The Screaming Skull

Take the skull out of the house, and the house screams back.

Bettiscombe Manor keeps a skull that, legend says, screams if it is taken from the house. OPC Dorset gives the usual story: John Frederick Pinney returned from Nevis with an African retainer, who swore on his deathbed that he would not rest unless buried on Nevis. Pinney buried him in St Stephen's churchyard instead, screams were heard from the grave, and the body was exhumed and taken back to the manor, where the skull remains. If it is removed, the house is said to rock to its foundations and the person responsible to die within a year. The Dorset Historic Environment Record prints an anatomist's report (examined 1962) calling it probably a female European skull, perhaps dug up from a hill-top burial. OPC says it was found to be a Bronze Age woman's.