Eight-year-old Daniel Holt told his mother that a man beneath the churchyard had been asking to be found.

He led Cryer directly to an unmarked patch of ground.

"There are three stones above him," the boy said.

There were.

Records later showed that an unidentified labourer had been buried there twelve years earlier. Daniel then described a silver ring missing from the burial inventory.

Cryer ordered the records re-examined. The ring had never been listed.

No one could explain how the boy knew.

Daniel refused to return to the graveyard. He said the man had stopped speaking after Cryer came.