Screaming Skull of Bettiscombe

Bettiscombe Manor in the Marshwood Vale has kept its skull for centuries, and the tradition surrounding it is one of the most persistent in English folklore. The skull — small, possibly female — screams if carried from the house, and any attempt to bury it is said to bring ruin: crops fail, cattle sicken, and the family knows no peace until it is returned to its shelf.

The most popular origin story dates the skull to an enslaved man brought to Dorset from the Caribbean by Azariah Pinney in the late seventeenth century, who is said to have sworn before death that his bones would never rest until they were returned to his homeland. When the body was buried in the churchyard strange disturbances began, and the skull was disinterred and brought indoors — where, contrary to the curse, it has apparently been content ever since.

Archaeologists who examined the skull in the twentieth century determined it was far older than the Pinney legend: a pre-Roman Iron Age skull, probably of a young woman. The legend attached to it seems to be a later accretion. Whatever its origin, it sits in the manor still.