OBJECT FILE
The Screaming Skull of Bettiscombe Manor
FOLLOWBettiscombe Manor, Bettiscombe, Dorset, United Kingdom
THE OBJECT
A human skull kept at Bettiscombe Manor, the Pinney family's house in west Dorset, since at least the nineteenth century. The tradition, printed by J. S. Udal in Dorsetshire Folk-lore (1922) from earlier accounts, says it belonged to an enslaved African man brought from Nevis by Azariah Pinney in the eighteenth century, who died asking to be buried at home and whose body was instead put in the churchyard. A 1963 examination found the skull to be that of a woman of the Bronze Age, three to four thousand years old — the legend's origin is wrong even if the object is old. These are human remains and the entry is written as such.
REPORTED ACTIVITY
The skull is said to scream, and the house to shake, if it is removed; one tenant who threw it into a pond retrieved it after days of noise; farms are said to fail and the remover to die within the year. The skull stays in the house.
WHERE IT IS NOW
Private collection — kept by The Pinney family (private house). Bettiscombe Manor, Bettiscombe, Dorset, United Kingdom.
PROVENANCE · 1 ENTRY
TRACE ON THE MAP →1922 — CURRENT LOCATION
The Pinney family and successive occupants of the house
Bettiscombe Manor, Bettiscombe, Dorset, United Kingdom
From-date is the earliest printed record used here; tradition places it in the house from the 1700s. Never known to have left the house except for the pond episode in the legend.
Source: Udal, Dorsetshire Folk-lore (1922); Mental Floss (2015)
PERSONAL ACCOUNTS · 0
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