Death is always distressing but when there's a supernatural element connected to a person's last moments it becomes even more chilling. While an autopsy can determine a person's manner of death, it cannot always explained what they experienced in their last weeks, days or hours on earth.
A cursed cooking pot has been blamed for supposedly causing the violent deaths of at least three people who all happened to touch it. It was sealed in a "specially-made steel cage" and secured from the outside world in the mid-1970s - but its legend lives on through locals still recalling the trauma it caused their community.
According to folklore, the cooking pot contained "the ashes of a dwarf who was killed in Thornton Abbey" and had been stashed in a dark cellar in Manor Farm, East Halton, North Lincolnshire.
It was rediscovered by workmen in the 1970s who moved into the historic building to begin renovating it for businessman John Morton.
The builder in charge, Alf Barwood, of Ulceby, North Lincolnshire, examined the cooking pot, which locals blamed for causing at least three tragic deaths within the village.
One of them being that of six-year-old Charles Atkin, who lived at Manor Farm, and who was tragically killed by a hay wagon the day after he had brushed against the pot.
Before his death, his brother, John Atkin, told news reporter Peter Reynolds what had happened.
He said: "The cooking pot was in our cellar and I remember our father always telling us never to go near it.
"But we were playing in the cellar one day and Charles accidentally bumped into it.
"The next day, we were out in a field near the Humber and Charles was playing around one of the hay wagons when it went right over him, killing him.
"I was always scared of the pot.
"There was a lot of superstition in the village about it in those days.
"We were told that it contained the ashes of a dwarf who was killed at Thornton Abbey.
"There was a story of a tunnel between the abbey and the cellar and that after the dwarf was killed, his remains were taken through the tunnel by the monks and disposed of in secret.
"The family that lived in the house before us moved out after a baby died there."
John spoke about another boy who supposedly removed the pot from the cellar and threw it into the village pond.
Within an hour he was dead after being run over by a wagon, just like Charles.
Sometime later, the pot was recovered from the pond and returned to the cellar by an unknown man.
He, too, was dead by the end of the day.
The cellar was bricked up following Charles' untimely death – with the cursed cooking pot sealed inside.
That was until John Morton moved into Manor Farm and began renovating the property.
In a statement, news reporter Peter Reynolds said: "John had heard about the legend and had an open mind but the workmen hired to sort out the cellar were reluctant to approach the battered object lurking in the corner.
"John called in the then local minister, the Rev Bob Kenyon, a firm believer in the legend, who offered to move the pot, convinced that, as a man of the church, he would be immune to the curse.
"Between them, however, they decided to let sleeping legends lie and, after an exorcism ceremony carried out by Mr Kenyon in the cellar, the pot was placed into a cask and encased in a steel cage fixed into the wall."
Mr Kenyon said: "It is very easy to scoff but there is far more in something like this than we care to think about."
Alf Darwood, who built the cooking pot's steel prison, said: "No one really believed the legend - but no one would touch it either.
"If it had been in the way, I suppose we would have had to have moved it. But I wouldn’t like to have been the one to do it!"
Do you have a spooky story to share? Email paige.freshwater@reachplc.com.
