In the early nineteen-seventies, two young brothers digging in their back garden in Hexham, Northumberland, unearthed two small carved stone heads. Soon afterwards, the families nearby were telling strange stories, including one about a half-man, half-sheep figure seen at night.
Adam tells the story of the Hexham Heads, from the garden to Dr Anne Ross, the Celtic specialist who studied them and later described her own terrifying experience. Then comes the twist: a local man named Desmond Craigie, who said he'd made heads just like them for his daughter in the nineteen-fifties.
Ancient Celtic relics or homemade toys? And does it even matter how old they are? Oz wants evidence, Frank wants justice for his nan's gnome, and nobody knows where the heads are now.
The Grave Shift is a Ghost Haunt UK production. Hosted by Adam, Oz and Frank.
Full transcript
AdamTwo little boys. A back garden in Hexham. A spade goes into the soil and comes back up with a face looking at it.
AdamThen another face. Carved stone, small enough to sit in your palm.
AdamAnd according to the people who lived near them, something else came up out of that garden too. This is The Grave Shift.
AdamWe're on Apple, Spotify and everywhere else you get podcasts. Follow us, rate us, and tell one mate who owns a spade.
FrankOne mate who owns a spade. That's every dad in the Northwest, Adam. That's the whole demographic.
OzEpisode nine. And tonight we're doing garden ornaments.
AdamThey are not garden ornaments, Oz.
OzSee if you still say that in an hour.
FrankBefore we start, I need to declare an interest. I have history with garden ornaments.
AdamOh no.
FrankMy nan had a gnome. Little fishing gnome by the pond. Called him Derek. And every single morning, Derek was facing a different way.
OzEvery single night, your grandad was coming home from the Legion a different way.
FrankDon't you bring my grandad into this. Derek knew things. Derek had a look.
AdamRight, we will come back to Derek—
FrankWe will absolutely come back to Derek.
AdamHexham. Market town in Northumberland, in the Tyne Valley, not far at all from Hadrian's Wall.
AdamProper old place. There's the abbey, there's Roman history all over that landscape, and before the Romans, Celtic peoples lived right across the north.
Oz'Before the Romans.' Lovely. You're laying the spooky carpet down already.
AdamIt's relevant, I promise. Apparently I'm the only one who reads, so let me use it.
AdamSo. Early nineteen-seventies. It's usually given as nineteen-seventy-one, though some accounts say seventy-two. An ordinary house in Hexham.
AdamTwo young lads are out in the back garden, digging about, the way kids do when they've been told to get out from under everyone's feet.
FrankLove that. Proper seventies. No telly till you've done the borders.
AdamAnd in the soil, one of them hits something hard. Small, stone. He rubs the muck off it, and it's a head. A carved human head.
AdamThey keep digging. And close by, there's a second one.
FrankThat would make the hairs on my arms go, that. You're a little lad and the garden's looking back at you.
OzTwo stone heads in a garden. I've already got about six explanations and none of them involve druids.
FrankGo on then, name one.
OzPrevious owner liked a hobby.
AdamHold that thought, Oz. Genuinely. Put it somewhere safe.
OzWhy are you looking at me like that?
AdamSo what did they look like? From the descriptions and photos, crude little things. Rough stone, simple carved faces.
AdamOne usually gets called the boy, a bit skull-like. The other gets called the girl, or the witch, with what looks like hair pulled back in a bun.
FrankThe witch. Course it is. Nobody ever digs up 'the accountant.'
OzWould be scarier, to be fair.
AdamThe boys take them indoors. Bit of a novelty. Something to show people.
AdamAnd this is where it turns. Because the stories that came out of those houses afterwards are a lot.
OzI'm getting the meter out. In spirit. Pun intended.
AdamNow, I want to be careful. Everything I'm about to say is what people reported. None of it's been verified. It's testimony.
FrankTestimony's evidence, Oz.
OzTestimony's a starting point, Frank.
AdamThe story goes the heads wouldn't stay put. You'd leave them facing one way, come back, and they'd have turned round.
FrankDEREK.
AdamI knew it. I knew the second I said it.
FrankThat is Derek behaviour! That is textbook Derek!
OzIt's also textbook two young lads in a house with two stone heads.
FrankFine, but I'm noting it. Derek's in the room.
AdamOther things got reported too. Objects broken. Things moved. A general feeling that something in there wasn't right.
AdamBut the bit everyone remembers isn't in the boys' house at all. It's next door.
FrankOh, I don't like next door.
AdamAnd the woman living next door told a story that's been repeated ever since.
AdamThe way it's usually retold, she was up one night, and a figure came into the room.
AdamHalf man. Half sheep.
OzSorry. Sheep?
AdamSheep.
FrankNo, don't laugh, Oz—
OzI'm not laughing, I'm processing. Of all the halves to pick.
FrankHang on though. Think about it in the dark. Long face, those eyes, standing upright in your kid's bedroom. That is horrible.
OzFine. Upright sheep in the dark is horrible. I'll give you that one.
AdamIn her account, it moved off through the house, and the story goes the front door was later found open. As if it had let itself out.
FrankIt let itself out. That's somehow worse. It's polite.
OzA front door open in the seventies. Somebody ring the papers.
AdamNow, as the story's usually told, the heads weren't in her house. And yet that's the story that got attached to them.
OzWhich tells you something about how these stories travel.
FrankOr it tells you whatever came out of that soil didn't stay in one house.
AdamEither way, word gets out. And the heads end up with someone who properly knows carved stone heads. Dr Anne Ross.
AdamAnne Ross was a serious academic. An archaeologist, a specialist in Celtic religion, who'd written about the importance of the head in Celtic belief.
OzOkay, that's a serious person. I'll say that straight off.
FrankThank you. Write that down.
OzI said serious, Frank. I didn't say right.
AdamQuick context. Carved stone heads turn up across Celtic Britain and Europe, and they're thought to have carried real religious meaning.
FrankSee, I love that. Two thousand years ago somebody's sat carving a face because they believed it held power.
OzAnd fifty years ago somebody's sat carving a face because the telly was rubbish.
AdamAgain. Hold the thought.
AdamRoss looks at the Hexham Heads and associates them with that Celtic tradition. To her eye, they fit.
FrankAnd she's the expert.
OzShe's the expert in Celtic heads. So when she looks at a head, guess what she sees.
FrankThat's so unfair. That's like saying a vet only ever sees dogs.
OzIf you hand a vet a dog-shaped lump, they do tend to see a dog.
AdamAnd then. Anne Ross has the heads in her own home. And she reports something.
FrankGo on.
AdamAs she told it, she woke in the night feeling an awful cold. And there was a figure in the doorway.
AdamIn her telling: tall. Dark. Part human, part wolf.
FrankNo.
OzUpgrade on the sheep, at least.
FrankWill you stop ranking the animals!
AdamIn her account, the figure moved off, and she went after it through the house before it was gone.
AdamAnd she said she wasn't the only one. She later described others in her household seeing something too.
FrankRight. This is where I plant my flag. This isn't two kids. This is a respected archaeologist saying it publicly.
OzIt is a big deal, I'll grant you. Academics don't usually put their name to wolfmen.
AdamAnd by her account, it unsettled her badly enough that she wanted the heads out of the house.
FrankYou don't do that for a laugh. You don't get rid of the most interesting thing on your desk for a laugh.
OzUnless the most interesting thing on your desk is giving you nightmares. Which, to be fair, is also my point.
AdamNow. Here's the turn.
AdamWhile all this is getting attention, a local man comes forward. His name's Desmond Craigie.
OzHere we go. Here's my thought.
AdamAnd Craigie says, essentially, I made heads like that. Back in the nineteen-fifties.
AdamFor his daughter. Apparently as a sort of toy.
FrankTo play with.
OzPrevious owner liked a hobby! I said that ages ago!
AdamYou did. I'll give you that. You did say it.
FrankHang on. Who gives a little girl stone heads to play with? What was wrong with a doll?
OzThey are dolls, Frank. They're just very low-budget dolls.
FrankImagine Christmas morning. 'Ooh, what's this? Oh. It's a face.'
AdamIt was the fifties. You got an orange and a stone face and you were grateful.
FrankDerek was a better present than that, and Derek was evil.
AdamSo that's the twist. An expert saying these fit an ancient Celtic tradition, and a local man saying he made heads just like them for his kid.
OzAnd for me, that's basically case closed.
FrankAbsolutely not, and I'll tell you why.
AdamRight, gloves off. Oz, make your case.
OzOne. A man says he made them. He's local, there's no obvious reason for him to lie, and he's describing something simple to make.
OzTwo. Celtic heads are often crude. So a crude modern head and a crude ancient one can look an awful lot alike.
OzThree. Nobody seems to know for certain where the heads are now. So it can't be settled, which is very handy for a ghost story.
FrankHandy! You think somebody hid them on purpose?
OzNo. I think things get lost. But a mystery with no object left to test lives forever.
OzAnd four. The sightings. A neighbour at night. Then an expert who's spent her life studying the power of these heads, at home with them.
OzI'm not saying anyone lied. I'm saying minds do strange things at three in the morning, especially when you've already heard the story.
FrankRight. My turn.
FrankFirst. You're mixing up two questions. How old are the heads? And did something happen? Those aren't the same question.
AdamThat's actually a good point.
FrankI have them. Occasionally.
FrankSay Craigie's right. Fifties. Made at home. Fine. Does that undo what the neighbour said she saw? Does it undo Anne Ross?
OzIt takes away the reason it's meant to be happening. No ancient cult, no ancient anything.
FrankWho says it needs to be ancient? Something's made with a face, it's buried, it's dug up. Maybe it's the attention. Maybe it's the people.
OzSo your theory is homemade Derek.
FrankDon't you dare. Leave Derek out of this.
FrankSecond. Anne Ross. Serious woman, serious career. She had every reason to keep quiet, and she didn't.
OzYeah. That's the bit I can't wave away, honestly. That's a genuine point.
FrankDid you hear that? Adam, write that down.
AdamI'm writing it down. Date, time, two witnesses.
OzI'm conceding she believed it. Not that a wolfman was in her house.
FrankIt's a start. Baby steps. Little lamb steps.
AdamFor the record, this is genuinely disputed. Celtic or nineteen-fifties, people have argued for decades, and with nobody sure where the heads are now, I can't see it ever being settled.
AdamAnd there were real families in the middle of this. Kids, a neighbour, a mum up at night. Whatever it was, they lived with it.
FrankYeah. That's fair. Nobody wants that in their house, real or not.
AdamRight. Verdicts. Oz, you first.
OzMy view? Made in the fifties, buried in a garden, dug up by kids. Then a story grew around it, and I think it grew in good faith.
OzBut Anne Ross bothers me. In a good way. I'd have loved a week in that house with her and the meters.
AdamFrank.
FrankI don't care how old they are. I think something happened in that house, and next door, and in Anne Ross's home.
FrankAnd I think Derek was trying to warn us.
OzDerek was facing the bins, Frank.
AdamMine. The Craigie claim is strong and I can't ignore it. But the experiences are the real story, and I don't think anyone's ever properly explained them.
AdamTwo little faces in the soil. Maybe two thousand years old. Maybe twenty. Either way, people were frightened of them.
FrankSo where are they now?
AdamThat's the thing. Nobody's certain.
OzSomebody's loft. A box in a garage. Somebody's rockery.
FrankFacing a different way every morning.
AdamThis has been The Grave Shift. I'm Adam.
FrankI'm Frank. Check your borders. And say goodnight to Derek for me.
OzI'm Oz. Derek's a gnome. Goodnight.
AdamMaybe, somewhere out there, two small stone heads are sitting in the dark. If you ever dig one up, maybe leave it where you found it.
AdamYou can listen to this episode and every other episode of The Grave Shift on all major podcast providers -- link's in the description below.
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