Chesterfield's Crooked Spire is one of the most recognisable landmarks in Derbyshire, and its twist is entirely real: built around 1362, the spire leans roughly nine and a half feet off true and spirals visibly when viewed from below, most likely because the timber used in its construction was unseasoned and warped as it dried under the weight of the lead sheeting wrapped around it. That is the sober architectural explanation, but it has done nothing to stop the church attracting its own small cluster of folk tales over the centuries, the most enduring of which puts the Devil himself at the centre of the story.
In the most commonly told version, the Devil was resting on top of the spire, tail wrapped around it to keep from falling, when the smell of incense drifting up from a service below reached him and caused him to sneeze so violently that the spire twisted under him. Other tellings put a virgin bride marrying in the church at the centre instead, with the spire turning to get a better look at such a rare event, or twisting in astonishment that one had actually been found; either way, the shape of the joke is the same, using the building's real oddity to poke fun at the town rather than making any serious supernatural claim.
Alongside the devil legend, the church has a separate and more conventional ghost tradition attached to it: the shadowy figure of a former cleric reported gliding among the gravestones in the churchyard, accompanied by an unexplained chill, and, inside the building, footsteps echoing through empty aisles and the sound of an organ playing with nobody at the keys late at night. None of this is presented with a specific name or date attached, and it sits comfortably alongside the church's older reputation as the subject of a joke about its own crooked spire rather than a documented haunting in the fuller sense, but both strands of story have been told about the church for long enough to count as genuine local tradition.
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