Screaming Skulls
Tuesday December 25, 2007 8:47 AM
Most ghosts just go bump in the night, but in England there are ghosts who live inside of skulls — and they shriek whenever they are unhappy.
Screaming skulls are one of the oddest types of hauntings, and are very peculiar to England, perhaps because of old and strange customs. The early Celts who lived in Britain and Europe were head worshipers. In centuries past, skulls were kept as trophies from conquests, and families kept ancestral skulls as good luck pieces that guarded homes. In a few cases, the skulls were said to literally scream out if they were removed from the premises, or if someone who died was believed to be not at rest. Sometimes the stories about screaming skulls turn out to be more fiction than fact — but the skulls are said to scream anyway.
One of the most famous screaming skulls is at Wardley Hall near Manchester, England. According to lore, the skull there supposedly is that of Roger Downes, a wealthy man who lived in the mid-1600s. He murdered a man and escaped punishment, but got his payback when he himself was murdered and his head was cut off. The skull was sent to Wardley, where it screamed if anyone tried to remove it from the premises. Most likely, the skull is that of Edward Ambrose Barlow, a Benedictine monk executed in 1641, whose head was impaled on a stake. If anyone tried to take it out of the hall, it screamed, and violent storms broke out.
Another famous screaming skull resided in the 1600s at the Bettiscombe farmhouse in Dorset, England. Lore held that the skull belonged to a West Indies slave who was either murdered or was a murderer. On his deathbed, the man said he would not be at rest until his body was taken back to his native soil. The skull is said to have screamed from the grave until the body was dug up. Eventually only the skull remained. A modern examination of the skull revealed that it belongs to a prehistoric woman in her 20s, probably a sacrificial victim. Regardless of identity, the skull still screamed.
Other screaming skulls have similar colorful histories. Keeping the skull of a dead person is a macabre and thankfully rare habit, so we are not likely to see many modern cases. But the unhappy skulls speak to our deep beliefs that the dead must be treated properly, or there is no rest in the
