Hauntings of a kind of spirit that plagued not individuals but entire generations, never posing threat but always looming formidably in their victims' lives - These spirits were the so-called screaming skulls, pestilential presences in many English country houses. To look at, they were no different from any channel - house relics, and they could be hefted and tossed in a grisly game of catch. But, as befitted former vessels of human intelligence, such skulls had inflexible will.

Screaming skulls were usually quiescent, since the families they afflicted quickly learned to respect their wishes - chiefly that they be undisturbed within their chosen home. While this demand was not especially onerous, the very presence of the skulls took spiritual toll.

Often the craving of a skull to repose forever within a certain habitation reflected the dying desire of the skulls mortal owner. Such was the case at Burton Agnes Hall in Yorkshire. There, during the reign of Elizabeth I, lived a young lady named Anne Griffith, who dearly loved the hall - and then she died. On her deathbed, she exacted from her sisters a promise to sever her head from her corpse and keep it in the manor house permanently. Believing she was delirious, her sisters ignored her macabre wish, and her body was placed complete in the family vault.

But her kin had little time for quiet grief. Several days after the interment, the family awoke in terror as a ghoulish gibbering that seemed to mingle grief and mirth rang from every corner of the dark house. Stalwart young men prowled the corridors in their nightshirts, with daggers drawn, yet the source of the racket eluded them. Night after night the disturbances continued, the shrieks sometimes sometimes fading into heavy groans of the dying, until at last the sisters decided to seek the advice of the local vicar. He reminded them of their promise to the dying girl and suggested that they open the tomb. And when the flowers so recently strewn for the burial were swept aside and torch - bearing kin descended into the vault's fetid air, the vicar's advice proved sound. For the corpse reflected Anne Griffith's dying wish. The body was not decayed, the bright dome of the cranium was bare of flesh, and mysteriously severed from the body. The head rested upright on it's grinning chops, shadows dancing in it's empty orbits.

The kinsmen's course was clear: They followed Anne's wish to the letter. The skull was taken to the house and placed as a ghoulish centerpiece on the table in the salon, and Burton Hall was quiet that night and every night for many years.

Later generations speculated that time might have moderated the skull's desire to retain a place of honor in the hall, but Anne Griffith's spirit vividly demonstrated the strength of it's attachment. A scullery maid was the cause of the episode. Watching a cart laden with cabbages creak along the lane that wound near a kitchen window, she decided to rid the hall of it's ugly guardian. She ran to the salon, snatched the skull and tossed it out the kitchen window at the cart, where it wedged among the cabbages. Instantly the driver began to curse, for his cart had halted, as if mired in mud. The old nag strained under his lashing, but the dray would not budge.

Drawn to the scene by the commotion, the master of the house ordered the maid to return the skull to the salon, but she could not bring herself to touch it. At last a young man of the family hurried outside and plucked the skull from the cabbages. The cart shot forward, tumbling the driver off his bench and redoubling his curses.

The young man gingerly returned the skull to it's place. And there it stayed, regarded with renewed awe by the occupants of the hall, until another family succeeded to the premises. One evening, scornful of what seemed a worn-out superstition, they ordered the relict buried in the garden. But as a servant tamped down the earth over the skull, the shrieks heard centuries before, and vividly recorded in the tales told - by the countryfolk, surrounded once again the corridors. All night the terrified family vainly sought the source of the ghoulish chorus. Their horses had gone lame, and a late frost blackened the garden.

Without leave from his masters, an old servant borrowed a spade from one of the gardeners and dug up the skull. He shook the clods from it, cleaned the mud from it's sockets and returned it to the hall. Peace returned. Once again the skull had bent mortals to it's implacable will.

A few screaming skulls possessed a power that added immeasurably to their terror a capacity to move from place to place - chillingly at odds with their stony, inert character. Not satisfied to reside in a chosen niche, such skulls pursued their victims, confronting hapless mortals at moments of vulnerability. These diligent haunters often had motives more urgent than a dying wish to remain at home, in one case, in the north of England, a pair of skulls haunted a country house for reasons of revenge.

The skulls were those of a couple, hanged on charges trumped up by a landowner who coveted their garden plot. In life, the couple had been meek, but after their wrongful execution, their skulls set about hounding the landowner and his family with diabolical energy, screaming without provocation, bowling down the carpet into the great hall in the mist of banquets and springing onto the stairs to bar the way of family members. In the end, the torment ruined the proud family. Generation followed generation, each more spiritless than the one before, until the last heir died childless and penniless, and the line was extinguished.

Fearsome as a screaming skull's outbursts could be, it's horror persisted even when it was silent. It's quiet presence, grinning and hollow-eyed, drained joy from the lives of it's mortal housemates. In that respect, a screaming skull resembled the many other spirits that did not attack or pursue the living but merely flickered into view and then faded.

Some of the most famous screaming skulls are:

The Wardly Skull

This screaming skull belongs to Wardly Hall, located a few miles outside Manchester, England. The skull, which dates from the reign of Edward VI, is associated with both an improbable legend and a likely tale.

The legend involves Roger Downes, a dissolute member of the family who owned the house at the time of the English Civil War. One day while in London drinking and carousing, Downes vowed that he would kill the first man he would meet. A poor, hapless tailor chanced by and Downes thrust his sword through him. Downes was arrested and tried for murder, but his influence at court enabled him to go free.

Comeuppance was soon at hand, however. Shortly thereafter Downes was crossing London Bridge in a drunken and rowdy state. He attacked a watchman with his rapier. The watchman fought back and was strong enough to successfully sever Downes' head from his body with one blow of his weapon.

The watchman and his friends sent the head to Wardley Hall. Later, the skull was placed in an aperture in the wall above the house's main staircase, but not before several unsuccessful efforts allegedly were made to get rid of it by burning or drowning. Subsequent efforts to move the skull met with violent responses such as destructive storms.

But such a colorful story was discounted because the last Downes of Wardley, oddly enough named Roger and also a rake, was buried in the family vault with his head intact, the skull more likely to be that of Dom Edward Ambrose Barlow, identified in the History of Wardley Hall, Lancashire by H. V. Hart - Davis and S. Holme.

It seems before the English Civil War and it's religious persecutions against Catholics, Francis Downes owned Wardley Hall. He and his wife were devout Catholics and they dangerously allowed Mass to be celebrated in the Hall's chapel. Barlow, a Benedictine monk who has successfully eluded authorities for 24 years, met his fate on Easter Sunday 1641 while officiating at neighboring Morleys Hall.

Barlow was seized, arrested, tried and condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered. His head was impaled either at a Manchester church or Lanchester castle. Downes secretly removed it and took it back to Wardley, where he hid it so well that all trace of it was lost until the mid-18th century.

At that time, Wardley was owned by Matthew Moreton, who found the skull in a box that had accidentally fallen out of a ruined wall. A servant later thought it was the skull of an animal and threw it into the moat. That night, a terrible storm broke out, and Moreton theorized that it was the skull screaming for it's place to be restored in the house. Moreton drained the moat and recovered the skull.


The Bettiscombe Skull

A screaming skull that takes it's name from an old farmhouse near Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, and is tied to a local legend. The skull traditionally was thought to belong to a slave from the West Indies brought to Bettiscombe Manor to serve Azariah Pinney in the 17th century.

The slave was either the victim of, or the perpetrator of, a murder. On his deathbed he stated that his spirit would not rest and would haunt Bettiscombe until his body was taken back to his homeland. Contrary to his wish, he was buried on English soil in Bettiscombe churchyard, and he thereafter fulfilled his warning by haunting the place in protest. Screaming was heard from the grave, and unexplained noises were heard in the farmhouse. The noises were silenced only when the body was dug up.

Renewed attempts to bury it brought about the same noisy reactions. This procedure was repeated so often that the skeleton was lost and only the head remained. The skull finally came to rest on a winding staircase leading to he roof of the house.

The myth was shattered, however, when Professor Gilbert Causey of the Royal College of Surgeons concluded that the skull belonged to a prehistoric woman in her early twenties, perhaps a sacrificial victim meant to bring prosperity to an earlier dwelling built on the site. In spite of this pronouncement, the skull remains at Bettiscombe against the professor's possible misdiagnosis.


The Burton Agnes Skull

Story above...
Recent stories say, another inheritor bricked the skull up somewhere behind the paneling; it still has not been found. Even though Anne's wish was finally honored, she reportedly makes a ghostly appearance around the anniversary of her death.


Tunstead Farm Skull

An imperfect skull named "Dickie," probably that of a woman, haunts a farmhouse, Tunstead Farm, near Chapel-en-le-Frith, England. According to one legend, a girl was murdered at some unknown date in the room where the skull is kept. Another legend says that Ned Dixon, an ancestor of the farmhouse's owners, was murdered in the room. The house also is said to be haunted by a woman's ghost, which appeared in the late 19th century to herald the death of the tenant's daughter.

Dickie is said to function as an unworldly guardian of the house. It has been said to sound noises and knockings at the approach of strangers. Some of these disturbances, including rattling of farm tools in the barn, has been so severe that temporary hired help have complained and even fled the premises. Dickie also has sounded warnings upon the birthing or illness of farm animals, or upon the imminent death of a member of the family.

Like other screaming skulls, Dickie resents relocation. Once it was stolen and taken to Disley. An ensuing racket at both Tunstead Farm and Disley was so unendurable that the thieves gladly returned it. Similar disturbance broke out after the skull was buried in consecrated ground.

Sources:

The World of Enchanted Ghosts &

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