Raising the Devil and the churchyard black dog

Up ahead is St Nicholas' church, where a fiery-eyed black dog guards the dead and twelve laps of the wrong tomb are said to summon the Devil.

Two separate beliefs gather around St Nicholas' churchyard. In one, anyone who runs twelve times around a certain tomb will raise the Devil himself, a stronger version of the run-round-the-grave dares found elsewhere in the county. In the other, the churchyard has a guardian spirit: according to old belief the first soul buried in a churchyard must protect those who follow, and here it takes the form of a large black dog with fiery eyes. A Hitchin historian writing in 1979 also noted that Stevenage had a phantom hound reported in several parts of the town. Which tomb must be circled is not recorded.