Busby Stoop Chair
alleged haunted chair in the United Kingdom
The Busby Stoop Chair or the Dead Man's Chair is an oak chair that was supposedly cursed by the murderer Thomas Busby before his execution by hanging in 1702 in North Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom.
The chair is said to have remained in use for centuries at the Busby Stoop inn, near Thirsk. Due to the many deaths later attributed to people sitting in the chair, the landlord donated it to Thirsk Museum in 1978.
A furniture historian examined the chair and found it to have machine-turned spindles, whereas 18th-century chairs were made using a pole lathe. He dated the chair to 1840, 138 years after Busby's execution.
Background
Thomas Busby was arrested, tried and condemned to death after he murdered his father-in-law Daniel Auty (or Autie) in 1702. Auty and Busby were running a coin counterfeiting business (as well as other criminal enterprises) and they argued about the business which ended with Busby killing Auty. One variation of the story has Busby cursing the chair whilst on his way to his execution, whereas another says that he was drunk in the chair when he was arrested and cursed it then.
Busby was gibbeted at Sandhutton crossroads, beside an inn, which later had its name changed to the Busby Stoop Inn. The site of the execution, opposite the pub on the A61 and A167 crossroads (now a roundabout), was said to be haunted by Busby's ghost.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Busby Stoop Chair” as alleged haunted chair in the United Kingdom. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as alleged haunted chair in the United Kingdom. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2947715. Authority coordinates are 54.233, -1.344. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1702, 1978 and 1840.
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This entry incorporates text from “Busby Stoop Chair” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.