Lore 241: Evergreen

A Mochi Moment from Sadie, who writes, I'm not crying, you're crying.

This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP-1.

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I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy.

Thanks, Sadie.

I'm Myra Ammeth, founder of Mochi Health.

To find your Mochi Moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Sadie is a mochi member, compensated for her story.

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Some characters are so well known, they need no introduction.

Take, for example, Robin Hood.

See, all I did was say his name, and already you've imagined a peak-capped, arrow-shooting robber stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

Perhaps you imagine the swashbuckling Arrol Flynn in brilliant 1938 Technicolor.

Or maybe a green-garbed Carrie Elwis prancing through Melbrook's classic men in tights.

Or maybe, as my research team of primarily millennial-aged women insists, you spent your youth swooning over a handsome, charming dreamboat of a Robin Hood who just also happened to be a cartoon fox.

Hey, you do you.

Whatever your Robin Hood of choice is, just know this, you aren't alone.

Because it turns out everyone's favorite bandit has been on the prowl through our imaginations for nearly a thousand years, and some of these robins just may have been real.

Way back in 1226, a court register from Yorkshire, England mentioned a fugitive named Robin Hood, whose land was being repossessed by the state.

And then there's William Robhood from 1262, member of a band of outlaws.

And we have a man named Robin Hood awaiting trial in 1354 in Northamptonshire.

And it doesn't stop there.

Historians have unearthed record after record of criminals named Robin Hood across decades and even centuries.

And no, we aren't dealing with an immortal bandit, as much as I would love that.

It turns out Robin Hood seems to be an alias used by various English outlaws throughout history.

Why, you might ask?

Well, probably for the same reason that you and I love Robin Hood.

Because of the stories, of course.

While the first written Robin Hood legend was penned in the late 14th century, the oral tradition likely dates much earlier.

Stories of the infamous noble robber, his merry men, and their home, a tract of woodland called Sherwood Forest.

The thing is, Robin is far from the only thief to crouch among the shadows of an English wood, waiting for a chance to pounce.

No, the British forests seem to hold as many stories as there are trees.

And with so many legends over the years, there are bound to be a few ghosts.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

From Hamlet's dead father materializing on the stage of the Globe Theater and the phantom stitched throughout Arthurian legends to the visitations in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the country of England has long been overrun with ghosts.

Seriously, if there were some sort of ghost census, I imagine the ghost-to-human ratio in England would be pretty high.

Maybe it's the damp, foggy weather that encourages the strange and spooky, as mist swirls over crumbling castles.

Maybe it's the nation's violent history of battling royals and terrible plagues.

Or maybe it's the land itself.

Of course, no landscape is home to more frights and fairy tales than a deep, dark wood.

And boy, do England's forests have some haunting stories to tell.

Wander through the thickly wooded Lidford Gorge in Devon, for instance, and you might come across the beautiful White Lady waterfall.

Oh, and you might spot something else, too.

Or rather, someone else, a ghostly woman in white, for which the falls are named.

Then there's Epping Forest in Essex, which has a haunted enough reputation that ghost hunting shows have even dragged whole camera crews through the woods there, trying to catch a glimpse of the paranormal.

Epping is said to be haunted by the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin, who was executed back in 1739.

Why was he executed, you might ask?

Well, for murdering a man right there in Epping Forest.

People claim to have been shoved and jostled by invisible hands among the Epping trees.

Some have seen a man on horseback wearing a black cape and a tricorn hat.

Others have heard disembodied screams.

There are legends of a little ghost girl in the woods who allegedly drowned nearby.

And in a real show of the old world versus the new, witnesses have seen both a headless horseman and a headless motorcyclist traveling through Epping Forest.

See, folklore does evolve.

Then there's Hangman Hill, a spot in Epping where, if the stories are to be believed, a man once met the gallows.

There's a road passing through the underbrush there, and they say that if you put your car in neutral, it will roll uphill toward Hangman Hill.

Now, whether that's supernatural or just the classic optical illusion known as a gravity hill isn't for me to judge.

But if you're ever in the area, you could decide for yourself.

To the west in Kent is Daring Wood.

Now this one lies just beside the town of Pluckley, which is known to be one of the most haunted villages in all of England.

And if ghosts are contagious, well, it seems like the woods next door caught the bug.

Just like in Epping, Daring has its own highwayman ghost, a robber who is said to have been captured and killed by angry villagers back in the 18th century, right there in the woods.

Visitors today hear ghostly cries weaving through the tall oaks and pines.

But if that lineup of fearful forests weren't enough, there's also Wenlock Edge, a dense wood that leads to a sharp cliff, dropping into a valley below.

According to legend, a corrupt 13th century knight named Ipikin decided to turn bandits and his men used a cave there as their hideout while they terrorized the surrounding towns.

But one night as the bandits slept in that cave, there was a huge storm.

A bolt of lightning struck the stone entrance, entrance, causing it to collapse, trapping the men inside to die.

To this day, visitors who stand on Wenlock Edge and repeat, Ipikin, Ipikin, keep away with your long chin, might find themselves pushed off the ledge by the knight's offended ghost.

Now, before you think that all woodland ghosts are lowlifes and swindlers, there are actually some that are aristocracy.

Take, for example, the ghosts of Blickling Estate within the Great Wood of Norfolk.

There, the spirit of a dead earl is said to wander through the trees, lamenting the loss of his daughter.

But not just any earl.

This man happens to be Thomas Boleyn, cursed because he failed to stop his daughter Anne's execution.

If by now you're thinking that England might want to consider fencing off its woods to visitors altogether and calling it a day, bear with me here, because we aren't done yet.

You see, all of these stories were simply a warm-up.

Now it's time to step onto the path, say goodbye to daylight, and be swallowed up by the most haunted forest in all of England.

A little place called Witchwood.

It was Christmas Eve and a family was traveling through the forest by horse-drawn carriage.

As members of the Roma people, they were no strangers to long journeys through unfamiliar lands.

But tonight was different.

You see, this was in the days long before meteorology, and so the family had set off without knowing one crucial fact, that a snowstorm was coming, and coming fast.

By the time the blizzard arrived, the carriage had forged too deep into the woods to turn around.

Soon the snow was so thick that their horses could no longer move forward.

The travelers were lost and trapped in the dark, freezing woods.

Which is exactly when the snow foresters surrounded them.

The family had heard the old legend about the ghosts called snow foresters who inhabited these woods, preying on travelers in the dead of winter.

And now it seemed the stories had become all too real.

They could hear the ghosts banging and scratching on the wagon walls, trying to get in.

The family cowered inside their wagon, but one little boy heard something outside that made him perk up his ears.

It was mewing, specifically the sound of a kitten.

And so, to his family's horror, he opened up the door and scooped up a white little cat.

As the tale goes, the cats spoke to them, as they do in forests, of course, and told the family that if they followed the sound of birds, they would be saved.

Sure enough, birdsong rose through the trees and the horses galloped forward, carriage in tow, following the sound through the woods, then out toward the ringing bells of the village church.

They had finally left Witchwood Forest behind.

Now, before we devolve into a cursed performance of who's on first, you know, when I say Witchwood, I'm not asking a question.

I'm referring to a plot of land in the lower middle region of England called Witchwood Forest, spelled WYCH, about an hour's drive northeast of Oxford.

And I know what you're thinking, but the title Witchwood actually has nothing to do with witches.

It's actually referring to the Wichit people, spelled H-W-I-C-C-E, who were the local Anglo-Saxon tribe that lived in the area a good 1500 years ago.

But the thing is, Witchwood's human history doesn't start there.

Not by a long shot.

Evidence of ancient barrows show that the area has been inhabited since 3000 BC, perhaps even longer.

Then in the year 43 CE, Romans invaded the woods and cut down the trees to build roads and settlements.

But by 500 CE, the Romans were gone and the woods had grown up again, which is when the Wicha made their mark, earning the forest the name we know it by today.

After that, Witchwood Forest continued to grow.

In size, yes, but in value too.

Lords and aristocrats soon parceled it off, and English kings even used the forest as a royal hunting ground.

Henry I, for example, built a park on the land, where he housed his collection of exotic animals, including lions, lynxes, and leopards.

Oh my.

By the time Henry II was on the throne, the forest had spread over a whopping 50,000 acres.

Now mind you, not all of that was wooded, but a lot of it was.

As the centuries went on, the land continued to be bought and sold and saw a ton of deforestation, primarily for shipbuilding.

Today, only 1,240 acres remain.

But just because the woods have shrunk doesn't mean the legends have.

In fact, they're bolder than ever.

And with a history as old and rich as Witchwoods, it has certainly collected its fair share of dark tales, like the Roma story of the snow foresters.

And of course, there are plenty more where that came from.

In another legend, there was a young maid whose lover left her for the house cook.

The maid was so distraught that she drowned herself in a lake within Witchwood Forest.

Her ghost can still be seen, still in her maid's uniform, wandering to this day.

Visitors have felt a ghostly hand reach out and tap their shoulder, but when they turn around, no one is there, which is pretty much the last thing I ever want to feel while walking alone through the woods.

Some have heard horses galloping through the trees, and one particularly unsettling report describes an apparition of a horse-drawn phantom carriage pulling a pair of sobbing children.

Now, if there can be ghost horses, it only makes sense that other animals might have ghosts too.

In Witchwood Forest, at least, they sure do.

Like the goat, who tends to appear before vanishing into thin air, or the howling black dog, which you probably want to avoid because, well, it's an omen of death.

By the way, many of these stories were collected by legendary English folklorist Catherine Briggs, who actually lived near Witchwood Forest.

She was the president of the Folklore Society in the late 60s and early 70s, and our researchers have been relying on her work for years.

According to Briggs, these stories I've shared are only a few of the supernatural witchwood tales that she documented there.

She actually once wrote that there were so many ghost stories in Witchwood, she couldn't possibly report them all.

That said, there's one more Witchwood story I have to tell you: it's a story of political intrigue, a story of love and betrayal, and a story of Witchwood Forest's most famous ghost of all.

Amy wasn't even 18 years old, and already her wedding day was fast approaching.

But she was lucky.

This wasn't an arranged marriage, but a love match.

And on June 5th, 1550, Amy and her sweetheart Robert were married.

Now, this wasn't your typical wedding.

You see, Amy Robshart happened to be the daughter of a lord, and her betrothed was none other than Robert Dudley, son of the incredibly powerful Earl of Warwick.

The couple had a lavish wedding with a star-studded guest list, including the very first Queen Elizabeth herself, as well as a young King Edward VI.

And so the two began their life together.

For a few years, Amy and Robert were happy, but the domestic bliss didn't last long.

See, it's hard to be rich and powerful in Tudor England without a bit of drama, especially if you're as ambitious as Robert was.

When Edward VI died, Robert, his father, and his brothers made a play to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne, who just also happened to be Amy's sister.

The plan ultimately failed though, and in January of 1554, Robert was imprisoned in the Tower of London and sentenced to death.

Amy was allowed to visit him there, and she did frequently for 10 months.

Finally, in October, enough power had changed hands that Robert's enemies were no longer on the throne, and so he was pardoned and released.

Now, you would think that a stint on death row might have made the guy think twice about climbing the social ladder, but none of that stopped Robert.

In fact, he even wormed his way into the queen's court.

In 1558, Queen Elizabeth took the throne and made Robert master of the queen's horse.

But that wasn't all she made him.

She also made him, well, sort of her secret boyfriend.

Robert and Elizabeth were old friends, and rumors had begun to spread.

Rumors that he and the unmarried queen were having an affair and that he was even vying to wed her.

Robert spent long stretches away at court by the queen's side, all as Amy waited behind at home.

On September 8th of 1560 though, everything changed.

Robert was off courting the queen as usual, but Amy still had a household to run.

And on that particular day, a fair was in town.

Her staff had been working hard and Amy decided they deserved a break, so she insisted that all of her servants take the day off to attend the festival.

And hey, maybe she wanted a day to herself too.

Some quiet without the bustle and gossip that seemed to surround her.

I guess we'll never know how Amy spent her day alone, because when the household staff returned, they found her lying dead at the bottom of the stairs.

Her neck had been broken.

Suffice to say, scandal and rumor cannonballed through England.

People were whispering that Robert had had his wife killed so that he could marry the queen.

Naturally, this decimated his reputation, so whatever shot he might have had with Elizabeth before had basically been beaten to a pulp.

And the fact that Robert didn't attend Amy's funeral didn't help the rumor mill any either.

In a desperate attempt to clear his good name, Robert insisted on conducting a full investigation into his wife's death.

Unlikely as it may seem, her death was ultimately ruled an accident.

But for Robert and his reputation, it was already too late.

The damage had been done.

Today, Amy Robshart's death is one of the Tudor era's greatest mysteries.

Did her husband murder her right there on the winding staircase?

Or was it truly an accident?

Some wondered whether she had been murdered by a rival suitor to the queen, hoping to smear Robert's name to keep him from being an eligible candidate.

After all, if that had been the goal, it had certainly worked.

Others speculated that the young woman may have taken her own life.

Perhaps her husband's alleged affair had been too much to bear.

There's also the rumor that Amy had been growing ill before her death and that she'd even found a lump in her breast.

Some wonder, could that have prompted suicide?

Surprisingly, most historians today agree with the original ruling that the whole thing was simply a tragic accident.

If she did indeed have cancer, perhaps an aneurysm or a fainting spell due to her illness had caused her to fall, and it wouldn't have been impossible for her spine to have been impacted by the cancer too, weakening her bones and making her neck more susceptible to damage.

While Robert never did marry the queen, he did get remarried to a woman named Lettis Nolis, whom the queen banished from court, and life as it does continued on, for Robert, for England, and even somehow, for Amy.

See, Amy may have been dead, but she wasn't fully gone, not if the legends are to be believed.

Some say her ghost haunted the staircase where she died.

People became too frightened to go near it, to the point where the house was allegedly exorcised by nine Oxford clergymen who attempted to drown the evil spirits in a nearby pond.

It said that pond never froze again.

But for all the pomp and circumstances, the exorcism apparently didn't work.

Amy's ghost was seen wandering the place for another 250 years.

Right about now, I imagine you're thinking, wait, what about Witchwood Forest?

But don't worry, we'll get there.

It's just that sometimes a good ghost story needs a bit of background.

You see, Amy Robsart not only haunted her own house, she also haunted Witchwood Forest.

By this time, it was 1588, nearly 40 years after her death.

Robert, though, was still alive, and on this particular afternoon, he, along with a few other nobles, had gone hunting in, you guessed it, Witchwood Forest.

Robert had been hunting all his life.

It was a common hobby for wealthy men, and Witchwood was one of the most popular spots for it.

He surely would have known his way around.

But just like the Roma family in the Snow Forester legend, Witchwood had its own plans for Robert.

The trees were thick around him, and somehow he became separated from his group.

And if you've ever seen a horror movie, you know that getting separated never leads to anything good.

That's when his ex-wife's spirit appeared to him.

Clear as day, there was Amy, just as she had looked 40 years earlier, back when she had died at only 28 years old.

And she approached Robert, who stood paralyzed, his eyes wide.

But she didn't seem violent or angry.

No, it seems that she only wanted to talk.

Amy leaned forward then and made Robert a promise, something that to her might have seemed like a reassurance, romantic even.

But to Robert, it made his blood run cold.

We will be reunited, she told her husband, in only 10 days' time.

Sure enough, enough on September 4th of 1588 Sir Robert Dudley died exactly ten days after Amy Robsart's prophecy no one can say for certain what really happened in the woods that day all those years ago remember there were only two witnesses one was Robert who is of course long gone now and the other

the silent trees of Witchwood Forest

Woodlands cover roughly 30% of this planet.

That's a lot of space for fairy tales and legends to lurk.

And forests all over the world hold stories eerily similar to the English ones that we've heard today.

Like one Romanian forest, for example, where ghosts and mysteries run rampant.

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He probably just wanted a relaxing afternoon.

After all, Emil Barnia was a military technician and day-to-day life must have been stressful, which is why in 1968, he decided to unwind, unplug, and spend some time in nature with his girlfriend and a couple of other friends.

The Hoyabachu forest in Romania, where they lived, seemed like the perfect getaway.

It was beautiful and serene, or at least it should have been.

But that day, something was off.

Amel's girlfriend saw something strange and called him over to look.

It appeared to be a silver disc, but this was no trashed hubcap or scrap metal buried in the ground.

In fact, the disc wasn't on the ground at all.

It was hovering in the sky.

The four friends stared at the thing for two full minutes, during which time Amel lifted his camera and snapped a photo.

Then, the disc disappeared.

Later, a number of newspapers would go on to publish Amel's photograph.

Skeptics brushed it off as a weather balloon, yet there's never been any conclusive evidence for that explanation, nor any other for that matter.

And if you've learned anything today, you wouldn't be surprised to hear that this was far from the only weird thing that's ever happened in the Hoyabachu woods.

Hoyabachu is an old-growth forest in Carpathian foothills, and by old, I mean this forest has a good 55,000 years under its belt.

Imagine cramming those candles on a cake.

The trees are spindly and twisting, some bent over at the waist with finger-like branches reaching out toward passers-by.

They look like the trees in Halloween cartoons, and weirdly, there seems to be no discernible cause for the trees twisting.

They just grow that way.

The wildlife only adds to the energy, too, because this part of Romania is bat country.

That's right, take whatever image you had in your head of those dark gnarled trees and add clouds of bats flapping through them.

Perfect, right?

In one popular legend, a shepherd disappeared in Hoyabachu along with over 200 of his flock.

None of their remains were ever found.

In another, a five-year-old girl vanished among the trees, only to reappear five years later.

If the story is to be believed, she had no memory of where she had been.

Oh, and one more tiny detail.

She hadn't aged a day.

There were so many disappearance stories set in the Hoyabachu forest that it's been referred to as the Bermuda Triangle of Romania.

And sure, getting lost in the woods is a tale as old as time.

But the thing about this forest is that it's actually quite small.

In fact, it only covers one square mile.

Not the easiest place in which to lose 200 sheep.

But there are so many more stories about the place.

The woods are said to be haunted by murdered peasants.

There's a clearing in the center of the woods, a circle of empty ground where it's said that no vegetation can grow.

Although, based on eyewitnesses, it's really just your run-of-the-mill meadow.

Even so, there are rumors of plenty that the clearing is a portal to another dimension.

And you'll notice that these stories all have something in common, that is their speculative nature.

There's no evidence or historical record that any of this is true.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean the stories aren't based in reality.

All it takes is a single seed to grow a forest, after all, and the same is true for legend.

But whatever that seed was, it's been lost to time.

Still, visitors today claim to experience all sorts of oddities when visiting the woods.

People have been overwhelmed with anxiety, nausea, and the feeling of being watched.

Some have found what they believe to be ectoplasm among the roots of the trees.

Electrical devices fail and shadow creatures flit among the branches.

You know, classic ghost stuff.

The nearby city of Kluj-Napoca is modern and urban.

To city dwellers, the woods are a place of mystery where anything becomes possible.

Some believe that it's this disconnect disconnect between nature and human industry that has made the woods such a hotbed for the strange and supernatural.

It's primal, hearkening back to our fear of dark, claustrophobic spaces where predators might hide behind any tree or shrub.

It's an explanation that makes a lot of sense.

But then again, there are more things in heaven and earth, as they say.

So many things will always just be a mystery.

Oh, by the way, the region of Romania where Hoyabachu lies is known by another name, a historical name, and one you may have heard before.

It's called Transylvania.

This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, and was researched and written by Jenna Rose Nethercott with music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast.

There is a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

Information about all of that and more is available over at lorepodcast.com.

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