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Cannock Chase

bakelite brain

Devoted Cultist
Joined
Dec 13, 2014
Messages
117
I've been watching some Youtube videos about Cannock Chase - a mostly wooded area in Staffordshire, UK. When I was in infant school in the mid 1960s we lived in the adjacent village of Little Haywood. I have no recollection of weird stories from so long ago about The Chase. Maybe there weren't many back then because it's mostly new stuff, or maybe my parents thought it best not to inflame the mind of an impressionable seven-year-old.

What I find interesting is the collection of apparitions experienced there; everything from UFOs, cryptids, ghosts and now the 'new-fangled' Black-Eyed Kids and Slenderman.

This poses some interesting points. Does the landscape there:
  • Somehow cause hallucinations?
  • Enhance perception of weird phenomena?
  • Attract weird phenomena of all types - even new ones, and if so how/why?
  • Does it attract folks who to want to "experience" something, not necessarily realising that Black-Eyed Kids and Slenderman are new inventions? (One report claims BEKs were first spotted on The Chase before spreading elsewhere, but I can't find anything to support that.)
I'm not a researcher in the paranormal, just a fascinated onlooker, but I get the impression that once a new phenomenon gets a foothold, or a new site gains a reputation, "critical mass" is soon generated and the stories keep on coming - especially in the social media age. Maybe this observation is already known in paranormal research...

It seems the area has been known for sightings of Black Dogs and werewolves for at least 200 years. Then came along UFOs, Bigfoot, Big Cats, and now the very latest must-see apparitions. Probably unanswerable, but how or why does the place continuously evolve to capture new apparitions? ( I guess the Cannock Chase murders of the 1960s helped enhance the area's notoriety.)

Anyway, I'm curious as to why this relatively small area of forest and scrub-land should ever have gained this reputation. There are suggestions that the Pye Green microwave tower has something to do with it (presumably the radio signals messing with perception), but that wasn't built until the mid 1960s - I remember the local speculation surrounding it. But it should be relatively easy to see if the radio signals from similar installations attracts clusters of rampaging cryptids nearby. Fitzrovia - around the BT tower for example in London - should be rife with increased sightings of UFOs and Bigfoot!

Does anyone have any experiences from Cannock Chase, or thoughts about the area?

BB
 
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We went cycling at the Chase last year and had great fun apart from when I fell off every time we reached a certain t-junction.
Lovely area! We'll be back this month.
 
We went cycling at the Chase last year and had great fun apart from when I fell off every time we reached a certain t-junction.
Lovely area! We'll be back this month.

Yes, there are lots of videos showing the cycling. I see there is now Pay and Display parking, signposted trails, shelters...

Just the luxury of a gravel car park there when I was a kid!

Do they have a paranormal gift shop yet? A ghost tour? Come and spot a werewolf from our air-conditioned hide? They're missing some money-spinning tricks if not...

BB
 
I like your thoughtful post, BB.
I've never been to Cannock Chase :) so this is pure speculation from a position of complete ignorance. I've got two thoughts. One, that it was an area with lots of deep coal mines, and coal miners are a superstitious lot (which I think is fair enough given the dangerous conditions of working in a mine). So my unwarranted total leap is that the local area might be receptive to / full of weird folklore? And secondly, that wild areas are strange numinous spots at the best of times, and in sharp contrast to the built up areas nearby - it's very accessible isn't it. Weird stories beget more weird stories (especially if you're expecting something weird?) It used to have a reputation for being a bit of a wilderness. But now isn't it planted forestry commission style, a lot of it? Those dark plantations are a bit weird. Or is it just that pissed / stoned teenagers find it a good spot to hide out. And then freak themselves out.
This isn't really helping with the explanation for why it's a 'focus area' for such stories though, as opposed to somewhere else hmmm.

What would you recommend as a good source of these stories? (and do they really go back as far as you say? or is that a necessary part of the lore, that they do?)
 
I've visited Cannock Chase a couple of times with my father and his friends from the Lutheran Church years back because of the German Military Cemetery there. Just inside the entrance are some alcoves with the memorials for. Zepellin aircrew shot down over England in 1916, many graves are dated to 1947 (?). I think there are also Commonwealth graves there - very poignant but I don't know if it adds to the general Fortean landscape..
 
I visited two years ago and enjoyed having a nosey around. Didn't experience anything unusual but just enjoyed being on the Fortran trail.
 
What would you recommend as a good source of these stories? (and do they really go back as far as you say? or is that a necessary part of the lore, that they do?)

Prolific paranormal writer Nick Redfern is local to the area. He's someone who has written extensively about it. Also found this: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/01/little-green-men-in-the-cannock-chase-woods/

And this short piece - a little bit down the page. http://nickredfernfortean.blogspot.com/2013/05/paranormal-cannock-chase.html
 
I don't think the Skin Walker Ranch is open to the public, but I wonder if the apparitions there keep up with modern trends...?
 
I don't think the Skin Walker Ranch is open to the public, but I wonder if the apparitions there keep up with modern trends...?
Skinwalker Ranch is very much a decendent of Keelian ideas. They seem to be "space poltergeists" - every trope is thrown in there. Even though the area was studied by Bigelow's folks, the "evidence" is not impressive except in story form. Paranormalists tend to cite the entire Uinta basin area as a weird area.

I also like your post because I find the idea of "paranormal hotspots" or "window areas" interesting. They really seem to be self-fulfilling places - if you expect something spooky, you experience something spooky and the reputation grows. But has anyone ever found any measurements that document they are physically anomalous? I don't think so. But there certainly is such a thing as a spooky sense of place.
 
Prolific paranormal writer Nick Redfern is local to the area. He's someone who has written extensively about it. Also found this: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/01/little-green-men-in-the-cannock-chase-woods/

And this short piece - a little bit down the page. http://nickredfernfortean.blogspot.com/2013/05/paranormal-cannock-chase.html

Recently read his Man-Monkey book.
He writes in a light and entertaining manner, but also crammed every known sighting of the "British Yeti " into the slim tome.
 
Recently read his Man-Monkey book.
He writes in a light and entertaining manner, but also crammed every known sighting of the "British Yeti " into the slim tome.

I really enjoyed this book. For those of us who don't think e-books are the work of the Devil, it is usually available at a very reasonable price on Kindle.
 
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Who's up for this?
 
This poses some interesting points. Does the landscape there:
  1. Somehow cause hallucinations?
  2. Enhance perception of weird phenomena?
  3. Attract weird phenomena of all types - even new ones, and if so how/why?
  4. Does it attract folks who to want to "experience" something...
[I converted the original bullets to numbers for clarity, Mikefule]
I've been to Cannock Chase a few times. There are mountain bike tracks in the wood and I have ridden one or two of them on my unicycle. I've also visited just to walk around Castle Ring: an iron age hill fort which gave its name to a Morris dance in the Lichfield tradition.

The history of the Lichfield Morris tradition is itself potentially of interest to Forteans. It is known that dances were performed in the city as far back as 1780 but the current "tradition" was collected in unusual circumstances in the 1950s. There are many claims and counter claims about whether it is "genuinely traditional" or "made up recently" — and yet despite this good natured controversy, two or three of the dances have become absolutely core to the wider Morris repertoire.

Also, nearby is Abbots Bromley, home to the unique Horn Dance, which is performed on Wakes Monday: the first Monday after the first Sunday after the 4th September. (Even Pratchett would have struggled to make that up!) The dancers carry reindeer antlers which have been carbon dated to 1065 — coincidentally, the year before the Normal conquest. However, there were no reindeer in Britain at that time, and Abbots Bromley is a long way inland, nowhere near a sea port where they might have been imported and traded.

But back to @bakelite brain 's post. You raise some interesting questions, but the first three on your list all rely on a number of unsupported assumptions.

1) How would a landscape cause hallucinations? I suppose we could speculate about hallucinogenic fungal spores or plant pollen in the air, for example, but then we'd need to identify a fungus or plant that grows here but not in similar habitats where there are no such reports. We might also expect the stories to go back a very long time, or for there to have been an identifiable change or event in the 19th century that coincided with the earliest reports. Too many ifs and buts for me.

2) Enhance perception of weird phenomena. This is phrased to imply that the weird phenomena are real, and that the perception of them is somehow made easier. However, the various phenomena (werewolves, black eyed children, UFOs) are sufficiently diverse that I find it hard to accept that something that enhances your perception of one would necessarily enhance your perception of another.

3) Attract weird phenomena... again, various different types. What unknown mechanism would "attract" such a diverse range of phenomena?

4) Which leaves me with the simplest. Occam's Razor: it requires no new assumptions to postulate that impressionable people exist, and that people are subject to confirmation bias, group think, and a range of other factors which tend to make many people see or hear what they expect to see or hear.

On my drive to work, I pass a haunted house. It has been beautifully renovated and is now occupied and I am sure that the present owner has no idea that 45 years ago, every local kid "knew" it was haunted. Every one of us had heard the tales of what someone else had seen or experienced there. Quite simply, it was the only unoccupied and derelict property on that road, in a nice area, and it soon attracted stories of the old lady who had died there, and the face at the window, and... you get the idea. As a kid, I never got far past the door.

We are a largely urban society. Substantial areas of accessible woodland are relatively rare in the Midlands of England, and Cannock Chase has a few steep hills and dark valleys. It's "atmospheric" in the right conditions. It has an ancient earthwork (Castle Ring) and, for the locals, the sad memory of the 1960s murders of 3 girls whose bodies were found in the chase. It is hardly surprising that one or two good stories have led to "more and better" stories being "remembered".
 
We've been cycling at Cannock Chase. The only weird thing that happened was when we did several circles of the route and I fell off at the same spot each time.
 
We've been cycling at Cannock Chase. The only weird thing that happened was when we did several circles of the route and I fell off at the same spot each time.
Invisible assailant?
 
I Don’t Know - The Podcast recently did a half hour episode on the Black Eyed Kids of Cannock Chase.

This is one podcast that doesn’t take itself seriously and can be quite humorous without the ridiculous screaming and contrived laughter that I find so bloody irritating in other podcasts.
I believe the host may have posted once or twice here but doesn’t seem to be a regular contributor.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/i-dont-know-the-podcast/id1488226554?i=1000484465426
 
More creepiness from Cannock Chase
IN PICTURES: Cannock Chase woods turned into horror set as baby dolls tied to trees
By Dayna FarringtonCannock ChasePublished: Feb 16, 2021Last Updated: Feb 17, 2021
Mystery surrounds the placing of dolls in an area of woodland in Cannock Chase.
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The mystery dolls in Cannock Chase

The mystery dolls in Cannock Chase
The toy babies have been attached to trees in a wooded area near to the Brindley Village car park, in Hednesford.
A ouija board is also located on the floor nearby.
It is not known where the dolls have come from, or why they have been left making the area look like the set of a horror film.
etc

https://www.expressandstar.com/news...c56HTAYlbWsfWOTCp9FVanICdoTURORCOUaQWw355zmeo
 
Living in Wolverhampton t'Chase was a regular sunday morning blast run for me on my old motorbikes (lots of remnant roman road routes reused so dead straight tank huggers to enjoy). One thing that has always struck me over there is how quiet it is for such a wooded area. Where are all the damn birds?
 
So why should Cannock Chase attract all of the weirdness, and not the North York Moors? I recently posted asking if anyone knew any paranormal stories about the moors, and pretty much drew a blank. We've got a host of folkloric tales about hobs, the odd ghost tale in Sarkless Kitty, but really, given the extent of the area, very little in the way of paranormal stories. Yet Cannock Chase, much smaller, much more densely populated*, is heaving with them.

*In that more people live there. The NYM gets hundreds of thousands of visitors each (normal) year, so there are plenty of potential witnesses.
 
I'd say that was teenagers pranking but they'd need a car to get there. So it'll be slightly older idiots pranking.
The ouija board is a nice touch. I like it. Techy would add it to his collection.

If not teens or Satanists then it could be the local Tourist Board preparing the ground for the end of Lockdown.
 
Love the way it specifies dolls are 'toy babies'...

I too suspect bored teenagers or someone doing an art project for school, who wants to be seen as 'edgy'.

I thought it might be the remnants of some amateur horror movie shoot that ended up being abandoned due to lockdown.
 
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