Dr Anne Ross was a respected and venerated doctor of ancient British mythology and culture, who had been studying the ancient earthworks in and around Hadrian’s wall. It was here in 1971 she was asked to examine two carven heads found on the site, and to give her professional opinion on them. A few days later they arrived through the post at her house, packaged in a cardboard box and wrapped in paper, ready to be thoroughly examined. But as soon as she had unpackaged the items, she felt an immediate sense of cold and fear, as though something was close to her. The heads themselves had nothing wrong with them, plain and simple, but something just felt off about them. She quickly analysed them geologically, them returned them as soon as she could, unwilling to delve much deeper into their past.
Although the heads may have left her house, that would not be the last time that Dr Ross would feel their presence. She tossed and turned in a cold sweat that night, with the images of them haunting her dreams. It was then she awoke suddenly, deeply afraid of a presence in her house. She looked over at her bedroom door, and to her horror she saw the silhouette of a tall, slender, hunched figure slipping out of her room into the corridor. Its outline was illuminated by the lights of her corridor, and they showed what seemed to be a half-man, half-beast. But what shocked and scared her more than the horrid thought of bring watched in her sleep by a shadowy was the strange desire to follow the creature, off out into the house. She immediately woke her husband, begging him to help her search the house for what she believed to be some sort of intruder. They looked until the sun came up, but still found no trace of a break in or break out. The shaken couple wrote it off as a nightmare, brought on by a fever and tricks of the light. But Dr Ross couldn’t believe that a nightmare could be so real, and spent many sleepless nights watching for the creature.
Days passed, and no sign of it appeared across the house, until one evening when the young daughter Dr Ross came home from school. She walked into the house, and froze right in her tracks. There on the stairs, hunched and shadowy, was a figure: half man, half animal. But this time it did not simply leave quietly. It sprinted down the stairs in a flash, leaping over the barriers and landed with padded feet on the floor, almost silently. It then burst past the girl through the door and vanished. Her parents soon arrived home to find her bundled on the floor, sobbing and crying in fear. They once again searched the house, and once again found nothing.
For the next few weeks, the creature kept to haunt the halls of their London home: doors opened with nothing on the other side, cold hung about the house constantly, shadows lurked in the corners of eyes. But Dr Ross had no reason to believe that this had anything to do with the mysterious heads, except a feeling in the pit of her stomach. This feeling was soon to be confirmed however, as a story soon came to her attention from Northumbria, near where the heads were found. A mother had been putting her children to bed, when she felt a strange feeling of cold and fear in the room. She then turned around, and saw a figure lurching over her. As she let out as scream, the creature burst out passed her, jumping out and window and disappearing. To this day, Dr Ross still cannot explain her series of paranormal events, and she still sometimes sees the dark shadow of a figure lurking, and feels cold chills and fear from the pits of her stomach.
Severed heads had a special significance to the ancient pagans, believing to protect them from enemies in battles and raids. They would drop them down wells and bury them near forts. Could this be the reason for the haunting of Dr Anne Ross? We may never know…