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Okay, let's get on with the show. On the night of February the 14th, 1945, the body of Charles Walton was found on a farm in Lower Quinton, Warwickshire in England.

His throat had been slashed open and the prongs of a pitchfork had been dug into the mud

on either side of his neck pinning his body to the ground.

As Leeds on the case faded away, paranoia and superstition crept in, leading to theories of witchcraft and the occult,

remnants of which linger still.

This is dark histories where the facts are worse than fiction.

Hello welcome season one episode seven of Dark Histories I'm Ben and this week we're looking at the story of Charles Walton and the

Pitch Fork murder. It's a pretty fascinating story and one that's quite sad

really but it's been heavily hyped I guess you could say over the years

so that the story a lot of the times that you read on the internet is

it's just nonsense so yeah I thought I'd take up the reins and give the story pretty much straight instead, which is not surprisingly no less interesting.

So let's get into it. This is Charles Walton and the Pitchfork Murder.

Charles Walton was born on the 12th of May, 1870. In 1945 he was 74 years old, suffered from rheumatism and walked

with the aid of two sticks. Despite this, he was still undertaking light work on the local farms of Lower Quinton.

...