The Restless Spirit of Captain Thomas Bound

Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire

At the edge of the winding River Severn lies the market town of Upton, a place where history and legend entwine like creeping ivy along old stone walls. Among its oldest and darkest tales is that of Captain Thomas Bound—a name once whispered with fear, whose spirit is said to wander still, unable to rest after a life steeped in greed, cruelty, and treachery.

Captain Bound lived in the uncertain years following the English Civil War, a fervent supporter of Cromwell’s cause. Though he died in 1667, his foul reputation endured long after his body was laid to rest. Stories handed down through generations tell of a man merciless to the poor, unyielding in cruelty, and obsessed with the accumulation of land and wealth—no matter the cost.

His private life was no less shadowed. Bound married three times, yet his first two wives met suspiciously swift ends—both perishing within a year of marriage. Neither woman died in childbirth, nor from illness, as neighbours might have expected in those days. Instead, dark murmurs spread through the town: had Captain Bound murdered them to rid himself of inconvenient partners? The whispers grew, and fear of him deepened.

But it was not only in matrimony that his wickedness showed. One of his most notorious crimes involved the quiet, secret shifting of boundary stones in a riverside meadow called The Ham. By moving these ancient markers under the cover of darkness, Bound expanded his own property at the expense of his neighbours—a sin so grave that Scripture itself cursed those who tampered with such things. Yet Bound’s hunger for land was insatiable.

His most unforgivable treachery, however, lay in the acquisition of Southend Farm. It is said that when the elderly owner of this house lay dying, struggling to complete her will, Bound crept into her chamber. Taking her frail, trembling hand, he guided her fingers to scrawl his own name upon the document, robbing her rightful heirs of their inheritance. But some crimes are not forgotten by the dead. After her passing, the woman’s furious spirit rose from the grave and returned to plague Bound, haunting his waking hours and invading his dreams. Tormented and despairing, he stumbled one grey dawn to a lonely pool near Southend Farm and threw himself into its cold, black waters.

In life, suicide was deemed an unforgivable sin—the ultimate defiance of God’s law—and the souls of such unrepentant dead were doomed to wander. Bound was no exception. On the day of his death, villagers spoke of a phantom funeral procession winding silently through Upton’s lanes—a spectral omen of things to come. Soon after, Bound’s ghost began to appear, drifting between his two stolen homes, looming by the pool where he died, and even roaming the lonely roads that bordered his ill-gotten lands.

Desperate to lay his spirit to rest, the people of Upton summoned a parson to perform an exorcism. The holy man’s curious method involved hurling a lighted candle into the pool and commanding Bound’s ghost to remain beneath the water until the flame burned itself out—an impossible command in the depths. Bound’s shade defied this effort, growing bolder still. Before long, his ghost was seen riding through the lanes on horseback in the broad light of day, a fearsome and unstoppable figure.

In desperation, three more parsons were called to confront the restless spirit. They gathered in the cellar of Soley’s Orchard, Bound’s old home, standing hand in hand within a circle carefully drawn upon the floor—an ancient ritual to trap and banish the dead. Their aim was to drive the ghost to the distant Red Sea, far from the world of the living. But fate betrayed them. One of the men, perhaps out of fear or carelessness, broke the circle by stepping outside it for but a moment. In that instant, something unseen hurtled through the air and struck him hard across the cheek. From that day on, no hair would ever grow upon the scarred spot where the blow had landed. Shaken and defeated, the clergymen fled, ordering the cellar to be sealed with bricks. No further attempts were made to rid Upton of the ghost.

But the hauntings did not cease. Bound’s phantom was seen standing by the Severn’s edge, perched upon a stone near the fateful pool, or dragging a long, heavy surveyor’s chain up the lane to Southend Farm—a grim punishment for his deceitful shifting of boundary stones. Some claimed that the spirits of his three dead wives also wandered nearby, pale and silent, bound to the earth by their tragic fates.

One final, chilling twist in Bound’s dark legend unfolded long after his death. During renovations to Upton’s church in the nineteenth century, his grave was disturbed, and his skull removed from its resting place. What happened to it afterwards remains a mystery—but some whispered that the restless spirit of Thomas Bound stirred again when his bones were so carelessly handled.

Today, the houses and lanes where he once lived are gone or greatly changed, swallowed by time. Yet some say that on quiet nights, when the mist curls thick over the Severn’s waters, the clinking of a chain or the distant tread of ghostly hooves can still be heard—echoes of Captain Bound, the man who could not rest in life or in death.