The Witch of Berkeley

In Berkeley, Gloucestershire, there lived a witch, according to legend. Her pet raven died and she cried out, "My plough has come to its last furrow!" Shortly after, she received news that her son and his family had died. She became ill and confessed her practice of the dark arts. She instructed her family to sew her body into the skin of a stag and put her in a stone coffin, bound by three iron chains, the last locking links were to be cooled with holy water. She ordered that her coffin be brought to the church and for psalms to be sung over her for forty and and forty nights to save her soul. Only then could she be safely buried.

All of her efforts were for nought, for the devil came on horseback. He rode a spiked black horse. He broke the chains and plucked the living corpse from its coffin. He slung her across the back of his horse, impaling her on the spikes, and they galloped into the night. Her screams faded slowly through the night. If you are abroad at night in Berkeley, you may come across the apparition of a raven that screams like a woman. It is the damned soul of the Berkeley witch.