Hauntings

The scythe figure of Breedon Priory church

Also known as: Breedon on the Hill hooded figure

Priory Church of St Mary and St Hardulph, Breedon on the Hill

Undated; modern reports

The priory church of St Mary and St Hardulph stands on the hilltop at Breedon on the Hill, on the site of an Iron Age hillfort. Wikipedia describes a minster (an Anglo-Saxon monastery) founded there about 675, later an Augustinian priory from the early 12th century, and the church still holds a very rich collection of Anglo-Saxon carving.

The haunting reports come from a Spooky Isles list of Leicestershire's most haunted places. It says the church hosts a frightening figure in the form of a robed man wielding a scythe, often surrounded by heavy mists. A separate and apparently unrelated incident is described in the same entry, in which a couple heard loud tinny music of the sort an ice cream van plays, with no apparent source. After it started a second time they decided to leave, feeling unsettled.

The list gives no dates, witnesses or sources, and the figure with a scythe is a very traditional image of death, so it may be more a type than a record. The priory church is a working parish church and the hilltop is a well-known local landmark, so the pin sits on the hill. It is a thin, single-source report.

Working parish church; check opening times.
Evidence
Single witness account
Access
Open ground
Location
52.806, -1.400 (Sited to the building or field)

Sources: Spooky Isles, "Leicestershire's 13 Most Haunted Places" [other]; Wikipedia, "Church of St Mary and St Hardulph, Breedon on the Hill" [other]

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