Home restoration is becoming an increasingly popular hobby for couples around the world. There's nothing quite as rewarding as bringing a home back to its former glory if you have the tools and time at your disposal to do so.
Kerrie and Bleddyn Jackson acquired a 16th century Welsh farmhouse in 2016 that they've been working on as a restoration project. During their restoration efforts, they made a shocking discovery.
They realized the staircase in the home had been built across a sealed-up medieval doorway that once connected different parts of the house. Inside the sealed-up space, they found a witchcraft den.
Kerrie Jackson and her husband, Bleddyn, were renovating a 16th century Welsh farmhouse when they made an incredible discovery. The farmhouse, known as Plas Uchaf in Denbigh, North Wales, has been in Bleddyn's family for generations.
"Bleddyn was working in the room next door when he saw something through a hole he'd made in the wall," Kerrie told Wales Online.
"The staircase had been built across a sealed up medieval doorway that once connected different parts of the house," she explained.
"And the void underneath it had become exposed by the repairs being carried on the old timber frame."
There were quite a few things there, and it was hard to make out in the unlit space. The couple noted some shoes in the midst of the pile.
"It was very eerie to peer into the darkness and make out all the objects inside, and, initially, we could only see a couple of shoes through the rubble," Kerrie said.
As they got into the space, they discovered odd shoes, horse skulls, and rusted gun barrels among the pile.
There were more creepy items in store. There was an eerie photo of a young Queen Victoria found behind the shutters in the parlor. There were also odd boots, old receipts, and old bottles containing poison and perfume.
"But, as we kept pulling them out, more and more were found, until, eventually, we'd lined up eight odd shoes — all for the left foot and ranging from heavy men's work boots to toddler shoes — along with the remnants of a horse’s skull, a wool hat and parts of a gun barrel," Kerrie shared.
"The shoes were in a remarkably good state – you could even still make out the imprint of their owners' feet."
They also discovered the significance of the shoes to those who must have left them there.
"There's an old superstition that says witches would enter homes 'between' places such as staircases, or at twilight or the chiming of midnight," Kerrie explained.
"People believed that by leaving out items, such as shoes, witches or demons would be attracted to the scent left by the wearer and, once they entered the shoe or boot, they were unable to reverse back out and were therefore trapped. Other theories suggest that perhaps they would become so distracted by the novelty of the find that they would leave the family alone."
"There are also lots of notions about why anyone would conceal horse skulls in houses, and we wondered if there was perhaps a connection to the Mari Lwyd — the ancient Welsh New Year's tradition of wearing a white sheet crowned with a horse's skull and travelling from house to house singing or reciting poetry," Kerrie continued.
"We also found a a smaller skull, but we're not sure what animal it belonged to."
Kerrie and Bleddyn decided to put the items back where they found them. They hope they'll continue to "protect" the home for hundreds of years to come.
"We're not worried about them being there and we’re not spooked by it at all," she asserted.
"We quite often come across quirky things around this old house that really connect us to the past — we believe it's important to record what we find and then return them for future generations to discover, she continued.
"Although, it does make us wonder what future inhabitants of this place will make of the things we'll end up leaving behind."
