Immediately the workers had gone they plotted to bury the body. It would be no use doing it out in the open, as any land that may be farmed might also be dug over to reveal the secret. Joe took a spade and went to the deserted ruins of the Nanny Horns Inn - a perfect place to hide the body under the rubble of the fallen walls. When he got there he found the man’s original clothes and quite a sum of money along with various valuables that he had obviously stolen from other farms. Once rocks had been moved and a shallow grave had been dug, Joe returned to his home.

Joe dragged the body down the stairs and forced Ann to help him sew it into an old sack. Then under cover of fading twilight, lit only by one of the rush candles made the night before, they carried the corpse to the Nanny Horns and buried it under a pile of wall stones. Never again did either of them mention it, even to one another. They suffered their secret in silence as they struggled to bring up their son who could never have suspected what had taken place. However, once he had left the valley to seek his fortune, the stress of the secret began to reek its revenge like a curse and they both fell into ill health and died quite young.

That should have been an end to the story, but somehow after the death of Ann the rumours of the tragic event began to circulate the valley. Possibly Ann had let some of the secret escape on her deathbed. It was to no-one’s surprise then, the events that were recounted by the tenants that eventually took over their empty farmhouse. Late one evening, on some anniversary of the original gruesome deed they briefly saw the figure of a man lying on the very same stone slab clutching his throat. They got very little sleep that night. To their amazement and terror the following night, as they ate their supper, a body floated down the stairs, across the floor and out of the door. When they dared to go outside the figure seemed to disappear into the old ruins of the Nanny Horns Inn.