In this episode, we dive into the strange mystery of the Hexham Heads — two small carved stone heads unearthed in 1971 (or ’72) in a suburban garden in the town of Hexham in Northumberland, England. The discovery was followed by reports of poltergeist-type phenomena: objects moving, bottles flying, a bizarre half-man/half-animal creature appearing, and a scholar who claimed to be haunted after taking the heads for study.
📚 Recommended Resources
- Screeton, Paul. Quest for the Hexham Heads. CFZ Press. (2010) — deep dive into the case.
- The Urban Prehistorian blog: “The Hexham Heads — discovery & contested testing” series.
- “1976: Lost Hexham Heads Werewolf Report Rediscovered” — BBC Archive clip covering the story on the TV programme Nationwide.
- Articles on the Hexham Heads in the context of hauntings and folk horror: e.g., “The Horrifying Hexham Heads” by A.C. Luke.
🎧 Thanks & Call-to-Action
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00:02 --> 00:07 [SPEAKER_00]: from the darkest reaches of space to the deepest corners of your mind.
00:07 --> 00:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Your mind.
00:09 --> 00:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to From the Void.
00:24 --> 00:26 [SPEAKER_00]: It started with a hole in the ground.
00:27 --> 00:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Two boys digging in their garden in the north of England.
00:31 --> 00:33 [SPEAKER_00]: A quiet suburb, a sleepy town.
00:34 --> 00:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And then something ancient, something carved, rose from the earth.
00:41 --> 00:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Two small stone heads, rough, crude, primitive.
00:47 --> 00:51 [SPEAKER_00]: They looked like something out of an archaeological dig.
00:51 --> 00:53 [SPEAKER_00]: But this wasn't a museum site.
00:53 --> 00:56 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a patch of dirt behind a family home.
00:57 --> 01:03 [SPEAKER_00]: And almost as soon as the heads came into the house, strange things began to happen.
01:04 --> 01:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Lights flickered, doors slammed, footsteps echoed down empty halls, and then came the creature.
01:14 --> 01:25 [SPEAKER_00]: a half-man half-beast, seen by more than one witness, standing in a hallway, before vanishing straight through a closed door.
01:25 --> 01:28 [SPEAKER_00]: This is from the Void, and I'm John Williamson.
01:29 --> 01:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Today we begin one of the strangest and most unsettling cases to ever come out of post-war Britain.
01:36 --> 01:42 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a mystery that straddles the line between archaeology, folklore, and the supernatural.
01:43 --> 01:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Some call it a hoax.
01:45 --> 01:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Others believe it was a curse.
01:47 --> 01:57 [SPEAKER_00]: But whatever it was, a left behind terrified witnesses, a vanished artifact, and a question that still haunts those who lived through it.
02:02 --> 02:13 [SPEAKER_00]: It was 1971 in the small market town of Hexam, located in Northumberland, in the northeast of England, about 25 miles west of Newcastle.
02:14 --> 02:20 [SPEAKER_00]: 12-year-old Colin Robinson and his younger brother Leslie were doing what kids have done for generations.
02:21 --> 02:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Digging in the garden behind their home at three-read Avenue.
02:25 --> 02:26 [SPEAKER_00]: That's when they found them.
02:27 --> 02:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Two small carp stone heads, buried just a few inches beneath the soil.
02:33 --> 02:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Each about two and a half inches wide, roughly shaped into faces, one male, one female.
02:43 --> 02:47 [SPEAKER_00]: believe to be courtsite or possibly local concrete.
02:48 --> 02:56 [SPEAKER_00]: One had distinct, almost exaggerated features, a flat face, wide eyes, a crown or helmet on its head.
02:57 --> 03:00 [SPEAKER_00]: The other, more oval and weathered.
03:00 --> 03:03 [SPEAKER_00]: They were strange.
03:04 --> 03:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Not the kind of thing you expect to find in a backyard flower bed.
03:09 --> 03:13 [SPEAKER_00]: The boys brought the heads inside, curious and a little spooked.
03:13 --> 03:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Their mother, Mrs. N. Robbson, thought they were interesting.
03:17 --> 03:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe, ancient, she put them on the mantle.
03:22 --> 03:25 [SPEAKER_00]: That night, the house changed.
03:26 --> 03:31 [SPEAKER_00]: According to the robbs and family, the disturbances began almost immediately.
03:31 --> 03:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Dors opening and slamming shut, even when no windows were open.
03:37 --> 03:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Lights turning on and off.
03:39 --> 03:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Footsteps heard when no one was home.
03:46 --> 03:50 [SPEAKER_00]: At first, they thought maybe the kids were playing tricks.
03:51 --> 03:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was nerves.
03:54 --> 03:57 [SPEAKER_00]: but then came the moment no one could explain.
03:57 --> 04:05 [SPEAKER_00]: One evening, Mrs. Robbson entered the hallway and saw, clear his day, a figure standing in the doorway.
04:06 --> 04:11 [SPEAKER_00]: It was tall, covered in hair, a blend of animal and man.
04:12 --> 04:13 [SPEAKER_00]: It stared at her.
04:13 --> 04:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Then, without taking a single step, it seemed to glide forward and pass straight through the closed door,
04:24 --> 04:26 [SPEAKER_00]: She wasn't the only one who saw it.
04:28 --> 04:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Neighbors would later confirm they saw something strange lingering near the home.
04:33 --> 04:38 [SPEAKER_00]: One described it as a half wolf, half man creature, with glowing eyes.
04:40 --> 04:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Now it would be easy to dismiss this as hysteria, mass suggestion, a misidentified animal, but it wasn't just one sighting, or one house.
04:52 --> 04:57 [SPEAKER_00]: In the days that followed, other homes on the street began reporting similar disturbances.
04:58 --> 05:03 [SPEAKER_00]: One neighbor's daughter woke up screaming, claiming something was inside the walls.
05:04 --> 05:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Another reported hearing, heavy breathing near her bed, with no one there.
05:10 --> 05:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And all of this followed the arrival of two unassuming stone heads.
05:16 --> 05:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually word got out, local newspapers picked up on the story.
05:21 --> 05:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Paranormal researchers started to take an interest, where these ancient ritual objects something older than history are just a strange coincidence.
05:33 --> 05:40 [SPEAKER_00]: That's when the Hexam heads were passed along to a woman who would take the case into another dimension entirely.
05:41 --> 05:51 [SPEAKER_00]: A Celtic scholar, a skeptic, and the next person to bring the heads into her home would see the same creature standing in her hallway.
05:54 --> 05:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Coming up after the break, Dr. Ann Ross takes the heads to her home.
06:00 --> 06:08 [SPEAKER_00]: A respected academic known for her work in Celtic studies, suddenly finds herself caught in a waking nightmare.
06:09 --> 06:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And she begins to wonder, are these just old stones or something far older, far darker than anyone expected?
06:24 --> 06:31 [SPEAKER_00]: After the story of the Robbins made local headlines, the Hacksham Heds were brought to the attention of Dr. Anne Ross.
06:32 --> 06:36 [SPEAKER_00]: One of Britain's leading experts in Celtic mythology in Iron Age history.
06:38 --> 06:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Ross had worked extensively on Celtic ritual objects and was respected voice in academic circles.
06:46 --> 06:54 [SPEAKER_00]: She was, by her own admission, not someone who leaned towards the supernatural, but that changed quickly.
06:54 --> 07:01 [SPEAKER_00]: When the heads were delivered to her home for analysis, Dr. Ross did what any good scholar would do.
07:02 --> 07:12 [SPEAKER_00]: She catalogged them, measured them, and placed them on a shelf in her study
07:15 --> 07:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Unexplained footsteps echoed through her house, heavy, deliberate, as if someone were walking from room to room, while no one was there.
07:27 --> 07:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Dors opened on their own, lights flickered, furniture shifted overnight.
07:34 --> 07:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Her daughter, who knew nothing of the heads, reported waking to find a large, hairy creature,
07:44 --> 07:47 [SPEAKER_00]: The description matched the one given by the Robbs and family.
07:48 --> 07:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Ross, again, a woman trained in rational, historical interpretation, was shaken.
07:55 --> 07:58 [SPEAKER_00]: She later described seeing the same creature herself.
07:59 --> 08:06 [SPEAKER_00]: A tall, half-man, half-animal entity, with hair covering its face and upper body.
08:06 --> 08:19 [SPEAKER_00]: It stood near her hallway, and then, without taking a single step, glided forward, and passed straight through a closed wooden door, vanishing, without a sound.
08:21 --> 08:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Ross couldn't explain what she'd seen, but she knew what she felt, fear, and something else.
08:28 --> 08:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Pressure, as if something unseen, had entered
08:37 --> 08:40 [SPEAKER_00]: The heads remained in her possession for weeks.
08:40 --> 08:44 [SPEAKER_00]: During that time, the disturbances didn't stop.
08:44 --> 08:45 [SPEAKER_00]: They intensified.
08:47 --> 08:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, Ross decided to hand them over to a colleague for further analysis, a professor of archeology.
08:54 --> 08:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And just like that, the activity stopped.
08:59 --> 09:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever was happening seemed to follow the heads.
09:05 --> 09:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Unlike many who have handled so-called cursed objects, Ross didn't blame the heads on ancient evil or demonic energy.
09:12 --> 09:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Her theory was grounded in archeology.
09:15 --> 09:23 [SPEAKER_00]: She believed the Hexam heads were connected to Celtic ritual practices, possibly votive offerings.
09:23 --> 09:36 [SPEAKER_00]: These carved heads were commonly used in Iron Age Britain, often left in rivers, bogs, or varied as symbols of protection, ancestral reverence, or spiritual guardianship.
09:40 --> 09:44 [SPEAKER_00]: These heads may have been part of a religious tradition meant to call upon the spirit world.
09:45 --> 09:51 [SPEAKER_00]: They weren't evil, but they were powerful, and that power didn't die when the carving stopped.
09:51 --> 10:03 [SPEAKER_00]: She speculated that removing them from the earth may have disturbed something old, a lingering spiritual presence attached to the ritual itself, or perhaps bound to the land they came from.
10:03 --> 10:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And Ross wasn't alone in this thinking.
10:07 --> 10:20 [SPEAKER_00]: In parts of Northern England, Scotland and Wales, Folklore is filled with stories of carved heads, varied charms and household spirits, some helpful, some vengeful.
10:20 --> 10:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The black dog or world spirit is a reoccurring theme, particularly in Northern Ireland where the heads were found.
10:29 --> 10:32 [SPEAKER_00]: These weren't just stories told to scare children.
10:32 --> 10:36 [SPEAKER_00]: They were considered real, and sometimes dangerous.
10:37 --> 10:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Whether you believe in folklore or not, the events at Ross's home mirrored the pattern scene at the Robsons.
10:44 --> 10:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And once again, when the heads left the house, the strange phenomena stopped.
10:51 --> 11:04 [SPEAKER_00]: But this story isn't over, because just as momentum was building, and researchers began to take a real interest, a local man came forward with a claim that changed everything.
11:05 --> 11:07 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, I made them.
11:08 --> 11:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Coming up next was it all a hoax, with a Hexam heads just garden decorations, or was this
11:23 --> 11:36 [SPEAKER_00]: When a story starts to gain traction, paranormal investigators, reporters, even academics getting involved, there's always someone who steps in to take the air out of the mystery.
11:37 --> 11:39 [SPEAKER_00]: That person showed up in Hexam in 1974.
11:41 --> 11:47 [SPEAKER_00]: His name was Deskreiki, and he claimed to have made the heads himself.
11:47 --> 11:48 [SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
11:49 --> 12:02 [SPEAKER_00]: The crewed little stone figures that caused months of poltergeist activity, terrified and entire family, and convinced a world-renowned Celtic scholar that they were tied to an ancient ritual tradition.
12:02 --> 12:13 [SPEAKER_00]: He said they were just a prank, poured from a mold in his garden
12:14 --> 12:18 [SPEAKER_00]: because what Deskrieggy offered wasn't closure.
12:18 --> 12:20 [SPEAKER_00]: It was something messier.
12:21 --> 12:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Something that didn't quite line up.
12:24 --> 12:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And in the end, his confession may have only made the mystery deeper.
12:33 --> 12:44 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1974, three years after the Hexton Heds were discovered and passed from family to researcher to folkwars, the story took a dramatic turn.
12:46 --> 12:53 [SPEAKER_00]: A local man named Deskreggi stepped forward and claimed that the entire fair had been a misunderstanding.
12:53 --> 13:02 [SPEAKER_00]: He told reporters that he, himself, had made the heads, out of cement in a mold, during his briefstay at three-reedy Avenue.
13:03 --> 13:07 [SPEAKER_00]: According to Kreggy, they were meant to be decorative.
13:07 --> 13:10 [SPEAKER_00]: possibly part of a concrete experiment or garden ornament.
13:12 --> 13:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And somehow, he said, they'd been buried only to be rediscovered by the robes and children after he'd moved out.
13:20 --> 13:25 [SPEAKER_00]: He claimed he recognized them immediately when they appeared in the papers.
13:26 --> 13:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Simple, right?
13:28 --> 13:29 [SPEAKER_00]: But here's the problem.
13:30 --> 13:32 [SPEAKER_00]: His timeline doesn't make sense.
13:33 --> 13:37 [SPEAKER_00]: The Robzin family moved into the house in early 1971.
13:37 --> 13:41 [SPEAKER_00]: The heads were found shortly after, during routine digging.
13:42 --> 13:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Craig E. claimed to have lived there at some point before them.
13:46 --> 13:50 [SPEAKER_00]: but the available property records, and multiple resident accounts.
13:51 --> 13:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Place him there, after the robesons had already found the heads.
13:56 --> 14:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Even if we assume Craigy lived there briefly before the robesons, he would have had to mold the heads, bury them in the garden, never mention it to anyone.
14:06 --> 14:10 [SPEAKER_00]: and have them rediscovered years later by total coincidence.
14:11 --> 14:13 [SPEAKER_00]: But the biggest issue is this.
14:13 --> 14:18 [SPEAKER_00]: The activity began before the story ever went public.
14:18 --> 14:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Before Craigy would have had any motive to insert himself.
14:24 --> 14:28 [SPEAKER_00]: And when asked to replicate the heads in front of researchers, he couldn't.
14:29 --> 14:36 [SPEAKER_00]: He said he used a specific kind of concrete and a mold, but no mold was ever found.
14:37 --> 14:46 [SPEAKER_00]: No leftover materials, no second set of heads, no photographs, no witnesses, just a man and his story.
14:47 --> 14:53 [SPEAKER_00]: This led some to believe that Craigie might have been telling the truth, but not the whole truth.
14:54 --> 15:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps he did make a pair of heads, similar in shape, but not the ones found by the robbs and boys.
15:02 --> 15:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Or perhaps someone encouraged him to come forward and take credit in order to kill the growing buzz around the case.
15:10 --> 15:17 [SPEAKER_00]: It wouldn't have been the first time a paranormal story had been abruptly shut down by an oddly timed confession.
15:21 --> 15:26 [SPEAKER_00]: The confession didn't just muddy the waters, it erased the conversation.
15:27 --> 15:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Newspapers stopped covering the story.
15:30 --> 15:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Paranormal researchers moved on.
15:33 --> 15:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Even Dr. Ross, whose testimony had been serious and well-documented, was dismissed as overly imaginative.
15:42 --> 15:50 [SPEAKER_00]: And just like that, the heads were quietly packed away.
15:51 --> 15:59 [SPEAKER_00]: because the Hacksam heads didn't end up in a museum, or in a private collection, or on a dusty shelf somewhere.
16:00 --> 16:02 [SPEAKER_00]: They vanished.
16:02 --> 16:06 [SPEAKER_00]: And no one, not even the scholars who studied them,
16:06 --> 16:07 [SPEAKER_00]: knows where they are.
16:07 --> 16:13 [SPEAKER_00]: The Hacksham Heds sit at the crossroads of hard archaeology in hair-reasing folklore.
16:14 --> 16:22 [SPEAKER_00]: To make sense of Deskreggy's confession and the decades of debate that followed, we need to walk through the major theories, one by one.
16:24 --> 16:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Number one, ancient Celtic ritual objects.
16:28 --> 16:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Dr. Anne Ross never wavered.
16:30 --> 16:36 [SPEAKER_00]: She believed the heads belonged to an Iron Age tradition, known as the cult of the severed head.
16:37 --> 16:41 [SPEAKER_00]: In Celtic cosmology, the head was the seat of the soul.
16:42 --> 16:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Carved stone heads were buried or deposited in rivers as protective offerings.
16:48 --> 17:00 [SPEAKER_00]: The Hacksham Heds exaggerated eyes, flatten faces even the hint of a crown, match known vote of heads unearthed in bath, gall, and northumberland.
17:01 --> 17:10 [SPEAKER_00]: If Ross is right, pulling such objects out of the earth might have broken whatever protection, or containment they once provided.
17:12 --> 17:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Number two, Stone Tape or recorded energy theory.
17:17 --> 17:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Paranormal researchers of the 1970s love the Stone Tape theory.
17:22 --> 17:30 [SPEAKER_00]: The idea that emotional or traumatic events imprint themselves onto stone and replay under the right conditions.
17:31 --> 17:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Quartzsite, the material many believe the heads are carved from, is piezoelectric.
17:38 --> 17:41 [SPEAKER_00]: meaning you can store and release small electrical charges.
17:42 --> 17:46 [SPEAKER_00]: So, did the heads act like cassette tapes for ancient ritual?
17:47 --> 17:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Broadcasting residual energy into the robes and raw homes?
17:52 --> 18:04 [SPEAKER_00]: It's unproven science, but it would explain why the disturbances stopped every time the heads were moved.
18:05 --> 18:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Classic Poltergeist cases often center on adolescence.
18:09 --> 18:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Stress, change, emotional turbulence.
18:13 --> 18:16 [SPEAKER_00]: In Hexam, two pre-teen boys found the heads.
18:17 --> 18:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Later, a teenage daughter and doctor Ross's house saw the Wolfman apparition.
18:23 --> 18:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the heads were just a focused object.
18:26 --> 18:29 [SPEAKER_00]: and the real engine was human psychokinesis.
18:31 --> 18:33 [SPEAKER_00]: But this theory struggles with the continuity.
18:34 --> 18:40 [SPEAKER_00]: Activity, record across households, across families, even when no children were present.
18:41 --> 18:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Number four, Talpa, Edgar Gore, the power of belief.
18:49 --> 18:51 [SPEAKER_00]: What if folklorate self created the haunting?
18:52 --> 18:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Northumberland is steeped in stories of phantom dogs that prowl the night.
18:57 --> 19:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Once newspapers printed accounts of a half wolf creature, did collective fear manifest the very thing it dreaded?
19:05 --> 19:13 [SPEAKER_00]: If so, Deskreggy's confession might have worked, because belief shifted, the topa lost its fuel.
19:14 --> 19:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Number five, shape shifter, where will folklore?
19:18 --> 19:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses described a tall fur-covered figure that glided or phased through solid doors.
19:25 --> 19:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Early close to the Scottish Wolver, a benign wear creature said to guard hidden treasures.
19:32 --> 19:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Could an ancient guardian spirit have been dislodged with its totem heads?
19:37 --> 19:45 [SPEAKER_00]: It's folklore sure, but the identical creature turning up in two unrelated homes still demands explanation.
19:45 --> 19:47 [SPEAKER_00]: 6.
19:47 --> 19:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Straight Up Hokes Finally, there's the simplest answer.
19:52 --> 19:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Deskreigi told the truth, the heads were 1970's Garden Kitch.
19:58 --> 20:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Everything else, door slamming, lights flickering, was coincidence, suggestion, or local legend
20:08 --> 20:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Yet Craigy never reproduced a matching head, never produced a mold, and his timeline clashes with property records.
20:17 --> 20:21 [SPEAKER_00]: If it was a hoax, it remains an oddly incomplete one.
20:23 --> 20:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So where does that leave us?
20:25 --> 20:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Physical evidence gone.
20:28 --> 20:30 [SPEAKER_00]: The head's vanish sometime in the 1980s.
20:31 --> 20:33 [SPEAKER_00]: I witness testimony.
20:33 --> 20:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Multiple families are respected scholar, independent neighbors.
20:38 --> 20:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Folklore parallels, rich and strangely specific.
20:44 --> 20:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Confession, convenient, but uncorroborated.
20:49 --> 20:55 [SPEAKER_00]: No single theory ties up every loose end, and maybe that's the real haunting of Hacksham.
20:56 --> 21:02 [SPEAKER_00]: A mystery opened enough for folklore to breathe, but grounded enough to keep skeptic sweating.
21:03 --> 21:08 [SPEAKER_00]: If you dug up a car face in your backyard tomorrow, would you keep it?
21:09 --> 21:15 [SPEAKER_00]: This is from the void, I'm John Williamson, and in a quiet town in northern England.
21:15 --> 21:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Something was unearthed and may never be buried again.
21:56 --> 21:59 [UNKNOWN]: Thank you.