The stone is a shaped block about 30cm square, packed round its base with small stones and rubble. Maps mark it as a cross-stone, though it may have been a boundary marker of some kind. It stands at the edge of a field where three roads and a dirt track cross, about half a mile south-west of Hardley church. It has been sinking or being buried over time: a record of 1934 describes about four feet showing above ground, while by 2017 only 53cm could be seen.
The tradition attached to it was probably first written down by the Norfolk folklorist William Blythe Gerish in his unpublished Norfolk Folklore Notes of 1890 to 1893. It says that on certain nights of the year, at midnight, the apparition of an old woman in red sits on the stone. Gerish did not say which nights, and no named witness is given.
There is one useful piece of corroboration that the story was already old by then. Bryant's map of Norfolk, published in 1826, labels this spot Haunted Gap. Something about the place had a reputation long before Gerish collected it, even if the red-clad woman is the only detail to survive.
This is a very thin, single-source entry. Nothing explains who the woman was, and there are no modern sightings that I could trace.
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