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William Clarke & his Dog
William Clarke, aged 44, was hanged in Lincoln Castle in 1877 for fatally shooting a gamekeeper while poaching near Norton Disney. His dog was then taken in by the proprietors of the nearby Strugglers’ Inn, which Clarke had frequented…
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Crowland Abbey: Guthlac & the Demons
Saint Guthlac of Crowland was of noble Mercian blood. He became a soldier in his teens, then retired to a monastic life in his mid-twenties. On St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August) 699, he headed…
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The Dorrington Demons (& Witches)
In A Dictionary of English Folklore, Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud note ‘a type of legend found throughout England’ in which the location of an ‘inconveniently sited’ church is said to be the result of malevolent forces…
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Byard’s Leap
The hamlet of Byard’s Leap is named for a local story about a witch called Old Meg, who lives in a cave from where she terrorises locals and curses their crops. She is challenged by either a villager, a knight or a retired soldier called Black Jim, who promises to slay her. He requires a…
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The Black Lady of Bradley Woods
The ghost of a crying woman in a black cloak and hood, the Black Lady, is said to roam these woodlands. Her harrowing tale is as follows…
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Tom Otter
A horrifying true story that fed macabre imaginations and thus became also a legend. Tom Otter, Nottinghamshire native and navvy working in Lincoln, made local woman Mary Kirkham pregnant in 1805. He already had a wife and child back home, but the authorities who forced them to marry in a ‘knob-stick wedding’…
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 