10 Creepy Stories About Real Life Executioners

Albert Pierrepoint was one of the last British executors, and he remains notorious to this day. He conducted many well documented executions, so there are plenty of strange stories about him. But perhaps the creepiest story surrounding him is not about an execution, but about his popularity.

He was a man whose job it was to kill people. Yes, these may have been people who were deemed deserving of their fate, but it’s still not the most moral of jobs. And yet, he became a hugely popular figure, and for a large portion of his career he was deemed a hero.

He rose to prominence after the Second World War, when he executed around 200 people from enemy countries of war crimes. He became seen as a national hero, treasured by the British public. He found that so many people were offering to buy him a pint as a gesture to his ‘heroism’, that he decided to open a pub. And after all the executions he performed, he had the money to do it too.

His popularity as an executor allowed the establishment to thrive. He went on executing criminals unrelated to the war, and maintained his popularity. He even executed one of his pub’s locals, who he’d been friendly with. The pair were so friendly that they had their own private greeting, and even greeted each other with it on the morning of the execution.

Pierrepoint’s popularity took a slight knock when he controversially executed Ruth Ellis, but after retirement he still remained popular enough to make money from his memoirs.