Cryptids near and far
May. 9th, 2023 07:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootLocal project requires a little colation of hereabouts legends. I now have more information than any one single person knows what to do with, and this is barely the beginning. This place needs some kind of PhD to cover its lore, it's a goldmine of cutural anthropology. It's also insane. My head's spinning and I haven't even done most of the work, I'm just picking up on other people's efforts.The problem now is to parse away for the current purpose.
One story turned up that made me pause. The beginning doesn't promise well:
In the Bathgate Hills of Lothian there is an area known as The Knock Forest due to the strange woodknockings that are reported there... Huh. Strange sounds have been heard,apparently, but the place is called Ravenscraig wood, occasionally referred to as Cnoc forest because it is close to the Cnoc itself. Cnoc comes from a gaelic word meaning hill. It is safe to assume that this person's a gatherer of tales rather than an investigator of their provenance.
The following story comes from a researcher friend. I first heard this same account 15 years ago and was told it on good authority from another researcher who interviewed one of the witnesses directly. Three guys, a painter and decorator crew were driving up to storage blocks in Polton Mill to resupply for the next days job, When they were up at the storage locker they saw a 7 or 8 foot upright 'Wolf being' standing on the roof of the building, it jumped down and landed in front of them all in the van, their boss rapidly reversed and they drove off. They never returned to those warehouses, which meant the cost of all those supplies they decided to take on the chin, losing masses of replacement materials.
This caught my eye for a couple of reasons, the first being that there have been recent (OK around 2016) sightings of the famed Yorkshire werewolf, 'Old Stinker,' so called because of its putrid breath. Can't help feeling that if you are close enough to smell its breath, chances are you won't get to record the experience, but anyway;
Residents in Hull claim to have seen a werewolf in the area. Seven separate eyewitnesses claim to have spotted the 8ft tall creature lurking in an abandoned industrial area outside the center of Hull. Residents and folklore experts believe the mythical beast, said to turn from a human to wolf at a new moon, is Old Stinker. According to a centuries-old legend the foul-breathed creature prowls the Yorkshire Wolds.
And from The Daily Mail on the same day:
Over the past months, witnesses have come forward to speak of spotting a huge, hairy creature around the Barmston Drain, a man-made channel near the town of Beverley. Some locals believe the sightings are evidence of a mythical Yorkshire beast called 'Old Stinker'... A woman who sighted the potential werewolf in December told the Express 'It was stood upright one moment. The next it was down on all fours running like a dog. I was terrified. 'It vaulted 30ft over to the other side and vanished up the embankment and over a wall into some allotments.' She said that it both ran on two legs and on all fours, as if with the qualities of both human and wolf. Another couple said they saw something 'tall and hairy' eating a dog next to the channel, which runs through the countryside. They added that it jumped over an 8ft-high fence, with the animal in its mouth.
Neither of these are local, but they are fine examples of how urban folklore travels around and reiterates itself. I have heard a form of this story before, back in the 1980s from a boyfriend of mine who heard it from a mate of his in the army. Apparently they were engaged in manoeuvres on Dartmoor, at which point basic elements in the story become familiar; they see an animal in the dark, they think it's a big dog, it then stands up and everyone has a moment.
30/40 years later it's a case of reset and repeat up and down the country. Recent ones might also have an element of big dog sightings, seeing as how 'wolfy' type dogs like akitas and huskies have become so popular. Both these breeds have strong hunting instincts and they can run and run. I remember one of the things I heard about this area when we first moved here, about a mauling of a flock of sheep up on the Pentland hills, not that far away. 30 animals were harmed/harrassed. Sounds like a dog gone nuts.
Local cryptids do not seem to be specifically dog-like, but reports consistently describe them as extremely fast.
Date of incident: approx 1986/87, late evening, Kirknewton, West Lothian. A historical encounter was reported in February 2015 from a work colleague, who tells of when he was a teenager growing up in the town of Kirknewton in West Lothian. He estimates the year to be around 1986/87. He states that he and his friends were daring each other to walk into one set of local woods one night and they eventually decided to go together, as they were approaching the woods they saw in the moonlight what is described as a large dark figure running across a field adjacent to the woods. It was reportedly running alternately upright and then down on all fours. It then vaulted a fence "It just glided over this fence and it looked like it had a really long neck(?). We thought it was trying to cut us off so we ran for it."
"Early in the winter of 2003 I had recently passed my driving test and was going for a run in my car ...I passed the lay by at Cairnpapple we were headed towards the Knock Hill area when my mate pointed out what looked like a man standing at the top of the hill looking down at us? I slowed the car down to look and saw he was right "I said oh yeah so it does" By this point we were slowly passing the Knock Hill and the dark figure came down the hill at great speed, he was really moving at some pace. We got a big fright and I drove away as fast as I could. It didn't look like your average person would look and this figure was all dark in colour. And it moved at a pace miles faster than I could.
Spring 2006 [...] We parked up at the Cairnpapple lay by and headed up the stairs. The field before Cairnpapple was snow covered and although we were not dressed for it we kept heading in anyway. We had a laugh falling in the snow repeatedly and I fell waist deep into a cairn at the Cairnpapple site. [what cairn could you fall into waist deep at Cairnpapple? I've been there, seen no such cairn] We left the gate of Cairnpapple and walked back into the field and within 15 seconds we both heard a noise from behind us as if something was coming towards us moving fast, from the direction we had just been. I turned around but could not see anything, neither of us could. All we knew is that it was coming fast or at least it sounded as if it was moving really quickly at speed heading in our direction. We ran as fast as we could and we ended up losing the way back to the stairs, after a panicked hunt for the steps we found them and we rushed down them, got in the car and drove away. We couldn’t explain what had happened to us and were shaken up and very confused. We kept talking about it and deciding whether to go back or not. I couldn't stop thinking about it and what had happened...]
And of course there's David Colman's Silver Man story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejwk4H1LPaA
I've spoken to David and as far as I can tell he is not lying and was genuinely terrified at the memory of what he saw. I can't vouch for any of these others because there are few if any names given, dates and names are spurious in the retelling and at least one of these sightings has antecedents in totally different areas of the island. I do have a strong presentiment though, that if I start properly researching this, I'm going to be snowed under by an avalanche of things that should not be.
One story turned up that made me pause. The beginning doesn't promise well:
In the Bathgate Hills of Lothian there is an area known as The Knock Forest due to the strange woodknockings that are reported there... Huh. Strange sounds have been heard,apparently, but the place is called Ravenscraig wood, occasionally referred to as Cnoc forest because it is close to the Cnoc itself. Cnoc comes from a gaelic word meaning hill. It is safe to assume that this person's a gatherer of tales rather than an investigator of their provenance.
The following story comes from a researcher friend. I first heard this same account 15 years ago and was told it on good authority from another researcher who interviewed one of the witnesses directly. Three guys, a painter and decorator crew were driving up to storage blocks in Polton Mill to resupply for the next days job, When they were up at the storage locker they saw a 7 or 8 foot upright 'Wolf being' standing on the roof of the building, it jumped down and landed in front of them all in the van, their boss rapidly reversed and they drove off. They never returned to those warehouses, which meant the cost of all those supplies they decided to take on the chin, losing masses of replacement materials.
This caught my eye for a couple of reasons, the first being that there have been recent (OK around 2016) sightings of the famed Yorkshire werewolf, 'Old Stinker,' so called because of its putrid breath. Can't help feeling that if you are close enough to smell its breath, chances are you won't get to record the experience, but anyway;
Residents in Hull claim to have seen a werewolf in the area. Seven separate eyewitnesses claim to have spotted the 8ft tall creature lurking in an abandoned industrial area outside the center of Hull. Residents and folklore experts believe the mythical beast, said to turn from a human to wolf at a new moon, is Old Stinker. According to a centuries-old legend the foul-breathed creature prowls the Yorkshire Wolds.
And from The Daily Mail on the same day:
Over the past months, witnesses have come forward to speak of spotting a huge, hairy creature around the Barmston Drain, a man-made channel near the town of Beverley. Some locals believe the sightings are evidence of a mythical Yorkshire beast called 'Old Stinker'... A woman who sighted the potential werewolf in December told the Express 'It was stood upright one moment. The next it was down on all fours running like a dog. I was terrified. 'It vaulted 30ft over to the other side and vanished up the embankment and over a wall into some allotments.' She said that it both ran on two legs and on all fours, as if with the qualities of both human and wolf. Another couple said they saw something 'tall and hairy' eating a dog next to the channel, which runs through the countryside. They added that it jumped over an 8ft-high fence, with the animal in its mouth.
Neither of these are local, but they are fine examples of how urban folklore travels around and reiterates itself. I have heard a form of this story before, back in the 1980s from a boyfriend of mine who heard it from a mate of his in the army. Apparently they were engaged in manoeuvres on Dartmoor, at which point basic elements in the story become familiar; they see an animal in the dark, they think it's a big dog, it then stands up and everyone has a moment.
30/40 years later it's a case of reset and repeat up and down the country. Recent ones might also have an element of big dog sightings, seeing as how 'wolfy' type dogs like akitas and huskies have become so popular. Both these breeds have strong hunting instincts and they can run and run. I remember one of the things I heard about this area when we first moved here, about a mauling of a flock of sheep up on the Pentland hills, not that far away. 30 animals were harmed/harrassed. Sounds like a dog gone nuts.
Local cryptids do not seem to be specifically dog-like, but reports consistently describe them as extremely fast.
Date of incident: approx 1986/87, late evening, Kirknewton, West Lothian. A historical encounter was reported in February 2015 from a work colleague, who tells of when he was a teenager growing up in the town of Kirknewton in West Lothian. He estimates the year to be around 1986/87. He states that he and his friends were daring each other to walk into one set of local woods one night and they eventually decided to go together, as they were approaching the woods they saw in the moonlight what is described as a large dark figure running across a field adjacent to the woods. It was reportedly running alternately upright and then down on all fours. It then vaulted a fence "It just glided over this fence and it looked like it had a really long neck(?). We thought it was trying to cut us off so we ran for it."
"Early in the winter of 2003 I had recently passed my driving test and was going for a run in my car ...I passed the lay by at Cairnpapple we were headed towards the Knock Hill area when my mate pointed out what looked like a man standing at the top of the hill looking down at us? I slowed the car down to look and saw he was right "I said oh yeah so it does" By this point we were slowly passing the Knock Hill and the dark figure came down the hill at great speed, he was really moving at some pace. We got a big fright and I drove away as fast as I could. It didn't look like your average person would look and this figure was all dark in colour. And it moved at a pace miles faster than I could.
Spring 2006 [...] We parked up at the Cairnpapple lay by and headed up the stairs. The field before Cairnpapple was snow covered and although we were not dressed for it we kept heading in anyway. We had a laugh falling in the snow repeatedly and I fell waist deep into a cairn at the Cairnpapple site. [what cairn could you fall into waist deep at Cairnpapple? I've been there, seen no such cairn] We left the gate of Cairnpapple and walked back into the field and within 15 seconds we both heard a noise from behind us as if something was coming towards us moving fast, from the direction we had just been. I turned around but could not see anything, neither of us could. All we knew is that it was coming fast or at least it sounded as if it was moving really quickly at speed heading in our direction. We ran as fast as we could and we ended up losing the way back to the stairs, after a panicked hunt for the steps we found them and we rushed down them, got in the car and drove away. We couldn’t explain what had happened to us and were shaken up and very confused. We kept talking about it and deciding whether to go back or not. I couldn't stop thinking about it and what had happened...]
And of course there's David Colman's Silver Man story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejwk4H1LPaA
I've spoken to David and as far as I can tell he is not lying and was genuinely terrified at the memory of what he saw. I can't vouch for any of these others because there are few if any names given, dates and names are spurious in the retelling and at least one of these sightings has antecedents in totally different areas of the island. I do have a strong presentiment though, that if I start properly researching this, I'm going to be snowed under by an avalanche of things that should not be.
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Date: 2023-05-09 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-10 09:04 am (UTC)Trouble is, the thing that gives this stuff the wow factor is peoples' insistence that it's not a story!