Cursed Places & Ill-Fated Stones

Some places carry a warning. A stone that must not be moved, a treasure that cannot be lifted, a family doom or a blight laid on a hall — the curse explains misfortune and enforces a boundary the living are not meant to cross. Many attach to tombs, boundary stones and disturbed ground.

WitchesTetford WitchLincolnshire, EnglandThe witch of Tetford kept a hole in her cottage wall through which she slipped as a hare; when a hunter's shot wounded the animal, she was found home next day covered in matching wounds. WitchesThe Bute WitchesRothesay, Isle of Bute, ScotlandFour named women — Margaret McLevin, Margaret McWilliam, Janet Morrison and Isobell McNicoll — were tried at Rothesay in 1661-62 during the Great Scottish Witch Hunt; one was said to keep a fairy of her own. WitchesThe Curse of the Campbells of JuraIsle of Jura, ScotlandA witch evicted by the grasping Campbells of Jura cursed their last laird to be one-eyed and leave the island by horse-cart — fulfilled to the letter in 1938. BeastsWerewolves of OssoryKingdom of Ossory (County Kilkenny / County Laois), Leinster, IrelandAn extraordinary 12th-century account by the cleric Giraldus Cambrensis, who claimed to have met a priest sheltering in a forest with a dying she-wolf who was in fact a cursed woman from Ossory — her people condemned by a saint to become wolves for seven years before returning to human form. WitchesWitch of BerkeleyBerkeley, Gloucestershire, EnglandA 12th-century chronicle by William of Malmesbury tells of a Berkeley woman who sold her soul to the Devil and begged her children to bind her corpse in iron chains after death—but demons broke the chains each night until the Devil himself rode off with her screaming on a spike-backed black horse. WitchesWitch's Stone of WestletonWestleton, Suffolk, EnglandA fallen 14th-century gravestone at St Peter's Church where running anti-clockwise with a handkerchief is said to summon the Devil. WitchesWitches of BelvoirBelvoir, Leicestershire, EnglandJoan Flower and her daughters were hanged in 1619 for cursing the sons of the Earl of Rutland at Belvoir Castle; Joan herself died in gaol after calling divine punishment on herself if she were guilty.
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