[150] A similar tale is related of
Caistor Castle, the seat of the Falstofs, where the headless apparition
drives round the courtyard, and carries away some unearthly visitors.
At Beverley, in Yorkshire, the headless ghost of Sir Joceline Percy
drives four headless horses at night, above its streets, passing over
a certain house which was said to contain a chest with one hundred
nails in it, one of which dropped out every year. The reason assigned
for this nocturnal disturbance is attributed to the fact that Sir
Joceline once rode on horseback into Beverley Minster. It has long been
considered dangerous to meet such spectral teams, for fear of being
carried off by them, so violent and threatening are their movements. In
'Rambles in Northumberland' we are told how, 'when the death-hearse,
drawn by headless horses, and driven by a headless driver, is seen
about midnight proceeding rapidly, but without noise, towards the
churchyard, the death of some considerable personage in the parish is
sure to happen at no distant period.'
Night after night, too, when it is sufficiently dark, the headless
coach whirls along the rough approach to Langley Hall, near Durham,
drawn by black and fiery steeds; and many years ago a headless boggart
was supposed to haunt Preston streets and neighbouring lanes. Its
presence was often accompanied by the rattling of chains. It presently
changed its form, and whether it appeared as a woman or a black dog,
it was always headless. The story went that this uncanny apparition
was at length 'laid' by some magical or religious ceremony in Walton
churchyard.[151]
Many spots where suicides have been buried are supposed to be
haunted by headless ghosts attired in white grave-clothes. Some few
years ago, as a peasant was passing in a waggon with three horses a
'four-lane-end' in Lyneal Lane, Ellesmere, Shropshire, where a man was
buried with a forked stake run through the body to keep it down, a
woman was seen without a head. The horses took fright, and started off,
overturning the waggon, and pitching the man into the Drumby Hole,
where the waggon and shaft-horse fell upon him. The other horses broke
loose and galloped home, where they arrived covered with foam, and on
a search being made, the dead body of the waggoner was found in the
hole.[152] Exactly twelve months afterwards, his son, it is said, was
killed by the same horses on the same spot. As Miss Jackson points out,
the headless ghost in this story is of a different sex from the person
whose death is supposed to cause its restlessness. The same, she adds,
is the case 'with the ghost of the Mary Way, a now almost forgotten
spectre of more than a hundred years ago. The figure of a woman in
white was supposed to haunt the spot where a murderer was buried--more
probably a suicide--at the cross roads about two miles from Wenlock, on
the Bridgnorth road, which is known as the "Mary Way," no doubt from
some chapel, or processional route, in honour of the Virgin.' Another
story is told of the Baschurch neighbourhood, where the ghost of a man
who hanged himself at Nesscliff is to be seen 'riding about in his trap
at night without a head.'
A tragic case is recorded by Crofton Croker, who tells how, many
years ago, a clergyman belonging to St. Catharine's Church, Dublin,
resided at the old Castle of Donore, in the vicinity of that city.
From melancholy, or some other cause, he put an end to his existence
by hanging himself out of a window near the top of the castle. After
his death, a coach, sometimes driven by a coachman without a head, and
occasionally drawn by headless horses, was observed at night driving
furiously by Roper's Rest.
Referring to spots where murders have taken place, a Shropshire
tradition informs us how, at a certain house at Hampton's Wood, near
Ellesmere, six illegitimate children were murdered by their parents,
and buried in a garden. But, soon after this unnatural event, a
ghost in the form of a man, sometimes headless, at other times not
so, haunted the stables, rode the horses to water, and talked to
the waggoner. Once it appeared to a young lady who was passing on
horseback, and rode before her on her horse. Eventually, after much
difficulty, this troublesome ghost was laid, but 'the poor minister was
so exhausted by the task that he died.'[153]
There is a haunted room at Walton Abbey frequented by a spectre known
as 'The Headless Nun of Walton.' The popular belief is that this is the
unquiet spirit of a transgressing nun of the twelfth century, but some
affirm it to be that of a lady brutally beheaded in the seventeenth
century.[154] Another instance is that of Calverley Hall, in the same
county. In 'The Yorkshireman' for January 5, 1884, the particulars of
this strange apparition are given, from which it appears that Walter
Calverley, on April 23, 1604, went into a fit of insane frenzy of
jealousy, or pretended to do so. Money-lenders were pressing him hard,
and he had become desperate. Rushing madly into the house, he plunged a
dagger into one and then into another of his children, and then tried
to take the life of their mother, a crime for which he was pressed to
death at York Castle. But his spirit could not rest, and he was often
seen galloping about the district at night on a headless horse, being
generally accompanied by a number of followers similarly mounted, who
attempted to run down any poor benighted folks whom they chanced to
meet. These spectral horsemen nearly always disappeared in a cave in
the wood, but this cave has now been quarried away.[155]
It would seem that in years gone by one of the punishments assigned
to evil doers guilty of a lesser crime than that of murder, was their
ceaselessly frequenting those very spots where in their lifetime they
had committed their wicked acts, carrying their heads under their arms.
Numerous tales of this kind have been long current on the Continent,
and at the present day are told by the simple-minded peasantry of many
a German village with the most implicit faith. It is much the same
in this country, and Mr. Henderson[156] has given several amusing
anecdotes. At Dalton, near Thirsk, there was an old barn, said to be
haunted by a headless woman. One night a tramp went into it to sleep;
at midnight he was awakened by a light, and, sitting up, he saw a
woman coming towards him from the end of the barn, holding her head
in her hands like a lantern, with light streaming out of the eyes,
nostrils, and mouth. Hunt, too, in his 'Popular Romances,' notices this
superstition as existing in the West of England; and Mrs. Latham, in
her 'Sussex Superstitions,' tells us how spirits are reported to walk
about without their heads; others carry them under their arms; and one
haunting a dark lane is said to have 'a ball of fire upon its shoulders
in lieu of the natural finial.' At Haddington, Worcestershire, there
is an avenue of trees locally known as 'Lady Winter's Walk,' where, it
is said, the lady of Thomas Winter, who was obliged to conceal himself
on account of his share in the Gunpowder Plot, was in the habit of
awaiting her husband's further visits, and here the headless spectre of
her ladyship used to be seen occasionally pacing up and down beneath
the sombre shade of the aged trees.
Lady Wilde[157] has given a laughable specimen of the headless ghost as
believed in by the Irish peasantry. One Denis Molony, a cow-jobber, was
on his way to the great fair at Navan when he was overtaken by night.
He laid down under a hedge, but 'at that moment a loud moaning and
screaming came to his ear, and a woman rushed past him all in white,
as if a winding sheet were round her, and her cries of despair were
terrible to hear. Then, after her, a great black coach came thundering
along the road, drawn by two black horses. But when Denis looked close
at them he saw that the horses had no heads, and the coachman had no
head; and out sprang two men from the coach, and they had no heads
either; and they seized the woman and carried her by force into the
carriage and drove off.'
It appears that the woman Denis saw was 'an evil liver and a wicked
sinner, and no doubt the devils were carrying her off from the
churchyard, for she had been buried that morning. To make sure, they
went next morning to the churchyard to examine the grave, and there,
sure enough, was the coffin, but it was open, and not a trace of the
dead woman was to be seen. So they knew that an evil fate had come on
her, and that her soul was gone to eternal tortures.'[158]
Connected also with the legend of the headless ghost is the old belief
that persons prior to their death occasionally appear to their friends
without their heads. Dr. Ferrier, in his 'Theory of Apparitions,' tells
of an old Northern chieftain who informed a relative of his 'that
the door of the room in which they and some ladies were sitting had
appeared to open, and that a little woman without a head had entered
the room; and that the apparition indicated the sudden death of some
person of his acquaintance.' The 'Glasgow Chronicle' (January, 1826)
records how, on the occasion of some silk-weavers being out of work,
mourning-coaches drawn by headless horses were seen about the town;
and some years ago a very unpleasant kind of headless ghost used to
drive every Saturday night through the town of Doneraile, Ireland,
and to stop at the doors of different houses, when, if anyone were so
foolhardy as to open the door, a basin of blood was instantly flung in
his face.
FOOTNOTES:
[145] _Primitive Culture_, i. p. 390.
[146] See _The Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany_, 1877, i. pp. 288, 289.
[147] _Eastern Counties Collectanea_, p. 3.
[148] See _Notes and Queries_, 1st S. xii. p. 486, for another hole or
pit story.
[149] _The Curate of Cranston, and other Stories_, 1862, 'Carriage and
Four Ghosts.'
[150] _Notes and Queries_, 1st S. v. p. 295.
[151] Hardwick's _Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-lore_, p. 130.
[152] _Shropshire Folk-lore_, p. 112.
[153] _Shropshire Folk-lore_, pp. 113, 114.
[154] A full account will be found in a paper by Mr. F. Ross, in the
_Leeds Mercury_, 1884, entitled 'Yorkshire Legends and Traditions.'
[155] See Ingram's _Haunted Homes_, 2nd S. pp. 72-78.
[156] _Folk-lore of the Northern Counties_, pp. 326-328.
[157] _Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland_, pp. 163, 164.
[158] See notes to Crofton Croker's _Fairy Legends and Traditions of
the South of Ireland_, where much curious information will be found on
this subject.