Jay's Grave is supposedly the last resting place of a suicide victim who is thought to have died in the late 18th century. It has become a well-known landmark on Dartmoor, Devon, in the United Kingdom, and is the subject of local folklore, and many a ghost story.
The small burial mound is to be found beside a narrow lane just below Hound Tor. A glass jar on top of the grave is regularly refilled with fresh flowers, although who does this remains a mystery.
The grave is believed to contain the bones of an orphan called Kitty Jay (some reports name her as Mary Jay), who worked on a farm near the village of Manaton. As a teenager, she was apparently raped by a young farmhand and became pregnant. Such was her shame, that Kitty Jay hanged herself in a barn.
The three local parishes of Widecombe-in-the-Moor, North Bovey and Manaton all refused to bury her body within consecrated ground, so she was buried at a crossroads - a traditional practice for suicide victims at the time. This also happened to be the point at which the three parishes joined. Her remains were discovered in 1860, placed in a coffin and reburied.
The flowers that regularly appear there are the subject of local folklore - some claim they are placed there by pixies. Motorists, passing at night, claim to have glimpsed ghostly figures in their headlights, other report seeing a dark, hooded figure kneeling there.
The story was the inspiration behind a novel by Celia Ann Leaman called Mary's Child.
