Ethelbert is thinly recorded. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says only that he was beheaded in 794. Historians place the killing either at the royal estate of Sutton or at nearby Marden, a few miles north of Hereford. Marden's church sits on the bank of the River Lugg and local tradition ties it to the king.
The legend grew in the twelfth century, when his cult was centred at Hereford Cathedral. An early life written around 1080 has him visiting Offa to marry Offa's daughter and being killed instead. Later versions put the blame on Queen Cynethryth. One thirteenth century version has her tricking him into a bedroom with a pit where executioners waited. A fifteenth century chronicle attributed to John Brompton says his severed head fell from a cart into a ditch, where it restored a blind man's sight.
The local detail is that Ethelbert was buried near the river at Marden and a sacred well rose on the spot. Visit Herefordshire's leaflet also reports that archaeologists have found 24 decapitated skeletons at Sutton Walls, which it suggests may be the wedding party, though that is the leaflet's speculation and not a settled finding. The saint's feast day is 20 May and he is joint patron of Hereford Cathedral.
Nothing here is a haunting. It is a saint's legend with a miracle attached, listed as traditional because the sources are late and contradict one another on how and where it happened.
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