I remember a story my mother told me once, of when she was staying on her Granny's farm, in the hills of Zululand in South Africa. My Granny was a healer, both the blacks & the whites would come to her for help, her mother was a princess of the Ximba tribe. My mother was born with the cowl.

Mum asked her Granny why the little girl was in the tree, and her neck was stretched.

Seems sometime in the late 1800s a white girl had hung herself after she'd been molested, she ended up hanging there for a while until she was found. Mum was only about 5 at the time, so wouldn't have known about how the body stretches if it is left hanging.