From the Regency era to the middle Victorian years, the village of South Moreton, southeast of Oxford, was haunted by the spirit of a farmer.
In 1804, William Field hanged himself in his barn. The son of the local wheelwright, William could not even escape South Moreton in death; he was known to terrorize the neighborhood for another 46 years. One story had the ghost rising from a nearby pond as a white mist, and causing the horses to stampede, while another account saw a spirit grinning at him from beyond a tree.
He was mostly known to haunt the stockyard near the barn, and although few accounts remain of the particulars of the haunting, it was severe enough that eleven clergy member banded together in 1850 to exorcise him. The goal was to send him into the adjacent pond (although that sounds even more terrifying), and the clergy gathered while two local men who were curious about the event hid under the straw in the barn.
The clergy started their rites, when William Field was said to manifest and demanded they give him either the rooster on the dunghill or the two mice under the straw. I am sure the men hiding there felt more than a moment of sheer terror at that request. Luckily, it was decided to give him the rooster, and immediately the thing was said to explode.
The clergy then drove a stake somewhere in or around the pond as the final act of the ritual, and South Moreton was said to be finally rid of the despondent farmer’s spirit.
The biggest terror of the recounting seems to be over the fate of the two peeping toms, which suggests this story serves lay people to hold sacred religious services and not be creepers.
It perhaps is also a warning against suicide that appeals to the gothic tides in culture during the era. This story is also nearly identical to one told about a ghost in Welford: http://berkshirehistory.com/legends/welford_ghost.html
Happy Halloween!
