5# The Dyatlov Pass Incident
Ural Mountains
Russia
4# Bella in the elm tree
Worcestershire,
England
On 18 April 1943, in Hagley Woods in Worcestershire, England, four young boys who were looking for birds’ nests found a human skull inside an elm tree.
They shouldn’t have been on the land – so they put the skull back. However, the youngest boy told his parents what he’d seen; they told police, who found a human female skeleton, a shoe, a wedding ring, and fragments of clothing, along with a severed hand buried nearby.
The woman had died in about October 1941. There were no marks of disease or violence on the body, but her mouth had been stuffed with taffeta. The coroner declared it murder by asphyxiation, and stated that the woman was probably murdered and then pushed into the hole while still warm, as the body would not have fitted into the hollow trunk after rigor mortis had set in.
Then graffiti began to appear. It started around Christmas that year. “Who put Luebella down the wych-elm?” said the first one, in nearby Old Hill. “Hagley Wood Bella”, said another, in Birmingham. Gradually, the messages – which seemed to be written by the same hand – took what was to be their settled form: “Who put Bella in the wych-elm?” they asked.
Eventually, the graffiti stopped. And then, half a century later, someone asked the question again. It has still not been answered.