Madam Pigott

Madam Pigott is the local ghost story in the market town of Newport, Shropshire

Squire Pigott lived at the Chetwynd Park estate; he took himself a wife. He was a harsh uncaring husband who simply needed an heir to his wealth and estates. The wife he took was a lady of sufficient pedigree to be mother of his child, but there was no real love in their marriage, and shortly after the wedding the squire left his wife to rattle round the great house while he departed for London on business; there he caroused the nights away with all sorts of dubious ladies and companions. He would return now and then just to put in an appearance, but his poor neglected wife stayed behind to run the house and yearned for some true love and affection from her husband. In due time Madam Pigott fell pregnant; she was sickly and frail throughout and spent much time in bed: alone and unloved and growing bitter towards her husband.

The birth was not an easy one and Madame Pigott had little strength and the midwife began to fear for both the lives of the mother and baby; she summoned the help of the doctor.

Squire Pigott was impatiently pacing up and down outside the delivery room, awaiting the news of the arrival of a son. The doctor emerged from the room to explain that he was unable to save both the lives of his wife and baby; the Squire was required to choose.

It took the cold-hearted squire only seconds to declare that the doctor should lop the root to save the branch. On hearing that her husband willed her death, Madame Pigott cursed him before gasping her last breath; the child also died.

From that day on, her restless angry spirit continued to haunt the area; it was said that a wisp of white smoke would appear from the skylight in the roof of the Old Rectory in Chetwynd and would descend on a breeze until it came to rest on the moonlit lawn in front of the house where it would take the form of a ghostly woman. Weeping with eternal grief, she clutched a tightly swaddled infant. The spirit would walk through the grounds of the house and along the dark high-banked lane that went up Cheney Hill.

The betrayed Madame Pigott would sit on the twisted roots of the old tree, combing the hair of the ghostly baby in the moonlight crying her heart-wrenching sadness; people would not dare go up there after dark, fearful of encountering the moaning spirit.

If a rider were to come past, especially someone racing for the midwife for his own wife, Madame Pigott would jump up in the saddle behind him and clasp her hands around his waist, She would then try and pull the terrified rider down and cling on no matter how the rider tried to shake her; her spirit was unable to cross water, so when the rider crossed a stream, she would let go and leave the terrified man to speed on into the dark.

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Wikipedia