grave

The pub is said to be haunted by the spirit of a teenage girl whose grave is under the bar – and she won’t let you turn the lights off till you wish her ‘goodnight’

A charming pub in England is making a strong bid for the title of Britain’s ‘most haunted’ boozer.

From the outside, it’s a quintessential British pub with white exteriors, hanging baskets and breathtaking riverside views. But step inside and you’re in for a scary surprise.

The eerie history of the pub becomes immediately apparent when you spot the grave under the bar. This isn’t your average local watering hole — it’s a supernaturally charged marvel.

The inn is said to be haunted by a heartbroken lover from the 11th century, whose gravestone lies within the bar and whose spirit is believed to still inhabit its four walls. A chilling tale surrounds this Cambridgeshire gem — the ghost of a teenage girl who died around 900 years ago is said to roam its corridors.

Staff insist she won’t let them switch off the lights until someone bids her ‘goodnight’, and there are numerous reports of menus mysteriously scattered on the floor. In fact, patrons have reported strange happenings at this St Ives pub — from restless nights spent on the premises, sudden cold spots and unexplained noises in the night.

The delightful pub, known as one of Cambridgeshire’s ‘most haunted’, gives The Eagle in Cambridge a run for its money. Not only does it serve up top-notch Sunday roasts and boast a stunning beer garden, but it also carries a chilling reputation that sets it apart as one of the county’s ‘most haunted’ pubs.

Once you hear the eerie tale associated with the tavern, it’s easy to see why. The story tells of a young woman named Juliet Tewsley, who was hopelessly smitten with a forester called Tom Zoul. Sadly, her feelings were not returned, a classic case of unrequited love.

Heartbroken, the 17-year-old is said to have taken her own life on March 17, 1050, by hanging herself from a tree near the Inn so that Tom would find her body on his way to work (or she drowned herself in the River Ouse on the same date in 1078, the details are somewhat unclear).

Given the stigma attached to suicide in the 11th century, Juliet was buried in unconsecrated ground near the Inn, her grave marked only by a simple stone slab. Over time, the pub has been extended and refurbished, and the young girl’s grave is now marked by a flagstone on the pub floor in the bar, having become an integral part of the interior.

Legend has it, her heartbroken spirit haunts the Old Ferry Boat Inn at midnight each year on the anniversary of her death. Juliet’s ghostly presence is said to be responsible for a series of unexplained phenomena, including lights that stubbornly refuse to turn off until someone says ‘Goodnight Juliet’, eerie sounds in the dead of night, and one particular night each year (March 17) when patrons claim they are kept awake by the palpable sense of paranormal activity.

In a 2019 interview with Cambridgeshire Live, Jamie Toms, former team leader and duty manager at the Old Ferry Boat Inn, shared some of the spine-chilling experiences he had while working – and living above the pub.

He said: “There’s a lot of things which go on at the pub, which people can’t really explain. Like sometimes the lights just won’t go out unless you say ‘goodnight Juliet’. Or menus will just appear on the floor.

“Sometimes when you’re here on your own you’ll hear things too like bangs and noises of doors opening. We’ve never seen an apparition but some guests and customers have said they’ve felt someone watching them in the bar or have felt very cold even when the heating is on full. Sometimes it can make you feel nervous but I’m pretty chill about it, we know we’ve got to respect the building and remember that it’s her building.”

Discussing Juliet’s death, Jamie revealed the week leading up to the anniversary is more challenging than the actual day. During this period, lights often flicker or brighten without explanation. “Guests will come down in the morning and say they’ve had a really bad night’s sleep – if that happens we always ask if they’ve walked over the grave which is in the restaurant.”

Jamie, who had been managing the establishment for eight weeks when he spoke to the publication in 2019, admitted he avoids crossing the grave himself.

The St Ives pub, like many others, claims to be England’s oldest. Dating back to 560 AD, it boasts connections to Anglo-Saxon England, reports Cambridgeshire Live. The Old Ferry Boat Inn is just four miles from St Ives and today, the venue preserves its heritage through its bar, traditional pub grub, and seven guest rooms.

Both locals and visitors can enjoy classic British dishes under the pub’s low wooden ceilings or in its charming beer garden by the River Ouse. The riverside pub offers a dog-friendly environment in a cosy setting, while the on-site accommodation provides guests with the convenience of staying overnight with parking available right outside.

So, if you’re a fan of the macabre and looking for a unique experience this spooky season – The Old Ferry Boat Inn might be just the ticket.

Dozens of Palestinian bodies have been retrieved from mass graves near al-Shifa Hospital, buried almost a year ago after Israeli forces withdrew from the area. Hani Mahmoud explains how families and aid workers are struggling to identify the victims.

THE real ‘Da Vinci Code’ is close to finally being solved after a major scientific breakthrough.

Experts are racing to crack the mystery of DNA, death and burial tied to legendary artist, scientist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci.

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The world was captivated by 2003 novel and 2006 movie The Da Dinvci Code.

It saw Tom Hanks playing a professor looking to uncover a religious mystery around the Holy Grail with clues hidden in Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic painting The Last Supper.

But the real Da Vinci Code that scientists are trying to solve involves mapping out the artist’s genome.

That’s the entire collection of DNA in da Vinci’s body – all of the genetic instructions needed to make and maintain him.

Now scientists say that they’ve confirmed a male bloodline that they can date all the way back to 1331.

This family tree spans 21 generations and involves as many as 400 individuals.

And they’ve found at least six descendants who, after DNA testing, can be traced directly to Leonardo da Vinci, who was born in 1452 in Anchiano, Vinci, Florence and died in 1519.

As part of the research, the scientists have also confirmed the existence of a da Vinci family tomb, in the Church of Santa Croce in Vinci.

The experts think this may be where several of Leonardo da Vinci’s family members are buried.

That includes his grandfather Antonio, uncle Francesco, and half-brothers Antonio, Pandolfo, and Giovanni.

“Further detailed analyses are necessary to determine whether the DNA extracted is sufficiently preserved,” said David Caramelli, of the University of Florence.

“Based on the results, we can proceed with analysis of Y chromosome fragments for comparison with current descendants.”

Now scientists hope to analyse the remains in the Vinci church tombs to find a match with the Y chromosome of the living descendants.

And scientists are also hoping to look for traces left on his original works.

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This could allow scientists to fully reconstruct da Vinci’s DNA.

“Our goal in reconstructing the Da Vinci family’s lineage up to the present day,” said Alessandro Vezzosi, of the Leonardo da Vinci Heritage Association.

“While also preserving and valuing the places connected to Leonardo, is to enable scientific research on his DNA.

“Through the recovery of Leonardo’s DNA, we hope to understand the biological roots of his extraordinary visual acuity, creativity, and possibly even aspects of his health and causes of death.”

Scientists may be able to use this information to confirm da Vinci’s final resting place.

The Renaissance painter was originally said to have been buried in Amboise, France in the Saint Florentin church.

This church was severely damaged during the French Revolution.

And bones believed to belong to him were moved to the Chapel of St Hubert in Amboise.

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But there have been doubts over whether these bones really do belong to da Vinci – a puzzle that could be solved using his DNA.

So scientists are probing what remains of da Vinci in terms of his works and descendants to crack the real code.

“Even a tiny fingerprint on a page could contain cells to sequence,” says Jesse H. Ausubel, of The Rockefeller University, who is director of the DNA project.

“21st-century biology is moving the boundary between the unknowable and the unknown.

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“Soon we may gain information about Leonardo and other historical figures once believed lost forever.”

The al-Khasfa site, near Iraq’s second-largest city, could contain 4,000 remains and possibly thousands more.

Iraqi officials have begun the excavation of what is believed to be a mass grave left behind by ISIL (ISIS) during its years of carnage exacted upon the civilian population after it seized large swaths of the nation from 2014 onwards, until being vanquished three years later.

Local authorities were working alongside the judiciary, forensic investigators, the Iraqi Martyrs Foundation and the directorate of mass graves to carry out the excavation in al-Khafsa, south of the northern city of Mosul, the state-run Iraqi News Agency reported on Sunday.

The site – a sinkhole about 150 metres (nearly 500 feet) deep and 110 metres (360 ft) wide – is believed to have been the grisly scene of some of the worst massacres committed by ISIL.

Ahmad Qusay al-Asady, head of the Martyrs Foundation’s mass graves excavation department, told The Associated Press news agency that his team began work on August 9 at the request of the Nineveh province.

The operation will initially be limited to gathering visible human remains and surface evidence, while preparing for a full exhumation that officials say will require international support, al-Asady said.

The foundation will then build a database and start collecting DNA samples from families of suspected victims.

Full exhumations can only proceed once specialised assistance is secured to navigate the site’s hazards, including sulfur water and unexploded ordnance. The water may have also eroded the human remains, complicating DNA identification.

Because of the presence of these elements, al-Khafsa is “a very complicated site,” al-Asady added.

Based on unverified accounts from witnesses and families and other unofficial testimonies, authorities estimate the site could contain at least 4,000 remains, with the possibility of thousands more.

Al-Khasfa is located near Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, where ISIL took control before being defeated in Iraq in late 2017. At its peak, ISIL ruled an area half the size of the United Kingdom, spanning across Iraq and Syria, with Raqqa in the latter being the capital of their self-declared “caliphate”.

The group was notorious for its brutality. The group carried out massacres of thousands of the Yazidi people and enslaved thousands of Yazidi women. The Yazidis, a long-persecuted group whose faith is rooted in Zoroastrianism, are still recovering from the horrors of ISIL’s onslaught on their community in Iraq’s Sinjar district in 2014.

Rabah Nouri Attiyah, a lawyer who has worked on more than 70 cases of missing people in Nineveh, told the AP that information points to al-Khasfa being “the largest mass grave in modern Iraqi history”.

Al-Asady, however, said investigators have not yet been able to confirm its size.

About 70 percent of the estimated human remains there are believed to belong to Iraqi army and police personnel, as well as other victims, including Yazidis.

Interviews conducted with numerous witnesses from the area suggest ISIL fighters brought people there by bus to kill them. “Many of them were decapitated,” al-Asady said.

In addition to ISIL-era mass graves, Iraqi authorities continue to unearth such sites dating to the rule of Saddam Hussein, who was toppled in a US-led invasion in 2003.

Team of forensic archaeologists and crime scene experts begins excavating to identify the remains of about 800 children.

Excavation has begun in Ireland at an unmarked mass burial site to identify the remains of about 800 infants and toddlers who died at a church-run home for unmarried mothers.

The digging of the site on Monday marked the beginning of a two-year investigation planned by Irish and foreign forensic archaeologists and crime scene experts in the western city of Tuam.

The probe comes more than a decade after Catherine Corless, an amateur historian, first uncovered evidence of a mass grave there, forcing the government to form a commission to investigate the matter.

The commission found that the remains of 802 children from newborns to three-year-olds were buried in Tuam from 1925 to 1961 as it discovered an “appalling” mortality rate of about 15 percent among children born at all of the so-called Mother and Baby Homes, which operated across Ireland.

Subsequent test excavations from 2016 and 2017 found significant quantities of baby remains in a disused septic tank at the location, which now sits within a housing complex.

Ireland’s Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention (ODAIT) will undertake the excavation with experts from Colombia, Spain, Britain, Canada and the United States.

It will involve exhumation, analysis, identification if possible and reinterment of the remains found, Director Daniel MacSweeney said at a recent news conference in Tuam.

‘Denied dignity and respect’

“These children were denied every human right in their lifetime as were their mothers,” Anna Corrigan, whose two siblings may have been buried at the Tuam site, told reporters this month, the AFP news agency reported.

“And they were denied dignity and respect in death.”

The Tuam home, run by nuns from the Bon Secours Order, was demolished in the 1970s and replaced by a housing estate.

Significant quantities of human skeletal remains were found in chambers along with babies’ shoes and nappy pins underneath a patch of grass near a playground during the test excavations.

Corless found records that show as many as 796 babies and children died at the Tuam home over the decades that it operated. State-issued death certificates compiled show that various ailments, from tuberculosis and convulsions to measles and whooping cough, were listed as the causes of death.

“It’s been a fierce battle. When I started this, nobody wanted to listen. At last we are righting the wrongs,” Corless, 71, told AFP in May. “I was just begging: Take the babies out of this sewage system and give them the decent Christian burial that they were denied.”

A six-year inquiry sparked by the initial discoveries in Tuam found 56,000 unmarried women and 57,000 children passed through 18 such homes over a 76-year period. It also concluded that 9,000 children had died in the various state- and Catholic Church-run homes nationwide.

Catholic nuns ran the so-called mother and baby institution from 1925 to 1961, housing women who had become pregnant outside of marriage and were shunned by their families. After giving birth, some children lived in the homes too, but many more were given up for adoption under a system that often saw church and state work in tandem.

A MAN has pleaded guilty to murdering his ex-wife by their teen son’s grave on what would have been his birthday.

Martin Suter, 86, brutally attacked 71-year-old Ann Blackwood at the cemetery in Stubbington, Hampshire.

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The mum was discovered by their son Christopher’s grave in July 2023 on what would have been his 16th birthday.

Suter admitted murder in court in May last year but the case was subjected to reporting restrictions.

But his plea can now be reported after a judge lifted the restrictions.

It can also be revealed that at the same time as his murder confession, Suter had faced court accused of historic sex offences.

He admitted indecent assault of a girl under 14 in May 2023 and faced five further charges at a trial in July last year but was cleared.

Police were called to Crofton Cemetery on July 24, 2023, following reports of an assault.

Ann was treated at the scene by paramedics but sadly couldn’t be saved and was declared dead shortly after.

Paying tribute, her family said: “Her daughter, brothers, their families and all her friends are absolutely devastated by the loss of Ann Blackwood.

“A loving, caring, kind-hearted mother and friend who was very popular in her local community, she was enjoying her retirement with an active lifestyle which included tennis, sailing, cycling and music”.

Suter was a Green Party member and council election candidate.

The killer was also an active member of the St Faith’s Church in Lee-on-the-Solent where he lived.

He will be sentenced in September at Portsmouth Crown Court.

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Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has condemned the US military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, calling it an ‘outrageous, grave and unprecedented violation’ of international law. He accused the Trump administration of colluding with Israel to breach Iran’s sovereignty, and vowed Tehran would defend its territory ‘by all means necessary.’

Violence against children in conflict zones reached ‘unprecedented levels’ in 2024, with most violations committed in Gaza, occupied West Bank, UN says.

The United Nations has kept Israel on its “blacklist” of countries committing abuses against children in armed conflict for a second straight year, as its war on Gaza continues for nearly 20 months.

The listing on Thursday came as the UN said in a new report that violence against children in conflict zones reached “unprecedented levels” in 2024, with the highest number of violations committed in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank by the Israeli army.

The annual report on Children in Armed Conflict detailed “a staggering” 25 percent surge globally in grave violations against children below the age of 18 last year from 2023. It said it had verified 41,370 grave violations against children, including killing and maiming, sexual violence, and attacks on schools and hospitals.

Among them were 8,554 grave violations against 2,959 children – 2,944 Palestinian, 15 Israeli – in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel.

The figure includes confirmation of 1,259 Palestinian children killed and 941 wounded in Gaza, which has come under relentless Israeli bombardment following an attack led by the Palestinian group Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported much higher figures, and the UN said it is currently verifying information on an additional 4,470 children killed in 2024 in the besieged territory.

The UN said it has also verified the killing of 97 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, where a total of 3,688 violations were recorded.

The report also called out Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, where more than 500 children were killed or injured last year.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said he was “appalled by the intensity of grave violations against children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel”, citing the widespread use of explosive weapons in populated areas.

Guterres also reiterated his calls on Israel to abide by international law requiring special protections for children, protection for schools and hospitals, and compliance with the requirement that attacks distinguish between fighters and civilians and avoid excessive harm to innocent people.

There was no immediate comment by Israel’s UN mission.

The armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, and the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, were also included in the blacklist for a second time.

Following the Palestinian territory, the countries where the UN registered the most violence against children in 2024 were the Democratic Republic of the Congo (more than 4,000 grave violations); Somalia (more than 2,500); Nigeria (nearly 2,500); and Haiti (more than 2,200).

The sharpest percentage increase in the number of violations was recorded in Lebanon (545 percent), followed by Mozambique (525 percent), Haiti (490 percent), Ethiopia (235 percent), and Ukraine (105 percent), it added.