A little south of Happisburgh, at the junction of Whimpwell Street, School Common Road and Stalham Road, is a grassy triangle with a dead tree and a signpost. It used to be called Pump Hill and, before that, Well Corner. It is the site of one of the best known Norfolk ghost tales, set in the late 17th or early 18th century.
The apparition had its head almost severed so that it hung down its back on a strip of flesh, and it carried its own legs in a bundle. It was seen on many nights in the main street, floating from the direction of Cart Gap. A couple of brave men finally followed it to Well Corner, where it threw its bundle down the well and vanished. Searching the next day, they found first the bundle of legs and then the body, of a man dressed like a sailor.
The common story that grew was that he was one of a gang of smugglers who had quarrelled, and who killed one of their number in a gruesome way and cut up his body to hide it in the well. One addition to the tale is that whenever the well is disturbed, the ghost walks again. The well was replaced by a pump in the 19th century and the pump was removed in the early 20th, and there have been no further reports.
The tale is given in E. R. Suckling's History and Legends of the Broads District (1891). It is a classic of the genre, but no record of the body or of a murder has been found, so it is tagged traditional.
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