Whatever the case, it is still an interesting situation. It is still being looked into today by Paul Screeton, one of the first to investigate it during the 1970s. According to the family, the heads would move about by themselves. And that wasn’t all: the haunting of the Hexham heads had just begun. I have one more post to write on the Hexham Heads, the tale of my own pilgrimage to Hexham and the urban street where these objects were once found…. In the intervening years, the worm grows into a huge beast, terrorising Wearside and curling itself menacingly around a hill (Worm Hill in Fatfield or Penshaw Hill depending on the version). And the fact that an archeologist would relate the supernatural with the real and tangible — such as the Heads — is quite flippant. Was it All a Prank?

He then made a couple more to show he could do it, from ‘local stone, sand and water’ although they were even more rubbish looking than the originals. The head on the left was made by Des Craigie to prove he could make little stone heads, the one on the right was made – rather suspiciously – by one of the boys who found the original heads (source: Screeton 2012) If this is the case, it’s probable that the Hexham Heads aren’t very old at all. Who then could have made them and for what purpose?https://media.blubrry.com/masqueradepodcast/content.blubrry.com/masqueradepodcast/HEXHAM_HEADS_TO_UPLOAD_TO_ITUNES_JAN_4TH_2020.mp3

The Lambton worm is perhaps the most famous and enduring piece of North East folklore - but it is not the only one like it. He kept the Heads for some analysis until early 1978 during which time his dog got excited and bit one of the Heads. Robins recounts various rather weak experiences he had that might have been connected to the female Head such as his car electrics dying. Once he thought this Head’s eyeballs were watching him. But he seems to have been unable to connect the objects with the poltergeist activity, and then he passed them onto the final character in the story, a ‘dowser’ called Frank Hyde. The elusive Hyde was delivered the Heads in February 1978 to do some ‘dowsing experiments’ with them – and they have never been seen since. One of the Hexham Heads looms over the cover of Robins’s book In an earlier blog post, I introduced the weird story of the Hexham Heads, rather strange little objects with prehistoric pretensions found in a very (sub)urban context in Hexham, County Durham. The story of the initial discovery, the ‘poltergeist’ activities that seem to have accompanied the little stone heads, and claims and counterclaims about their age and origin provide an already rich folk narrative. But fairly soon after two children found the stones in their garden in Rede Avenue, these objects came into the orbit of archaeologists, historians, pseudo-scientists and psychics. They travelled the length of England as an answer was sought for the nature and date of these objects. The Heads were tested and became even more contested – specialists disagreed, amateurs speculated, and then finally the Heads were lost. The first came to be known as “The Boy”, and featured a face of regular proportions, with carved lines across the skull, indicating hair. The other was known as “The Girl”, and appeared to sport a bob-like hair cut with rather bulging eyes.

Success!

The two stone heads were thought to be Celtic in origin and collector Dr Anne Ross took possession of the heads as she had several other stone heads in her collection and wished to compare them to the Hexham pair. A few nights after taking possession of the heads, Dr Ross awoke at 2am one morning, feeling cold and frightened. Looking up, she saw a strange creature standing in her bedroom doorway: It is difficult to see how two analyses of the same objects could lead to two such divergent identifications of the material involved, and it is a pity the sample fragments no longer appear to exist, as these could now be tested much more definitively (and without doing further damage to the materials). It’s a shame that the current location of the heads is unknown and we are unable to subject them to a modern analysis.

There have been claims that The Hexham Heads were not Celtic in origin and had simply been carved as toys by the previous occupants of the Robson family home only twenty years previously, and had subsequently become lost in the garden. It has also been said that the heads were examined by the Universities of Newcastle and Southampton for dating. For now, the current whereabouts of The Hexham Heads remains unknown. Despite this, the legend of The Hexham Heads and its association with The Wolf of Allendale has become a cornerstone of the local folklore of the area. Now this is a weird one. In 1971, some children digging in a garden in Hexham found two small carved stone models of rather creepy looking heads. According to one of the North East's best known ghost stories, the Baron of Hylton - who lived at Hylton Castle in Sunderland - killed a stable boy called Robert Skelton in a fit of rage in the 16th or 17th century. The story was covered in several newspapers - including The Journal - but the current whereabouts of the heads is unknown. And that was what further solidified Dr. Ross’s belief that the Hexham Heads were indeed ancient Celtic artifacts.While a hoax can never be ruled out, Durham Constabulary were certainly investigating the reports as a genuine concern for a time. Oswald of Northumbria Even the Robson’s neighbors, the Dodds, were affected. Although the activity was less consistent, there were similarities such as her children’s hair being inexplicably pulled. Nelly Dodd, the matriarch of the family, also claimed to see a half-man, half-sheep who had walked on all fours in her bedroom one night and examined her feet. On the rather bizarre platform of the BBC TV early evening news magazine Nationwide, Anne Ross made some amazing claims about the Hexham Heads that were not fit for academic publication. She recounted that her home in Southampton was being haunted by a huge werewolf that seemed to have followed the Heads all the way from the NE of England; the Heads had been brought south with Ross for analysis at her own institution, Southampton University, and she had taken them home. Big mistake! When Dr. Ross challenged the man to prove it, Craigie made a couple more heads to push through with his claim — or prank, as some like to put it.