Whatever Happened to Charles Walton?:
Valentine's Day is the day when people all across the world express and celebrate their love, a day created in honor of St. Valentine and a day recognized as the official feast for the Anglicans in England. However, it is also the day associated with the Celtic Festival of Imbolc and on this day, in 1945, a seventy four year old man was brutally murdered in Warwickshire, his body mutilated and his death, an unwary testament to the practice and ancientness of a craft no one has yet till this day been able to uncover and pinpoint the source to. The detectives who investigate the murder later confirmed that the day Charles Walton met his untimely death was recognized as February 2nd on the medieval calendar. According to that time and in line with the old Druid practice, a blood sacrifice could be conducted to ensure the coming of a good crop. 1945 was turning out to be a bad crop season for the little village.
So, was Walton a victim of something terribly sinister, a diabolical plot hatched perhaps by the village elders to welcome a change in the season? No one quite knows but the story of this man's murder in a rather tiny closed village with a population of close to only 500 people, still shows that old superstitions held a place for their time. And though not necessarily the view held by the detective inspector who took charge of the murder investigations, must be seen in the context and beliefs of the village where the murder occurred.
Still, the detective ranted there must be a logical explanation to everything that happens. That there is something called witchcraft which is still practiced today seems altogether absurd but then it is the heart of this murder whether it is to be believed or not. The death of Charles Walton was a murder planned to rejuvenate a land that was in need of a blood sacrifice and if this was all so true that witchcraft exists, why shouldn't the death of Charles Walton be attributed to a murder initiated through witchcraft? Everything seems to point that way whether we like to believe it or not.…
At the time his body was found, the little sleepy village of South Warwickshire was possibly engaged in their own Valentine's Day celebrations. Naturally, the village may have been seemingly unaware of the murder since it would have been love and romance which would have presided in the air that quiet morning but as the day progressed towards the evening, the thick dense fog gathered to destroy the search for Charles Walton. The fear and knowledge of what was to come stirred the village community and when Charles Walton was found, police could tell someone had done a dastardly deed on the poor old man. The problem was no one knew who the murderer was or should the villagers even tell?
The hushed tones which sounded within the whole village was almost contrived for not even the great Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Fabian on whom the famous series Fabian of the Yard moved on with 39 episodes attesting to his greatness, could even in all his worldly best, solve the crime! He had solved all others….everything except this particular case in a sleepy and strange village with a set of people he sees as foreboding and having trouble dealing with their own superstitious beliefs and the question is why? Why was it no one wanted to say a thing and even when the murder got the eyes of Scotland Yard's best, the great detective Fabian? Weren't they afraid?
However, over time, the murderer or murderers seemed to have escaped. Inspector Fabian was surprised. Why would this death not be solved? After all, the detective and his team had embarked on a thorough investigation of the area interviewing each and every one of the villagers. They had also employed the top forensic methods known for their days. So many questions were asked and many of those even touched the most sensitive fabric of the village community but nothing turned up. However, with the books provided by Alec Spooner, a lot of superstitious possibilities began to submerge that overthrew the normal course of a police investigation. Fabian began asking himself questions which he would have detested greatly most possibly, that something out of the ordinary happened with the death of this supposedly likable old man. Did someone or some people do a murder the inhuman way to suppress the evil eye? Was it because Charles Walton was a witch and was casting wicked old eyes on the village's crops for the season so the village would be vanquished in ill luck and total agony?
Quite a thought it seems! The fact was the murder was embroiled with signs of ritual murder, of witchcraft and black magic, and this frightened the people of the village. They did not want to know what they should have known…that possibly one or a few of them had done the dirty deed of killing Charles Walton. Try putting your detective cap on and snoop all you want. Till this day, none of the villagers would speak of the old man's murder. It is as they say, one to be best left alone. And if you still try to push that cap of yours' with the Sherlock Holmes cape, you get this feeling that they would not even tell who did it even if they knew. It is upsetting to talk about it least of all to get someone to even hear you. So get snubbed you will and you earned it is what they would say to you! They have no wish to talk, so best leave it be.
To many of the villagers, the murder is a day best left forgotten and sadly, left unsolved for the Waltons have moved and the rest of the village see no point bringing in the story about why it happened to an old man like Charles Walton. But one thing is worthy of note and possibly enough to raise one's brow. The villagers have not forgotten Charles Walton. They remember him well but they refuse to take any questions of any sort that would delve on what happened that fateful day of February 14, 1945 not even if it means a clue that could be gathered to solve the murder. And they certainly do not want to know what happened on that horrific day when all lovers come to meet and when people commune in church to remember St. Valentine. What would you have gathered then would have happened during the times the police were in the village trying to get help to solve the crime? People would have so much more tight-lipped in those days and many would have said nothing. The village chooses to be in its own world, closed to the rest of the outside world and it does not seem that's going to change much in the years to come.
He was a farm laborer who shared his little cottage in the Lower Quinton area with his niece Edie whom he adopted as his own. He was known to be friendly although possessing an unusual character. Most people knew him as a man who loved nature. In fact, he was the man who knew the secrets of the old countryside in a way others did not. The little cottage he rented while alive still stands this day facing St. Swithin's Church but is much larger and is made of three cottages set on a larger property.
Although Charles was an old man, he still continued to work helping out in the local farms. On the day of his murder, he was working on the hedges for the owner of Fire Farms, Alfred Porter, at the bottom of Meon Hill with a pitch fork and a trouncing hook.
Many have said that Charles may have been involved in witchcraft and the dark arts because of his strange abilities which included horse whispering. For instance he was said to invite the birds to eat off food which he held on his palms while wild dogs were easily subdued under his control. He was also said to carry a mirror and a mica piece which was believed to cast bad luck on people he did not like. There were also claims that he kept large toads as pets which he would then pull in small toy carts only to let them out in fields to destroy the crops. It was a method most known as blasting when witches would send out toads to either destroy or encourage the growth of crops for the season.
What was mystifying about the murder was the way the killing was exacted. When they found Walton, his body was lying on its back sprawled at the foot of the hill like a rag doll. His face was wrapped in terror and his eyes wide open shocked at what was coming onto him. The trouncing hook Charles was using was found sunk into his throat while the pitch fork which was used to pin him to the bank, was found still standing upright. It seemed that the prongs of the fork were buried six inches into ground showing the severity of the manner in which the man would have been killed. It took two burly policemen all the effort they needed to draw out the prongs from Walton's throat. His killer or killers had wasted no time spilling his blood in a brutal fashion and to be sure in keeping with the old belief that by shedding a witch's blood into the ground, would neutralize the effects he/she has on the people around him/her.
In typical witchcraft style, a large cross was carved onto the old man's chest and another cross was found on his throat. What that typically means is the person who murdered believed Charles Walton to be a witch who placed him/her under a spell. To take revenge, the killing was exacted with the cross etched on the dead man's chest because Charles Walton was, as the killer believed, the witch who cast the spell on him/her. It was a killing to remove the evil eye it seems. The use of a pitchfork was also said to be the typical approach in killing a witch. An old tin watch was missing on his body. This was regarded as strange because it was not worth a value.
There was in fact an immense search done by Scotland Yard for that watch because of the belief that it might contain the fingerprints of the criminal but the watch never turned up, not in the old cottage where Walton lived and no where near the crime site. It was never understood why something so cheap as that was taken away. However, it must be said that sometime in 1960, in the month of August to be sure, the pocket watch turned up. The cottage in which Charles Walton used to live was being modernized during this time and it was uncovered by a worker. Now why would anything so obvious not have shown itself years ago? Inside the pocket watch was a small piece of glass which Walton used to absorb all evil thoughts made about him. No one knows why the police were not able to find this watch that fateful day but if the watch was innocently dropped by Walton himself, then he did not have his good luck charm that day. Still, questions do arise on this find. Did the killer leave the watch deliberately so he would not be caught and if so, why did the police not find it? They had combed Walton's cottage and this watch should have been found.
It should also be noted that in the year following the death of Walton, Warwickshire was marked by a poor harvest. It was considered unusual and the locals viewed that strange phenomenon which besieged them as a sign of the devil, that an evil eye was cast on them and they believed that Walton was that evil eye. He was after all clairvoyant and suspected of mingling with the covens in the area.
The area that marks the Lower Quinton is said to be marked with a mystery most often thought to deal with witchcraft and its symbols. There are many black dogs or shucks which are known to roam the area and the locals believe that those dogs belong to the ancient Celtic God and King Arawyn. It is said that Charles Walton himself had seen these dogs for a number of days as a lad aged fifteen years with terrifying effects shown on the ninth day. And some say in hushed corners that it is this meeting with the black dogs which has cast a terrible luck on the way his life was to be in the years to come. That and the fact that he possibly walked on to the dreaded Meon Hill in the quiet hours of the night to engage in witchcraft rituals.
Many relate Meon Hill as a hill created by Satan himself. Near Meon Hill are tall stones arranged in a circle which are referenced as the Rollright stones and known to predate Christianity. No one knows the exact reason for them being there but many believe it is the site where witchcraft and black magic have occurred. Some say that the stones were none other than the Danish King and his men who were struck down and turned into stones by witches in the area. There is also a popular legend that claims the Devil tried to destroy Evesham Abbey by rolling a boulder down but it was the village prayers which stopped the deed from occurring and the boulder was directed on Cleeve Hill. Thereafter the stone was shaped into a cross so the Devil would not touch it.
There is another version that says the Devil threw a large amount of earth to smother the abbey but the act was stopped by the Bishop of Worcester and so the clod fell short of the aim and was instead created into what stands today as Meon Hill.
Detective Inspector Fabian who was called to investigate the site of the killing had also in the course of his research in the area, noted that Meon Hill was the site of many witchcraft killings. About 200 years, an old woman, Ann Turner, was killed in the same manner similar to the Charles Walton killing. It was the village idiot John Hayward who did the killing and he had used a bill hook to slash her throat in the form of a cross. Fabian later noted the use of spikes as the Anglo-Saxon manner of killing witches. It was Superintendent Alec Spooner of the Warwickshire Criminal Investigation Division who provided a book to Fabian that told on the typical manner of killing a witch. According to the "Folklore, Old Customers and Superstitions in Shakespeare Land" written by a J. Harvey Bloom in 1929, a woman, Ann Turner, had been killed years ago with a pitchfork since she was a witch. Spooner who was familiar with the local customs in the area then handed Robert Fabian another book which detailed further the manner a John Hayward had killed Ann Turner. She was pinned to the ground with a pitchfork and her chest, slashed with a cross using the billhook. This was regarded as the preferred method for killing a witch for bewitching the cattle and the land which they lived in.
Detective Fabian most likely never liked walking away from a crime and leaving it unsolved. However, it was Superintendent Alec Spooner who had lived in the area most of his years, who made his presence heard each and every year thereafter cajoling the villagers into telling him something that he should have known, which would never have been told regardless. It was the tradition never to speak what need not be known but Fabian and Spooner never understood that in the small village in Warwickshire.
Eventually as the investigation drew to a close, he walked up the hill to the place where the old man had been left in the most tragic way, pinned down to the earth which he seemed to have toiled for the long years past, and Fabian must have drawn a long sigh as he surveyed the land for he regarded the place as a "bleak and lonely place" in his memoirs. It was then that he spotted a black dog run past him. That must have been a shock considering the lore that was told in the area about black dogs. Shortly thereafter, a little boy walks up the hill and Fabian asks him if he had lost his dog. Without realizing the impact of what he had said, the detective was possibly surprised when the little lad looked at him so dazed and shocked. Fabian had said the ultimate and something truly taboo. Without saying a thing possibly, he ran away from Fabian. The story goes that the black dog was run over by a police car later that day and a young cow was found dead lying in a ditch the following morning. Maybe, it a coincidence but the strange incidences were never forgotten.
No one talks about witchcraft and though there are rumors about continuing practice of the arts in the Cotswolds today, no one talks about it. It has been the same state of affairs told in the years past. Witchcraft is never discussed in public but then you see the weather vane with the impression of the witch set on a house just behind what was once Charles Walton's cottage, and you just wonder. Are there witches in the Cotswold?
Have you ventured into the graveyard and searched for old Charles Walton's grave? You will see only a smattering of tombstones around and none for the poor old man who met his death in the most brutal way. What you will see though is a small little stone almost like a little boulder that is left in the most desolate corner, and if you look carefully at that stone, you will see the initials "C H W". Nothing more...
And if you are someone who is not familiar with this rather infamous case that even shook Scotland Yard into disbelief, you would not have guessed it was to mark the grave of one Charles Walton, a victim of one of the most heinous crimes of his time, killed brutally because he was supposed to be a witch. Other than those initials, there is no date and other details done to remember this man. So what do you think? Was he missed? Obviously not!
If you pry around, you will not get much. As they say, best left to be the way it is….