The haunted Churchill cottage at Knowle St Giles, near Chard (1879)

Early March 1879. A cottage at Knowle St Giles, a village on the River Isle about 2.5 miles north-east of Chard, in Somerset. One morning a neighbour, Eliza Whatley, heard a man's voice shouting "Murder, murder" from inside.

Around 10 a.m. Catherine Churchill, 55, went to George Whatley for help. Her husband had fallen into the fire, she said. Whatley found Samuel Churchill, 82, on his back with his head in the grate. He was badly burned.

The police found a billhook under a chair, its blade stained with blood, and blood on Samuel's pipe and on the floor near the fireplace. Upstairs lay a bloodstained woman's dress. Dr Munden found "fresh cuts to the hands". The prosecution said Samuel had put on his best clothes that morning to change his will, and that Catherine feared being cut out of it.

At the Somerset Assizes in Taunton, in early May 1879, the defence argued that the old man had suffered a fit and fallen. The jury wanted to return manslaughter. Baron Huddleston told them they must convict of murder or acquit. Catherine denied everything to the end. At 8 a.m. on Monday 26 May 1879 she was hanged at Taunton Gaol by William Marwood, while about 500 people waited outside to see the black flag raised.

For some time after the execution, the cottage stood empty. Then it was let to a labourer and his family. They soon found they "could obtain no rest".

The woman they called "Kitty" was seen again and again. She would "glide about the premises in ghostly attire". Old Churchill came too. He was "distinctly observed to look in at the window, with hideous countenance".

Inside, blood appeared on the floor of the room where he died. Furniture and other articles moved by themselves. Unearthly noises sounded around the cottage. At last the family abandoned the dwelling. The house, the report said, was "now regarded as haunted".

The story survives through one source. The Illustrated Police News printed it, and Findmypast transcribed it in a 2017 blog post. That transcription dates the report to December 1878, which cannot be right, since it describes events after an execution in May 1879, and the original issue has not yet been traced. No police, clergy or scientific inquiry into the haunting is known. The family were never named, and their account reached print second hand.

The Illustrated Police News was a sensational paper that ran ghost reports often, and murder houses have long gathered ghost stories. The blood had a real history. Police had found it on that same floor near the hearth, and old stains returning through scrubbed boards is an ordinary possibility.

The case faded but did not vanish. In April 1969 the folklorist Kingsley Palmer recorded Mrs. Board of Dowlish Wake talking about the murder at Knowle St Giles, alongside local tales of a haunted house. On another tape, a Mr E. Hallet recalled "Mary Churchill (last woman hanged at Taunton)". Somerset remembered the story, if not quite her name.