Datchworth has the reputation, according to local writers, of being the most haunted village in Hertfordshire, and the story of the Pie-Man is among the darkest of the several tales attached to it. Walter Clibbons ran an apparently ordinary trade in the eighteenth century, baking and selling pies at the fairs and markets held around the village, a business that put him in regular contact with the local farming community and, crucially, gave him an unremarkable reason to be present wherever money was changing hands.
Clibbons is said to have claimed to be hearing impaired, a deception that let him move unnoticed through crowds while quietly noting who at each market or fair was carrying the most money, information he passed on to the gang he led. On 28 December 1782, Clibbons and his men violently attacked and robbed a local farmer, beating him to death in the process before fleeing the scene, apparently confident they had gotten away with it.
They had not. The farmer's son and his uncle tracked Clibbons down to his hideout and shot him dead in short order. Not content with that, the two men tied Clibbons's lifeless body to a horse and sent the animal galloping through the village, dragging the corpse through the streets as a brutal public example to anyone else who might consider following his path. Since that night, according to local tradition, the unearthly screams of a man and the sound of a horse galloping have been heard periodically in the streets of Datchworth, the violence of that final act of revenge apparently imprinted as firmly on the village's memory as the original crime that provoked it.
Unlike many of the ghost stories recorded in this register, the Pie-Man of Datchworth comes with a specific date and a named perpetrator, giving it an unusual degree of historical texture even without independent corroboration of the exact events described. It is recorded here as a curse or omen tale rather than a straightforward haunting, given its shape as a story of violent retribution whose echo, rather than any single visible ghost, is what is said to remain.
Comments