ASBOs FOR SATANISTS AT A LOCAL CHURCH IN LINCOLNSHIRE - Saltfleet

© Illustration by Jules (not based on this church)

Watch Paranormal Truth's documentary that features Skidbrook Church (2018) start at 12.48 here https://youtu.be/ctgzdjxIqF8?t=12m48s

St Botolph's Church

Skidbrooke "Demon Church" Saltfleet, Lincolnshire 

Name:  Church of St Botolph

Locality: Skidbrooke with Saltfleet Haven

Built: Early 16th century

Owner: English Heritage

Grade I

Website: Skidbrooke

Skidbrooke Church or St Botolph's I known for being one of Lincolnshire's hot spot haunted places, with a good pedigree and lots written about it on the internet So as we were in the area I thought we would have a gander.

As we drove on the quiet and winding country lanes, I spotted the church in the distance, you can't miss it really, it's the only tall building you can see. Lonely and remote stuck in the middle of nowhere on Lincolnshire's flat marshlands. We pulled up on a side road in the car, Spaniel in tow. Only seconds out of the car I spotted what I thought was a big black dog bounding towards us, it just appeared out of nowhere and was running in our direction with no owner in sight! I shouted 'Get in the car now!!!' We all dived in the car like our lives depended on it. How the mind can play tricks, fortunately it wasn't a barguest with glowing red eyes, but a little stray black terrier dog, quite a tiny thing it was, I could have sworn it was BIG really big, I hate big black dogs, so glad it wasn't.

The dog continued to mind its own business and walked ahead of us up the long path to the church then disappeared in the long grass. By this point I was a little nervous as to what was around the next corner. Luckily the churchyard was all quiet, only a distant crow could be heard and a pigeon flapping its wings, the sun was shining and there was no breeze.

In 2016 an article in the Lincolnshire Echo was written about the church regarding the findings of sacrificed animals

"Mysterious Lincolnshire" By Daniel Codd

The 13th century church has stood abandoned for many a year now. It has not been used for Christian worship for 30 years. But its remoteness in marshland and corpse-shrouded eerie setting seem to have made it the focal point for gatherings of a sinister kind. Even before this there was reputed to have been the ghostly figures of hooded monks still haunting the place. A correspondent to the Lincolnshire Echo of 11 February 2006 noted how, late one night, in the hollow, empty shell of the church, he and some friends had clearly heard phantom footsteps crunch on the stone floor. Local lore tells ancient, vague stories of spells and witchcraft and is said that this church has been cursed! Stories first appeared in the 1970's and 80's that the empty church had become the haunt of Satanists, so much that it earned the reputation as the so-called Demon Church.

There were persistent reports of fires burning in its grounds and strange activities taking place, by January 2004 locals were so disturbed by the goings-on that they forced a meeting between the church leaders and the churches conservation trust to try and decide what action to take - one sad but extreme option being to demolish the church.

The Bassetlaw Ghost Research Group had set up base camp in one corner of the old church during an all-night investigation. They reported that the gloomy oppressive atmosphere of the place appearing to be almost trying to force them to leave. Strange noises were heard, and ominous flashes in the sky when the weather was calm. Parapsychologist David Wharmby also stated enigmatically to the Louth Leader Newspaper, "We Saw Small Babies among the gravestones and grass!"

In the hamlet of Skidbrooke itself, the dark rumours surrounding the church had forced one woman to have her house blessed by a priest! The woman said " I felt such bad vibes, the whole place really freaked me out!"

It is stated in this article that Dave Wharmby is a parapsychologist, but he is actually a well known trance medium.


To our surprise the place was a shell, but not in a total state of disrepair. The windows were out, the leading on the windows was all twisted and contorted giving it a rather spooky appearance.

Rational

We walked around the graveyard, found some old war graves. I didn't sense anything eerie, why would I? Maybe at night it would be a different story. I would have gone back at night, but the inclement weather soon put paid to that. Shelter from the rain, but the howling gales would have covered up any sounds of phantom footsteps! 

"Experts claim church is paranormal paradise" Louth leader - Which experts??

A classic stereotype,  local lore, gossip, people up to no good, then the rumours start and before you know it, an innocent old place is crawling with ghosts, demons and ghost hunters. 

From these photos, the church appears to be in the middle of the nowhere, it is in-fact only 1.1 miles away from Saltfleet which is only a 22 minute walk away and only 5 minutes away on a push bike and 3 minutes in a car, so visitors (like us) can just turn up willy nilly. This area of Lincolnshire is a popular tourist spot with many people passing through it. Ghosts? Personally I would take the story with a pinch of salt. It was probably some bored locals up to no good.

ASBO'S FOR SATANISTS!!
We also have strange goings on in our locality too, youths setting fire to stuff (usually wheely bins) in the local mill ruins and woodland, but I am pretty sure they aren't satanists.

Legend tripping - The concept of legend tripping is at least as old as Mark Twain's 1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which contains several accounts of adolescents visiting allegedly haunted houses and caves said to be the lairs of criminals. Wikipedia.

It only takes one paranormal investigation to go mainstream for a location to get a rating as 'One of the most haunted...' EVIDENCE PLEASE!? ? 

The scariest thing was the little black dog! 

It is a picturesque place to visit with your camera if you're in the area.  

Path up to the church

How the mind can play tricks!!!

View Larger Map LINKSSkidbrooke Church - The History & the Mysteryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Botolph's_Church,_Skidbrooke

GHOULISH CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS THROUGH THE CENTURIES

Not for the faint of heart!

It's little wonder ghosts still haunt some places, as they still linger and fear to move on to the next world.

Only people who did heinous crimes were subjected to the most horrible of punishments in England.

In the past people craved a decent burial, but if you were tried for murder or any other heinous crime then you could find yourself gibbeted, or hanged drawn and quartered, flogged, burned alive, guillotined or pressed to death.

If you were lucky you would get off with a straight forward hanging from a long drop which brought you a quick death, alternatively if you weren't so lucky, you would be hung from a short drop where your body would have writhed about for at least and hour, you would choke and vomit yourself to death.  The innocent were also punished too. Gibbeting..hung up from a metal cage, the local blacksmith would measure you up for a gibbet cage and they would cram you in it, hang you 30 foot high off the ground then leave you to die where bits would drop off and what remained of your decomposing flesh the crows would peck off including your eyeballs.

http://www.orpheusweb.co.uk/ynnad/tomo.htm

A Northumberland gibbet - stands on the site of one from which the body of William Winter, he was suspended in chains after he had been hanged at The Westgate in Newcastle. Today this grisly relic is called Winter's Gibbet.

'Gallows birds' The gibbet story of a Lincolnshire murderer 'Tom Otter' the flesh fell off his jawbone and a blue tit nested inside his mouth and had its young. The poem goes  "nine tongues within one head the tenth went out to seek for bread, to feed the living within the dead" As the old lady walked past his gibbet cage she noticed a nest of starlings in his rib cage. 44 years he was hung up in the gibbet, eventually it blew down in the wind. His bones lie buried beneath the gibbet post.  You can still hear the phantom creaking of the gibbet post and hear the rattling of chains that held up Tom Otter's gibbet cage.

The real story of Tom Otter - read on.. ‘in the mouth of Thos. Otter, hanged in chains for the murder of his wife . . .   there is a nest containing several young birds half   fledged’  ‘It appears that, whilst the   carnivorous tomtit was feeding on the flesh of the   malefactor, he had an eye to a comfortable habitation in the vicinity of so much good cheer. . . . He actually   took possession of the dead man’s mouth, and he and   his mate brought forth a brood of young cannibals’. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbeting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanged,_drawn_and_quartered

Resurrectionists 

If you found yourself living rough in the sleazy part of Edinburgh in the 1700's then it wasn't a pleasant time for you, you didn't lay down to sleep without keeping one eye open because a body snatcher might be lurking round the next corner. Body snatching was rife in the area and you could have been their next victim! Body snatching and grave robbing was so bad graveyards had large walls and railings built around them, doctors would pay good money for a good supply of cadavers, they also used executed criminals for anatomical experimentation. But criminals found their own sinister methods of profiteering the business by supplying medical students with fresh bodies, so fresh in-fact they were just barely alive!  Burke and Hare were notorious body snatchers of the era, they had their own form of strangulation by restricting their victims breathing by covering the nose and mouth so as not to damage the body, the method was known as 'Burking'. Dr Knox paid up to seven pounds seven shillings for the bodies so he could carry out his 'no questions asked' work, easy money for the pair. When they did the grave robbing they would remove the body and replace it with tanning bark.  After many years the pair were found out through rumour and Burke was sentence to hang. On January 28th 1829 Burke was hanged, over 25,000 people attended the execution, the crowded cheered 'Burke him, Burke him!!"  Ironically HIS body also ended up being dissected by medical students who removed sections of his skin and bound a book with it, it is stamped on the front in gold lettering 'Burke's Skin 1829' but before dissection, Burke's corpse was put on a slab in town, a public exhibition for thousands to see and walk past at a rate of sixty people a minute. His skeleton can still be seen at Surgeon's Hall in Edinburgh along with his death mask and the life mask of is cohort Hare, but did you know, Hare got off Scot free!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrectionists_in_the_United_Kingdom

Mary Queen of Scots ghost wanders many an earthy pile, her life was taken away in 1587 by the executioners axe.

She laid down her head, putting her chin over the block with both her hands she laid there quietly, and stretching out her arms cried, "In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum" ("Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit"), she endured two strokes with the axe, making hardly a noise or moving so the executioner cut off her head, although not detaching it accurately, he lifted up her head to the view of all the assembly and bade God save the Queen. Then lifted her wig off her head, her hair appeared as grey as a women's of threescore and ten years old, cut very short, her face in a moment being so much altered from the form she had when she was alive, as few could remember her by her dead face. Her lips stirred up and a down a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_Queen_of_Scots

A very ordinary lady by the name of Margaret Clitherow who lived in York in the 1500's was found guilty of practicing Catholicism which was considered treason in that era.  She held mass in her house knowing that if the authorities found out, there would be hell to pay.  Alas one day her home was searched and chalices and vestments were found and she was arrested.  But the trial couldn't proceed because she wouldn't plead, she shouted "I need no trial!" which lead to a very barbaric death by pressing.  Only aged thirty she was laid on the floor with a stone under her back and a door place on top of her she was subjected to having heavier and heavier stones placed upon her chest until a plea was entered, the weight of the stones on  her chest became too great for the condemned lady to breathe, fatal suffocation finally occurred.  Her home is now a shrine.

If you are into gruesome stuff you may enjoy this pinterest account - warning, it has DEAD people posing as alive people ;) THE WEIRD THE WONDERFUL AND THE TABOO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crushing_(execution)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Clitherow