MysteryLegendary
The Black Magic Church
Bones on the floor, feathers in the nave, and nobody ever caught.
See it clearly
- What's there
- A roofless church ruin with a tower you can climb
- Legend from
- 1963
- Tone
- Chilling
On the ridge ahead is Clophill's old church, where in 1963 police found bones, feathers and an opened grave, and never found who did it.
Clophill's old St Mary's church stands roofless on the Greensand Ridge above the village, abandoned after a new church was built in 1848-49. In March 1963 two Luton youths were seen with a human skull they said came from the church. Inside the ruin police found bones laid out with cockerel feathers and crosses, and the grave of Jenny Humberstone, who died in 1770 aged 22, had been broken open. Her remains were reburied, but the grave was disturbed again, and the culprits were never identified. Newspapers spoke of black masses, more graves were opened in 1969, and the ruin became one of England's most notorious haunted churches, later the subject of a 2013 horror film.