The Turning Grave in Swaffham – Route 11
In the shadowy graveyard of Swaffham Church lies the final resting place of Ella Morse, who tragically passed in 1852. At first glance, her grave appears ordinary, marked by a modest 3-foot stone cross. Yet, over a span of seven years, something truly bizarre happened - the cross slowly rotated, turning 90 degrees in place. The churchwarden, puzzled by the strange movement, kept a careful eye on all of the headstones, but only Ella Morse’s seemed to move.
Miss Morse, who died unmarried in her late thirties, was memorialised with this stone cross and an elaborate stained-glass window, far more extravagant than her siblings’ simple markers. Some say it was guilt that drove her father to such lengths. Rumour has it that he had arranged a marriage for his daughter with one of his business partners, but in her grief and despair, she took her own life rather than be forced into a loveless union. Her father, wracked with shame and afraid the church would refuse her a Christian burial, staged her death as a tragic accident. To atone for what he had done, he immortalised her with the lavish stained-glass memorial.
In the 1980s and 90s, numerous reports surfaced of a shadowy figure roaming the graveyard at night, dressed in a formal three-piece suit, searching desperately among the headstones. Could this spectral figure be Ella Morse’s father, still searching for her headstone, haunted by the consequences of his actions?