Dartmoor’s Bottomless Pool That’s Haunted by a Witch

A pool in Dartmoor, England, was rumored to have no bottom and is said to be haunted by a witch. Crazywell Pool (also known as Clasiwell Pool), which is located near the village of Princetown, was initially thought to have been a natural lake; however, it was later suggested that it was an old tin pit mine that became flooded. And it is full of mysteries as well as frightening stories.

According to ancient local legends, the pool is bottomless. It was said that many years ago, parishioners from the villages of Walkhampton and Sheepstor wanted to find out how deep the pool was, so they tied together ropes from their parishes’ church bells with a weight at the end and dropped it into the pool. The ropes with the weight allegedly measured 152 meters (500 feet) but it still didn’t touch the bottom – was it really bottomless?

The answer would come during the dry summer of 1844 when the Plymouth Dock Water Company pumped all of the water out of the pool to send over to Devonport. Interestingly, once the water was removed, the pool was only about 5 meters deep (16 feet).

A witch is rumored to haunt the pool.

While it was confirmed that the pool wasn’t actually bottomless, another legend is even more terrifying. It is believed that it is haunted by a witch who plagued the area after giving locals bad advice.

Back in the 1300s, Piers Gaveston, who was the first Earl of Cornwall, went to see the Witch of Sheepstor after he was banished from Edward II’s court. She told him that his “humbled head” would “soon be high” if he returned to the court. He ignored her advice and when he returned, he was beheaded with his head on display on the battlements.

Rumors circulated that if anyone looked into the pool during Midsummer’s Eve, they would see the face of the pool’s next victim. One story claimed that two young men decided to look in the pool and they ended up dying on their way home.

A mysterious event occurred in 1903 when a local farmer named John Pearce was tending to his ponies when he noticed a bloated dead body floating in the pool. The deceased individual had a mustache and was wearing a dark blue suit. According to a coroner’s report, the body had been in the pool for approximately two weeks.

How did the man die?

The strange part was that none of the locals knew who the man was. The only clue they had to go on was the initials R.W. that were embroidered on his clothes and the words “St. James” sewn into the collar of his shirt. Furthermore, the coroner couldn’t find any evidence of violence, so how did he die?

Crazywell Pool is definitely one spooky location with a lot of mystery and frightening legends associated with it. Pictures of the pool can be seen here.

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