The Luton Paranormal Society's Kensworth page sets out the village's ghosts. The first is a headless milkmaid at the church of St Mary the Virgin in Church End and on a nearby footpath running north from the churchyard. She appears complete with a yoke from which hang two pails, and her most striking feature is that she has no head. She walks down the path from the direction of the woods to the north and enters the churchyard.
The page gives three local explanations. In the first she was waylaid and murdered as she walked down the path. In the second she was killed by farm machinery in the early 19th century. In the third she died a natural death and her lover then took her head so that part of her could remain with him for ever. The page does not give a source for any of the three or a date for any sighting.
Kensworth church is a Grade I listed Norman building in flint. Wikipedia notes that the parish was in Hertfordshire until it was transferred to Bedfordshire in 1897. The society has investigated the village several times, in 2013 and 2018 among others, and photographed a strange mist above the graves, but the page offers nothing more specific about the milkmaid.
The three competing origin stories are the usual sign of a tradition that has been explained after the fact. It is recorded here as a traditional village ghost with no named witness.
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