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Cannock Chase

bakelite brain said:
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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I also grew up near Cannock Chase - AFAIK there was NOTHING at the time suggesting that the Chase was spooks, beyond an ABC on Castle Ring. I was very into the paranormal - Im sure I would have known.

Nothing about werewolves or blacks dogs in the vicinity at all. Nothing the local ghost books, nothing in the literature. The only spooky thing was the Satanic Mill in Chorley
 
catseye said:
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.
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Possibly the same reason every single building in the North of England has at least 10 ghosts, and Ian Brady was calling forth demons on Saddleworth Moor - Tom Slemen and his ilk need SOMETHING to write about...
 
saltman said:
I also grew up near Cannock Chase - AFAIK there was NOTHING at the time suggesting that the Chase was spooks, beyond an ABC on Castle Ring.
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Norton Canes has always made me uneasy, just going through. Not the Services (although motorway Services are odd places IMHO) but the place itself.
 
saltman said:
Possibly the same reason every single building in the North of England has at least 10 ghosts, and Ian Brady was calling forth demons on Saddleworth Moor - Tom Slemen and his ilk need SOMETHING to write about...
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York is excessively haunted, but none of the towns near me, further north, have ANY spooks. I seem, inadvertently, to be living in the least haunted part of the country.
 
catseye said:
York is excessively haunted, but none of the towns near me, further north, have ANY spooks. I seem, inadvertently, to be living in the least haunted part of the country.
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Ah yes that's the name of the place! I had a mate who lived near Cannock Chase and I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of the town.
 
Actually Im pretty sure SOMETHING was at Castle Ring. There was an area on the ring that always felt off, and you could watch groups go quiet and hurry as they passed it, although without giving nay sign they felt anything was wrong.
 
I live very near to / on the the chase, i walk my dog there once or twice a day depending on the time of year. Never come across anything spooky or heard anything first hand. There has been a huge increase in visitor numbers in recent years too.
 
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