The words “Who put Bella in the Wych Elm – Hagley Wood” first appeared graffitied on a wall in Upper Dean Street, Birmingham in the year 1944. Immediately, links were made to the discovery of the body of a young woman in Hagley Wood, Worcestershire, a year earlier.
On the 18th April, 1943, four boys were poaching in the local Hagley woods, part of the Hagley Estate. Coming across a large Wych Elm tree, one of the boys climbed it to search for birds’ nests. Looking down into the hollow trunk of the tree, the boy discovered a human skull. As the boys were on the land illegally, they originally agreed to return the skull to where it was found and to go home without mentioning the discovery. However, it didn’t take long for the youngest of the boys to become uneasy and to reveal the discovery to his parents.
Police subsequently searched the area and found the skeleton of a woman inside the trunk of the tree, including a shoe, a wedding ring, and some scraps of clothing. The remains of a hand were found a short distance from the tree. Professor James Webster performed the forensic investigation on the remains, deducing that the woman had died approximately 18 months prior, meaning the time of death was around October 1941. A piece of taffeta was found inside the mouth of the skull, leading to the theory that she was suffocated with this material. It was also determined that the woman was placed inside the tree not long after her death, as she could not have fitted inside the trunk after the start of rigor mortis.
Given that the UK was in the midst of the second world war, authorities found that the records of missing people were far too vast to be able to identify the woman easily. In 1944, the message in Birmingham appeared, followed in later years by similar phrases written on the Hagley Obelisk close to the area where the woman was discovered. Police worked to try to determine who “Bella” could have been.
In 1945, Margaret Murray, an anthropologist from University College London, presented her theory. She believed that “Bella” had been killed in an occult ritual by gypsies and that the removal of her hand was consistent with a ritual called the Hand of Glory (whereby the hand of a criminal is removed after death and is deemed to hold spiritual powers).
Other theories are that Bella was a local prostitute by the name of Luebella who had worked on Hagley Road and was reported missing in 1941, that she was the lover of a German spy, and that she was a Dutch woman killed by a group of spies for knowing too much.
In 1953, a woman named Una Mossop came to the police to say that her late husband Jack Mossop had spoken to her about placing a drunken woman inside a tree. Apparently after discovering a drunken woman on a night out, he and a friend had placed the unconscious woman inside the hollow trunk of a tree so that she might wake up and “see the error of her ways”. Jack was sent to a mental hospital in Stafford and had regular nightmares about a woman staring out at him from a tree. He died in the mental hospital before the body of the woman was discovered.
As of today, it hasn’t been determined who Bella was, or indeed who put Bella in the Witch Elm.
As you approach Overtoun Bridge, a Category-B listed structure leading to Overtoun House in Dunbartonshire, Scotland, you will see signs exclaiming “DANGEROUS BRIDGE: KEEP YOUR DOGS ON A LEAD”.
Since 2005, media attention has grown significantly, with reports that a significant number of dogs have leapt from the side of the bridge to their deaths in seemingly unexplained circumstances.
Paranormal investigators have attributed these events to a history of supernatural activity around the area of the bridge, which they believe can be sensed by dogs.
Canine behavioural experts however dispute this, and have explained that the unfortunate deaths are most-likely caused by nearby scents of minks and other animals, combined with the fact that the severe drop at the side of the bridge cannot be fully perceived by small dogs.
Tragically, in 1994 the bridge was the site of a murder and attempted suicide, when a man threw his two-week old son over the side of the bridge as he believed the child was possessed by the devil. The man subsequently jumped from the bridge himself, and then slashed his own wrists, but survived the attempt to take his own life.
Every year on Shrove Tuesday in the town of Atherstone, Warwickshire, England, a traditional ball game takes place. In the days and hours leading up to the event, local business and residents of the central Long Street board up their windows in preparation for the game. At 3pm, a large specially made football is dropped from a second-floor window into the crowd below. The ball is passed and kicked around, with the gathered crowd of players and spectators encouraged to have a kick of the ball. At around 4pm, the game becomes serious with groups competing to have control of the ball, and it is not unusual to see blood spilled as punches are thrown between the competitors. Whoever has hold of the ball when the whistle blows at 5pm wins.
A tradition dating back to 1199, the game has changed somewhat throughout the years, but the two basic rules remain the same:
1) Do not take the ball away from Long Street.
