The Murderer's Angry Skull

Because it’s always fun to see people who play silly buggers with other people’s body parts get a terrifying supernatural comeuppance, let’s look at the time someone stole the skull of a notorious murderer, and almost instantly regretted it.  Consider it a cautionary tale about the dangers of causing someone to rest in pieces.

The murder of Maria Marten is one of those sordid, non-mysterious crimes that nevertheless somehow gain immortal fame.  In 1827, a young man named William Corder, wishing to rid himself of Marten, who had been his lover, killed her and hid the body in a local landmark called the “Red Barn.”  After the corpse was discovered the following year, Corder became the immediate suspect.  He was arrested in London and eventually faced trial, conviction, and the gallows.  As far as is known, Corder’s spirit rested quietly for about fifty years, until someone took a regrettable interest in his skull.

The ghostly sequel to the “Red Barn Murder” was told by British author and ghost-hunter Robert Thurston Hopkins. Hopkins, you might say, literally grew up in the shadow of the infamous murder: He spent his boyhood within the old prison at Bury St. Edmunds, where his father F.C. Hopkins, a prison official, proudly kept a framed copy of Corder’s final confession.

A close friend of Hopkins’ father was one Dr. Kilner, who had a deeper, and far more morbid, interest in the Corder case.  He owned a book about the murder that was bound in Corder’s skin, as well as the murderer’s pickled scalp.  One would think that Kilner owned enough bits and pieces of the late Mr. Corder to satisfy even the most ghoulish tastes, but such was not the case: Corder’s skeleton then resided at the West Suffolk General Hospital, where for years it had been used as a sort of celebrity anatomy display, and Kilner longed to get his hands on the skull.  As he knew that the hospital would not part with its prize, the good doctor decided that his only option was to pinch the thing.

When Kilner sneaked into the hospital one night to do his bit of body-snatching, he lit three candles.  One immediately went out.  When he relit it, the other two went dark.  As he was removing Corder’s skull from the rest of the skeleton, the candles continued mysteriously snuffing themselves out.  One would think Kilner would realize he was being warned, but he blithely replaced Corder’s skull with a ringer he had picked up somewhere, and took his stolen treasure home.

Kilner lovingly polished the skull until it glowed like a gemstone, and placed it in an ebony box which he kept in a cabinet in his drawing room.  However, he was not entirely happy.  He felt a vague unease about his acquisition, which he tried to dismiss as merely his overactive imagination.

A few days after the skull became part of the Kilner household’s bric-a-brac, a servant told the doctor that a man had come to see him.  As it was after his surgery hours, Kilner was a bit irked by the disturbance.  When he asked if the caller was someone the servant recognized, she replied that he was a stranger.  “He is proper old-fashioned looking,” she remarked, “with a furry top hat and a blue overcoat with silver buttons.”

The doctor went to his surgery, asking the servant to follow him with a lamp.  As he entered the room, he caught a glimpse of a figure standing by the window, but when the servant came in with the lamp, the room was empty.

Kilner’s servant swore that she had escorted a man into the surgery.  She surmised that he changed his mind about seeing the doctor, and left.

Not long after this incident, Kilner happened to be looking out a window of his house when he saw a man standing on the lawn.  He was wearing a beaver hat and an old-fashioned blue overcoat.  Kilner went out to confront the man, but by then the figure had disappeared.

Kilner began to have the disconcerting feeling that he was constantly being followed by…something.  At night, he would hear doors mysteriously opening, and the sound of phantom footsteps throughout his house.  Outside his bedroom door, he heard loud breathing, spectral murmurings, and sobbing, accompanied by loud bangs coming from the drawing room.  He started to have dreams where he got the sense that he was being begged to do something.

In short, Kilner knew that he had made someone very unhappy.  And he had a good idea who it was.  William Corder, understandably enough, took great offense at being turned into home décor.

Kilner was now as anxious to return the skull as he had been to steal it.  However, the skull was so highly polished that the difference between it and the rest of the skeleton would be obvious, leading to some very uncomfortable questions.  He had no idea what to do.

One night, Kilner was awakened by a sound from downstairs.  When he lit a candle and looked down over the stairs, he saw a disembodied hand over the handle of the drawing room door.  This hand turned the knob and opened the door.  Then, from the drawing room, there came a sharp noise that sounded like a shotgun blast.  When Kilner ran downstairs to investigate, he was met by a huge gust of wind which blew out the candle, and nearly knocked him off his feet.  When he managed to relight the candle and enter the drawing room, he found that the box containing the skull had been shattered into bits.  Kilner was greeted by Corder’s skull resting in the open cabinet, grinning at him.

That was enough for Dr. Kilner.  Rather selfishly, he gifted the skull to F. C. Hopkins, who was idiot enough to accept it.  As Hopkins walked home with the skull (discreetly wrapped in a handkerchief,) he twisted his ankle and fell flat on the pavement just as a female acquaintance was passing by.  He dropped the skull, which cheerfully rolled at his friend’s feet.  The woman screamed and dashed off.

Hopkins’ life subsequently became very difficult.  His injured ankle kept him bedridden for a week.  His best horse fell into a pit and broke her back.  Both Hopkins and Kilner suffered a series of personal and financial disasters that left both men shattered in spirit. Hopkins finally wised up and did what Kilner should have done a long time before:  He took the skull to a churchyard near Bury St. Edmunds, where he bribed a grave-digger to give it a decent burial. Fortunately, Corder’s spirit seemed content with this compromise, and peace returned to the lives of everyone involved.

At the end of the younger Hopkins’ account of this episode in his 1953 book “Ghosts Over England,” he noted, “if ever you come across a tortoise-shell tinted skull in a japanned cash box, leave it severely alone.”

Excellent advice.  William Corder was clearly a ghost one does not want to cross.