The Chained Skeleton in the Pond
Here’s some dark lore about a shackled skeleton found in a South Norfolk (UK) duckpond.
I’m back doing my short dark folklore and history videos on YouTube so here’s the (sort-of) script for my latest offering…
The video starts with a shot of the rural landscape and I say:
“These are the grounds of Geldeston Hall in South Norfolk, just a few hundred yards away from the River Waveney. Today the Hall, which still in private ownership, is the home to numerous equestrian events including showjumping and cross-country. The cross-country course also includes a water-jump — where the horses basically race through a small pond — and it is this pond that’s the focus of our attention today because back in the first half of the 19th century — so about 200 years ago — this pond was known as a horse pond, where local farm labourers would take horses both to drink and to wash them.
“At the time the pond periodically flooded so the parish council arranged for it to dug out and deepened. To the farm labourers’ horror their diggings uncovered a human skeleton that had been buried by several feet of mud. But this was no ordinary skeleton because a large piece of millstone had been chained around its neck.
“Some of the older members of the village recalled that many years earlier — in the latter half of the 18th century — there had been a ‘wicked felon’ who had either died, been killed or executed — who was to be buried at a nearby crossroads but instead was laid to rest in the pond. The then rector of Geldeston (in other words the local parson) agreed that the millstone should be removed and the skeleton buried on the north side of the churchyard.
“Back in the 19th century, the north side of the churchyard was still known as the Devil’s Side of the church — a place where traditionally only evil doers, the excommunicated and the unbaptised would be buried. Very often this part of the churchyard was not even consecrated however in modern times this tradition has been abandoned and now all parts of a parish churchyard are treated equally.
“But now back to our newly buried wicked felon. No sooner than the skeleton been laid beneath the soil than its ghost began to walk every night, haunting the fields between the churchyard and the old horse pond. Not everyone could see the ghost but they could hear it rattling its chains! This apparently continued for many years but eventually, as so often happens with older ghost stories, the haunting gradually faded away to become just another dark rural folklore memory.
“Annoyingly further details about the background to this story are unavailable. Who was this wicked felon? What had he done? And why was he to be buried at the crossroads? This was usually the fate of suicides in England until well into the 19th century. The fact he was also described as a wicked felon suggests he may have been a highwayman or a murderer who had committed suicide rather than be captured and taken alive for his crimes.”
You can find the link to the YouTube video here: https://youtu.be/tdoon1hqNP4
