bought up by the Abbey. Similarly, an Abbot Martin accurately foretold of the catastrophic fl ooding of the Tyne in the spring of 1215. This warning was ignored by the people of adjacent villages, who subsequently suffered great loss of life and property while the Brothers, having moved their fl ocks to higher ground, enjoyed something of a monopoly on wool and mutton for many years after. Soon, commoners and potentates alike would travel to the Abbey, seeking an audience with its mystical Monks that saw the future in strange trances. Thus, while bereft of the relics normally associated with a wealthy abbey, the Brothers of Gedsbry did a brisk enough trade in fortune-telling to buy up numerous properties up and down the valley.
Rumors of the source of these visions all seemed to point to a distinctly non-Chrisitian origin, however. The Giant’s Hill, upon which the abbey is built, has had a long history of haunting and mysterious events. These began with the first Roman chronicles from the area, who noticed that the site was of particular abhorrence to the native Celts known as the Votadini. One Severus Magnus, a Legionnaire of equestrian rank, wrote of the mysterious rites of the Picts who, slipping across the border on moonless nights, would hold unholy sacrifices atop a place he termed the “domum gigantes”. Here, he wrote, their wild chants would be answered by terrible voices coming up from the ground that, in exchange for blood, instructed pictish shamans in all the secrets of the earth.
The retreat of Rome and the advent of the Dark Ages did little to lessen the weirdness of the locale. The Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria, dominant in the 7th and 8th Centuries, left many chilling tales that found their way into the libraries of many monasteries. The most famous tells of the hellish vision of a young man named Oswiu. Lost and wandering in the dark, he came upon a hill lit with unholy flame and circled round by a horned serpent that whispered blasphemies to the stars. Tending the fire atop the hill was a giant man blue with woad and girt with wolfskin, while naked celebrants danced and writhed in the relight. Among the more human celebrants, Oswiu is said to have recognized neighbors and prominent land-owners. He fled the scene, and reported all to the King. In the subsequent weeks, many people were rounded up by King Ceolwulf and drowned in the North Sea for the “grievous sins” of sorcery, necromancy, false prophecy, and paganism. Shortly thereafter Ceolwulf himself, perhaps hounded by the horrors he had heard and witnessed at the trials, abdicated the throne and retired to a monastery for the rest of his days.
By the time the Poor Brothers of Saint Christopher came on the scene then, we see that the Giant’s Hill had already become a grisly haunt of ghosts and goblins. Why then did these strange Monks from the continent settle there? Some scholars believe that their choice was not in spite of these rumors, but rather because of them. Although the record is muddled, it appears that the Brothers were not entirely naïve about occult topics, for in all the pertinent records we fi nd the Poor Brothers wrapped in a cloak of mysticism and
rumored diabolism. For starters, whence came the Poor Brothers? By their own accounts, they had fled persecution “in the east”, and that their order was originally from the first missions sent to Egypt, perhaps making them Coptic. What secrets had they learned in that ancient land?
This Egyptian connection is important, and it may be that the Brothers had already tipped their hand. As noted above, the Brothers of Gedsbry Abbey had a special enthusiasm for Saint Christopher. In some traditions, St. Christopher was said to have been one of the cynocephali, strange creatures mentioned by Herotodus and Ctesias in the Ancient World, and by Paul the Deacon in his “Historia gentis Langobardorum” in the Middle Ages. Specifically, St. Christopher was believed by some to have had the head of a dog. A dog-headed figure associated with holy death and mystic visions? A similarly figure is found among the Egyptians in the form of the most occult Anubis, the ancient dog-headed God of the Dead.
These mummies are common in Northumberland, associated with both the Celtic and Norse settlements of Late Antiquity and the early Dark Ages. Internment in the bogs was of a clearly ceremonial nature, the individuals having been fed a final meal of bread baked with ash before being ritualistically killed via strangulation or, less commonly, bludgeoning. The mummies are also often found in association with offerings of iron weapons or tools, an extravagant waste of rare metal that speaks to the importance of these bog burials. Christianization of the North resulted in a marked change in burial practices, of course; after the sixth or seventh century C.E., one does not find bog mummies.
Except…there is a period where bog mummies become common again, temporally and spatially coinciding precisely with activity at Gedsby Abbey. Beginning in the mid 1100s, and continuing on until approximately the late 1300s, bodies were being inhumed in the swamps five miles north of The Giant’s Hill. These remains, their bellies stuff ed with ash-laden bread, limbs bound, and throats slashed, are often found with small iron statues of a dog-headed man. It is a remarkably consistent return to form after many hundreds of years without, apparently, any intervening continuity.
In 1244 C.E., a combined secular and ecclesiastical enclave was convened to address the concerns expressed by locals regarding the unnaturalness of the Brothers of St. Christopher. Fortune telling was bad enough, but it seems that people were disappearing with alarming regularity, never to be heard from again. Additionally, witnesses remarked on the strange, midnight processions to the northern swamps the Brother’s seemed so fond of taking, particularly around Walpurgisnacht and Samhain. Finally, the cemetery around the church, sacrosanct land that was the special charter of the Brothers, was being disgracefully neglected. The conclave went even further, citing the Brothers for heresy and “un-christian” burial practices. The Abbot, along with key Brothers, were “removed” (and almost certainly burned as wizards), while a new hierarchy of Dominican Brothers were brought in to “correct” the unorthodox members of the community.
It would appear, however, that these overseers met with little success, and indeed may even have become converts to the particular practices of the Brothers, as the rumors, disappearances, and bog mummifications continued until 1388. Indeed, stories from the period immediately after the Censuring Conclave become markedly grisly, as the Brothers apparently reasserted their control over the area. The vanishings continued, and local shepherds learned to travel always in well-armed gangs, choosing to combine their fl ocks rather than make themselves vulnerable among the lonely hills. Strange, inhuman figures would appear and disappear along the banks of the river, while blood curdling screams and moans seemed to echo up from the Earth. This lead to the belief, common even today, that the area around The Giant’s Hill is riddled with caves and passages through which evil things stalk.
The horrors eventually came to a head in the spring of 1388, with a particularly gruesome discovery. A peat cutter, draining some of the bogs in search of fuel, uncovered a whole cache of mummies, carefully arranged in a circle around a central body that had been tied to a heavy iron chair. This central mummy was a particularly horrific jumble of remains, and only partly human. According to the tale, the head of this poor victim had been removed, replaced by the skull of large hound or wolf, strapped in place on the stump of the corpse’s neck and surmounted with an iron crown. On this unusual piece of headwear was stamped the following phrase, recorded in the annals of the village priest, Father Osric: “Fraternitatem presertim leges Mors Canisque”, Latin for “Brotherhood of the Sainted Dog of Death. Furthermore, around the neck of this composite mummy was found an amulet bearing the insignia of St. Christopher.
Imagine the furor such a discovery must have wrought! All the tales of hellish idolatry, black magic, and demoniacal evil confirmed in an instant! What happened next is difficult to piece together, for those involved seemed to have made an effort to efface their subsequent actions from the historical record. However, this much is known. It seems that, having summoned Father Osric and some of the more important local land-owners, it was decided that the Poor Brothers must be apprehended or driven from the area. To this end, they summoned the local Undersheri ff and his men and, under cover of darkness, they came upon the Abbey unawares in the night.
It is not clear whether they had planned to confront the Brothers with this evidence, or if they had simply decided to attack. Regardless it seems that, despite being surprised by the sudden assault, the Brothers attempted some violence in their defense. A melee soon developed in which many on both sides were killed, some in a particularly horrible and “indescribable” way, at least according to a letter sent by the Undersheri ff after the fact. Some Brothers seemed to have fled into the swamps, while the Abbot and many of the Brothers seemed to have died in a fire that consumed the main church, screaming defiance and blasphemies to the end. I write “seemed to have died” since, apparently, no remains were ever found, not even a charred bit of bone. Also, one must remember the tales of the tunnels rumored to have turned the bedrock into Swiss cheese. Did these “Brothers of the Sainted Dog of Death” escape into the subterranean world?
The ruins remain to this day, a Historical Heritage Site registered with the U.K., though visited only rarely by tourists of the Occult. Strange lights are sometimes seen, illuminating windows briefly as they flit through the Abbey. People have told tales of a huge black dog that stalks through the ruins silently on moonless nights, and at least one man, a poet of unusual sensitivity, went mad after spending the night there in the early 1930s. None have found the tunnels and chambers rumored to lie beneath the hulk of the Abbey, though in truth few have tried. I myself visited it in the mid 1980s, and can attest that there is something unearthly about the place, a brooding watchfulness that seems to resent the clumsy footfall of intruders from the wider world. Still, it is a lovely bit of ruins in a landscape noted for its rugged beauty, and should not be missed by my fellow travelers. Go in the daytime, however, and make sure you leave yourself plenty of time to get back to the village before twilight.
From Samizdat, V.1 n.1
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