William of Malmesbury included the tale in his Gesta Regum Anglorum, a Latin history of the English kings begun around 1118 and finished by about 1126. He sets it at Berkeley and sets the tale at Berkeley, pairing it with the story of Pope Gregory VI as a deliberate contrast.
In the story a woman who lived a sinful life and was skilled in witchcraft and augury gets an ill omen from a jackdaw, and then learns that her son and his family have died. Knowing she is near death herself, she asks her surviving children to protect her body. They sew the corpse into a deerskin and bind the coffin with chains, to keep it safe for three nights.
Despite all this, on the third night a horrifying devil breaks through and drags her away on horseback. William uses the account as a moral lesson, setting it against the peaceful death of a good man elsewhere in his book.
There is no ghost sighting attached to this one, and no named location inside Berkeley is given in the sources found. It is kept here as an early recorded Gloucestershire witch legend, and because it is a medieval literary account its confidence is tagged as traditional, not as a witnessed event.
Comments