Creepy Mystery: Hexham Heads

Digging around in the yard in the hopes of finding treasure is a things kids do. But in 1971 two boys in Hexham in Northumberland would would find something rare buried deep in the garden. However, it was far from a treasure but would instead unleash a nightmare on their family. What brothers Leslie and Colin Robson had found were two round stones with rudimentary faces carved into them. One was a darker stone and had more masculine features and the other was lighter in color with more feminine qualities.

Of course they happily claimed this strange new treasure as their own and brought them into their home, thus beginning a nightmare for the Robson family. Things started small as members of the household would notice the rocks moving on their own, at times they were even flung through the air as if thrown by an invisible force. These supernaturally charged events would be spooky enough on their own, but the forces seemingly tied to the Hexham Heads would only ramp of from there.

Weeks following the discovery of the stone heads, the matriarch of their family went to check on Colin who had woken up in the middle of the night sobbing. As she tried to calm her son who claimed his hair had been pulled by a pair of “invisible hands” she looked into the hallway outside. Standing in the doorway looking in on them was a tall fur-covered being with a face of a goat. This being disappeared as soon as it realized it had been noticed. But this was far from the end as the Robsons neighbors, the Dodds, began to tell of the paranormal activity spreading to their home complete with the terrifying goat monster.

Eventually these strange artifacts came to the attention of Dr. Anne Ross an expert on the antiquities and folklore from Southampton University. Her research concluded that the Hexham Heads were Celtic artifacts and she even published a number of peer reviewed articles concerning these artifacts. However, it would seem that the supernatural force which had terrorized the Robsons and the Dodds had now passed to the scholar and her family. Dr. Ross kept the Hexham Heads stored beneath her bed in a box and once she awoke one fateful night to see a werewolf-type creature in her bedroom she knew something strange was afoot. Soon her husband and daughter began to see the effects of this monster as well. After one particularly terrifying encounter had with the beast, she relocated them to the university collection. The staff of Southampton would periodically conduct research on them but their research but nothing conclusive ever came of it.

In 1974, Desmond Craigie would emerge claiming he had previously resided in the home of the Robson family and had carved the stone himself. But when asked to replicate the methods he used to carve the stones he failed in every regard. In 1978, a researcher from the University of Newcastle conducted his own research on the Heads and came to the conclusion that they were created via a mold of some kind. As the stones were passed around they eventually ended up in the possession of a paranormal researcher who wished to study them in conjunction with a Faraday cage, however he passed away and since then the fate of the Hexham Heads has been left unknown.

We are now left to wonder who carved these Hexham Heads? It is safe to assume Dr. Ross was the most accurate in these regards as the ancient people of Britain were known to carve faces into rocks. But there are plenty of those that have been discovered without any paranormal activity associated with them. Why did a beast of some kind seemingly attach itself to the rocks? And why did it appear with goat features to the Robsons and the Dodds but like a werewolf to Dr. Anne Ross and her family? Perhaps the greatest question is, where are they now?