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Strange Creatures In British Folklore

EnolaGaia said:
Since it came up as a joke in the Rendlesham thread, it's worth mentioning the Shug Monkey:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shug_Monkey

The Shug Monkey is sometimes described as exhibiting parts of different / additional animals, but the monkey face seems to be a constant.
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Isn't there a legend about a monkey type creature haunting parts of Staffordshire/Black Country? - have a very vague memory of reading about it years ago
 
Swifty said:
Cool .. and I found out recently that Cromer also has a second paranormal ghost dog sometimes seen on the beach completely separate it seems from the Shuck legend .. two ghost dogs ? .. we're just being greedy now !

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Peter Haining covers both tales in the very readable “Supernatural coast”. Although he tells the story with the dog and the little boy slightly differently.

In Haining’s version (and this information was gleaned from the locals apparently) the little boy and the dog swim out to sea together, only for the dog to turn into an evil dark-haired teenage child, who then tries to drown the little boy, and who was only saved by a passing fisherman. I think that’s the way I remember it.

When Haining visited Cromer to do some research for his book, he wrote that he was staring out to sea one evening from his hotel bedroom window, and spotted a large black dog running along the foreshore, leaping over the groynes with no apparent owner in sight.
 
I must give a plug for a local(ish) folkloric beastie - the Buckland Shag. This shaggy, ape-like beast was said to haunt a standing stone by the road at Buckland, just west of Reigate, Surrey. The stone had been associated in folklore with a local tragedy when a young man and woman were found dead (an apparent murder-suicide), after which the stone would not stop bleeding, and was called the Bleeding Stone. It stood beside the stream still marked as Shag Brook on modern OS maps. The Buckland Shag used to leap out at wayfarers, who avoided passing the place after dark, sometimes leaping up onto the backs of horses behind the riders, or jumping out to frighten people passing by. Even when it wasn't seen, horses were said to baulk at passing the stone after dark. In the early 19th century, the lord of the manor became tired of these shenanigans and had the stone hauled off and dumped in the local pond, since when the Buckland Shag has haunted no more.
 
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The Gloucestershire / Warwickshire border area has the amusingly-named Mickleton Hooter, which modern references suppose to be a sort of dog-type, or possibly cow-type, thing.

While I'd thought this might be another interesting local creature, sadly this version of the story seems to be bollocks, and relatively modern bollocks at that. A 1912 article by F.S.Potter classes the Hooter as a "being", suggests that "he is only to be heard", and then blames the sound on foxes. Meanwhile a still older version of the story is given by James Stone back in the 19th century: here the Hooter is in fact the ghost of the only son of Sir William Greville, who was shot dead in Mickleton Hollow, which was afterwards haunted by his "unearthly moanings and screechings". When (rarely) visible he was supposed to ride a black hunter and be accompanied by a pack of hounds, so perhaps the latter are what suggested the dog.
 
Dick Turpin said:
When Haining visited Cromer to do some research for his book, he wrote that he was staring out to sea one evening from his hotel bedroom window, and spotted a large black dog running along the foreshore, leaping over the groynes with no apparent owner in sight.
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I've seen foxes before sunrise on the beach here, so close to the sea they almost get their feet wet. No red eyes as far as I can recall though.
 

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BS3 said:
The Gloucestershire / Warwickshire border area has the amusingly-named Mickleton Hooter, which modern references suppose to be a sort of dog-type, or possibly cow-type, thing.

While I'd thought this might be another interesting local creature, sadly this version of the story seems to be bollocks, and relatively modern bollocks at that. A 1912 article by F.S.Potter classes the Hooter as a "being", suggests that "he is only to be heard", and then blames the sound on foxes. Meanwhile a still older version of the story is given by James Stone back in the 19th century: here the Hooter is in fact the ghost of the only son of Sir William Greville, who was shot dead in Mickleton Hollow, which was afterwards haunted by his "unearthly moanings and screechings". When (rarely) visible he was supposed to ride a black hunter and be accompanied by a pack of hounds, so perhaps the latter are what suggested the dog.
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I have dug out a couple more 19th century references to this thing. One (Elizabeth Hodges, Some Ancient English Homes) retells a relative's eyewitness story of seeing a calf like animal, followed by a "tall white figure" - presumably this is the source of the "cow" bit - while relating two local traditions explaining the 'ghost': one about a 16th century Edward Greville accidentally shooting his brother (rather than son, this time), while another concerns the murder of a Miss Greville. No dogs in this version.

I always find it interesting how folklore (even when claimed to be hundreds of years old, as here) can vary wildly in the telling in just a few years.

There's a bit more in an 1864 Notes and Queries:

With reference to the inquiry about a mysterious noise in a wood near Mickleton, in Gloucestershire, I beg to say I know the place well, and can state from personal knowledge that this noise is still heard at intervals. It is a most awful wailing sort of sound, which, when I heard it, appeared to rise and fall ; sounding sometimes quite close, and the next instant dying away in the distance, and resembling no other noise I ever heard.
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The Notes and Queries correspondent signs himself "H." which makes me wonder if he was in fact the "Mr Hodges" cited by Elizabeth H. some forty years or so later.

Maybe this would fit better in a "Strange noises in British folklore" thread?
 
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I haven't finished with the Mickleton Hooter yet (the baby kept us up half the night so I had lots more time for 'research'). It turns out the Hooter's origin story is probably more interesting than the ghost itself.

Lodovic Greville was the Lord of the Manor at Mickleton in the mid 16th century. He had a vast estate put together with family profits from the wool trade, but was a bit of a spendthrift and constantly in debt, particularly due to his attempts to build a spectacular new house, 'Mount Greville'.

As part of his financial dealings he instigated a murder plot quite bizarrely Fortean in its own right, centreing on the murder of a servant and the impersonation of the servant on his deathbed by someone else who would leave all "his" property to Greville. This started to unravel when one of the accomplices began boasting about the plot in Warwick pubs, so Greville had him murdered as well. Greville was arrested in 1589 for this quite idiotic series of crimes but then elected to be 'pressed to death' (suffocated under a pile of large rocks) rather than enter a plea, so that his family wouldn't have to give up any of the property due to a conviction. However, before his death he managed to put together a large notebook for his son, Edward, listing his various debts, triumphantly noting how he had avoided them and advising how Edward might do the same.

Sir Edward Greville however turned out to be an even bigger spendthrift than his father. Suffice to say that by the time of his death in his sixties, he'd reduced an estate worth about £38,000 to just £27. His widow couldn't even afford to give herself a proper funeral. His only child being a daughter, the Grevilles then disappeared and were forgotten- almost.

Anyway, the Hooter. Edward was Lodovic's second son, and became the heir after accidentally shooting his older brother in the head; at the time Lodovic joked that it was "the best shot he had ever made". And it was the ghost of the elder son who was supposed to emit the wails and screams in the coomb on Mickleton Hill known as the Mickleton Hooter, and which later seems to have been distorted by 20th century writers into a story about a booming cow, or a dog, or something.

In short the Grevilles were one of those families where you'd be very surprised if there wasn't a ghost story about them.
 
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BS3 said:
I haven't finished with the Mickleton Hooter yet (the baby kept us up half the night so I had lots more time for 'research'). It turns out the Hooter's origin story is probably more interesting than the ghost itself.

Lodovic Greville was the Lord of the Manor at Mickleton in the mid 16th century. He had a vast estate put together with family profits from the wool trade, but was a bit of a spendthrift and constantly in debt, particularly due to his attempts to build a spectacular new house, 'Mount Greville'.

As part of his financial dealings he instigated a murder plot quite bizarrely Fortean in its own right, centreing on the murder of a servant and the impersonation of the servant on his deathbed by someone else who would leave all "his" property to Greville. This started to unravel when one of the accomplices began boasting about the plot in Warwick pubs, so Greville had him murdered as well. Greville was arrested in 1587 for this quite idiotic series of crimes but then elected to be 'pressed to death' (suffocated under a pile of large rocks) rather than enter a plea, so that his family wouldn't have to give up any of the property due to a conviction. However, before his death he managed to put together a large notebook for his son, Edward, listing his various debts, triumphantly noting how he had avoided them and advising how Edward might do the same.

Sir Edward Greville however turned out to be an even bigger spendthrift than his father. Suffice to say that by the time of his death in his sixties, he'd reduced an estate worth about £38,000 to just £27. His widow couldn't even afford to give herself a proper funeral. His only child being a daughter, the Grevilles then disappeared and were forgotten- almost.

Anyway, the Hooter. Edward was Lodovic's second son, and became the heir after accidentally shooting his older brother in the head; at the time Lodovic joked that it was "the best shot he had ever made". And it was the ghost of the elder son who was supposed to emit the wails and screams in the coomb on Mickleton Hill known as the Mickleton Hooter, and which later seems to have been distorted by 20th century writers into a story about a booming cow, or a dog, or something.

In short the Grevilles were one of those families where you'd be very surprised if there wasn't a ghost story about them.
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Is this the same Greville family that Fulke belonged to?
 
gordonrutter said:
As someone on another forum once write about Peter Haining

"All the stories are true; Haining just changed the names of people and places, and the things that happened."
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We are on a short break in Boxford Suffolk, which is where Peter Haining spent his last years according to village history.
Walking the hounds this evening we found a bench dedicated to him between the two dugouts at Boxford Football Club.

“Up the Reds”

C2DB30AD-45D9-4050-A3B1-7CEF04A70589.jpeg
 
I found a number of Peter Haining books as a teenager and they really inspired my interest in the outré.

Whatever case or facet of the supernatural I became interested in, he seemed to have an introduction-level book on the subject.

Useful man.
 
The white and red dragons summoned by Lludd and Llefelys, and later released by King Vortigern, fighting in the sky over what is now Oxfordshire in the tales from the Mabinogion. Great stuff :)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-34859676

"..Of course, the red dragon is the creature most closely associated with Wales.
The tale of Lludd and Llefelys features two warring dragons - a reference to the legendary battle between the red and white - who are eventually gorged on mead and then imprisoned in Snowdonia.
"But you do not have a lot of other dragons in Welsh mythology," Dr Wood added, "which is quite interesting.".."
 
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