The mystery of Bella in the Witch Elm – a tale as twisted as the gnarled branches of the tree itself. In the grim year of 1943, while the world was busy tearing itself apart in the throes of World War II, four boys stumbled upon something even more ghastly than the Luftwaffe’s finest. They were poaching, or as I like to call it, indulging in a little wartime entrepreneurship, in Hagley Wood, Worcestershire, when one of them clambered up a wych elm tree and peered into the hollow. What he saw staring back at him – or rather, grinning back at him, given the state of decay – was the skull of a woman, mouth agape, as if mid-scream or, perhaps, mid-punchline of a particularly dark joke.
Now, let’s set the scene properly. Picture it: the Midlands in wartime Britain – ration books as scarce as joy, blackout curtains drawn tighter than a miser’s purse strings, and everyone’s nerves jangling like loose change in a beggar’s pocket. There was a war on, after all. So, when local law enforcement were informed and they pulled the rest of the skeleton out of that tree, it’s fair to say they weren’t best pleased.
The remains were examined and determined to be those of a woman around 35 years old, dead for at least 18 months. A piece of taffeta was stuffed in her mouth, which, to my mind, is a bit of an insult to the fabric, normally reserved for fancy frocks and not post-mortem gagging. But I digress. Her hand was found buried near the tree – detached, deliberately so. Not exactly neighbourly behaviour, is it? The kind of thing that would get you barred from the village fête, I should think.
But the true intrigue came months later when graffiti started appearing around the Midlands. Scrawled in chalk on buildings and walls were the words, “Who put Bella in the Witch Elm?” Now, there’s a question for you. Not “Who killed her?” or “Why was she stuffed in a tree?” but “Who put her there?” – as if she were a misplaced umbrella. The name ‘Bella’ seemed to spring from nowhere, or everywhere, depending on how you look at it. But why Bella? Why not Gertrude or Millicent or any other name befitting a woman who ended up as owl bedding?
Theories abounded, naturally. One popular idea was that she was a spy. Ah, espionage – the explanation for everything in wartime Britain, from mysterious deaths to missing butter rations. The notion was that she was a German cabaret singer named Clara Bauerle, a Nazi agent parachuted in and then promptly silenced. But there was no record of Clara after 1941, and no one could confirm she ever made it to our green and septic isle.
Another theory flirted with the occult. It was suggested that Bella was the victim of a witchcraft ritual – her hand cut off for a ‘Hand of Glory,’ supposedly used by occultists to cast spells or unlock doors. This is where our tale gets properly medieval, so let’s take a brief historical detour.
Witchcraft accusations have been flung around in Britain like confetti at a shotgun wedding for centuries. From the Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, in the 17th century – who was more conman than conjurer – to the Pendle witches who swung from the gallows in 1612, it seems nothing delighted our forebears more than pointing fingers and lighting bonfires. It’s worth noting that wych elms themselves were traditionally linked to witchcraft, seen as trees of ill omen, used to make wands and talismans. Of course, that’s all superstition, unless you happen to be staring at the skeletal grin of a woman stuffed inside one, in which case, it suddenly feels less quaint.
It’s no surprise that Biblical references find their way into this tangled narrative too. In Leviticus 19:31, it’s written: “Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them.” Sound advice, really. But it seems someone in Hagley Wood was doing exactly that – dabbling in familiar spirits, if not entirely familiar trees. And who can forget Exodus 22:18, that delightful chestnut: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” But in this case, it appears the witch wasn’t merely not suffered to live; she was stuffed in a tree as a sort of post-mortem party trick.
There’s also the chilling possibility that Bella was the victim of something altogether more banal: good old-fashioned murder, devoid of espionage or occult frippery. One theory suggested she was a prostitute killed by a client or a lover’s quarrel that took a nasty turn. But this lacks the dramatic flair of witches and Nazis, doesn’t it? It feels too ordinary for a body in a tree, like suggesting Stonehenge is just an ancient game of ring toss.
After all these decades, the question remains unanswered, haunting the imagination like a bad smell in a small room: Who put Bella in the Witch Elm? I can’t help but think of Ecclesiastes 3:20: “All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” I suppose Bella did just that, albeit in a more arboreal fashion.
So here we are, 80-odd years later, still scratching our heads over Bella, still wondering why she ended up in that wych elm in Hagley Wood. Was it spies, sorcery, or just some poor sod’s idea of corpse disposal? I like to think that somewhere, someone’s having a good chuckle about it. And who knows – maybe that someone is Bella herself, still grinning in the darkness, mouth wide open in the world’s longest, cruelest punchline.
There’s something deliciously perverse about the whole thing, isn’t there? Like a fairy tale gone horribly wrong. Perhaps the moral is simply this: avoid hollow trees, especially the kind with room for a body. And for heaven’s sakes, if you’re going to write graffiti, at least give us the answer.
Wording 