A wood adjoining the land of Fanton Hall, which was known as Shrieking Boy, or Screeching Boy’s Wood is said to be so called because a ploughman had killed his plough-boy with his plough. According to the church registers a murder was committed on Fanton Hall Farm in 1734 and this seems to support the legend.

 

A more colourful version is that, in a fit of temper, a woodsman working in the copse at the end of Kingsley Lane cut off his working boy’s head because he was not working hard enough. Hiding the torse in a hollow tree the woodsman told the local people who asked about the boy that he had run away.

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The woodsman, so the story goes, was haunted by the boy he had murdered and used to get drunk to try and stop the bloodcurdling screams coursing through his head.

 

The boy was supposed to sit on the gate at the entrance to the wood now and then scream when anyone approached, to remind them of his murder. It is said that sometime afterwards some children went to see if the legend was true and sure enough, sitting on the gate was a screaming figure: they fled without ascertaining if it was a headless ghost.

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