A newcomer with a bad reputation
In the latter part of Book V, chapter 24, William of Newburgh moves his reader to the castle called Anantis, usually identified with Alnwick. This is a different episode from his account of a wealthy dead man at Berwick. It begins with someone fleeing Yorkshire through fear of enemies or the law. He enters a local lord's service and, in the chronicler's judgement, continues his disreputable habits. He then marries. William supplies no personal name: the man's moral character and the expansion of a private domestic disaster into a communal emergency matter more to the narrative.
The watcher falls from a beam
Hearing rumours about his wife's fidelity, the husband pretends to depart on a journey lasting several days. A servant secretly admits him again that evening. He hides on a beam overlooking the bedroom to investigate for himself. According to William, seeing his wife with another man makes him forget caution and fall. The visitor escapes, while his wife helps him up and attributes his accusations to illness. His injuries prove serious. A visiting cleric urges confession and communion, but he postpones them until the next day. He dies during the night. The chronicler builds his causal chain around failed repentance rather than a vampire bite or supernatural infection.
Closed doors cannot stop disease
After burial the dead man supposedly begins walking at night, accompanied by barking dogs. Residents lock their doors and avoid venturing outside before dawn. Fear of an encounter then becomes a greater danger: William claims that the corpse's pestilential breath corrupts the air, bringing sickness and death into houses. The settlement empties as survivors leave. This is the chronicle's own explanatory model, in which a mobile corpse spreads poisoned air, rather than an established medical diagnosis of an epidemic. The narrative connects the danger so firmly with the dead man's presence that ordinary nighttime caution cannot protect the community.
Brothers act while elders deliberate
On Palm Sunday the local religious adviser assembles prudent people before inviting guests to a meal. Two brothers who have lost their father to the sickness decide to act without waiting. Taking a blunt spade, they go to the burial ground. They find a shallow grave and a swollen body with a blood-filled face. Blood flows from a wound they inflict, prompting William to compare the corpse to a gorged leech. They drag the remains beyond the settlement. One insists that burning will fail unless the heart is removed. They extract it and burn the body; the guests reach the scene afterwards. The story ends with the disease ceasing.
Locating the witness's voice
William explains that an elderly, respected monk told him the story, presenting himself as a witness to local events. That claim places the reported source nearby without making William an eyewitness. Modern scholarship studies this episode with the other revenants in his late-twelfth-century history. Alnwick Castle's modern historical account establishes a medieval fortress, not the narrated exhumation. Unlike the Berwick story, this one centres on two bereaved brothers, a domestic scene and postponed confession. Neither an exact year nor an individual grave can securely be assigned from the surviving narrative.
