Owd Nance and her skull

This takes place around Burton Agnes Hall in Yorkshire. Burton Agnes Hall is between Bridington and Driffield, and was originally built by three sisters. They never married and inherited a good deal of money from their father, and at the urging of Anne built the hall to suit their wealth and standing. Anne organized almost everything to do with the hall’s construction, hiring architects, craftsmen, and watched over their work like a hawk. Anne was called “Owd Nance” by those who lived in the area, and they believe she watches over and haunts the place still.

One day shortly after the house was finished Anne went to visit a family who lived in a nearby town. She walked with her dog the mile or so to the village of Harpham, and set of home at night fall, as she got to St. John’s Well she saw two tramps lying on the grass near the side of the well. As she got closer to the tramps and saw how rough-looking they were she got more and more nervous given it was well known that many tramps made their way by robbing defenseless people in out of the way places such as the one she was in. But then that was why she had brought her dog with her, to protect her, so she carried on. The tramps stood up and begged for money, figuring that she should keep in their good graces, she gave them a few coins, but as she was doing so they saw the ring that she was wearing and demanded she give them it as well.

Anne refused. She had inherited the ring from her dead mother and so it was precious to her.

The tramps didn’t care. They demanded again that she give them the ring or they would take it by force. Then one of them grabbed her hand and tried to take the ring from her finger anyway. They fought, the dog barked and tried to bite the tramps, while one of them held on to Anne the other drove the dog away. Anne screamed and shouted for help. The tramp then yelled at her to be quiet and hit her on the head with the stick he’d been attacking the dog with. Anne fell to the ground, unconscious from the blow, but her screams had alerted people in the village and the tramps ran off without their prize.

The villagers found Anne, still unconscious, with a gaping wound on her head. They carried her body back to Harpham Hall and nursed her. The next day, although weak, she had recovered enough to be taken back to her home, where she was put to bed as soon as she arrived.

For many days Anne lay in pain, she continued to weaken despite the attention of her sisters and the best doctors in Yorkshire. During her days of illness she spoke often of the house that she had been so involved in building and how much she loved the place. When she was close to death she called her sisters to her and told them, “I shall never sleep peacefully in my grave unless a part of me, at least, remains in my home for as long as it lasts. Promise me, that when I am dead my head shall be taken from my body and preserved within these walls. Let it be here forever and never removed. Make it known to those who will own the house after us that if they disobey my last request my spirit will render the house uninhabitable for others as long as my head is kept from it’s home.”

Her sisters were mortified by the request, but Anne would hear no counter-argument. To calm her and appeased what they felt must be a delirious request they agreed. Although secretly they felt the idea was ridiculous and when Anne died soon after. They had her interred at a nearby church.

The sisters missed her bitterly, of course, she had been the most active of them and now that she was gone their life was not the same. They wished that she was back with them.

A week to the day after Anne’s death, the two surviving sisters were going back to bed when suddenly they heard a loud crash from one of the upstairs rooms. They rushed to the bottom of the stairs and listened. A few moments later the servants joined them, also startled by the noise, and wondering what was going on. The sisters ordered to of the male servants to go up and see what had happened, but when the men went upstairs and searched all the rooms they found nothing out of place. Everyone grew very frightened, and for a long time they stayed down there unable to rouse the courage to go to bed, but when nothing more happened eventually they went to their rooms, and after nothing else happened for a few days calmed down, but then exactly a week after the first incident, the house hold were woken in the dead of night by the sound of doors being slammed shut in every part of the building.

Sisters and servants met on the landing, disheveled and carrying candles. They kept together for support and searched the entire house. Every door was shut fast, but as they moved from one room to the next they heard crashes all around them, always from a part of the house away from where they were. The noise stopped as suddenly as it had started, but still they were worried about going on, afraid that it might start up again, but the house stood silent and eventually they decided that it was safe and went back to bed, but hardly slept.

Another week went by, and again, the house hold were woken. This time by the clatter of people running along the passageways and up and down the stairs. The house shook and thundered with the noise, until it suddenly stopped. But then a spine-chiling death groan echoed through the Hall. Then the clattering feet stormed around, and then the groan, and then the stamping feet, and again the groan, and on and on it went, so much so that no one dared leave their rooms to find out what might be causing the ruckus.

Next day most of the woman servants left the hall, unable to deal with the terror any longer. The sisters tried to calm them there had to be some other explanation than ghosts, but the servants insisted it had to be, because what else could it be? and with that they left the Hall.

At their wits end the sisters asked the vicar of the parish to visit them. They told him all that had gone on for the past month, and discussed every possible solution. During the course of the conversation one of the sisters remembered the promise they had made to Anne on her death bed, and they realized that the noises had been heard on the same night of the week on which Anne had died. Could it be that their dead sister was keeping the “threat” she had made with her dying breath? She had said she would make the house “uninhabitable” if her head was not kept at the home she loved.

The vicar and the two sisters continued discussing various options, but in the end, in desperation, the vicar finally suggested that they open Anne’s grave in the hopes they could find some sort of answer. The sisters reluctantly agreed, and the following day the vicar and his gravedigger opened Anne’s grave. When they opened the coffin itself they were horrified. Anne’s body was as it had been three weeks before when the vicar prepared the funeral robes, but Anne’s head…

Anne’s head was severed from it’s body and all the flesh and skin had shriveled away leaving just the skull.

This settled the point for the vicar and the sisters. Hideous as though her wish had seemed, the dead woman had her way and Anne’s skull was brought into the Hall.

So it was Owd Nance came home. While her skull was left in peace the house was also left in piece. From time to time new residents have tried to get rid of skull, but always have come the bangings, the footsteps, the slamming of doors, and the blood-curdling death groans.

Another legend that I remember about her skull goes:

One day a maid threw it out of an upstairs window and it landed on a horse-drawn cart carrying manure, and the horses froze right there. The drive whipped them, shouted at them, all in vain. Until the maid admitted what she’d done and the skull was retrieved. Then the horses were able to move once again.

When I was in college we had a spirit come to us along with a kitchen table. Our landlords were given the table after an estate sale of a friend of their mothers. When we got it we discovered that we didn’t have to tell the cats not to jump on it. They would sniff around and occasionally put their feet up on the chairs but they would always run away as though they’d been chastised even though they hadn’t. After a few days of this we started noticing cold spots in the kitchen, which was interesting given we had no air conditioning in that apartment.

It got to the point that the only real time the cats would go into the kitchen was to drink from the kitchen faucets when their water ran out while we were in class. They’d still tear through the rest of the house like crazy animals. After a while we decided to talk to whatever was in our house, and the cats calmed down about the kitchen a little to the point where they would at least come to the fridge, but they would still give the table and chairs wide berth. I find it interesting that often times animals are more aware of things than we are. None of my room mates got a malicious feeling about the woman who came with the table, we just knew that she was there. She apparently just really liked her table.

There was an elderly man, as far as I could tell, who would stand by the door out on to the first floor balcony, some times I would get the scent of cigarette smoke from him, and he seemed to just be a household fixture, but the woman definitely wasn’t there when we looked around the house.

It’s always fascinating to me to find the differences in what causes spirits to be attached to certain areas, or objects. The town I lived in when I was in college is notorious for being haunted, however not all of the ghosts are historic. The woman with the table had only died a few months before.

I’ve watched seven episodes of the first season now and to be completely honest I’m finding the show hilarious, just the way everyone deals with things. On the one hand I’m glad that the main character, Melinda, has actually told her husband and her friend about what she can do and isn’t sneaking around with it like so many main characters do, but at the same time I think that certain things about the show are kind of ridiculous, like the fact that EVERYONE she meets accuses her outright of being a con artist and a scammer, or that she goes so out of her way for all these ghosts, but then I guess without that she wouldn’t have a show.

I suppose it’s that I don’t have it in me to travel all over everywhere doing things like that, and then again I’m not “graced” with the Hollywood style ghost who is crystal clear and looks just like they did in life, and speaks clearly and makes their demands known.

I can speak on the “shocked every time” because even though I’ve been seeing and interact with spirits more clearly for at least ten years now, given my clarity and acceptance of these things came around in college…but even so I tend to be perturbed if I feel a spirit around because it is unexpected. It’s more common for me not to see them than to see them. No matter what “Ghost Whisperer” shows they don’t wander around all over the place, that I’ve seen, or maybe they don’t always choose to show themselves to me because they hear my ground rules.

Plus from what I’ve seen in my experience a lot of ghosts are content with just offers to cross them over, they don’t want huge complicated errands.

I hope this doesn’t mean I get a rash of them trying to prove me wrong. o.O

She told me of the family that were in the De Mesa house, a wife and two children and their evil father, who had abused them. I’m not sure if he had anything to do with their death, but the family would apparently run around in the upstairs and be afraid of the bad man who was down stairs. The children would be seen running around playing every once in a while, and the wife could mostly be seen sitting on the bed in the upstairs bed room ringing her hands, from time to time there would be banging from downstairs and all the ghostly activity upstairs would cease.

We did have fun in St. Aug though. We visited a couple of restaurants I’ve never tried before, and we tried gelato at Whetstone’s. We walked around by the Spanish bakery and I told ghost stories as we were wandering about the different places that I remembered having legends. We spent some time at the fort looking for messages, and found the hot shot oven seemed to have the resonance that someone might have been put in there and poked with sharp objects, and my friend kept humming a tune that she was hearing like it was being played on the viola or violin, and felt that there were a couple of soldiers helping a little girl get some wildflowers somewhere near the hot shot oven.

We’ve decided that we’re only going to go up to St. Aug between the months of October and February because then it might not be so oppressively hot when trying to walk around.

Today we’re going ghost hunting with a friend of the family. Which will be a wonderful distraction I’m looking forward to be refreshed in time to do some heavy work in preparation for a friend’s birthday party that we’re hosting

I’ll be sure to let you know if we see any ghosts!

In a certain corridor where I felt a presence moving up and down the munchkin started smiling and waving “Bye!” he also zoned in on an other area where the co-workers had said that they’d encountered some things. He would occasionally follow movement with his eyes and try to reach out to nothing.

My husband who hasn’t been around when the munchkin’s witnessed ghosts before was a little creeped out. He’s used to it with me, but with the munchkin it’s different because of the innocence.

There’s the traumatic death spirit. Say you’re involved in a semi truck accident, or murdered, or fall down the stairs or something like that. That’s a very violent death and could cause leave some unresolved issues that will have you sticking around.

Other spirits I believe stay around because they feel an obligation, like my grandfather, who likes to watch out for us, offer advice and keep the munchkin company while he sleeps.

I think there are others who don’t realize that they’ve died, and may stay around because they missed the way to cross over, and in many cases they repeat what they’ve been doing in life over and over.

There was apparently something scaring him, but he had no way to explain what it was. He’s done this a few times at night recently and I’m not sure if it’s a nightmare of some sort or something else, visitors that he doesn’t want or need.

I’m going to be going back over the ground rules in the house with everything spirit-wise again I can see it. I’d figured Samhain would be a good time to do that, but it looks as though I’m going to have to do it earlier. I found out last week that there’s a cemetery only a few minutes from us but I’d no idea because it’s not a side street I normally go down, but there it is. I wonder if spirits are being attracted over this way and being nosy.

We had a relatively uneventful visit compared to things that would happen when I was living there, but there was one incident with my son that made me do a bit of a double-take. We were going through the Castillo de San Marco when he started to babble as though he was talking to someone yet my friend and I, and him, were the only ones who were in that particular area.

When we asked him what he was doing or if anyone was there he said, “Wah-war,” I asked him what it was and he said again, “Wah-war, he dead,” I looked around while trying to open my own senses a bit more and saw the sign explaining that the room we were in had been a prison for Native Americans when they were there, automatically this made me think “Wah-war,” might be “warrior” so I asked him and he said, “Yeah, war-rar,” and then mimed someone getting hit and said, “Ow!”

A diaper change later and we found there was a room he didn’t want to go into at all. He cried and shouted and pulled away at one point crawling backwards out of the room.