Gory tale behind an unassuming pub chair ‘cursed’ by a murderer 300 years ago

There are fascinating stories to be told about the origins of pub names up and down the country.

But few of these tales are quite as gory as the legend behind the Busby Stoop, a pub in the Yorkshire village of Thirsk which received its name in the 1700s.

Wade Radford, a then 17-year-old budding ghost hunter, visited the pub in 2008 with a couple of friends, a medium, and some cheap handheld camcorders he’d bought from Argos.

He’d been calling pubs, ruins, castles and other historic buildings around the country, asking them if they had any ghosts in residents and if he could carry out a paranormal investigation there.

The Busby Stoop was one of the venues which said yes – and while he was there Wade believes he and his friends heard the voice of Thomas Busby, a murderer who was sentenced to death, hung, and then gibbeted at the crossroads outside the pub.

After moving back up north earlier this year, Wade rediscovered the Busby Stoop and found the old pub had been turned into an Indian restaurant – so he’s put together a book documenting the historic building’s history, its incredible ghost story, and the findings of his investigation.

The story of Thomas Busby and the Busby Stoop

There isn’t a huge amount of information out there about Thomas Busby, who in 1702 may or may not have been the landlord of what would eventually be known as the Busby Stoop inn.

He was thought to be running a criminal enterprise, a coin forgery business, with his father-in-law Daniel. But the pair argued, and Thomas bludgeoned Daniel to death.

Thomas was arrested at the Busby Stoop Inn, and the legend says he turned to the patrons as he was dragged from the pub and said anyone that sits in his chair will meet an untimely end.

He was found guilty of murdering his stepfather, was executed, then his body was hung from a gibbet just across the road from the inn in which he was arrested – which was later named the Busby Stoop after him.

Hysteria and rumours about the chair, and other unlucky people who had sat on it and supposedly met untimely ends, eventually led to the pub landlord donating the chair to the Thirsk Museum – on the condition that it was nailed to the wall to prevent anyone else from taking a seat.

The ghost hunt

Wade, now aged 32, moved to the north east earlier this year and suddenly realised his new home is only 40 minutes up the road from Thirsk.

Driven by nostalgia for his ghost-hunting teenage years, he went back to the village but realised when he arrived that the former Busby Stoop Inn had been converted into an Indian restaurant.

‘It wasn’t your typical pub, there was a sign hanging outside with the cursed chair and a noose hanging outside, but that’s all gone,’ Wade explained.

‘I thought, I have all this stuff from nearly 20 years ago, it’s such a great story and so many cool things happened while I was there, I was compelled to have a trip down memory lane.

‘The legend of how the chair came to be is such a fascinating tale and a real part of Yorkshire legacy.

‘My feeling of disappointment over how it looks now was so strong and unexpected, I felt compelled to do something about it.

‘I got engulfed in writing the book about the history and what we found.’

Wade realised it was important to preserve this piece of local history – so he went back through his belongings and found the original tapes of that fateful ghost hunt, which stuck with him ever since.

‘We’d never used a clairvoyant before, but we met her in a pub, I told her we were going to the Busby Stoop and asked if she would come, she said definitely,’ Wade, a writer and formerly a filmmaker, explained.

‘We were able to film with the chair, in the pub, it was a great time and a great deal of responsibility.

‘The equipment was very basic, the camera still took tape, and yet we caught the very first clear voice audio of Thomas, which made it very exciting.

‘We were doing automatic writing with the medium when one of the girls I was with screamed and said “I heard something in my ear”.

‘I listened back to the tape and heard a long drawn out “I”, and afterwards when we looked at the automatic writing the medium had been writing “I”.

‘At the time we reported that the chair wasn’t the real chair that was cursed, but that wasn’t what people wanted to hear, but since then antique experts have said the chair was machine spun which couldn’t have been done in 1702.’

The clairvoyant even claimed that Thomas Busby is one of Wade’s past life connections – and when they performed a séance together in a totally different venue, Wade claims he called out to Thomas and seconds later, the clairvoyant said Thomas’s spirit had just entered the room.

The book and the future

Since releasing his self-published book, Wade has already started work on a second edition following a fantastic response from readers.

Locals with connections to the Busby Stoop Inn and further details about Thomas Busby’s story have come forward to share more information – including the grandson of a former landlord of the pub, who has provided copies of the building’s deeds.

‘I’ve been trying to restore the old videos, I found an old sketch the clairvoyant did of Thomas Busby screwed up at the bottom of a box,’ Wade added.

But what does Wade say to skeptics who may not believe he truly had an encounter with the ghost of Thomas Busby?

‘I’d say it’s really good to be skeptical,’ he explained.

‘Editing abilities these days are amazing and misinformation online is so easily achieved.

‘But the great thing about the paranormal is it will always get people around a table asking “what about this, what about that” – people should always do that .

‘When people watch the clip I restored of the voice of Thomas, people might say I just edited a voice in, but I didn’t.

‘We captured it without an Alice Box, these were Argos handheld video cameras with a built in mic because we didn’t have the money for anything else.

‘It was just me and three women in that video [with the voice of Thomas], the camera was pointing at me and I wasn’t talking, and the reaction of the person that heard his voice was terrifying for them.

‘The spirit would have had to be right by her for the mic to pick it up.’

Find out more about the book and the history of the Busby Stoop by visiting Wade’s website.

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