{"id":37146,"date":"2024-05-30T17:11:25","date_gmt":"2024-05-30T15:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/151e1e1b-9f1b-46ae-b2c5-ba9b9b96a535"},"modified":"2024-05-30T18:27:46","modified_gmt":"2024-05-30T16:27:46","slug":"12-eerie-mythical-beasts-that-are-supposed-to-roam-britain-sometimes-with-deadly-consequences-for-the-victim-dare-you-go-out-and-find-them","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/rss_feed\/12-eerie-mythical-beasts-that-are-supposed-to-roam-britain-sometimes-with-deadly-consequences-for-the-victim-dare-you-go-out-and-find-them\/","title":{"rendered":"12 eerie mythical beasts that are supposed to roam Britain, sometimes with deadly consequences for the victim – dare you go out and find them…?"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Loch Ness Monster to the Grindylow, our guide looks at infamous British mythical beasts and the legends that accompany them, plus the best sites to visit in the UK that have inspired these spooky stories \u2013 if you dare! <\/p>

By <\/p>

Published: Thursday, 30 May 2024 at 15:11 PM<\/p>

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Eerie tales of dreadful creatures stalking the land have long terrified the population.Ian Vince numbers the beasts \u2013 Black Shuck, Grindylow and the Nuckelavee among them…<\/strong><\/p>

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A boulder-strewn blockfield covers the lonely summit plateau of Britain\u2019s second highest peak, Ben Macdui in the Cairngorms. It has a terrible beauty; a sprawling, desolate landscape of wild open space where everything conspires to make you feel small.<\/p>

The isolation of this spot is tangible and when the summit is deserted, an air of separation from the world as a whole quickly overcomes your senses. In Britain\u2019s most Arctic environment, survival is constantly in the balance and, although the long walk to the summit is not difficult in fair weather, the balance tips very easily. Like all mountains, the Cairngorms are fickle, occasionally spiteful, and even a slight change in conditions can throw the visitor into another world entirely.<\/p>

Pendle Hill in Lancashire is a place surrounded by myths and legend, stories of the Pendle witches draw thousands of pagans to the hill every year. this stone circle is most likely a remnant of a pagan ceremony performed under a new moon in the shadow of Pendle. (Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

By his own account, that was what happened to renowned climber, scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society, J Norman Collie, at the end of the 19th century. Years later, he recalled hearing slow, deliberate footsteps \u2013 one vast step for every three or four of his own \u2013 following him on the mountain.<\/p>

\u201cAs I walked on and the eerie crunch, crunch, sounded behind me, I was seized with terror and took to my heels, staggering blindly among the boulders for four or five miles,\u201d Collie told a meeting of the Cairngorm Club in 1925.<\/p>

Since prehistory, when we first started telling stories to one another, we have paid close attention to those locations that our tales have populated with monsters and supernatural presences. We imbued the landscape with meaning, with rituals and a personality of its own. The age of reason, the emergence of science and rationality, have shone light into the shadows and yet, something still stirs in the British countryside. Dare you go out and feel it for yourselves…<\/p><\/div><\/div>

Britain’s scariest mythical beasts<\/h2>

1<\/p>

Big Grey Man<\/h3><\/div>

What Collie had experienced was a classic case of a brush with the Big Grey Man (Am Fear Liath M\u00f2r) of Ben Macdui, an enduring myth of an extremely large, Sasquatch-like grey figure covered in short hair. Wherever the Grey Man ventures, he is accompanied by a sense of irrational panic and dread.<\/p>

Although Collie, who vowed never to return to the mountain alone, saw nothing, others were not so lucky. In October 1943, while on 10 days leave, soldier Alexander Tewnion reached the summit of the mountain and immediately noticed, in the swirling mist, that \u201cthe atmosphere became dark and oppressive, a fierce, bitter wind whisked among the boulders, and an odd sound echoed through the mist \u2013 a loud footstep, it seemed. Then another, and another. A strange shape loomed up, receded, came charging at me! Without hesitation I whipped out the revolver and fired three times at the figure. When it still came on I turned and hared down the path\u2026\u201d<\/p>

More rational minds point to a possible explanation for the terrifying sightings: the Brocken spectre \u2013 a rare atmospheric effect caused by the projection of your shadow on to mist and cloud, sometimes accompanied by a rainbow halo called a glory. Brocken spectres have sometimes been witnessed on Ben Macdui when conditions have been right, but what might be the cause of the fear that overcomes experienced climbers and scientists?<\/p>

Could the terror be the manifestation of an ancestral memory of hominids from a thousand generations ago or is it the mind\u2019s response to isolation and exhaustion? Could it be the place\u2019s essential spirit, its genius loci, something unknowable and so much larger than ourselves that our mind struggles to comprehend and replaces with the avatar of a monster or a spectral presence? Or is it a fluke of the landscape that produces infrasound and other sensory data just out of our reach? What dreadful spirit stalks the lonely mountaineer on Ben Macdui? And, if it\u2019s specific to the place, are there any other places that inspire such fear on these islands of ours?<\/p>

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Big Grey Man (Pat Perry)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

2<\/p>

Black Shuck<\/h3><\/div>

The Black Dog legend is perhaps the most common local myth in Britain, but in the counties of East Anglia, one local variant particularly stands out: Black Shuck.<\/p>

Along the desolate coastal flats of East Anglia, among the graveyards, by crossroads, in its darkest forests, lurks a fear stirred first in the early medieval<\/a> mind. In Suffolk<\/a>, this calf-sized malevolent hound with saucer-sized glowing red eyes is a harbinger of doom and death. It often appears during electrical storms, such as the one that struck both the churches of Bungay and Blythburgh on the same day and at the exact same moment in August 1577, leaving scorched claw marks on the church door at Blythburgh, at least two fatalities and a feeling of deep dread. \u201cAll down the church in midst of fire, the hellish monster flew. And, passing onward to the quire, he many people slew,\u201d runs the old local verse.<\/p>

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Black dog (Pat Perry)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

3<\/p>

C\u00f9-S\u00ecth<\/h3><\/div>

C\u00f9-S\u00ecth is the Scottish Highland version of Black Shuck, a wolf-like creature the size of a bull, but coloured dark green. It lives in the clefts of rocks and carries souls away to the afterlife. Another spectral hound with saucer-sized eyes, the C\u00f9-S\u00ecth howls three times and if you haven\u2019t reached a place of safety by the third bay, you are overcome with mortal terror and drop dead on the spot.<\/p>

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A wolf-like creature the size of a bull, but coloured dark green (Pat Perry)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

4<\/p>

Black dog of bunting nook<\/h3><\/div>

This peculiarly suburban version of the Black Dog prowls along a quiet, leafy lane on the outskirts of Sheffield<\/a>. The dog appears from nowhere in front of cars and makes the engine stall. For some reason it is only interested in the car\u2019s passenger. The hound dematerialises into a green mist if it is threatened.<\/p>

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The Black Dog prowls along a quiet, leafy lane on the outskirts of Sheffield (Pat Perry)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

5<\/p>

Hairy hands<\/h3><\/div>

The Bunting Nook dog isn\u2019t the only thing to materialise around vehicles. Between Cherrybrook and Postbridge in Devon<\/a>, a lonely stretch of the B3212 runs over the leviathan folds of Dartmoor<\/a>, where \u2013 once more \u2013 wide open spaces contrive to give the traveller an almost claustrophobic sense of their self as a thing of little consequence in nature\u2019s grand order. <\/p>

There have been numerous reports on this stretch of road of a presence and, on a number of occasions, drivers, motorcyclists and cyclists have fallen prey to a mysterious pair of hairy hands that grab the steering wheel or handlebar and attempt to steer the hapless traveller off the road.<\/p>

\"Hands
Hairy hands (Pat Perry)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

6<\/p>

Beast of Bodmin moor<\/h3><\/div>

Numerous local sightings of a very large black cat are believed in some quarters to be less a spectral feline and more a very-real panther or puma, possibly a zoo escapee or illegal release. Sightings of the Beast of Bodmin Moor are the most famous examples of alleged wild cat sightings in Britain. The similarly alliterative Beast of Buchan from Aberdeenshire has been reported since the 1930s. <\/p>