BRITAIN'S MOST HAUNTED WITCH PRISON: Paranormal Investigators Restore The Cage

Two paranormal researchers bought a 16th-century prison where accused witches awaited execution - then the renovations began stirring things up.

READ or SHARE: https://weirddarkness.com/cage-st-osyth-witch-prison-renovation/

WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.
#WeirdDarkness #TheCageStOsyth #HauntedHouse #WitchTrials #ParanormalInvestigation #BritishHistory #TrueParanormal #UrsulaKemp #HauntedRenovation #DarkHistory

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
I'm Darren Marler, and this is weird dark news. There's
a yellow painted cottage in Saint Ossith, Essex that most
people would pass by without a second thought. But behind
those cheerful walls sits a building this spent centuries as
something far darker than a home. The cage, as it's known,
served as a prison for women accused of witchcraft, a

(00:35):
holding cell where they waited before facing trial and execution
in the fifteen hundreds. Amy Wayne and Jared Cutting knew
all of this when they bought the property earlier this year.
They're paranormal investigators who run a YouTube channel called Amy's
Crypt with three hundred and thirty thousand subscribers, so they're
familiar with haunted locations. They also knew that paranormal researchers

(00:59):
often worn that renovations to supposedly haunted houses tend to
stir things up. The spirits, apparently, don't appreciate change and
make their displeasure known through the usual way of unexplained phenomena.
Knowing that advice and following it are two different things entirely.
The structure dates back to the fifteen hundreds and originally

(01:22):
functioned as the town's lock up basically a holding pen
for minor offenders, vagrants, and people awaiting transport to larger
courts for more serious proceedings. It was not designed for
comfort or rehabilitation. It was designed to hold people, and
that's exactly what it did. The building went through some
major changes over the centuries. During the early nineteen hundreds,

(01:45):
the cage was reconstructed with new bricks and joined with
a neighboring property that had been built sometime in the
seventeen hundreds. Someone added an extra bedroom above the original
cage structure, and a kitchen extension got tacked on to
the side. Theifications created what exists today at fourteen Colchester Road,
a two bedroom cottage that looks relatively normal from the

(02:08):
outside despite its grim history. The police had been sitting
empty for nearly a decade when Amy and Jared came
across it. They paid two hundred thirty thousand pounds for
a property riddled with dampness and mold issues. Amy had
learned it was for sale from a friend who mentioned
it casually. The physical condition didn't scare them off. Neither

(02:30):
did the stories from Vanessa Mitchell, the previous owner, who
had spent over a decade trying to sell the place,
Mitchell had some experiences that would make most people reconsider
their real estate choices. She fled the property in two
thousand and four after witnessing what she described as mysterious
blood spatters appearing on walls. She also claimed something physically

(02:51):
pushed her while she was pregnant. She told reporters about
doors opening on their own, the kettle switching itself on
without anyone touching it, and fireplace implements that would swing
back and forth with no apparent cause. She described rooms
suddenly dropping in temperature, going freezing cold, and mentioned seeing
a black figure materialize in those cold spots. Mitchell had

(03:16):
been so disturbed that she visited the local vicar seeking
answers about her homes haunted nature. When he showed up
with his robes and holy water, she asked if this
kind of thing was common in the area. The vicar
told her something interesting. He said that he had worked
in many parishes over the years, but since coming to
Saint Ossith, he'd never had so many people approach him

(03:39):
privately or in church asking for house blessings because they
believed their homes were haunted. He mentioned that he could
name at least four houses on that road alone where
he had performed blessings. In fifteen eighty two, fourteen women
from Saint Osith were accused of witchcraft and brought to
trial at Chelmsford. The most famous case involved Ursula Kemp,

(04:03):
a woman in her fifties who'd built a reputation in
the community as what they called a cunning woman. She
worked as a midwife and healer, using folk medicine and
herbal remedies to treat the sick. People in the village
trusted her skills and called on her regularly when family
members fell ill. Camp had a friendship with a woman
named Grace Thurlow. When Grace's son Davy got sick, Camp

(04:26):
used her healing methods and the boy recovered. Based on
that success, Camp expected to be hired as nurse maid
for Grace's baby daughter, Joan, but Grace chose someone else
for the role. In a community where poverty was widespread
and Weamon, like Camp, scrambled for every bit of income
they could get, losing that position created real resentment. The

(04:49):
situation deteriorated rapidly. Just months after Joan was born, the
baby fell from her cradle and suffered a fatal neck injury.
The timing struck Grace as suspic for thinking with something
like this. If Kemp knew how to heal people and
lift curses, couldn't she theoretically do the opposite. Couldn't she

(05:11):
harm people just as easily as she helped them? Greece
took her concerns to the Darcis, A prominent local family magistrate,
Brian Darcy, decided to take up the case supperiently, viewing
it as a career opportunity. He wasn't particularly ethical in
his methods. He had a pattern of deceiving accused witches
to extract confessions from them. In Kemp's case, he told

(05:34):
her that if she confessed, he would show her clemency
and treat her mercifully. She believed him and confessed. Then
he did the exact opposite of what he had promised.
He condemned her to death. Brian had more than just
Kemp's confession to work with. He persuaded her eight year
old son, Thomas, to testify against his own mother. Thomas

(05:56):
told the court that his mother kept four spirits or familiars.
He named them Tiffin, a gray cat, Titty, a white lamb,
Pijing a black toad, and Jack a black cat. He
testified that he had watched his mother give these familiars
beer and cake. He also said that she had let
them suck blood from her body. The details of the

(06:18):
confession paint a picture of the superstitions of that era.
Kemp admitted to having two female spirits who inflicted lameness
and destroyed cattle, and two male spirits who killed people.
She confessed to sending these familiars to make Grace Thurlow
lame and to kill Joan Thurlow, Elizabeth Leatherdale, and Kemp's
own sister in law. Whether she actually believed these things

(06:41):
or simply said what her interrogators wanted here remains unclear.
The accusations spread through the small village. Kemp named twelve
other women as witches during her confession. Elizabeth Bennett, Alice Hunt,
Alice Newman, Marjorie Salmon, Joan Petchy, Agnes Glascock, Cicily Cellis,

(07:02):
Joan Turner, Elizabeth Eustace An has Heard, Alice Manfield, Margaret Gravelle,
and Anne Swallow. Each of those women in turn named others.
The accusations multiplied as people pointed fingers at their neighbors,
setting old grudges under the guise of rooting out witchcraft.

(07:22):
Of all the women who stood trial, only two are
definitively known to have been sentenced to hang, Ursula Kemp
and Elizabeth Bennett. Records indicate that six of the accused
were hanged in fifteen eighty two, including Kemp. The fate
of the others remains uncertain. Some may have been acquitted,
some may have died in prison while awaiting trial. The

(07:43):
incomplete records leave their stories unfinished. The witch hysteria didn't
end with those trials. Between sixteen forty four and sixteen
forty seven, East Anglia experienced another massive wave of witch hunts,
this time led by a man, Mathew Hopkins, who styled
himself the Witchfinder General. Hopkins operated out of Missley, not

(08:06):
far from Saint Ossith. During his campaign, as many as
three hundred people were executed for witchcraft across Eastern England.
In Chelmsford alone, nineteen people were hanged for witchcraft in
a single day. Two of those executed were from Saint Oscith.
The story takes an unexpected turn more than three centuries later,

(08:28):
in nineteen twenty one, a man named Charles Brooker was
digging for sand in the garden of his cottage on
Mill Street in Saint Ossith when he hit something solid.
He had uncovered two skeletons. The bodies worked in a
proper burial ground, and Brooker noticed they were oriented north
to south rather than the traditional east to west alignment

(08:48):
used in Christian burials. Iron nails were found driven through
the skeleton's knees and elbows, the kind of restraints that
would have been used to shackle someone. Brooker knew the
village history. He made a quick calculation about what he
had found and what it might mean for his finances.
He decided the skeletons must be the Saint Ossith Witches.

(09:11):
The discovery generated significant interest in the area, and Brooker
seized the opportunity. He constructed a fence around the skeletons
and started charging people admission to view them. He even
had postcards printed featuring the skeletons and sold them to visitors.
His profitable venture came to an abrupt halt. The cottage
mysteriously burned down. People immediately blamed the curse of the witches,

(09:35):
suggesting the disturbed dead were exacting revenge. However, Brooker's grandson Paul,
later told the Clacton and Frinton Gazette what he believed
really happened. He thought his grandfather, who was known for
enjoying his guinness, had probably knocked over an oil lamp
while drinking. The fire buried the skeletons again, and they

(09:56):
stayed that way for thirty years. Eventually, Paul's father wanted
to build a house on the site. The skeleton, believed
to be Ursula Kemp, was exhumed, had an extorcism performed,
and was sold to Bowcastle Museum of Witches for ninety
nine pounds. The skeleton's journey didn't end there. It was
later purchased by Robert Linkowitz, a Plymouth based artist known

(10:19):
for his eccentric collecting habits. Lankowitz was extraordinarily prolific, producing
over ten thousand works of art during his lifetime. He
also accumulated an impressive library of twenty five thousand books
focused on witchcraft, the occult, demonology, and medieval philosophy. Among
his collections more disturbing items was the mummified body of

(10:41):
a local homeless man, which he had kept stored in
a secret drawer. Nobody discovered it until after Lenkawitz died.
The question of whether the skeleton actually belonged to Ursula
Kemp has been debated extensively. In two thousand seven, historian
Alison Rowland's pois doubt that, according to her research, the

(11:01):
skeletons could have belonged to any of ten women who
were executed for witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
A more recent forensic study even suggested that the bones
might date back to the Roman era. However, documentary maker
John Worland used carbon dating to prove that the skeleton
does date back to the sixteenth century. His analysis also

(11:24):
confirmed that remnants of iron nails were embedded in the bones.
Working with Saint Ossith Parish Council, Warland arranged for the
skeleton to be laid to rest properly on April fifteenth,
with both Pagan and Christian representatives present. The remains were
buried in unconsecrated ground in a plot oriented north to south,

(11:44):
matching the original burial position. Amy and Jared began their
restoration project with the goal of returning the property to
something resembling its original state. They planned to eventually operate
it as a holiday rental, though that's assuming they can
finished the work. They are restoring the original floorboards that
had been covered over with layers of carpet. They're hunting

(12:06):
down period furniture to furnish the rooms in a way
that honors the building's history while still making it functional
for modern guests. Their initial budget of fifty thousand pounds
has been completely exhausted. Jared admits they're now winging it financially,
trying to complete the renovation without a clear sense of
where the money'll come from. The work continues despite the

(12:28):
budget problems, and despite some other complications that have emerged.
Amy has documented various unusual occurrences since they moved in
earlier this year. She's heard strange noises she can't identify
or explain. Strange smells have appeared and disappeared without any
obvious source. Doors have opened and closed on their own

(12:49):
when nobody was near them. A speaker fell off a
shelf under circumstances that didn't make physical sense. Their bedroom
lights switched themselves on at three am one night. There's
a theory in paranormal investigation circles that undertaking renovations in
a supposedly haunted location can increase supernatural activity. The thinking

(13:11):
goes that spirits grow accustomed to their environment, and when
you start tearing things apart and changing them, it disturbs
whatever presence might be there. Amy finds it interesting to
observe how the house seems to shift and change during
the renovation process. She's noticed that the atmosphere becomes more
unsettling after dark. She's developed a habit of trying to

(13:33):
get upstairs to bed before Jared so she doesn't have
to be alone on the ground floor at night. The
couple had not set out to buy a haunted property specifically.
They travel the world investigating allegedly haunted locations for their
YouTube channel, examining the histories of these places and interviewing
people who claim to have experienced paranormal phenomena. Amy's interest

(13:56):
in this field began after she saw what appeared to
be a young girl in her San Francisco apartment years ago.
When they heard about the cage being for sale, they
were drawn to both the building itself and the claims
surrounding it. A few months after learning it was available,
they owned it. The purchase was made through the Cage
of Saint Osseth, the Limited that organization Amy founded specifically

(14:19):
for this project. The organization's state admission is to restore
and preserve the building while continuing to tell the story
of the women who were falsely accused and executed during
the witch trials. Jared explained their thinking about the property.
They are actively looking for ways to preserve and honor
the legacies of those women and what they endured. He

(14:41):
noted that this house has essentially become synonymous with the
witch trials themselves. It's the physical location most directly connected
to those events. Amy has reflected on what she's learned
while researching the history. She says, the more you read
about the witch trials and understand what actually happened, career,
you become about the fundamental injustices inflicted on these women.

(15:04):
They were accused based on superstition, fear, and often personal grudges.
They faced trials that were rigged against them from the start.
Many confessed under promises of mercy that turned out to
be lies. Their deaths served no purpose beyond satisfying the
paranoia of their communities. The previous owner's experience revealed something

(15:27):
particularly troubling during Mitchell's time, living at the cage, she
reported hearing voices telling her to end her own life.
This was disturbing because, according to local documents, a previous
owner of the property had taken his own life at
the cage years earlier. Whether there's any connection between these
events or whether Mitchell's experiences were influenced by knowing that

(15:50):
history is impossible to determine. Amy and Jarrett are moving
forward with their restoration regardless of what might or might
not be happening in the building. They're documenting the entire
process for their YouTube audience, sharing both the historical research
and their personal experiences in the house. They're treating the
property and its history with respect, acknowledging both the documented

(16:13):
facts and the legends that have grown around the place.
Their plan is to have the property ready for public
overnight's days by October of twenty twenty six. They want
to give people the opportunity to experience the building firsthand,
to spend time in a place where such significant historical
events occurred. Whether guests will encounter anything beyond an interesting

(16:35):
piece of history remains to be seen. The restoration continues,
the budget is blown. The bedroom lights occasionally turn themselves
on at three am, doors open and close, Strange noises
echo through the rooms at night. Amy still tries to
get upstairs before Jared and two paranormal investigators are learning
what happens when you ignore your own advice about renovating

(16:58):
haunted houses. The women who are imprisoned in the cage
in fifteen eighty two are long dead. Of course, their stories,
their suffering, and their unjust executions are matters of historical record.
Whether anything of them remains in that yellow painted cottage
and Essex is a question that Amy and Jared might
spend years trying to answer while they repair floorboards, install

(17:21):
period furniture, and occasionally wake up to lights that they
didn't turn on. If you'd like to read this story
for yourself or share the article with a friend, you
can read it on the Weird Darkness website. I've placed
a link to it in the episode description, and you
can find more stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange,
and more, including numerous stories that never make it to

(17:41):
the podcast, at Weirddarkness dot com. Slash News