The wicked Candy Lady

 There is a sinister case about a serial killer named Clara Crane. Some of this has been interwoven with folklore and today the story is an urban legend. 

Born in Terral, Texas in 1871, Clara grew up on a farm and later met Leonard Crane, fell in love and they got married. Things turned darker when she lost a child and blamed it on her husband who became an alcoholic. Out of vengeance, she decided to kill him. She put poison over pieces of caramel, fed it to Leonard and he died shortly after eating it. It was 1895 and this murder was reported to the local sheriff Dixon. After her arrest, Clara Crane went on trial and found guilty but she was considered mentally ill, so she was sent to Terral State Mental Hospital. She suffered there, emotionally and physically by abusive staff. She was under the care of Dr Vernon Matthews and it seemed that he, as well as his staff, were involved in tormenting Clara. There was overcrowding in the psychiatric hospital, so Clara was released back home in 1903. 

It was then that mysterious gifts were placed on windowsills of houses across town. These contained wrapped sweets of caramels with messages like "Come and play". Sheriff Dixon found it had an eerie connection to Clara Crane, who also used caramels to kill her husband. The missing children were the very children of people who worked at Terral State Mental Hospital. 

A search party looked for Clara Crane, going through her cornfields and farm. Sheriff Dixon was later found dead in a barn. Countless more deaths followed. More evidence showed Clara was behind it all, when they found caramel wrappers containing teeth belonging to the missing children. In total 28 children had gone missing. A total of 6 sheriff's were murdered in the investigation. Today Clara Crane is known as the Candy Lady. 

This is a horrible true event mimicking warnings from many fairy tales, mostly this is like the character of the evil wicked stepmother in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". Or the cannibalistic witch in "Hansel and Gretel" with a gingerbread house made of candies to lure children. Fables can be real. The moral is don't accept gifts from strangers, and don't eat sweets from strangers. It's a creepy story that can put you off eating candy altogether.

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March ghosts

March 2026 is all about St Patrick's Day and Mothering Sunday. There's nothing spooky about March, unless you live in a haunted house and experience recurring hauntings on ancient sites. There's plenty of eerie haunted buildings with spectral visitors in March, as this time includes the cursed Ides of March, with bad luck happening such as winter storms and false springs. It brings the phrase "In like a lion, out like a lamb." The phrase "March Madness" is connected to stress, fatigue and sleep disruption caused by daylight savings time change. I shall mention some ghost activities and then personal stories.   

 One of the most darkest church ruins is Saint Nonna, also called "Cathedral of the Moor" in Altarnun in Cornwall. It's a 12th century church that was originally built on an even older sacred pagan Neolithic  temple, believed to have been a place of human sacrifices. There is a well that was once part of a Medieval ritual of tormenting the sick and mentally ill. This including tying them up, giving them violent thumps across the chest and throwing them into the water. After being removed, the patients would be gathered into the church for congregation. It's believed that St. Nonna is the mother of Saint David. Every 1st March is St David's Day and this is when ghostly singing can be heard coming from the church ruins.

At Hopton Castle in Shropshire, a haunted army appears every 14th March. The soldiers are Parliamentarian forces, about 28 of them who arrived at the castle and remained there for two weeks, surrounded by enemy Royalists. Soon the Parliamentarians were attacked and slaughtered by hundreds of Royalists. Now this happens every year on that anniversary. 

17th March is the spookiest time of year at Ye Olde Ferryboat Inn, Holywell in Cambridgeshire. The tragic story goes that in the year 1050, a 17 year old girl named Juliet Tewsley fell in love with Tom Zaul. He rejected her completely when she approached him, and this made Juliet extremely upset. She took her own life, unable to cope with heartbreak. She was buried near the River Ouse. Many years passed and then Ye Olde Ferryboat Inn was built over her grave. This disturbed Juliet, who visits the inn on the anniversary of her death. She frightens guests, causes trouble and tampers with electricity. Apparently she calms down when someone says something nice to her. Today there's a memorial for her including a gravestone inside the inn itself. Poor Juliet deserves to be loved.

During the first full moon in March, a huge cat appears on the moor in Beeley, Derbyshire. Some reported it as a panther running across the road in front of cars. It's terrified walkers who fear for their lives. 

In Ottery St Mary churchyard in Devon, a male spirit haunts every 26th March. It's said he rises from the grave, or basically emerges from his tomb on that date every year. He looks around and then returns to his grave. This is John Coke who was murdered by his own brother on 26th March 1632. He gets up every anniversary to watch out for his brother. 

Now two personal stories to share. A Reddit user named Pequod47 wrote that they had a nightmare of a tall skinny man wearing a trench coat. The user often had this recurring dream of the same scary figure that just stared with creepy eyes. Then many years later, the very same entity appeared in an elevator mirror staring with the same intense gaze. 

Another from user Akatsuki_Accountant wrote about a childhood experience. Once her parents went out to a party, leaving both her and younger sister in the house for the night. Late that night, the parents were heard coming home, so she quickly turned off her computer game and got into bed, pretending to be asleep. Someone approached the bedroom and opened the door, which the user said she had her eyes partially closed. She could make out an elderly woman in a long Victorian dress, who smiled and turned off the lamp. She later found out there was an ancestor in an old Victorian photograph looking like the woman who appeared in her bedroom that night. 

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Britain's last witch trails

In 1944, two British women were tried for witchcraft. They were Helen Duncan and Jane Rebecca Yorke. Both were to become the last two people to be arrested and tried under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. It happened during the Second World War, at a time of national crisis and air raid bombings. So one might think resorting to witch mania again was the result of PTSD. Bringing back an infamous law against two citizens was enough to get even the prime minister involved. Winston Churchill said that the witch trails of Helen Duncan and Jane Rebecca Yorke was "obsolete tomfoolery" and a complete waste of wartime recourses. 

Why did this happen? It started at a meeting in a house. Helen Duncan held a séance there, as she was a well known clairvoyant. She caused officials panic when Helen was able to know secrets about naval ships. She predicted the sinking of HMS Barham and this made them prosecute her. They were worried she might know too much about their military operations including the Normandy Landings. Many have supported Helen who gave their statements validating her psychic powers, but still she was locked up in prison for nine months. 

She was also accused of being a fraud who "exploited" people during dark times. They nicknamed her "Hellish Nell". She could summon spirits of the dead during seances. Born Victoria Helen MacFarlane in Callander, Perthshire in Scotland in 1897, she could see spirits and had the gift of foresight since childhood. It made her stand out amongst other kids in school. It was then that she started using her powers after leaving school aged 14 while working in an infirmary. She married a soldier and went onto have six children. She always suffered chronic conditions including Type II diabetes but on top of this she suffered grief from having a number of miscarriages. In 1956 police raided her seance meeting and interrupted her trance, causing her ectoplasm to snap back into her system. She never recovered from this and passed away five weeks later on 6th December 1956. Official records state her cause of death was ill health and diabetes. Today her descendants often appeal to the Scottish government to clear her name but this is always rejected. A piece of Helen's ectoplasm is at a museum. 

Jane Rebecca Yorke was the next victim of the system's sudden regress back to witch mania. She worked as a psychic medium in Forest Gate, Essex. Again she was also arrested by police for the same reasons as Helen. It was almost like a sting, as police went undercover during a seance meeting, and tricked Jane into falling in their trap. They pretended to have certain relatives who died, but once she contacted her spirit guide and talked about them, the police nicked her. While Jane had been communicating with spirits of the deceased family members, who were totally made up by the police. One undercover cop invented a brother who Jane said had just been killed in the war. That was enough for the police to show that Jane was a fraud, but this was about scepticism and not actual magic.

In 1944 Jane's trail happened at the Old Bailey, and she was found guilty of seven counts against the Witchcraft Act of 1735. She was sentenced with a fine and put on a good behaviour bond for three years, making her promise she would stop organising seances. Jane never held seances again, simply out of fear from the bullying establishment and police. The Witchcraft Act appeared during the mid 18th century as a mild way of dealing with witches. It was created by more reasonable lawmakers who wanted to end the barbaric punishments of witches. The act was repealed in 1951.

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