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Daniel Lambert
Daniel Lambert was born in Leicester in 1770, and surely remains the most famous obese man in English history. He suffered from an undiagnosed ailment that brought on immense weight gain, had to give up work, became a recluse, and then took to exhibiting himself to earn money…
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Harlaxton Manor Ghosts
In the mid-twentieth century Harlaxton Manor – built to rival Belvoir Castle – was in the care of Jesuits, who reported many supernatural events, resulting in a well-publicised exorcism. Perhaps the most unnerving ghost story at Harlaxton concerns the alleged ghost of a woman with a baby…
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Grantham Railway Disaster
In 1906, the night-mail to Edinburgh steamed at full speed through Grantham station, where it had been expected to stop, and derailed at a bend and junction a few hundred yards farther north, killing everyone on board.
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The Witches of Belvoir
Lincolnshire’s most famous example of a witch trial, and one of the most widely discussed and embellished in the early seventeenth century. The ‘witches’ were Joan Flower and her daughters, Margaret and Philippa, servants to the Earl and Countess of Rutland. They were accused of killing two young brothers, Henry and Francis Manners, who were…
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Nanny Rutt
This tale is associated with Nanny Rutt’s Well, an artesian spring (not marked on OS maps) in Math Wood, near Bourne, in which a girl enters the wood to meet her lover and is murdered by an old woman whose face is covered by a shawl.
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The Parasitic Serpent
The tale of a woman from the parish of Wildmore (the biggest settlement within which is New York), who had a snake inside her, and eventually died as a result. Attempts were made to lure it out by having her lean over a bowl of milk, with a noose close to her mouth…
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 