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Monks

Most legends have a basis in fact, although it is often impossible to find corroborative evidence. Every so often, however, things happen that confirm our worst fears. Such is the case of the Devil Monks.

A group of monks came to England from Europe in Saxon times and asked the local lord, the Earl of Leeds, if they could build a monastery on some nearby common land. The earl, assuming they belonged to a religious order, agreed. Ten years later, the abbey was complete and the monks went about their business, keeping themselves to themselves. When young women started to disappear from the surrounding villages of Harthill and Todwick, however, people began asking questions.

After the fifth disappearance, the villagers decided to confront the monks and marched en masse to the abbey. There the abbot was able to quiet the crowd and convince the villagers that the monks did not interfere in village life and really had no idea where the girls were. The father of one of the missing girls, Tom Moody, was not content with the abbot's response. He decided to take a look inside the abbey, which no one beside die monks had seen. According to legend, Moody saw the monks acting out a black mass and sacrificing a young woman he didn't recognize on the Devil's sign, the pentagram.

Terrified, he ran back to the village and reported what he had seen to the earl. The earl decided to wait until morning, despite the fact that the new sacrifice would by then be dead. He rounded up as many villagers as dared to come with him and rode to the abbey. There he confronted the abbot with Moody's evidence and smashed down the door. After searching, he found all the paraphernalia connected with devil worship. The monks were thrown into the local jail to await sentence.

ground, saying it would never be happily inhabited. One coincidence does not make the curse or the legend real, but the earl's family did die in the great plague. The monks' land remained barren for 700 years, until it was sold to a property developer. He sold it to the Rank Organization, which built a cinema on it, the Regal. All was quiet for six months. Then the activity began: knocks, bangs, lights going out and equipment failure. Several employees said that they felt sudden temperature drops and they felt as if they were being watched all the time. Eventually, no one would work at the theatre and the place closed.

The developer sold the place to a local businessman in 1938. The man brought his family in to operate the machinery and do everything necessary to make the new company flourish. In October of that year, a fire burned the building to the ground, killing 25 people. They were all young, unmarried women. Almost 40 years passed. The land was sold once again, this time to a brewery. Forewarned about the area's evil past, the owners had the land exorcised before building the Saxon pub. The Saxon is still intact. It has had five landlords, however, and each has confirmed strange happenings, usually in the cellar and usually at night.

The first landlord, Dick Strange, refused to ever again go into the cellar after one incident. He said, "I was down there changing a barrel over, when I suddenly felt very cold. I was aware that someone was watching me, and I thought perhaps that one of the bar staff had followed me down, leaving the door open. I turned around just in time to see a black, hooded figure walk through the far wall. I swear to God he walked straight through it. It made my hair stand on end, and I got out of there as fast as I could." Three months later, Dick and his wife died in a mysterious car accident. The car just burst into flames. Dick's 24-year-old unmarried daughter also died later, in a hospital.

The next two landlords were single, unmarried men. Their tenure at the bar was uneventful. The fourth landlord, however, was a different story: Maurice Smith had been happily married for over 20 years and had twin 19-year-old daughters. Several of the pub's regulars told him about the legend and what had happened to Dick Strange, but Smith just laughed it off as superstition. For three months, nothing happened. Then, on November 5, 1989, three regulars were patiently waiting for the pub to open. Opening time came and went. They decided, after shouting and trying several windows, to call the police. The police broke in and searched. The last room they came to was the cellar, and what they found was horrifying.

Maurice was hanging by his belt. In one corner, his wife and two daughters had been tied up, and each had stab wounds to the heart. A police pathologist later said that it looked like an attempt had been made to remove their hearts. A roughly drawn pentagram had been chalked onto the floor, and the couples' bedroom had been ransacked. Instead of the bed and the usual furnishings, there was a pile of wood in the centre of the room - a bonfire - soaked in petrol and ready to go. Was Maurice taken over by the spirit of a devil-worshipping monk, or was he compelled to carry out their diabolical trade by some unseen force? We will never know.

Whether the pub owners believe in the legend or not, they have at least shown common sense. From that day on, the pub has only been managed by single men or childless couples. The phantom, the cold spots and the feeling of being watched are still reported by regulars and staff at The Saxon. The legend lives on. Newstead Abbey | Beauchief | Bedfordshire | Berkshire | Dorset | Glastonbury | Melrose | Woburn |