The Cursed Crematorium

Weird North - Episode 1: The Cursed Crematorium

A midnight fare. A restless soul. A story you’ll never forget.
Step past the gates of Carleton Crematorium and into a tangled web of history, folklore, and lingering spirits. In tonight’s tale, host Zowie Swan shares the chilling story of taxi driver Harry Hodges, who encountered a ghastly green-faced apparition during a midnight fare. Was it the restless soul of Mrs Abigail Whalley, murdered five years earlier under mysterious circumstances, returned for vengeance? And what ancient forces linger along the Hollow Way known as Robins Lane, where sanctified ground meets pagan roots? Dare you walk here after dark?

Join Zowie for the very first chapter of Weird North. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:32

Welcome to Weird North, where we discuss all things weird and all things northern. Luckily for you, I am both Weird and Northern, so we're starting off in quite a good place. This is the very first episode of the podcast, and we will be talking about the hidden folklore and the strange history and the eerie hauntings of northern England. Join me as we investigate the curse of Carlton Crematorium. Carlton is located near Poulton on the filed coast of Lancashire, which is the northwest coast of England. Now Carlton is, you know, quite a sleepy, may I say even posh area, not really known too much for you know the way of strange and mysterious goings on. However, they did actually find the remains of a prehistoric giant elk when they were doing some works a long time ago. And I think it's the only one of its type that was found in the country. So it is quite interesting to imagine these massive uh elks, you know, just roaming that area of the fild. But um back to the crematorium itself. Now the crematorium is located on Stocks Lane, just opposite Robins Lane, which, as Colton is quite a you know, nice area to live. Uh Robins Lane is probably one of the nicest streets in Colton. Very sought-after area, it's got big, massive, detached houses, certainly somewhere I would never be able to afford to live. Um, and again, you wouldn't expect the strangeness that is connected to this place to come in such a sort of suburban area, but we all know that the weirdest stuff happens where you least expect it. So Carlton Crematorium and its necropolis, Carlton Cemetery, it sort of occupies this massive bit of no man's land, which sort of connects Poulton, Blackpool, and Bispam, all towns on the Foul Coast. The crematorium itself was built in 1935 by Blackpool Borough architect JC Robinson. Um, it's actually one of the oldest crematoriums in the country. And I don't think a lot of people realise how old it actually is. When Robinson was um building the crematorium, he based his designs on his own interpretation of the ancient Persian Mausoleum of Mausalis, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Quite grand, really, for a crematorium on the Foul Coast. The cemetery today, because of its sort of proximity to Blackpool, has become known as under the nickname as the Cemetery of the Stars. I think that Leyton Cemetery also would probably uh contest that title because there's a lot of famous and interesting people from Blackpool's entertainment history buried there too. And it is actually the sister cemetery to Carlton. But at Carlton um we have the final resting place of the famous Italian clown Charlie Carioli, and also everyone's favourite northern battle axe, Ina Sharples, famously played by the wonderful late great Violet Carson. And um they are buried in Colton Cemetery. Also, Beatrix Potter was cremated, one of the first people to be cremated at Colton Crematorium. She was, as we know, a huge environmentalist. The Lake District National Park today only exists because of her work and um her sort of foresight into protecting um common land. She at the time believed that uh being cremated was actually the best option for the environment. We know that's not the case today. However, she really went the extra mile she travelled, although, well, she she didn't personally travel, but she arranged for her body to be transferred down to Carlton and be cremated. Today, Carlton Crematorium and its cemetery is a place of peaceful remembrance. On the surface, nothing more than a dignified and stately space to say goodbye to loved ones. However, as with most places in the north of England, all is not as it first seems. Let me introduce you to Harry Hodges and the green-faced ghoul. Now, Harry Hodges was a local man, he came from Leyton, and he was a taxi driver. On one evening in 1936, only a year after the crematorium had been first opened, Harry Hodges picked up a fair at Blackpool North Train Station. This fair was a young lady travelling alone, and when she got into his cab, she told Harry to take her up to Robins Lane in Carlton. Thinking nothing of it, Harry obeyed. He carried his passenger over the Carlton Crossing and drove her up to Robins Lane. However, before he could actually turn down into Robins Lane, the young lady suddenly made him take a sharp left and drive up to the cemetery gates. Now this was at night time. So Harry Hodges later told the authorities how he'd found this request to be quite unusual with it being so late and the cemetery being closed. But who was he to argue with a customer? So he dutifully drove up to the gates of the pitch black cemetery and he waited for his fare to pay. It was then that he was seized by the sight of a ghastly green face, and he described it as having sunken eyes, long dark hair, and a punch like nose with a prominent chin. This was the face that he saw staring in at him through the cab window. Now Harry did what any other grown man would do if he was met in a similar situation. He screamed bloody murder. His screams were met by the young woman in the back seat. She shrieked with fear as she saw the face herself. So they both saw this apparition. But the next thing that Harry knew, his cab door had slammed shut because the woman had jumped from the car and was fleeing in terror, and had actually run through and over the fields into the darkness. And the face didn't just stay in one place, it floated across the windscreen of his taxi, and then it dissipated in front of his eyes. The next morning, Harry Hodges consulted the Blackpool Evening Gazette to see if they could maybe make sense of what had happened. Now you might be thinking, why did he wait until the next morning? Because certainly I was when I was reading this article. Um he'd gone home, he'd thought, okay, well, that was a very strange thing that has happened. And, you know, the the woman jumping out of his car and running away into the dark, he'd sort of just choked it up to a bad experience, a bad do, and thought, well, I'm clocking off for the evening. That's enough for me. However, all through the night, he just couldn't sleep, he just couldn't rest with thinking about what could have happened to the woman. So that's why he turned up, he'd sort of tipped up at the Blackpool Evening Gazette as soon as it opened to find out if they could help him. And, you know, remember this was 1936. He might not have wanted to go to the police because he might not have wanted to get the woman in trouble. But he he went to the Gazette to see if anybody had been reported as missing or anything like that. So um he just wanted to make sure she was okay. He really had like a sincere concern for her well-being. The newspaper did look into it, however, they took a rather different spin on things. They ran his story as like quite the serious piece, um, because after they checked their back numbers of the Gazette, they actually found something very strange and unsettling that had happened in the exact same spot. So five years before the grim spectre had been seen, there had been a horrible and horrific murder on Robins Lane. So they wondered if there was a connection between the two. On Monday the 11th, 1931, Miss Duckworth mentioned to her dear elderly neighbour, Mrs. Abigail Worley, that she was due to leave Colton and go on holiday. She was going to go the following day. Mrs. Worley was a widow of great age. She was entering her eighty-fourth year, and she lived completely alone in a bungalow on Robins Lane, so her neighbour was very kind and she would check in with her daily to make sure that the old lady didn't want for anything. Abigail Worley had once run a respectable school with her sister in Manchester, but after her sister's passing, she was all alone in the world, and her only remaining family lived on the other side of the Atlantic in America. Not only was she all alone, but she'd been left with a considerable fortune. The problem was that she had little need of it. She was once overheard basically saying that she had so much money that she scarcely knew what to do with it. She was not an ostentatious woman. She didn't care much for worldly possessions. In her twilight years she'd even taken to wearing a sturdy pair of old man's boots, you know, throwing away societal norms of the time in favour of thrift. So when Miss Duckworth had told her of her impending trip, Mrs Worley answered with quite a dismal response and quite prophetic. She said Goodbye, I may not see you again. This statement prompted Miss Duckworth to take extra care in the next morning in wishing Mrs Worley farewell before she left. However, she couldn't get a response from her neighbour, and it was swiftly discovered that something awful had happened in the night. The widow's house was in disarray. Her door had been forced by a blunt instrument, and it was clear that a robbery had taken place. Tragically, the trespasser had used that same blunt instrument to bludgeon the poor old lady to death. Such a heinous and atrocious crime sparked national interest, and the hunt began for poor Abigail's murderer. Initially, a roving lavender seller was suspected. He'd been seen in the area recently selling his wares, but then a witness came forward and stated that they'd seen a young couple, a man and a woman, visit the vicinity twice on the night of the murder, and both times they sped off in their vehicle in great and noticeable haste. They were never traced, however, no one was ever brought to justice for the appalling crime. And what's more bizarre is that Mrs. Wallie's wealth, which was naturally believed to be the motive for the murder, was on the investigation completely untouched. There was a large sum of money that had been left entirely in the property itself, along with jewellery and other valuables, so the case had remained a mystery. The Blackpool Evening Gazette basically made the assumption, or at least brought forth the suggestion that this green ghoul, this awful apparition that had been seen by Harry Hodges and his passenger was none other than poor Abigail. Could it have been that the female passenger had been in some way connected to the crime? Perhaps she was one half of the mysterious couple who had visited Mrs. Warley's home. Was this Abigail's terrible revenge? This is what the press of the time believed, yet as we delve even further back, perhaps something far older and far more elemental is to blame for the apparition. Robins Lane is not of modern design, despite the architect crafted houses and the sleek cars in the driveways. Robins Lane is in fact an ancient Celtic hollowway. Holloways are sunken lanes with often with built up banks of earth on either side, originally shielded by a tunnel of overhanging trees. These historic byways were of great significance, often marking land boundaries or sacred paths to religious sites. The land around Robins Lane and Carlton Crematorium is believed to have been an ancestral burial ground once guarded by pre-Roman chieftains. The hallway ran from the entrance of modern day the modern day crematorium all the way to All Hallows Church in Bispum. The original path has now been sadly interrupted by King Craig Road, but evidence of the lane connecting to Bispum can be seen on early maps. And just as an aside, my sister, you know, often uses that same area because it is very popular as a bridal way. So you can still go, even if you can't go by car, you can certainly go on foot or on hoof all the way from Colton at the very top of Robins Lane all the way back to Bispum. And if you wanted to, you could go all the way to All Hallows Church if you really wanted to do that. Now, All Hallows Church itself is old enough, but its history, again, is even older, with the indication of a holy well being on that site, and potentially the presence of a keel, which is a Manx Gaelic name for a very early type of chapel. These fledgling churches were built by those converted by St. Patrick himself and were often built on sacred pagan sites, as it was St. Patrick's preferred method of conversion to blend the two faiths to further his Christian mission. As there's believed to have been a keel at Colton also, it does make sense that the hollowway at Robins Lane connected these two important sites. Now, legend says that Celtic holloways are traditionally protected by boggots. Boggots are mischievous, malevolent spirits, and boggets are said to have a leader, or a master even, known as Old Hob, who takes the form of a devil or a goat or a satyr, sporting horns and cloven hooves and a tail even. Could it have been that Harry Hodges saw a boggot or even old Hobb himself guarding the entranceway to this ancient road? I'll leave it up to you. Whether Harry saw a ghost or a boggot or just a drunken farmhand having a laugh, two facts remain. Abigail Worley was brutally murdered by unknown assailants, and in the same spot five years later, a young woman disappeared into the night and was never heard of again. Harry was adamant in what he saw. He certainly thought twice about taking any more fares to the crematorium after that. So next time you're walking, perhaps walking your dog at Colton Cemetery, or walking your dog down the old ancient hollowway of Robins Lane, if your dog stops to bark, seemingly barking at the midair, you may wish to heed its warning and turn back the other way.