In a church somewhere near West Drayton in Buckinghamshire, during the eighteenth century, reports of strange sounds began to roll in. Unusually, the sounds were most commonly reported on a Friday, which at the time was associated with bad omens. Even the church's sexton, who was said to be completely non-superstitious, claimed to have heard the noises. Once, when three friends were exploring the grounds, they peeked through a grate and saw a large raven sitting on one of the coffins in the vault. With no opening but for tiny slits in the grating, it's unclear how it got inside. The raven was also once seen flying around the church building and was spotted in the vaults on more occasions, this also was mostly on Fridays. Said to be a ghost raven, perhaps the spirit of a murderer who committed suicide, they claimed that the spirit was forced to flutter aimlessly in the dark on Fridays because instead of burying him at the cross-roads with a stake through the heart, the court ordered him buried on consecrated ground in the churchyard. Perhaps there is truth in this origin, and the raven story added extra weight to the tale making it clear that it's unwise to break from tradition.
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