Ghost
The Headless Pedlar
Beheaded and dumped down a well, he walked the road until he was found.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Village lanes; the farm and well are lost
- Legend from
- 1700s
- Tone
- Chilling
Coming into Bygrave, where a murdered pedlar's headless ghost walked the road until his bones were found at the bottom of a well.
In the eighteenth century, so the story goes, a pedlar walking home from Baldock fair was murdered at Bygrave Farm. His killer, named as Thomas Fossey, cut off his head and threw the body down a well. Soon travellers on the road nearby began meeting a headless figure in the dark. The haunting is told as a lesson in the old belief that the spirit of anyone denied Christian burial would walk until put to rest: only when the pedlar's remains were found and buried in consecrated ground did the headless ghost stop appearing on the road.
One sourceOnly one written account of this legend has been found so far.