The following tale concerns a real-life witch who was greatly feared by a community in the picturesque setting of the English Forest of Bowland. Even today, the mere mention of the Witch of Bowland's name is greeted with an uneasy silence in a certain Lancashire tavern, because of an old legend that says the eyes of her corpse will fly open in her grave if her name is so much as uttered. So be very careful, because not to speak the name of this long-dead witch, for she will rise from her grave and come to you...
In December 1812, three wood cutters from the village of Abbesystead, which lies 7 miles south-east of Lancaster, were instructed by Lord Trench to bring an enormous fir tree from the Forest of Bowland. The Lord had selected the tree and had chalked a white cross upon its bark. The wood cutters were to chop the tree down and cart it back to Abbesystead, where it would be erected on the village green and decorated as a Christmas tree. It seemed a simple enough task. The wood cutters reached the forest after making a detour to an old friend who made his own scrumpy cider, so when they reached the forest, the were quite drunk. They staggered about; one waved a hatchet and the other two carried the long saw, and they started to sing as they went along the path into the dense forest. The oldest wood cutter, a well-built man named John Perry, spotted the white cross on the huge fir tree, and saw to his dismay that it was almost 40 feet in height. That meant that the men would have to haul the tree onto the cart and have it drawn back to the village by their two old shire horses. A real daunting task. The three men set about sawing through the hard trunk of the fir, and it was very thirsty work. Mr Perry told his workmates, two young twins named Norman and Daniel to have a go at sawing through the bark, and even the young men found the task demanding. Suddenly, young Norman pointed to a clearing and said, "Look. Someone lives there. They might spare us a drink and some food."
A quaint-looking little wooden house stood in the shadows of the forest. It was crudely built and little more than a shanty. When a young woman of about twenty-five with long black hair emerged from this hut carrying a basket, the three men smiled, and as she passed by, old Mr Perry tipped his hat and said, "Good day to ye, Miss."
But the woman just looked the men up and down and walked on. She went over to the base of a tree and picked toadstools. She put them in her basket and walked off into the forest. When she was out of sight, Mr Perry said, "My, she was a pretty maiden. Let us see if her family are at home." And he and the twins went over to the hut and peeped through the window. There was no sign of anybody in there, so the men pulled open the door and went in. The intruders soon realised that they had entered the home of a witch. A small cauldron hung on a chain over a flickering fire, and on the hearthstone near the grate was a human skull, probably unearthed from Abbeystead graveyard. Hanging from one of the crossbeams of the low ceiling was a collection of little effigies made from rags and real human hair. All of the dolls had pins in them.
One of the twins picked up a book and flipped through its pages. There were lots of detailed drawings of plants and notes scribbled under the diagrams. Mr Perry saw a small round table with a black cloth upon it. He picked up the cloth to reveal a large egg-shaped piece of clear polished amber.
"What the deuce is that?" one of the twins asked.
"Some crystal ball I imagine." said Mr Perry, and he and the twins recoiled in horror as the faint image of a blue eye appeared in the amber and stared at them. The phantom-like eye really frightened the nosey parkers and they ran out of the house. Then Mr Perry said, "It must be the house of Mary Crane." The mention of the name made them all shiver. What happened next is not too clear, but Mary Crane saw the men coming from her house as she returned from the forest. She dropped her basket and raised her hands to the men, as if she was about to cast some evil spell on them. Daniel ran off in a state of terror and didn't stop until he reached the village of Abbeystead. He returned to the clearing with a mob, but there was no sign of Mary Crane. And there was no sign of Mr Perry and the twin Norman either. Then suddenly, the burly blacksmith who was part of the multitude pointed to the fir tree marked with a cross. The bodies of old Mr Perry and Norman were nailed to its trunk. Daniel fainted at the grisly sight. The men had been nailed to the tree with long iron spikes that penetrated their foreheads and necks.
The vicar of Abbeystead then stirred the mob with religious mania by crying out, "See what this agent of the Devil has done! Mary Crane will be hanged for this crime, for it is written in the scriptures: 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!' Find her and kill her!"
But a strange twilight fell on the Forest, and the temperature plunged until the cold was unbearable. The mob hurried back along the road to Abbeystead, and during the retreat, the eerie sound of a woman cackling could be heard somewhere nearby. The records mention that a strange, large black cat leapt out of a tree and attacked the vicar. The overgrown feline seized his head and clawed one of the holy man eyes out its socket. This sent the mob into a panic and they stampeded back to the village. On the following morning just after sunrise, a stronger mob returned to the little wooden house of Mary Crane and tried to set fire to it with torches and buckets of tar, but the wooden dwelling refused to burn. The mob resorted to smashing the house up with hatchets, then returned to the village. But that night, the beer in the tavern turned sour, and several farm animals dropped dead for no apparent reason. At the first stroke of midnight the barmaid of the tavern let out a scream and clutched at her beautiful face. The red, blistering imprint of a hand slowly appeared on the side of her face and the impression never went away. She was scarred for life. Everyone knew it was the evil work of the witch Crane.
Then something really bizarre took place on Christmas Eve. Two travellers from Lancaster came down a country road to Abbeystead village to visit their relatives for Christmas. The travellers saw a crowd of people dressed in white walking in the moonlight through the outskirts of Bowland Forest. One of the travellers thought the figures were ghosts, and wanted to ride away, but his companion persuaded him to take a closer look at the nocturnal activity. The two men rode into the forest, and what they saw sent a shiver down their spines. All the people were wearing night-gowns and night-dresses, and seemed to be in a trance. It was almost as if they were all - sleepwalking. But these sleepwalkers were carrying out tasks under the supervision of a young woman dressed in black. She was ordering them to carry out various jobs. As the fascinated travellers came nearer to the bizarre scene, they recognized four of their own relatives among the fifty-odd members of the sleepwalking crowd. All the people were building a new home for the woman on the other side of the forest. The travellers realised with dread that the weird taskmaster was Mary Crane, and one of the travellers produced a pistol and fired at the witch. She let out a shriek and ran off into the forest, followed by a large black cat. At that precise moment, all the somnambulists awoke from their trance, and were puzzled to find themselves in the forest. The last thing they remembered was going to bed.
The villagers later sent out requests for a professional witch-hunter to every village in the area, and some six months passed before an old man rode into Abbeystead. He was George Mandeville, and he convinced Lord Trenchard that he had the skill to rid the scared villagers of the witch. Mandeville used a dowsing rod to track down the witch, and he and a group of armed villagers encircled Mary Crane with salt and captured her. She was hanged the same day and Mandeville had her buried face-down beneath a certain crossroads near the village. He then ordered the villagers not to even breathe one mention of her name. He warned them that each mention of Mary Crane would give her spirit more and more strength to return to life with a vengeance. And the villagers obeyed Mandeville's advice, but one particular villager wrote the story down and committed it to posterity. So now that you have read this story, please don't repeat it and talk of you-know-who; or she might just pay you a visit.
