
THE CURSE OF THE BURTON AGNES SKULL
When the Griffin family decided to build a new home on their Yorkshire lands in 1598, their three daughters took great interest in the project. Anne, in particular, followed every detail of constructing Burton Agnes Hall from start to finish, and grew very attached to the grand house after moving in.
One night, while returning from a visit to a neighbor, Ann was attacked on the road by a gang of thieves. She was struck in the head and, if not for her rescue by villagers who heard her screams, she would have died on the spot. She was brought home to the loving arms of her family, but the outlook was grim. Before dying, Anne begged her sisters to keep a part of her in Burton Agnes Hall forever. In her final farewell, she asked them to have her skull buried within the walls of the house she had helped them build.
Anne died five days after the attack, and her family ignored her request by burying her--head and all-- in the church graveyard. Soon, blood-curdling screams began to ring out in Burton Agnes Hall. No one could discover their source. Alarmed and chilled to the bone in fear, the sisters feared that the screams were a ghostly call from Ann to fulfill her dying wish. The family, with no other solution in sight, decided to dig up Anne's grave and obey her wishes. When the coffin was opened, the small group recieved another grisly shock: the body had not decayed, but the head had fallen off and lost every bit of hair and tissue, leaving only a bare skull. The Griffins took the skull home and the screams stopped.
All was well for many years, until the house was sold to another family who banished the skull from the hall. The screams returned, much to the horror of the new inhabitants. Again the skull was returned; and all was quiet once more. Later, a new owner hid the skull away withing a wall and never told anyone where it was hidden. No one has found the skull's hiding place to this day, and the screams have not returned. Some people have seen Anne floating through the house in October, the month in which she was killed. They recognize the ghost as Anne, as it matches her portrait, which hangs in the home to this day.
