in the parish is sure to happen at no distant period.”[1] And it is recorded in Bee’s Diary, that the death of one John Borrow, of Durham, was presaged by a vision of a coach drawn by six black swine, and driven by a black driver.
The Headless Coach, or more correctly coach with headless coachman, appears again in Norfolk. Mr. Henry Denny writes thus of it: “I remember well my mother talking about a certain person, whose name I have forgotten, but who formerly lived in what is called Pockthorp, a part of the city near the river Wensam, a man of some substance. He used to be seen by people late at night driving a coach and four horses over the tops of the houses, the coachman and horses all without heads. The crack of the whip was heard and then the carriage and horses were seen in the air. He was always seen going in the direction of Pockthorp, or the old bridge which leads to Monshold Heath. The belief was a common one fifty or sixty years ago.”
Beverley, in Yorkshire, has also a like apparition. The headless ghost of Sir Josceline Percy drives four headless horses nightly above its streets, pausing over a certain house, of which I can say nothing more by way of identification than that it was tenanted a few years back by a Mr. Gilbey. This house was said to contain a chest with 100 nails in it-, one of which dropped out every year. Tradition avers that this nocturnal disturbance is connected with Sir Josceline once riding on horseback into Beverley Minster. There is in the Minster a Percy shrine.[2]
“At Dalton, near Thirsk,” writes Mr. Baring-Gould, “is an old barn, which is haunted by a headless woman. One night a tramp went into it to sleep. At midnight he was awakened by a light, and sitting up he saw a woman coming towards him from the end of the barn, holding her head in her hands like a lantern, with light streaming out of the eyes, nostrils, and mouth. He sprang out of the barn in a fright, breaking a hole in the wall to escape. This hole I was shown six years ago. Whether the barn still stands I cannot say.”
As for Yorkshire, indeed, the Rev. J. Barmby assures me that
