Witch's Stone of Westleton

In the churchyard of St Peter's Church in Westleton, Suffolk, lies a flat 14th-century gravestone known as the Witch's Stone — said to be perpetually free of grass and the focus of one of Suffolk's most enduring pieces of devil-lore. According to the legend, anyone bold enough to leave a handkerchief inside the church, then run anti-clockwise around the stone a set number of times, will return to find the handkerchief gone, spirited away by the Devil himself, with the clank of hellish chains audible in the distance.

The story is sometimes linked to the wider history of witchcraft accusations in the area: Katherine Tooly of Westleton was hanged in 1645, accused of using a familiar spirit to attempt murder, during the height of the East Anglian witch trials associated with Matthew Hopkins. Other local historians offer a more earthly origin, suggesting the tale of a devil-haunted churchyard was deliberately spread or embellished by smugglers moving contraband from the nearby Sizewell Gap, since a reputation for supernatural danger kept villagers and revenue men away from the church's crypts at night.

Whatever its origin, the legend remains a fixture of Suffolk ghost-story collections and 'Weird Suffolk' features — though, fittingly, no one now seems willing to actually test the ritual.