S01 Episode 9: Dawn of the Head

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nine each. Let us help you save even more with free delivery, eighteen month interest, fry financing and exclusive rebates not found at big box stores, shop online, over the phone, or in store. Airport Home Appliance unbeatable price selection and people. Throughout history, we have attributed worth and sentiment to inanimate objects, things that, when looked at out of context or without the language to understand their worth, would otherwise appear completely insignificant.

At one end of the scale, it may be something as small as a trinket, a memento of a happier time, or something to remind you of somebody you love. At the other end, it may be an idol that for some might represent the material embodiment of nothing less than a god, but to another might seem nothing more than a strange looking doll. It is a trait we develop from an early age, as explored by celebrated psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott.

During his early work as a pediatrician, Winnicott became fascinated with the various blankets and toys that children, mainly aged four to twelve months, would bring to his consultations. What he discovered was that these items, rather than being mere distractions or comfort aides, were actually serving a far greater purpose.

The objects, in fact, provided a bridge between the inner world of the child and the external outside world, thus beginning the transition of separation from the mother in order to develop its own identity. In other words, even at that early stage, we are already imbuing physical things with

our own unique sense of meaning. The branch of philosophy known as phenomenology, as explored by Edmund Hussel and Martin Heidegger, posits that all reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in the human consciousness, and not of anything independent of human consciousness. In its simplest form, it explains why one person might look at their nation's flag and feel pride and affection, while another looking at the exact same thing, might identify it with far more

negative connotations. But what are those objects that seem not to conform to the vagaries of the human conscious, objects that some might say seem to have a power all of their own. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McClain Smith. June nineteen seventy one, the presenters of the BBC children's show Blue Peter buried a time capsule into

the ground at BBC's television center in West London. Three hundred miles away, in the small northern town of Hexham, two young boys were digging up their own time capsule of swords. What they found exactly has never been fully explained. The discovery of the objects, now known as the Hexham Heads, would set off a chain of extraordinary and strange events that have never fully been accounted for. It is a

truly astounding mystery that remains to this day unexplained. It began one afternoon, roughly half a mile from the town center of Hexham, as two young boys were out playing in their garden. The Robson family had only recently moved and were still settling into their new home at number three Red Avenue. Spring finally turned to summer, and with the oldest daughter Wendy away on honeymoon in Scotland, the Robsons took the opportunity to conduct a spring clean of

the property. Eleven year old Colin Robson and his younger brother Leslie had volunteered to tidy up the garden, their mother, Jenny watching from the kitchen as they set about tackling the overgrown vegetation. At some point, Colin wandered to the back of the garden and began pulling up the weeds when he came across something very strange buried in the ground.

The object, spherical in shape and just a little smaller than a tennis ball, was larger and different in texture to the normal stones you might expect to find in the area. Colin sensed immediately that there was something peculiar about it, a feenie that was justified when, after clearing the mud from the surface, he uncovered what looked like a face carved into the stone. Colin called his brother

Leslie over to have a look. A short time later, after some further digging, Lesli he found his own tennis ball sized stone. Wiping the mud from the surface, sure enough, he too found a face carved into the rock. After giving the heads a proper clean, the boys proudly showed of their discovery to the rest of the family. The strange heads appeared to be made from a sandstone like material, the faces seeming too distinct to have been made by

natural erosion. They had an appearance like two grotesque doll's heads. The first, one, known as the Boy, had hair etched into the head, an open face with wide set eyes and a long nose. The other had a far more severe look and has been described as having a strong, beaked nose and wild, bulging eyes. It would later be known as the Witch. Excited by their find, the two boys gave the heads pride of place on a shelf in their living room and headed off to bed. The

next morning, however, something strange had occurred. The heads had moved, having been positioned to face one way. The boys discovered that they now seemed to be facing out the window toward the spot where they had been buried, and things only began to get stranger. Certain objects in the house started to break with no reason. A bed belonging to the youngest daughter was one evening showered with glass, forcing

her to move out of her room. Oldest daughter, Wendy, returned from her honeymoon to find the family in a heightened state of anxiety. Believing the boys to be playing tricks, Wendy determined to put an end to the nonsense and promptly hid the heads under the top end of her bed. The following morning, they had moved again to the other side. A few nights later, the Robsons were awoken by screams coming from next door. The property was rented by their neighbors,

the Dodd family. That night, Nellie Dodd, the mother of the family, had been staying in her children's bedroom to come at her young daughter, Marie, who had been suffering from an ear infection. After finally getting to sleep, she was woken by her ten year old son, Trevor. He told his mum that something or someone had been pressing on his legs as he tried to sleep. Nellie managed to calm her son and put him back to bed,

but sometime later, Marie was awoken by a noise. She woke her mother, who immediately sat upright in bed, for there in front of her stood a strange creature that she later described as having the torso of a man but the head of a ram. When they screamed in terror, the creature was unmoved, but eventually turned out of the room and disappeared down the stairs. Nellie was so traumatized by the incidant that she applied to Hexham Counsel to

have the family relocated, a request that was granted shortly after. Meanwhile, the Robsons continued to experience a number of strange phenomena. A mysterious glowing light had started appearing at night at the end of the garden in the place that the heads had been discovered. Later, an unusual flower grew up

from the same spot. Eager to put an end to the strange occurrences, the Robsons took the heads to Hexham Abbey, where they were later passed on to archeologists Roger Mikett and David Smith of the Newcastle University Museum of Antiquities. The two academics were unconcerned by the reported hauntings and only too happy to take possession of the peculiar stone objects.

Mikeert was particularly infused by the discovery, believing the heads to be of Celtic origin, and despite not being specialized in this area, he knew just the person who could help. Doctor Anne Ross, a well known Celtic scholar from Southampton University, was at the time best known for her book The Pagan Celts and Pagan Celtic Britain. After being sent a photo of the heads by Roger Miked, Doctor Ross confirmed his hunch, agreeing that they were indeed Celtic in origin.

Eager to learn more, Ross requested the heads be sent to her at Southampton to be analyzed. A few days later, the heads arrived at doctor Ross's office. Opening the package, doctor Ross was instantly gripped by a strange sensation. It wasn't anything particular, just a very base sense of unease. Nonetheless, due to a number of work constraints, doctor Ross had little choice but to take the heads home to examine them further, a decision she would soon come to regret.

Two nights later, doctor Ross awoke suddenly at two am in a fit of terror. A deep chill was in the air as Anne looked towards the door, where a tall, dark figure over six foot in height and appearing as if to be made of shadow, was slipping out of her room. In her confused state, the figure seemed to doctor Ross to be part animal and part man, overwhelmed by an irresistible force. Doctor Ross rose from her bed and followed the strange creature from her room, tracing it

to the landing. She caught sight of it again, moving towards the kitchen. Seeing it more clearly now, the upper part of its body was unmistakably that of a wolf, its back covered in black fur, while the lower half seemed to be that of a man. Terrified, she ran back to the bedroom and woke her husband, archeologist Richard Feacham. Together they searched the house but found no sign of the intruder. A few days later, doctor Ross and her

husband had been visiting friends in London. When they returned, they were shocked to find their daughter, Berenice, deathly pale and incapacitated with fear. Barely two hours before they had returned, Berenice had come back from school to find something inhuman standing on the stairs. It was the blackfurred creature returned again. Startled by the girl, the creature had run at her, vaulted over the banisters, and dropped down to the corridor below,

before vanishing in front of her eyes. Richard and Anne tried their best to calm their daughter down and made an immediate search of the house, but again found no sign of the intruder. Unaware that the hauntings may have been connected to the heads, doctor Ross shortly after received the results of the composition analysis. The tests conducted by her colleague, Professor Frank Hodson, failed to confirm the age

of the artifacts. However, after performing a visual and petrological analysis, Hodson declared their heads to be made from sandstone with hints of lime coating and some applied color pigments. The results seemed to confirm doctor Ross's theory of the Celtic origin of the heads. Back at home, doctor Ross began to notice a cold presence in the house, arising at random times throughout the day. On more than one occasion,

doors would burst open unaided. Other times, the family would hear the familiar sound of something leaping from the banister to the floor below, as if landing on its hind legs. Are you always taking care of your family? Do you often take care of others and not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself, to make time for you you deserve it. TELEDOC gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best to feeling like yourself again. With teledoc, you can

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Download the app or visit teledoc dot com forward slash Unexplained podcast today to get started. That's t e la d oc dot com slash Unexplained podcast. After conducting a lecture on Celtic heads at Newcastle University, doctor Ross was introduced to the Dodd family. Unlike Mitech and Smith, doctor Ross was profoundly moved by the Dodd's story regarding the strange part man, part animal creature they had witnessed, not least because her family had been experiencing the very same thing.

It was clear to doctor Ross that the heads were cursed, believing that in all possibility. The Garden of three Red Avenue had once been home to a Celtic shrine. Before long, the strange tale of the heads was national news. Doctor Ross insisting on their Celtic origin and attesting to the peculiar hauntings that seemed to accompany them. She had even gone as far as to compile a report of her theory, which had been due to be published in volume one

of the journal Archeologia Aliana. In her report, doctor Ross calculated the heads to be around eighteen hundred years old and that they were indicative of the Celtic cult of the severed head. Renowned Greek and Celtic arts scholar Paul Jakobstahl describes how the heads to the Celts was venerated above all else, since the heads of the celt was the soul, a symbol of divinity and the powers of

the other world. After battle, Celtic tribes were infamous for decapitating their enemies, placing their heads on spikes to be displayed on the outskirts of their settlements, or sometimes even nailed to their doors. Although the strange events had yet to be accounted for, it would seem at the very least the heads had been granted a genuine historical context.

But then something extraordinary he happened. Shortly after doctor Ross compiled her findings, a man contacted the Newcastle Evening Chronicle claiming to a valuable information pertaining to the origins of the mysterious Hexham heads. His name was De's Craigie, a lorry driver and lifelong resident of Hexham. Craigie, it turned out, was also a former resident of number three Reid Avenue.

He claimed to know about the heads because he had made them sixteen years previously, telling the Press, I made the heads from bits of stone and mortar simply to amuse my daughter Nancy des Craigie's admission was a surprise, to say the least, and for Doctor Ross the sort of revelation that could end a career. Undeterred, she published her report in nineteen seventy three and demanded Craigy provide proof of his claims, challenging him to make the heads again,

a challenge that Craigie was only too glad to take on. However, having provided the press with examples of his handiwork, many failed to see any significant resemblance to the original models, casting doubt on the veracity of his claims. For doctor Ross, her accounts of the events that took place at her home in Southampton never wavered, nor did that of her daughter and husband, and more to the point, the hauntings

had continued regardless. Convinced that the stones had brought something evil into her home, Doctor Ross finally had them sent back to the Newcastle Museum of Antiquities, at which point the strange occurrences ceased, immediately saying herself, it was as if a cloud had been lifted. The following years saw the heads pass between a number of different parties. They were retested again, this time by doctor Chiss Robson of

Newcastle University. His report offered a somewhat different result to the Southampton analysis, concluding the material from which the heads had been formed was in fact an artificial cement, a material unlike any natural sandstone. Although the results cast doubt on doctor Ross's theory, a precise date for the objects

remained tantalizingly out of reach. In nineteen seventy seven, the heads passed into the possession of Don Robbins, a controversial chemist whose book The Secret Language of the Stones posited an extraordinary theory. It was his belief that ancient stone circles such as Stonehenge or the Ring of broad Guard on Orkney, had unusual magnetic energies attached to them, and that the hexham heads made too, hold similar properties, affecting

anyone that came near them. It is a theory that came to prominence in nineteen sixty one, having been first proposed by archaeologist and Cambridge University graduate Thomas Charles Lethbridge. After graduation, Ethbridge worked for thirty five years as keeper of Anglo Saxon antiquities at the Cambridge University Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. However, as his theories and methods became more and more unorthodox, Lethbridge faced mounting criticism from many

of his peers. In nineteen fifty seven, Lethbridge left the museum and turned his attention instead to researching paranormal phenomena. Skeptical of the traditional understanding of ghosts, Lethbridge proposed an explanation no less extraordinary. It was his belief that certain minerals were capable of retaining information given off during a particularly emotional or traumatic event. Information that could then be replayed much like a cassette tape recording. The idea became

known as the stone tape theory. Could it be that the hexam heads had retained some kind of ancient information that was merely being replayed over and over again. In nineteen fifty three, Harry Martindale, an eighteen year old heating engineer, was working in the basement of Treasurer's House in York, in the north of England. The house had been erected in fifteen sixty two as the primary residence of the Archbishop of York, but had since been taken over by

the National Trust in the nineteen thirties. In an effort to modernize the building, Harry had been sent to begin the process of installing a new central heating system. After a few hours work, Harry became aware of a distant noise that sounded like a trumpet. The fanfare grew louder until, much to Harry's horror, ahead wearing a plumed helmet burst from the wall, followed by the rest of the body, along with a cart horse and what looked like nine

Roman soldiers. Curiously, all the apparitions had been cut off at the knee. The terrified Harry fell from his ladder and scrambled into the corner of the room to hide. Harry was so shaken by the event that he required two weeks off work to recover from the experience. Any attempt he made to recount the story was met only

with derision. That was until it was discovered that not only had a Roman road run through the exact spot where the cellar was located, but that it would have been placed fifteen inches lower than the cellar, which would explain the missing lower legs. His description of the soldiers was later found to be perfectly in keeping with what would have been expected of soldiers from that time. Despite regularly tellings of the event, Harry's story never changed, and

neither did he ever profit from it. Is it possible that Harry had witnessed some sort of recurrence of a past event played out from the very stone that the Roman soldiers had walked over all those years ago. Although the theory has been roundly dismissed in academic circles, it did, however, lend itself to an incredible TV play broadcast on the BBC in nineteen seventy two, written by Nigel Neil the Stone Tape is a masterfully creepy combination of science fiction

and horror that I can't recommend highly enough. So what then, of the heads and the extraordinary half man, half animal visitations? Explained by three separate families, neither with any knowledge of each other's experiences. In the winter of nineteen oh four, just outside the village of Allendale, something strange was brewing. The village, located only a few miles from Hexham, lies in the thick of the North Pennines, a sprawling mass

of rolling hills, dark browns and greens. One morning, as a soft orange sun began to rise, a veil of mist crept over the land. While out in the field, a young farmer was inspecting his flock of sheep. The farmer was surprised to find that at least two of them were missing. After a quick search at the field, he came across a distressing site. On the ground. Before him were the shredded remains of two sheep carcasses, one having been stripped of its bowels, while the other had

been completely devoured, with only its head remaining. A later inspection of the remaining flock revealed a number of contusions and scrapes about their necks and legs. The farmer recognized immediately the tell tale signs of a wolf. A few days previously, Captain Bains, a local dignitary, had reported the escape of a gray wolf that belonged to him. The coincidence was quickly dismissed since the wolf in question was only four and a half months old and incapable of

inflicting such damage. A hunting party of over one hundred and fifty people was quickly assembled and duly sent out in search of the mysterious beast. After days of searching, no sign of the animal was found, and the incident was forgotten. But then on Wednesday, December fourteenth, another local farmer awoke to find a great number of his flock had been slaughtered and left a rot in the fields.

The wolf was back. The hunting party, now numbering two hundred, resumed the search and continued throughout the winter to hunt in vain for the creature. A renowned pack of hunting dogs known as the Hayden Hounds were also put on the trail, but seemed unable to find any scent. In a fit of desperation, like something from a Hollywood movie. A skilled hunter was hired to take down the wolf.

The cocky mister Briddick, who had spent many years in India tracking and killing game, vowed to catch the animal through, as he put it, scientific lines, but he too was unable to find the culprit. Shortly after New Year's Day nineteen o five, the corpse of a wolf was discovered on a railway track some thirty miles from Hexham, its body brutally torn in two by a train. The Wolf Committee, however, were adamant that this animal could not have been the

same responsible for slaughtering all those sheep. The real culprit was still at large. By the end of January, the spate of attacks appeared to be over and the search was eventually called off. Now known as the Allendale Wolf, might this mysterious creature hold the key to the sightings

of doctor Anne Ross and the Dodd family. Don Robins, who had taken possession of the hexam heads in the late seventies, is thought to have lent them to a man named Frank Hyde, who specialized in the ancient practice of dowsing. It was Don's hope that Frank might be able to determine once and for all whether these strange

artifacts possessed any paranormal properties. But then Frank Hyde disappeared, As Robins later noted, Hyde seemed to have vanished as completely as if he had walked into a ferry hill in a folk tale, and neither he nor the heads

have ever been seen again. Whatever you come to believe, the bizarre story of the Hexam Heads is certainly not without intrigue, and, perhaps most interestingly, as Paul Screeton notes in his book The Quest for the hexam Heads, maybe the real power came not from the objects themselves, but

rather the people that handled them. Whether the heads were Celtic in origin or nothing more than crude playthings for a young girl, there is no denying their presence exerted a very real effect on those that came into contact with them, Much like the fabled Ring in the Tolkien

Ring trilogy. The weight of meaning projected onto the heads be that, from the time of the Celts or merely later on, was enough in itself to generate extraordinarily physical reactions, leaving a trail of confusion, fear, and mystery in their wake. It is a sheer testament to the human imagination, which in a sense renders any question of their provenance completely irrelevant.

As the circle begins to close on the first season of Unexplained, I just wanted to say a huge and heartfelt thank you to everyone that has listened to the show for your incredible messages of support and for reviewing and rating on iTunes. I really can't thank you enough. But also just to let you know that since I will be away for the next couple of weeks, episode ten will be due in four weeks from now, as

opposed to two. I will however, be providing a special bonus episode in its absence, so listen out for that. I'd also like to say a quick thank you to Andy Matthews, who first introduced me to the extraordinary story of the hexam Heads. You can tweet him at World Underscore of Underscore Weird. All elements of Unexplained are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the

show on iTunes. Feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained Podcast dot com or on Twitter at Unexplained pod Now. It's time to take care of yourself. To make time for you. Tell a doc gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you get back to feeling your best.

Speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between seven a m. To nine pm local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download the app, or visit teledoc dot com Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast Today to get started. That's t e l a d oc dot com Slash Unexplained podcast