Case Study: Calling on the Red King
The death of the Red King is a mystery that has remained unsolved for over 900 years and shaped both the political and actual British landscape.
King William II, also known as Rufus, was supposedly killed in a hunting accident in the New Forest, at the time a royal hunting ground, by an expert marksman.
That’s how the story goes… But whether or not this was an accident or actually murder is still very much up for debate. For a start, the fated arrow reportedly bounced off an oak tree after missing a stag. Yes you read that right, bounced. Not glanced, or skimmed, bounced.
Semantics and likely story embellishments aside, the marksman Tyrrell, immediately fled the scene, only stopping to shoe his horse backwards to confuse pursuers. Lucky for him, the king really wasn’t popular and no one bothered to chase him.
The death of the Red King, whilst much debated, is quite literally set in stone, on a memorial called the Rufus Stone originally erected in 1746. And it is here that the king supposedly still haunts, somewhere along the liminal path between the Rufus Stone and the city of Winchester, where he was buried.
We set out on a blustery autumn day last year to visit the location of his death and uncover the truth behind these rumours…
The scene was set for a memorable haunting.
Pitch darkness, torrential rain, ears buzzing with a tale of murder, betrayal, and potentially something darker lurking in the forest…
But we were to return home empty handed, soaked to the skin, the only fright a minor panic when we got back and momentarily misplaced the voice recorder… Unlike Kitty and Aiden, we heard no Old French, nor saw any figures in the underbrush (thank goodness).
For now, the Red King remains elusive.
