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Wodewose & The British Bigfoot

Barker Short Story

Its 'Rawhead Rex' I think, and I have a feeling it was made into a 'straight to video' film, possibly in Italy.

In the story, he's very much an ogre rather than a wildman.
 
Cheers, it was bugging me. The pub in the story was called the "Tall Man". Yeah he was a bit ogrey. It scared the bejaysus out of me. "Dont dig in yon field!" fiction at its very best.

I have a feeling it was made into a 'straight to video' film, possibly in Italy.
Click to expand...

Clive Barker? connected with a travesty of a film? How very unusual.
 
Does 'The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui' count as a bigfoot-type phenomena?
Or is it a natural weather-related oddity?
I've always thought that the Grampian Hills could hold our own strange remnant of pre-history....
It's certainly remote enough....:eek:
 
I think the grey man is suppost to be a woodwytch or something like that which was an old medieval legend that there were wild men that liked in forests etc. I suppose it could be categorized with big feet yetis etc cos it is an unknown type of hominid that’s roaming around.
The only thing I don’t get with the grey man is that all the sightings seem to talk about how they hear music and ghostly laughter before during or after seeing the grey man, this makes me think that they could have been on the booze: D
 
British Bigfoot

Okay, so historically we've got:

Man-monkey of Ranton, Staffordshire.

Big Grey Man (Am Fear Liath Mor/Ferla Mohr), of Ben Macdhui and surrounding areas.

Brenin Llwyd, or the Grey King, of Snowdon.

To name just three possible bigfoot-type things (open to discussion;)), off the top of my head.

Anyone know of any good sites/books for information on the above and any other great hairy brit-beasties?
:)
 
Bigfoot type creature sometimes reported in Cannock area, Staffordshire.
 
You forgot to mention the Woodwytch, the medieval legend of the wild man that supposidly lived in the woods that was hairy all over and had a big beard. Ive heard theorys sayingt hat this legend was created to discourage the then common practice of beastiality, there are also other half man half human hybrid creature legends that were also thought to be around for the same reason.
 
while we're on the topic of the woodwo(u)se, i read somewhere recently that one was captured early last century, carrying with him some kind of book written in an indecipherable language... would anyone happen to know what happened to said book; was it taken to a university and studied, found to reveal some mysterious and unknown culture in our midst, or was it just thrown away and lost?


________
chanubi
 
I'm sure you can provide me with some references for these tales.

Links, books, articles please. :)
 
Wild Men: On one hand these are the fur/leaf covered men that appear on medieval woodcuts; on the other they are the same men that leave normal society to go and live in the forest. In this case they are often described as mad (Gelt in Irish - although that might also imply that they are inspired). Also known as Wood Wose or wode wose; famous wild men include Suibhne Gelt, Lailoken, Sir Orfeo, Merlin and maybe even Robin Hood.

http://www.mythagic.btinternet.co.uk/glossary.htm

here is all i could find bout the wood wose, i mentioned it earlier as wood wytch i got mixed up. I meant to say wood wose. I have also seen ancient drawings of this creature on tv programs and it apeared to be a old man with a long beard and all over body hair with a birds nest as a hat, he also carried a long stick and a book.
 
Probably more a ghost thing than a monster thing, but the Hairy Hands of Dartmoor is a well known tale.

You can read about it (and other Dartmoor tales) on this webpage (about halfway down - unfortunately the subheadings are almost illegible!).

[Emp edit: Here is the Web cache version of the above for reasons difficult to explain it is white text on a white background so highlight the page to read it.]
 
There's a Big Hairy Man report from Derbyshire here.

[Emp edit: This is probably now this but you need to pay to view]

Next time any of my fellow Sheffield or Derbyshire types are driving through Strines, keep your eyes open for the 8-foot hairy man!
 
Thanks :)

Didn't I meet the Hairy Hands of Dartmoor in a pub once? Nope, that was my ex. :p
 
It's probably not connected, but at St Peter's Church at Holwell, in Hertfordshire, there is a brass to Robert Wodehouse, who was apparently a rector of the parish & who died in 1515.

The brass has an engraving of two "woodwoses" or wild men!!!!
 
Try Lincoln's Big Beasts site...he is geoff lincoln and very interest in British wildmen etc. Just type it in on Google and it should come up.
 
Does anyone think the British Wildmen legends could result in deformed kids fathered by related parents? ive heard that interbreeding amoungst certain species can result in DNA kickbacks, perhaps these legends stem from kids born with full body hair that where shunned by the people of their day. It is one possibility.
 
THere was a report in Colin and Janet Bord's book "Mysterious BRitain" that two london schoolgirls saw a bigfoot esque greature run through scrubland with it's tail betwen its legs.
 
As well as my report of the Derbyshire BHM (See Evil Sprout's Posting), I have others from Sherwood Forest/Clumber Park, Notts/Yorkshire boundaries.

There has been sightings from there for the last thirty years including the time when three people with double barrel shotguns went looking for it one night. They expected the publicity to be good.
 
Bipedal cryptid in Cumbria, sounds bigfoot like

Strange Sighting In Wood
A reader's letter to 'The Whitehaven News' - March 5th 1998

Sir - Following your story that you ran in The News on February 19th, 1998, I would like to recount the tale of a sighting made by myself some weeks ago. While walking my dog on the evening of Sunday, January 25th on the road out of Beckermet towards the A595, I passed Nursery Woods. The time was approximately 16.45. It was starting to get dark so my visibility was not that good, but as I walked past the woods I heard the snapping of branches.

Thinking it was a deer or another animal, I stopped to try and see what it was. Looking through the trees I noticed a large creature covered in a sort of ginger brown hair that seemed to be drinking from a pond about 150 metres into the woods. As the lighting was getting bad I was straining to make out what the animal was but as I stopped and stared it appeared to see me, at which point it reared up onto it's hind legs and made off slowly further into the woods. I would estimate it's height when upright to be approximately six feet and six inches and it's weight to be about 14 stone.

This was not a man as it was naked except for it's covering of hair. Also it was not a deer as it made off on it's hind legs.

After the sighting I rushed to my home in Beckermet and told my wife what I had witnessed. Let me assure you, this is not a hoax. I was going to report the incident to the police but my wife persuaded me not to for fear of ridicule. I have lived in Beckermet for seven years and walk past these woods almost every day and have never witnessed anything like it before of since.

Name and address withheld by agreement.


Source - 'The Whitehaven News' 5th March 1998
 
The Strines reservoir case is interesting; I've always felt it was a bit too quiet round there! There's also lots of National Trust/Yorkshire Water forest to hide in.
However: I do wonder about the 'reality' of the BHM in question; as is common in these cases, the area is well known for sightings of UFOs, ghosts and the like. Am I right in thinking that there are a few stone circles in the vicinity? I seem to remember visiting one round there some years ago.
 
Woses

woodwoses are a quite common thing in english folklore i think, and there are carvings of 'em all over various churches in england...
JRR tolkien puts them in the lord opf the rings (i think) as woses or wild men of the woods. it think that woodwose translates as man of the woods.
 
BHM's in the UK

I want to pick the libraries and brain's of the FT message boarders and see if anybody can recount sightings of bigfoot type creatures in the UK.

I already have two cases (derbyshire and notts) and seek more. I am also interested in the Wildman of the Woods type folklore.

I wait in interest...
 
Well, there's the case from the 1950s mentioned in Mothman Prophecies (you know the one, gold light in the sky, headless BHM appears etc). Is the Derbyshire one the incident near the reservoir which we discussed some time ago?

Then we have the creature that followed the Hexham heads and the Big Grey Man, but I guess you were looking for more corporeal examples. I'll see what I can find.

I myself have been responsible for a few of these reports, what with being 7 foot tall and 400 pounds (since the accident).
 
Thanks Evil Sprout.

So basically we have sightings in:

Derbyshire
Staffordshire
Notts
Snowdonia
Scotland.

Anymore anybody....?
 
Don't forget the Woodwose that has been sighted in Graves Park, Sheffield, both as a green mist and as a more solid entity.
 
in the early part of last century (hmm, why do i feel old saying that?), there were apparently around a dozen or so sightings from "various parts of England", unfortunately that source doesn't go into any further detail, although it does note the fact that one of these characters carried "a book containing unknown and unidentified writing", which seems not to have been followed up :(
Could one consider the Orford 'merman' to be a kind of woodwose?
 
IIRC, there was a case in Somerset in the 1970s where two boys claimed to have seen a 'bear' walking upright in the woods near where they lived. This is all I can remember off the top of my head.
 
JerryB said:
IIRC, there was a case in Somerset in the 1970s where two boys claimed to have seen a 'bear' walking upright in the woods near where they lived. This is all I can remember off the top of my head.
Click to expand...

Was that "The Beast of Brassknocker Hill?" - certainly rings a bell (same sort of thing, lots of local interest for about three weeks, then no more was heard).

I also remember accounts of a man-beast type thing terrorising a chap in a long barrow somewhere in the West Country last century - anyone fill in the yawning gaps for me?

Stu
 
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