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The Dark Shore / [Witchbone]

1961 , Grantchester (Cambridgeshire)

Cat no. 783

The mysterious power of the 'witchbone' as told by John Saltmarsh for a local television series.

John Saltmarsh, Fellow of King's College Cambridge, stands on the riverbank at Grantchester Meadows, Cambridge. He describes in graphic detail how to get a witchbone, “to be master of the devil, to do just what you like”. The bones of a Natterjack toad have to be flung into a river at night. The bone that drifts against the current is the witchbone. He finishes with the tale of a man who tried to perform the ritual, but who fled the river in terror at the sounds he heard before he could retrieve the witchbone from the water. The final shot rests on the flowing water of the river.

Keywords

Folklore; Supernatural

Background Information

This film is one of a series of programmes about the supernatural shot by Malcolm Freegard for BBC East for an episode of Outlook entitled The Dark Shore, broadcast on 31st May, 1961. In the studio for that episode were Dick Bagnell-Oakley, Tyler Whittle and James Wentworth Day.

Manifestations

The Dark Shore / [Witchbone]

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