How The Cave Came To Be…
On the 8th of January 1927 a Castleton youth, Fred Bannister was roaming around the caves of Winnats Pass when he stumbled across a young woman, slumped with her back against a rock within the entrance to Horseshoe Cave..
Realising something was amiss, he raced down to the village police station to summon assistance. Upon returning to the cave, they found a man’s body lying a short distance from the girl, both had been dead for several days.
Harry Fallows and Marjorie Coe Stewart had not been seen by their families since New Year’s eve; she was 17, single, worked in a warehouse and was described as bright with an artistic temperament; he was 26, an unemployed driver with a disposition toward depression and gambling, living apart from his wife and child he stayed occasionally with his sister, who resided on the same street as Marjorie in Moston, Manchester. They had known each other two years but Marjorie’s father had previously warned Harry off after discovering his marital status and no one had been aware that the pair were still in contact until shortly after their disappearance they sent telegrams explaining they had left together and would not be returning for some time.
Fred Bannister, it transpired, had seen Harry and Marjorie in the cave the week before, the pair had asked Fred and the friends he was with to put their torches out as they had shone them into the entrance, disturbing them.
The youths left them in peace… and at some stage soon afterwards, the pair must have consumed Lysol poison which they poured from a bottle into a porcelain cup and saucer ….both of which were found broken between their bodies.
The Coroner, summing up, decided the couple had left Manchester with little money between them and once that was spent, they had taken this final drastic course of action. There appeared no evidence that they were of unsound mind and both seemed to have agreed to die, though they could not determine which had deceased first.
Many from the village volunteered to go up and help retrieve the bodies from the narrow cave entrance, the light was fading and violent winds howled down the Pass, blowing the helpers across the cold dead corpses as they slid them down the steep icy path.
Greengrocer Ted Medwell had driven his truck up to collect the grisly load but the gusting Gale made it impossible to manoeuvre the vehicle within the tight Pass… eventually the distressed folk carried the couple down to the Castle Hotel, where they could be stored for identification in the cellars, which doubled as the local mortuary.
Harry and Marjorie were buried together in St Edmunds church yard an hour after the inquest which was hastily held in the Castleton Restaurant, close to the cave… only a few relatives were present but a group of village residents stood in silent respect nearby as they were laid in cold earth at the north side…
Ever since that day Horseshoe Cave was referred to as Suicide Cave…
I went up on the anniversary of the event several January’s ago and found the interior of the cave dripping wet.. I ventured in but apart from getting saturated, found nothing paranormal, nothing came up on the “ghost radio” app I was using at the time, (absolutely nothing which in itself was highly unusual).. nothing was sensed.. no frisson of a spectral presence, no depth of despair… but as soon as I’d walked out of the cave I realised my left knee had developed some minor injury somehow.. I’d not knocked it or twisted it against anything, couldn’t imagine how I’d picked up a strain.. but it left me limping heavily for several weeks afterwards and I had a right job hobbling back down to Castleton village in the gloom! A miserable place to take your life!!
Winnats Pass has long held a reputation of ghostly screams cascading down from the long dead spirits of Alan and Clara.. the original “lost lovers”… murdered by lead miners as they eloped to Peak Forest in the 1740s… of course the name Winnats is old English for “wind gates”, so its always been a bit of a wind trap obviously… though by all reports the wind that grim night sounded extreme in the least!
Hubert Hobux 