A haunting collection of dolls found nailed and tied to trees on the site of an abandoned village has been discovered by a walker.
The hospital worker, 64, was met with the the dolls’ unblinking stares peering down at her as she headed out for a walk in forest near Hednesford, Cannock Chase, Staffordshire.
She insists the dolls were tied up in ‘some sort of order,’ after finding them at the former site of a First World War military hospital – which later became a mining village before it was abandoned in the 1950s.
The theatre practitioner at Walsall Manor Hospital, who has not given her name, said: said: ‘When I was on my walks I looked a bit further and as I dug through the undergrowth I saw these dolls.
‘They were in some sort of order. Their dresses were all raggedy and they were all tied and nailed to the trees.
‘And as I came out of the woods I saw a sign that said that this was the operating theatre for the old Pensions Hospital. It was just a little bit weird considering what I do for my job.
‘I have got a friend who is a spiritual medium and she wants to go and take a look up there to see if she can feel anything.’
Cannock Chase was home to Brindley Heath Military Hospital during the First World War, which was able to treat around 1,000 soldiers at a time.
After the war it was used to treat veterans suffering from PTSD, or shell-shock as it was known at the time, as well as people injured in poison gas attacks in the trenches.
In 1924 the hospital was closed and the land was instead used to house the families of 75 miners who worked for The West Cannock Colliery.