Well here is another story garnered from the Fortean news. It is not a nice story so you can give it a miss but it takes place in the little town of Helmsley. Helmsley is a few miles from Pickering where we would go for food shopping. But every now and then we would go to Helmsley to have coffee, it also had a good delicatessen as well, and was not too far from Rievaulx Abbey.
A story had arisen in 2018 about a body being found in one of the cottages there. It turned out that a Japanese family, three adult children and their mother lived in the cottage but had been hiding the body of one of the children who had died. Speculation was rife, builders whilst working on the attics next door had said they smelt a funny smell but we never did find out the truth about what had happened.
Well Fortean Times fills the story in. Apparently the mother and one of her daughters went to the chemist and bought 'excessive quantities' of surgical spirit, and the chemist said he could also 'smelt the smell of dead bodies on them. The police went round and indeed in a bedroom they found the dead daughter and a funeral was arranged.
Now you could say this was a criminal offence, a body has to be buried by law. The three were taken to court but the judge said because of the unusual circumstances and that the three defendants 'suffer from an extremely rare mental affliction' and would therefore not be charged.
Helmsley is a very pretty little town and yet beneath its surface strange stories lurk. A typical market town.
Article at the time
nice pics - as a twenty something year old, i used to have a subscription to fortean times..... the little village looks pretty typical a sort of place that would have some sort of urban myth or folklore about it... thanks for the interesting story
ReplyDeleteIt has a castle as well A/F, and a very pretty walled garden looked after by volunteers. North Yorkshire is so much prettier than this side of Yorkshire ;)
DeleteA lovely looking place but a sad story.
ReplyDeleteYes Ellen a weird story, but the news (which I have just looked up) is as stated.
DeleteIt is a sad story. Whatever became of the family? Are they still there? Have they gotten the mental health assistance that they needed? (and what on earth were they doing with all the surgical spirits - which I had to look up, btw. Here we call it rubbing alcohol.)
ReplyDeleteWell I looked up the news. The case would have gone to York and I shall put a link on the blog. But as for surgical spirits I don't know what they were used for except that the body had started to mummify, though the remaining two siblings and the mother thought the dead woman was still alive. Gruesome isn't it?
DeleteOh dear. Did all 3 of the family all suffer from the same mental slowness?
ReplyDeleteI suppose it must happen. I think the judge made the right call.
I thought at first that it could have been been some weird funeral rite but not so. The daughter that had died was clever and had been to Cambridge so not necessarily a mental slowness. It would have been pointless in putting them in prison so yes the judge did make the right call.
ReplyDelete