On Scrapfaggot Green

The village of Great Leighs in Essex thought itself bewitched last week. On Scrapfaggot Green a G.I., driving a bulldozer, had pushed the stone off the grave of a witch, dead with a stake in her heart these 200 years. Now she was hightailing about the countryside, scattering scaffolds, blowing down haystacks, ringing church bells in the dead of night.

In the taproom of Ye Old Queen Anne's Castle Inn, one of several "oldest hostelries" in the county, Landlord Alfred Sykes drew pint after pint for inquisitive reporters from London, told them of awesome doings. "Last night the church clock turned two hours slow, which never happened before. . . . Then there was old Chipping's rabbits. One of them--ain't this witchcraft?--he found setting on eggs in his chicken coop. . . . And Mrs. Warren's books. There's a respectable widow woman for you, and a friend o' mine. All her books changed jackets one night. How do you explain that, young fellow-me-lads?"

One night skeptical Landlord Bob Reynolds, of the rival Dog and Gun Inn, who had scoffed at reports of the witch's pranks, found a boulder the size of a beer barrel outside his pub door.

Down from London dashed Professor Harry Price, head of the Council of Psychical Investigation. The professor puttered about the violated grave, diagnosed the mischief-maker as a poltergeist-at-large, whose headstone must be restored exactly as before. He warned: "Its orientation north to south must be precise."

At chill midnight of Friday the 13th, a band of the hardier villagers heaved the long grey slab back into place. Next morning the stone was all awry again. Across it, spelled out in faggots from a nearby oak, were the words: "Non in sum." Yokels gawked until a Latinizing G.I. translated: "Nobody home."

Down to Scrapfaggot Green for United Press hurried an Irish expert on leprechauns, Dr. D. J. G. MacSweeney. Admittedly, witches were a little out of his line, but the doctor went to work with Celtic canniness, came up with a report--on Publican Sykes. "He is an upstanding citizen . . . but, I fear, a man with a glass in his eye for business. . . . All the witnesses were customers of his pub. . . . The witch legend is a matter for hooting and disbelief in adjoining Little Waltham. Little Walthamites in road crews assure me they have moved the stone a score of times in as many years. . . . It is my reluctant conclusion that the witch of Scrapfaggot Green is--to be blunt--a hoax."

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