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Stay Out of the Woods
The ghosts of four alleged witches are said to haunt this English woodland…But they aren’t the only ones.
“The atmosphere was so intense, she could not bear it. She…felt as if someone was watching her and she turned around and fled” — Account of a visitor to Grovely Wood, Wiltshire, England.
Grovely Wood is ancient. An arrow-straight Roman road cuts through the centre of the woodland west to east and within the wood, one can find pre-historic earthworks.
In the wood, there are also four very old, gnarled beech trees, three standing and one fallen, that look like they belong in an enchanted forest.
These trees are grave markers for four sisters, murdered in the woods for allegedly being witches.
Some say the trees were not planted but grew spontaneously from the sisters’ burial places to remind the murderers and their descendants of the crime they had committed.
The Witches
The four Handsel sisters, who were Danish, moved to the Wiltshire town of Wilton in 1737. Unfortunately for them, around the time of their arrival, there was a smallpox outbreak in the area which claimed 132 lives.
Local people blamed the foreign sisters for spreading the disease, accusing them of witchcraft and an alliance with the devil. Mob justice…
