BP-2026.010.1
Hexham Heads
- Claim
- 1 of 5
Possessions, or a person’s state of mind, affected in a way that passes. - Evidence
- 2 of 5
One retelling, publication or sale listing. - Provenance
- 0 of 3
The object cannot be produced.
These three figures are kept separate and are never combined into a single score. How grave the claim is, what it rests on, and whether the object can be traced are different questions. How the register reads them.
Asserted
Accounts attributed to a source. The register does not adopt them.
That being near them makes people uneasy. Two small heads dug up in a garden in 1971 are said to have moved on their own, to have been accompanied by a cold presence and by objects thrown about the house, and to have been followed by the appearance of a figure that was part man and part animal. The disturbances are said to have travelled with the heads to a second household and to have stopped when the heads were removed.
- P11
sensation on approach
- P15
apparition
- P19
visible movement
- P20
displacement unobserved
- C6
unease
- T3
passes by proximity or dwelling
- E5
a non-human entity attributed to them
index v0.8: Non-human entity attributed
- E9
able to leave the object
- H9
subject of a ritual
index v0.8: Subject of a ritual, curse or blessing
- H21
associated with a named legend or figure
reported by: five identifiable people between 1971 and 1976
Recorded
Established by the register, or received with the object.
File
- Register number
- BP-2026.010.1
- Entry type
- Object entry
- Opened
- 2026-09-16
- Coded against
- Claim Index v0.8
Object
- Type
- two carved stone heads
- Materials
- stone or cast material — analyses disagree
- Date
- disputed; claimed as Iron Age, alleged as 1956
- Origin
- Northumberland, England
- Whereabouts
- the object cannot be produced. Last recorded around 1976
Custody
No custody record has been entered.
On what grounds
A contemporaneous newspaper report from March 1972 quoting the archaeologist in whose house the second set of disturbances occurred. Reported by five identifiable people between 1971 and 1976.
Counter-indications
What weighs against the claim. These are never subtracted from a figure; the lowest applicable ceiling is applied instead.
- CI2
sources conflict on the event
- CI7
an ordinary explanation has been offered
- CI12
a claim of fabrication has been made but is unresolved
- CI18
the record of ownership breaks
A local man came forward in 1974 saying he had made the heads from concrete in 1956 for his daughter, in the house where the finders later lived. Replicas he produced were judged insufficiently similar. A university examination found the heads to be cast rather than carved, which supports his account; geological analyses returned contradictory verdicts on their age. The heads went missing from a university department around 1976 and have not been seen since, which closes off any further examination.
Register findings
- MT20
recurring rite by a holder
- MT26
exhibited publicly