“who put Bella in the Wych Elm?” wand

this 16inch wand is hand carved from 10,000 year old bog oak to look like a natural weather worn and storm wrought branch. every detail is meticulously hand carved including a tiny skull carved from a piece of fallow deer antler.

I wanted to carve this wand in Memory of “Bella” and a question I believe we should still be asking today.

In April 1943, four boys were playing in Hagley Wood, near Worcestershire, England, when they discovered a hollow wych elm tree. Inside, they found a human skull. Alarmed, they reported it to the authorities, who uncovered a nearly complete female skeleton hidden inside the tree’s trunk. The woman, estimated to be in her mid-30s, had been dead for at least 18 months, meaning she likely died around 1941.

She was 5 feet tall, had light brown hair, and had given birth at least once. Her cause of death was assumed to have been asphyxiation, possibly from a piece of taffeta cloth found stuffed in her mouth, suggesting murder.

No missing persons report matched her description. Her hand was found buried separately sparking many rumours of ritualistic murder.

Then, in 1944, the case took a bizarre turn. Graffiti appeared on a wall in Birmingham, reading:

“Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?”

More graffiti followed over the years in different locations, always asking about “Bella”—a name never publicly linked to the case before.

somehow Bella was then lost and her skeleton is currently still missing and the case was never solved, not even nearly.