Member-only story
Winter’s Gibbet: An Eerie Structure on a Bleak Landscape
Memorial to a terrible murder
Picture the scene. While out hiking on the bleak Northumberland moors one misty evening, you become separated from your group. Your cellphone battery is dead, dusk is descending, and there’s a stiff breeze blowing. You have no idea where you are, so all you can do is continue your progress along the farm track you are following. A glimpse of the moon vanishing behind a dark cloud causes you to shudder, and you curse yourself for watching An American Werewolf in London last night.
An owl hoots, and the silence that follows is broken by a faint creaking sound. You listen carefully, and walk tentatively towards the source of the creaking. You see a form protruding from the low lying mist; it’s a wooden structure that you fancy may be a pub sign, and your spirits are raised by the prospect that there may be a welcome hostelry alongside the post. With renewed hope, you advance through the swirling mist towards the structure, only to find, to your horror, that it is not a pub sign at all, but a gallows, and with a figure hanging from it. The roughly human form swings in the wind, causing the rope to creak. There is no inn; no hostelry. In fact, there are no buildings at all, just open moorland beneath an ever-darkening sky. And a gallows.
