The marks are meant to keep bad spirits away, but they won't stop a high-speed train route from moving into the area.

Learning no lessons from horror films of yore, Britain has plans for a high-speed rail project that will lay tracks over the ruins of a medieval church.

According to archaeologists working at Stoke Mandeville, a village that lies in the path of the proposed railway, an early excavation of the site's 700-year-old church revealed stone beams etched with strange circular patterns known as "witch marks.".

Michael Court, lead archaeologist at HS2 Ltd (the company behind the rail project) said the unusual markings offer a "fascinating insight into the past" at a site that has long been lost to history.

Mary's, was erected around 1070 as a private chapel for the lord of Stoke Mandeville in what is now Buckinghamshire, England, according to the statement?

Similar witch markings have turned up at medieval sites across the U.K., including a set discovered last year at Creswell Crags, a limestone gorge and cave complex that has been inhabited on and off since the last ice age.

The markings did not save St.

But with the scrawled stones still intact, modern witches keen on trying the new high-speed train may need to reroute their travels away from Stoke Mandeville.