The Devil’s Stone or as some may have known it the Summoning Stone, is located in North Nottinghamshire village of Carlton-in-Lindrick. The stone is a large worked stone and is thought to be part of a ancient font and used as a base for a cross.
Legend states that the stone is resistant to being moved and those who have tried, it has been known to fall on those who have tried to put it to other use.
Legend also states, that if you walk around the stone in a anticlockwise direction, you will summon the devil.
Is it the real devil’s stone?
My information on this as been sourced from a book named The A-Z of curious Nottingham by Frank E. Earp, he states in this book that he sourced information from H. H Henson book ‘The church of England’ and made reference to the following source quoted in this book
‘over the vestry door at Carlton-in-Lindrick there is preserved a stone which may be a relic of a pre-Christian pagan temple. On it is craved in a semi circle l, the sun, moon and stars, bordered by what may be stalks and heads of wheat or barley, in an allusion to the sun’s fertilising power. A Christian cross has been cut later into a upper rim of the stone, which seems to have been adapted at one time to form a tympanum for the head of a Norman doorway’
On my visit I did not see any cravings on the stone but it was covered in moss.
Henson, who was the Bishop of Durham, states he believed that the Church was built on a site of a pagan temple or a prehistoric monument, as we know may pagan sites was destroyed and churches was built over them and this wouldn’t have been the first church to sit on such a site.
If it did sit at above the church a some point, this would fit with many legends suggesting that if you walk around a church anticlockwise 9 times then this is classed as a ritual to to summon the devil.
So, if you want to try summoning the devil, visit the church in Carlton-in-Lindrick, walk around the stone 9 times and if that isn’t working try walking around the church and stone 9 times, just be careful because the legend always tells you how to summon the devil but it don’t ever give you any details how to get rid once you have!
Here is my video of a walk around I did around the church….
Gina Marshall looked into local newspaper articles to see if anything was reported locally and what she found was quite amazing
Haunted!
The stone is meant to be haunted, here are the following snippets she found from 1937.
So the little stone we see in the picture and in the video, may not seem much to some, but it is actually rich in its haunted history.