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The Hexham Heads

Krepostnoi said:
I'm particularly intrigued by Frank Hyde - as I don't have access to Screeton's book (and Amazon postage is expensive to my location), would it be too much of an imposition to ask for a few more details about him and his involvement? How did he come to be the last known possessor of the original heads?
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According to Screeton, there’s a strong chance that Frank Hyde was the last person in possession of the heads. Don Robins had passed the heads to Hyde in order for him to test them for paranormal activity. Robins delivered the heads to Frank Hyde’s house where they both conducted a dowsing experiment on them which, according to Screeton, Robins reluctantly took part in. They found activity around the ‘hag’ head (the one that looked like a female) but nothing coming from the male looking head. Screeton comments: “'She' activated the pendulum and had it performing a merry dance and had the divining rod twitching away; while the skull-head 'He' remained moribund.”

Screeton then goes on to say:

“Doubtless still anxious to retreat to his cosy home, sans Heads, Don witnessed the next stage in the research programme, whereby the traditional techniques gave way to a more 'Mad scientist's laboratory' experiment with the Heads wrapped firstly individually and then together and put into a network of copper wire which Don compared to a Faraday cage. Don was impressed but the latter demonstration to show that the procedure diminished activity has left me baffled. In Don's account he admitted he had no 'clear idea of what further experiments he [Hyde] proposed to do', but after the demonstrations felt sufficiently confident to leave them in Hyde's hands.”

After that it gets murky.

Robins “did admit relief at fostering the Heads out and Hyde had given him an assurance to keep in touch regarding further experimentation and to return the Heads for others, too, to examine them. When after a reasonable time Hyde had not communicated with him, Don tried to contact him by letter and telephone but to no avail. Later that spring, Don met the acquaintance who had introduced him to Hyde and was to receive bad news. Shortly after Don left the Heads in Kilburn, Hyde had been injured in a serious road crash. The messenger with bad news had no idea as to Hyde's current whereabouts. Throughout that summer of 1978 Don tried to contact the injured Hyde without success. Private and professional priorities took prominence and Don put the Heads out of his mind. But others had not forgotten and over the following five years persons who Don had contact with asked after the Heads welfare and situation. Many of these knew Frank Hyde personally. Or rather, had known Hyde- 'because to all intents and purposes he seemed to have vanished..”

If this theory is to be believed, nobody was able to trace Hyde or the heads again. Of course there are other versions of where the heads ended up which are discussed in the book – one theory being that they made their way back to the north east. I’m not sure if this was supposed to be after they had been with Hyde, or whether the Hyde disappearance part of the story is disputed and they ended up back with Don Robins.

If they did end up with Hyde, one of Screeton’s theories about the possible whereabouts of the heads is that “Frank Hyde's executors might well have thought the Hexham Heads worth a punt on eBay or they have more likely end up in a skip and as you read this are creating mischief and mayhem at some landfill site.”

PS. I've located and scanned the missing page of the Screeton pamphlet, re ordered the pages and updated the blog.
 
Schloup said:
According to Screeton, there’s a strong chance that Frank Hyde was the last person in possession of the heads. Don Robins had passed the heads to Hyde in order for him to test them for paranormal activity. Robins delivered the heads to Frank Hyde’s house where they both conducted a dowsing experiment on them which, according to Screeton, Robins reluctantly took part in. They found activity around the ‘hag’ head (the one that looked like a female) but nothing coming from the male looking head. Screeton comments: “'She' activated the pendulum and had it performing a merry dance and had the divining rod twitching away; while the skull-head 'He' remained moribund.”

Screeton then goes on to say:

“Doubtless still anxious to retreat to his cosy home, sans Heads, Don witnessed the next stage in the research programme, whereby the traditional techniques gave way to a more 'Mad scientist's laboratory' experiment with the Heads wrapped firstly individually and then together and put into a network of copper wire which Don compared to a Faraday cage. Don was impressed but the latter demonstration to show that the procedure diminished activity has left me baffled. In Don's account he admitted he had no 'clear idea of what further experiments he [Hyde] proposed to do', but after the demonstrations felt sufficiently confident to leave them in Hyde's hands.”

After that it gets murky.

Robins “did admit relief at fostering the Heads out and Hyde had given him an assurance to keep in touch regarding further experimentation and to return the Heads for others, too, to examine them. When after a reasonable time Hyde had not communicated with him, Don tried to contact him by letter and telephone but to no avail. Later that spring, Don met the acquaintance who had introduced him to Hyde and was to receive bad news. Shortly after Don left the Heads in Kilburn, Hyde had been injured in a serious road crash. The messenger with bad news had no idea as to Hyde's current whereabouts. Throughout that summer of 1978 Don tried to contact the injured Hyde without success. Private and professional priorities took prominence and Don put the Heads out of his mind. But others had not forgotten and over the following five years persons who Don had contact with asked after the Heads welfare and situation. Many of these knew Frank Hyde personally. Or rather, had known Hyde- 'because to all intents and purposes he seemed to have vanished..”

If this theory is to be believed, nobody was able to trace Hyde or the heads again. Of course there are other versions of where the heads ended up which are discussed in the book – one theory being that they made their way back to the north east. I’m not sure if this was supposed to be after they had been with Hyde, or whether the Hyde disappearance part of the story is disputed and they ended up back with Don Robins.

If they did end up with Hyde, one of Screeton’s theories about the possible whereabouts of the heads is that “Frank Hyde's executors might well have thought the Hexham Heads worth a punt on eBay or they have more likely end up in a skip and as you read this are creating mischief and mayhem at some landfill site.”

PS. I've located and scanned the missing page of the Screeton pamphlet, re ordered the pages and updated the blog.
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Is that Kilburn in London or in North Yorkshire (or, indeed, elsewhere)?

Thank you, @Schloup, that's very intriguing. I assume I'm not the first person to be struck by the timing of this accident? The presumed last custodian of the heads being seriously injured shortly after being entrusted with them? That's an odd coincidence, if coincidence it is .
 
Krepostnoi said:
Is that Kilburn in London or in North Yorkshire (or, indeed, elsewhere)?
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It's Kilburn, London. It's frustrating that Hyde's address has never come to light as I'm sure there are people who must have known where he lived.

I assume I'm not the first person to be struck by the timing of this accident? The presumed last custodian of the heads being seriously injured shortly after being entrusted with them? That's an odd coincidence, if coincidence it is .
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Yes, the car crash is yet another twist in the tale, but seems to be common activity with stone heads. The Hexham Heads had already demonstrated some car related mischief by apparently forcing Don Robins' car to lose power as he was about to set off from Anne Ross's house with the Heads. He had just picked them up for the journey from Southampton to Middlesex when the car dashboard circuitry died. He fixed it by fiddling with the fuse box.

There's also another story of Anne Ross collecting two different heads from near the Welsh border. She said they crashed three times on the journey home, including one time when the car brakes suddenly failed.
 
Coastaljames said:
"A man named Desmond Craigie reported that he was the creator of the heads, making them in 1956 for his daughter while he was living in the house later occupied by the Robson family, along with a third head which became damaged and had to be thrown away. Craigie, who worked for a company that dealt in concrete at the time he allegedly created the heads, made some replicas to demonstrate his claim. The original heads were analysed by Professor Dearman of the University of Newcastle, who concluded that the items had been moulded artificially rather than carved."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexham_Heads

Thoughts?
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Seems plausible, frankly. Sadly that Professor Dearman (if it was he) is no longer with us to corroborate and all too easy to perpetuate a mystery when the main exhibit has 'vanished'.
 
uair01 said:
Good summary (also an interesting weblog):
https://theurbanprehistorian.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/the-hexham-heads-part-1-the-discovery/
https://theurbanprehistorian.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/the-hexham-heads-part-2-tested-and-contested/
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Those are excellent summaries. And though they don't, quite, come right out and say it, there's a clear implication that Anne Ross's involvement, rather than lending credibility to the whole saga, instead takes it away.
She was a leading Celtic scholar - but it's not that hard to become a leader in a field that, at the time, was very sparsely populated, and her personal beliefs about Celtic religion (and its practical applicability in the present) don't make her as reliable a source as the phrase "leading Celtic scholar Dr Anne Ross" implies. It's a bit like asking the Pope to verify the Turin Shroud.
But it remains one of my favourites of all Fortean stories - I saw the "Nationwide" report when I was four and it terrified me for years afterwards.
 
I'm probably being harsh but I've never believed the Hexham Heads tale ... two kids find some stone heads and then a werewolf is seen ? .. my neighbour in exactly the same era gave me two small wooden African carved heads and I also had weird dreams around that time .. and before that time .. I've never been convinced that anything supernatural went on but to be fair, I wasn't in Hexham .. without checking the timeline of pop culture films, when was An American Werewolf In London and The Howling released ? ... roughly about the same time ? .. if not, werewolf films were in existence before that of course ..
 
Swifty said:
.. without checking the timeline of pop culture films, when was An American Werewolf In London and The Howling released ? ... roughly about the same time ? ...
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Both the films you cited were released in 1981 - roughly a decade after the heads were first discovered.
 
EnolaGaia said:
Both the films you cited were released in 1981 - roughly a decade after the heads were first discovered.
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Thanks EnoliaGaia .. although I'm still unconvinced about this case.
 
Swifty said:
I'm probably being harsh but I've never believed the Hexham Heads tale ... two kids find some stone heads and then a werewolf is seen ? .. my neighbour in exactly the same era gave me two small wooden African carved heads and I also had weird dreams around that time .. and before that time .. I've never been convinced that anything supernatural went on but to be fair, I wasn't in Hexham .. without checking the timeline of pop culture films, when was An American Werewolf In London and The Howling released ? ... roughly about the same time ? .. if not, werewolf films were in existence before that of course ..
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i saw the Hexham Beds at Union a few years ago and thought, hmm, lumps of concrete, obviously badly-made garden ornaments!
 
Schloup said:
Shortly after Don left the Heads in Kilburn, Hyde had been injured in a serious road crash. The messenger with bad news had no idea as to Hyde's current whereabouts. Throughout that summer of 1978 Don tried to contact the injured Hyde without success. Private and professional priorities took prominence and Don put the Heads out of his mind. But others had not forgotten and over the following five years persons who Don had contact with asked after the Heads welfare and situation. Many of these knew Frank Hyde personally. Or rather, had known Hyde- 'because to all intents and purposes he seemed to have vanished..”

If this theory is to be believed, nobody was able to trace Hyde or the heads again. Of course there are other versions of where the heads ended up which are discussed in the book – one theory being that they made their way back to the north east. I’m not sure if this was supposed to be after they had been with Hyde, or whether the Hyde disappearance part of the story is disputed and they ended up back with Don Robins.
Click to expand...
escargot1 said:
i saw the Hexham Beds at Union a few years ago and thought, hmm, lumps of concrete, obviously badly-made garden ornaments!
Click to expand...
So we have a trusted witness attesting to the continued existence - in 2004 - of objects purporting to be the Heads some 20-odd years after Frank Hyde's mysterious disappearance. Furthermore, they were made available for inspection by any interested visitor to Uncon 2004, by an exhibitor who was only too keen to discuss them.

Is there any way of tracing who was invited to present at that event?
 
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Krepostnoi said:
So we have a trusted witness attesting to the continued existence - in 2004 - of objects purporting to be the Heads some 20-odd years after Frank Hyde's mysterious disappearance. Furthermore, they were made available for inspection by any interested visitor to Uncon 2004, by an exhibitor who was only too keen to discuss them.
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I think that was David Clarke and they are replicas of the originals.
 
Krepostnoi said:
Oh, ok. Thanks for the update. One step forwards, two steps back.
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Ah, according to David's blog, not actually replicas but a different stone head. Also reputed to be cursed mind you!

https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/2012/12/22/heads-and-tales/

I could appreciate the dilemma she faced because in 1990 I became the part-owner of a ‘haunted stone head’ from Ryshworth Hall in West Yorkshire that had been the subject of similar lurid tabloid headlines. This artefact became the centre of much attention when Andy Roberts and I put it on display following our talk on ‘cursed heads’ at the 2011 FT Unconvention.
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(Was that really 2011?)
 
You know, incidents like this make me despair that worthwhile witness testimony is ever obtainable: my *cough* anonymous *cough* informant not only mistook the date, but also the nature of the objects s/he saw. And there's little likelihood of this particular experience being massively traumatic, or otherwise particularly likely to deleteriously affect recall. That said, I've never been to an Uncon...
 
Krepostnoi said:
You know, incidents like this make me despair that worthwhile witness testimony is ever obtainable: my *cough* anonymous *cough* informant not only mistook the date, but also the nature of the objects s/he saw. And there's little likelihood of this particular experience being massively traumatic, or otherwise particularly likely to deleteriously affect recall. That said, I've never been to an Uncon...
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In defence of your anonymous and slimy informant, I would have put that date earlier that 2011 too as my other memories of that Uncon (including being mistaken for Nina Conti directly after we all watched a film of her on a large screen) seem much more recent. But that could have happened after being "seeded" with the 2004?

Sorry for going OT!
 
Schloup said:
According to Screeton, there’s a strong chance that Frank Hyde was the last person in possession of the heads. Don Robins had passed the heads to Hyde in order for him to test them for paranormal activity. Robins delivered the heads to Frank Hyde’s house where they both conducted a dowsing experiment on them which, according to Screeton, Robins reluctantly took part in. They found activity around the ‘hag’ head (the one that looked like a female) but nothing coming from the male looking head. Screeton comments: “'She' activated the pendulum and had it performing a merry dance and had the divining rod twitching away; while the skull-head 'He' remained moribund.”

Screeton then goes on to say:

“Doubtless still anxious to retreat to his cosy home, sans Heads, Don witnessed the next stage in the research programme, whereby the traditional techniques gave way to a more 'Mad scientist's laboratory' experiment with the Heads wrapped firstly individually and then together and put into a network of copper wire which Don compared to a Faraday cage. Don was impressed but the latter demonstration to show that the procedure diminished activity has left me baffled. In Don's account he admitted he had no 'clear idea of what further experiments he [Hyde] proposed to do', but after the demonstrations felt sufficiently confident to leave them in Hyde's hands.”

After that it gets murky.

Robins “did admit relief at fostering the Heads out and Hyde had given him an assurance to keep in touch regarding further experimentation and to return the Heads for others, too, to examine them. When after a reasonable time Hyde had not communicated with him, Don tried to contact him by letter and telephone but to no avail. Later that spring, Don met the acquaintance who had introduced him to Hyde and was to receive bad news. Shortly after Don left the Heads in Kilburn, Hyde had been injured in a serious road crash. The messenger with bad news had no idea as to Hyde's current whereabouts. Throughout that summer of 1978 Don tried to contact the injured Hyde without success. Private and professional priorities took prominence and Don put the Heads out of his mind. But others had not forgotten and over the following five years persons who Don had contact with asked after the Heads welfare and situation. Many of these knew Frank Hyde personally. Or rather, had known Hyde- 'because to all intents and purposes he seemed to have vanished..”

If this theory is to be believed, nobody was able to trace Hyde or the heads again. Of course there are other versions of where the heads ended up which are discussed in the book – one theory being that they made their way back to the north east. I’m not sure if this was supposed to be after they had been with Hyde, or whether the Hyde disappearance part of the story is disputed and they ended up back with Don Robins.

If they did end up with Hyde, one of Screeton’s theories about the possible whereabouts of the heads is that “Frank Hyde's executors might well have thought the Hexham Heads worth a punt on eBay or they have more likely end up in a skip and as you read this are creating mischief and mayhem at some landfill site.”

PS. I've located and scanned the missing page of the Screeton pamphlet, re ordered the pages and updated the blog.
Click to expand...
Schloup said:
It's Kilburn, London. It's frustrating that Hyde's address has never come to light as I'm sure there are people who must have known where he lived.


Yes, the car crash is yet another twist in the tale, but seems to be common activity with stone heads. The Hexham Heads had already demonstrated some car related mischief by apparently forcing Don Robins' car to lose power as he was about to set off from Anne Ross's house with the Heads. He had just picked them up for the journey from Southampton to Middlesex when the car dashboard circuitry died. He fixed it by fiddling with the fuse box.

There's also another story of Anne Ross collecting two different heads from near the Welsh border. She said they crashed three times on the journey home, including one time when the car brakes suddenly failed.
Click to expand...
Hi just read a few of the posts regarding the hexham heads just like u all to know that I am Colin Robson and I found them in my garden aged 11 would be glad to chat and tell u the real story if u interested all's a few years ago Paul screeton and another guy interviewed me and recorded it on video but have heard nothing from him about it
 
Colin r said:
Hi just read a few of the posts regarding the hexham heads just like u all to know that I am Colin Robson and I found them in my garden aged 11 would be glad to chat and tell u the real story if u interested all's a few years ago Paul screeton and another guy interviewed me and recorded it on video but have heard nothing from him about it
Click to expand...

A very warm welcome to the message board, Colin.

Perhaps the best way to proceed--if you have the time--would be for you to tell the tale in your own words and then--again if you have the time--for us to ask a few questions.

Alternatively, if that's more than you had in mind, perhaps you might be able to clarify, correct or elucidate on the capsule description of what occurred that appears here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexham_Heads
 
Colin r said:
Hi just read a few of the posts regarding the hexham heads just like u all to know that I am Colin Robson and I found them in my garden aged 11 would be glad to chat and tell u the real story if u interested all's a few years ago Paul screeton and another guy interviewed me and recorded it on video but have heard nothing from him about it
Click to expand...

Oh we have LOTS to ask you!

When I saw the Heads on show at Uncon in 2004, when they looked like bits of concrete gnomes, was I looking at the real ones or copies? I'm confused.
 
Yithian said:
A very warm welcome to the message board, Colin.

Perhaps the best way to proceed--if you have the time--would be for you to tell the tale in your own words and then--again if you have the time--for us to ask a few questions.

Alternatively, if that's more than you had in mind, perhaps you might be able to clarify, correct or elucidate on the capsule description of what occurred that appears here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexham_Heads
Click to expand...
Just going off to work now but depending upon how much interest I get in the matter would be glad when I have time to relate my true story
 
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