During a cholera outbreak, a farm labourer heads home to Frog Hall, south of New York (the little one near Coningsby), and sees a horse and cart bearing a coffin, so he asks who is in it. ‘Your own wife’, he is told – but the labourer had seen his wife just a few hours earlier and she had been fine, so he demands the coffin be taken back to his house. This is done, and he removes the lid; sure enough, his wife is inside, and is evidently dead. Unsure what to do next, he goes to bed, but is woken in the night by his wife, who sits bolt upright and ask for a glass of water. They subsequently live a full life together.

This story was retold by Martin Hughes in ‘Strange Tales of Lincolnshire’, Lincolnshire Life (September 1968). There is no longer a Frog Hall, but there is a Frog Hall Bridge.

Words by RORY WATERMAN