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Charles Walton - An Unsolved Occult Murder
Well, searched the site and found no threads on this subject yet. Could easily have slipped beneath peoples radars, or may just be lurking in the background of most peoples fortean knowledge. But the story has cropped up from separate sources throughout my interest in wierdness and I thought I would bring it to peoples attention.
Basic summary:-
An unsolved mystery from February 14th 1945 when Charles Walton, a 74 year old farm labourer from Lower Quinton in Warwickshire, well-liked if eccentric but certainly no known enemies was murdered in an occult fashion. With no known motive, or witnesses in an otherwise sleepy rural village, Robert Fabian, a famous Detective Superintendent from London attempted to solve the case but came up against a wall of silence and constant hints of witchcraft.
The full unabridged article can be found on the Dragon's Hoard Website
It makes for fascinating reading.
Well, searched the site and found no threads on this subject yet. Could easily have slipped beneath peoples radars, or may just be lurking in the background of most peoples fortean knowledge. But the story has cropped up from separate sources throughout my interest in wierdness and I thought I would bring it to peoples attention.
Basic summary:-
An unsolved mystery from February 14th 1945 when Charles Walton, a 74 year old farm labourer from Lower Quinton in Warwickshire, well-liked if eccentric but certainly no known enemies was murdered in an occult fashion. With no known motive, or witnesses in an otherwise sleepy rural village, Robert Fabian, a famous Detective Superintendent from London attempted to solve the case but came up against a wall of silence and constant hints of witchcraft.
Charles Walton was a popular and well liked member of the community, although regarded as slightly eccentric by some, and with a mixture of suspicion and respect by others. It was well known that there was something a little peculiar about Walton, wild birds would flock to him to be fed from his hand, and he had the ability to tame wild dogs using only his voice. He was well versed in country lore, rather too well according to some people, and seemed to know much about the old ways of the countryside. Few areas of Britain have a deeper association with traditional witchcraft than Warwickshire and privately it was accepted that Walton was involved with the various covens operating in the area. Despite this, it seems that Walton had few if any enemies and could number most of the village amongst his friends...
After a short search of the area the group came across Charles Walton's body. He had been brutally murdered with his own trouncing hook, which still lay embedded in his throat, and then pinned to the ground with his hayfork. A large cross had been carved deeply into Walton's chest and neck and the blood from this wound had soaked the ground surrounding the body. The Police were immediately summoned and such had been the ferocity of the attack that it took two constables to remove the hayfork from the ground. Waltons mutilated body was carried down the hill into the village and a major Police investigation began...
Fabian tended to agree, but Spooner, who had already been doing his own research, then produced a book which was to give the crime an entirely different angle. The book, Folklore, Old Customs and Superstitions in Shakespeareland, had been written by J. Harvey Bloom, a local vicar, in 1929. Spooner had underlined a passage in the book which told of how, in 1875, "a weak minded young man killed a woman named Ann Turner with a hayfork because he believed she had bewitched him"
Further on in the book, another page had been marked. This told of how in 1885, a plough boy by the name of Charles Walton had encountered a large black dog on nine successive days while on his way home from work. On the last occasion, the dog was accompanied by a headless woman. Of course legends about black dogs are not rare, especially in rural areas, and there had long been stories of a ghostly black dog on Meon hill that heralded death to those it appeared to, but was it possible that this Charles Walton was the same person ?
Spooner then handed Fabian another book, Warwickshire, published in 1906. The author, Clive Holland, another local man, described the murder of Ann Turner in greater depth and additionally he included an account of the trial of John Hayward who was eventually found guilty and hanged. In his defence, Hayward stated that he considered he was acting for the good of the whole community as Ann Turner had "bewitched the cattle and land of local farmers". He said that he had "pinned her to the ground with a hayfork before slashing her throat with a bill hook in the form of a cross". Holland explained that this was an ancient and traditional way of killing a witch and was known to have existed in Anglo-Saxon England where it was called 'stacung' or 'sticking'. It was believed that this was the only way to prevent the dead witch rising from the grave...
Fabian reluctantly turned to the witchcraft theory and discovered that according to the old Julian calendar in use until the Middle Ages, February 14th actually fell on February 2nd which, according to local superstition was traditionally the best day for a blood sacrifice. At this point of the year the earth was just beginning to recover from the winter and a ritual sacrifice was seen as a certain way to ensure a good harvest would follow. As Fabian pursued this line, he found a general reluctance amongst the local people to talk about it, in fact one man was heard to say that Walton was "dead and buried so there was nothing to worry about". The probability that Walton had played the leading role in some sort of pagan fertility sacrifice seemed so unlikely that, faced with a barrage of silence from anyone questioned about it, Fabian decided to look elsewhere.
The last line of enquiry was that of Walton's past, but nothing was found there either, except for the strange disappearance of Walton's money. It seemed that when Walton's wife had died in 1927, she left him a sum of £297, which was quite a considerable amount. He was known to have placed it in a building society but when Police investigated, the balance was only £2 11s 9d. It was estimated that his weekly outgoings were certainly no more than £2 per week and anyway he had worked all his life and been a man of very frugal habits. Some 60 shillings was found in his house but the remainder was never accounted for and no explanation was ever given for its disappearance.
As the inquiry drew to a close, Fabian took one last walk up the hill to the site of the murder, "a bleak and lonely place", as he recalled it in his memoirs. As he looked around, a large black dog ran past him. Shortly afterwards a young boy came up the hill and Fabian asked whether he had lost his dog. When the boy looked puzzled, Fabian explained that he'd just seen a large black hound, at which the boy gasped and turning, ran as fast as he could down the hill. Later that day, a large black dog was found dead, hung by its neck from a tree next to the murder scene and the same evening, a police car ran over and killed a similar dog in a lane near the village.
At the time of writing, the file on the murder of Charles Walton remains open, and in Warwickshire Police archives it is still possible to see the weapons used to commit the crime. Despite the efforts of various writers, journalists and occultists through the years, we are still no closer to finding the killer than Fabian was in 1945.
Visiting the village today, one cannot help noticing that the older inhabitants are still reluctant to talk about Walton's death, and some of those that will talk suggest that a cover-up may have taken place. There is certainly the suggestion that some people know rather more than they are admitting to. Whatever the truth about the awful events at Meon Hill on Valentines Day 1945, it is certain that they will continue to intrigue people for many years to come.
The full unabridged article can be found on the Dragon's Hoard Website
It makes for fascinating reading.