Post by theshee on Mar 28, 2010 8:15:27 GMT 10
On December 10, 1904, a startling story appeared in the pages of the English newspaper, the Hexham Courant. Under the heading of Wolf at Large in Allendale, it read:
“Local farmers from the village of Allendale, very near to Hexham, had reported the loss of their livestock, so serious that many sheep were being stabled at night to protect them. A shepherd found two of his flock slaughtered, one with its entrails hanging out, and all that remained of the other was its head and horns. Many of the sheep had been bitten about the neck and the legs – common with an attack made by a wolf.”
The newspaper article continued:
“Hysteria soon set in. During the night, lanterns were kept burning to scare away the wolf, and women and children were ordered to keep to the busy roads and be home before dusk. The ‘Hexham Wolf Committee’ was soon set up to organize search parties and hunts to bring down the beast using specialized hunting dogs, the ‘Haydon Hounds’, but even they could not find the wolf. The Wolf Committee took the next step and hired Mr. W. Briddick, a trained tracker. But he was also unsuccessful, despite searching the woods.”
On January 7, 1905, however, there was a major development: the Hexham Courant reported that the body of a wolf had been found dead on a railway track at Cumwinton, Cumbria – which was approximately thirty miles from where the majority of the attacks had been occurring.
However, it was the newspaper’s firm opinion that this was not the same creature, but yet another one.
In other words, the mystery beast of Hexham was still out there.
Indeed, according to some theorists, there was a whole pack of such animals wildly roaming the countryside of northern England by night. And although the searches for the animal, or animals, continued for some time, they were finally brought to a halt when the attacks abruptly stopped. Hexham’s mysterious and wolfish visitor had gone.
In 1972, however, it may well have returned – albeit in a slightly different guise.
And as evidence of this, we have to turn our attention to the bizarre story of the Hexham Heads.
The strange saga all began in February 1972. An eleven-year-old boy and his younger brother, whose family name was Robson, were digging up weeds in their parents’ back yard in the town of Hexham, when they unearthed two carved, stone heads, slightly smaller than a tennis ball and very heavy in weight.
Crudely fashioned and weathered-looking, one resembled a skull-like masculine head crowned by a Celtic hairstyle; while the other was a slightly smaller female head that possessed what were said to be witch-like qualities, including the classic beaked nose.
Shortly after the boys had taken the heads into their house, a number of peculiar incidents occurred in the family home. The heads would move by themselves. Household objects were found inexplicably broken.
And at one point the boys’ sister found her bed showered with glass. However, it was the next-door neighbors who would experience the most bizarre phenomena of all.
A few nights after the discovery of the heads, a mother living in the neighboring house, Ellen Dodd, was sitting up late with her daughter, who was suffering with toothache, when both saw what they described as a hellish, “half-man, half-beast” enter the room.
Naturally, both screamed for their lives and the woman’s husband came running from another room to see what all the commotion was about.
By this stage, however, the hairy creature had fled the room and could be heard “padding down the stairs as if on its hind legs.”
The front door was later found wide open and it was presumed that the creature had left the house in haste.
Soon after the incident, one Anne Ross – a doctor who had studied the Celtic culture and who was the author of several books on the subject, including Pagan Celtic Britain and The Folklore of the Scottish Highlands – took possession of the stone heads to study them herself.
She already had in her possession several similar heads and was certain that the Hexham Heads were Celtic in origin and probably nearly two thousand years old.
The doctor, who lived in the English city of Southampton and about 150 miles from Hexham, had heard nothing at that time of the strange goings-on encountered by the previous owners of the heads.
Having put the two stone heads with the rest of her collection, however, Dr. Ross, too, encountered the mysterious werewolf-like creature a few nights later.
She awoke from her sleep feeling cold and frightened and, on looking up found herself confronted by a horrific man-beast identical to that seen at Hexham.
“It was about six feet high,” Dr. Ross recalled, “slightly stooping, and it was black, against the white door, and it was half animal and half man.”
She continued: “The upper part, I would have said, was a wolf, and the lower part was human and, I would have again said, that it was covered with a kind of black, very dark fur.
“It went out and I just saw it clearly, and then it disappeared, and something made me run after it, a thing I wouldn’t normally have done, but I felt compelled to run after it.
“I got out of bed and I ran, and I could hear it going down the stairs; then it disappeared toward the back of the house.”
In the wake of this startling and terrifying event, the doctor and her family saw the huge creature materialize within the confines of the house on several occasions.
It invariably appeared on the stairs, said the doctor, and then jumped over the banisters to land in the hall, whereupon it always exited at high speed on what sounded like padded feet.
At other times, the beast was heard moving around, yet it remained unseen, while doors flew open, seemingly for no reason at all.
On another occasion, Dr. Ross and her husband, the archaeologist, and author of the books A Guide to Prehistoric Scotland and From Windmill Hill to Hadrian’s Wall, Richard Feachem returned home one evening after a visit to London to find their daughter in a state of considerable distress after she too encountered the mysterious animal.
According to Dr. Ross, there was “an evil presence about the house,” and she eventually decided that the stone heads were the direct source of the problem and promptly got rid of the entire collection.
At some point afterwards, the heads are known to have been briefly displayed at the British Museum; but were reportedly withdrawn amid whispered rumors of “eerie events” allegedly having occurred in their presence.
The Hexham Heads also reached the hands of Don Robins – author of Circles of Silence, and a player in British author Paul Devereux’s Dragon Project; the purpose of which was to study claims that certain British prehistoric sites, such as ancient stone circles, had unusual forces or energies attached to them, including magnetic, infrared and ultrasonic anomalies.
Don Robins subsequently provided the Hexham Heads to a dowser named Frank Hyde, who tried to determine if they possessed paranormal qualities, and who created a copper mesh coating for the heads in an effort to lessen their strange and seemingly paranormal effects – something that was reportedly successful.
The two Hexham Heads then fell into the hands of other collectors, none of whom experienced any werewolf-like encounters in the dead of night. Some, however, did report that the sense of pure evil, which seemed to specifically emit from the witchlike head, made them feel extremely uncomfortable.
Interestingly, the previous owner of the house in Hexham, where the heads were discovered, claimed later that he had, in fact, carved the heads as toys for his children in the 1950s and that they had been lost in the yard years before.
Yet, this claim is disputed by many that have delved into the puzzle and studied the heads for themselves.
And although tests were undertaken at both Southampton University and Newcastle University to try and confirm the real ages of the heads, the results of those tests remain tantalizingly unknown, and they were eventually and somewhat mysteriously lost.
The current whereabouts of the Hexham Heads remains unknown.
www.mania.com/hexham-horrors-part-2_article_112854.html
“Local farmers from the village of Allendale, very near to Hexham, had reported the loss of their livestock, so serious that many sheep were being stabled at night to protect them. A shepherd found two of his flock slaughtered, one with its entrails hanging out, and all that remained of the other was its head and horns. Many of the sheep had been bitten about the neck and the legs – common with an attack made by a wolf.”
The newspaper article continued:
“Hysteria soon set in. During the night, lanterns were kept burning to scare away the wolf, and women and children were ordered to keep to the busy roads and be home before dusk. The ‘Hexham Wolf Committee’ was soon set up to organize search parties and hunts to bring down the beast using specialized hunting dogs, the ‘Haydon Hounds’, but even they could not find the wolf. The Wolf Committee took the next step and hired Mr. W. Briddick, a trained tracker. But he was also unsuccessful, despite searching the woods.”
On January 7, 1905, however, there was a major development: the Hexham Courant reported that the body of a wolf had been found dead on a railway track at Cumwinton, Cumbria – which was approximately thirty miles from where the majority of the attacks had been occurring.
However, it was the newspaper’s firm opinion that this was not the same creature, but yet another one.
In other words, the mystery beast of Hexham was still out there.
Indeed, according to some theorists, there was a whole pack of such animals wildly roaming the countryside of northern England by night. And although the searches for the animal, or animals, continued for some time, they were finally brought to a halt when the attacks abruptly stopped. Hexham’s mysterious and wolfish visitor had gone.
In 1972, however, it may well have returned – albeit in a slightly different guise.
And as evidence of this, we have to turn our attention to the bizarre story of the Hexham Heads.
The strange saga all began in February 1972. An eleven-year-old boy and his younger brother, whose family name was Robson, were digging up weeds in their parents’ back yard in the town of Hexham, when they unearthed two carved, stone heads, slightly smaller than a tennis ball and very heavy in weight.
Crudely fashioned and weathered-looking, one resembled a skull-like masculine head crowned by a Celtic hairstyle; while the other was a slightly smaller female head that possessed what were said to be witch-like qualities, including the classic beaked nose.
Shortly after the boys had taken the heads into their house, a number of peculiar incidents occurred in the family home. The heads would move by themselves. Household objects were found inexplicably broken.
And at one point the boys’ sister found her bed showered with glass. However, it was the next-door neighbors who would experience the most bizarre phenomena of all.
A few nights after the discovery of the heads, a mother living in the neighboring house, Ellen Dodd, was sitting up late with her daughter, who was suffering with toothache, when both saw what they described as a hellish, “half-man, half-beast” enter the room.
Naturally, both screamed for their lives and the woman’s husband came running from another room to see what all the commotion was about.
By this stage, however, the hairy creature had fled the room and could be heard “padding down the stairs as if on its hind legs.”
The front door was later found wide open and it was presumed that the creature had left the house in haste.
Soon after the incident, one Anne Ross – a doctor who had studied the Celtic culture and who was the author of several books on the subject, including Pagan Celtic Britain and The Folklore of the Scottish Highlands – took possession of the stone heads to study them herself.
She already had in her possession several similar heads and was certain that the Hexham Heads were Celtic in origin and probably nearly two thousand years old.
The doctor, who lived in the English city of Southampton and about 150 miles from Hexham, had heard nothing at that time of the strange goings-on encountered by the previous owners of the heads.
Having put the two stone heads with the rest of her collection, however, Dr. Ross, too, encountered the mysterious werewolf-like creature a few nights later.
She awoke from her sleep feeling cold and frightened and, on looking up found herself confronted by a horrific man-beast identical to that seen at Hexham.
“It was about six feet high,” Dr. Ross recalled, “slightly stooping, and it was black, against the white door, and it was half animal and half man.”
She continued: “The upper part, I would have said, was a wolf, and the lower part was human and, I would have again said, that it was covered with a kind of black, very dark fur.
“It went out and I just saw it clearly, and then it disappeared, and something made me run after it, a thing I wouldn’t normally have done, but I felt compelled to run after it.
“I got out of bed and I ran, and I could hear it going down the stairs; then it disappeared toward the back of the house.”
In the wake of this startling and terrifying event, the doctor and her family saw the huge creature materialize within the confines of the house on several occasions.
It invariably appeared on the stairs, said the doctor, and then jumped over the banisters to land in the hall, whereupon it always exited at high speed on what sounded like padded feet.
At other times, the beast was heard moving around, yet it remained unseen, while doors flew open, seemingly for no reason at all.
On another occasion, Dr. Ross and her husband, the archaeologist, and author of the books A Guide to Prehistoric Scotland and From Windmill Hill to Hadrian’s Wall, Richard Feachem returned home one evening after a visit to London to find their daughter in a state of considerable distress after she too encountered the mysterious animal.
According to Dr. Ross, there was “an evil presence about the house,” and she eventually decided that the stone heads were the direct source of the problem and promptly got rid of the entire collection.
At some point afterwards, the heads are known to have been briefly displayed at the British Museum; but were reportedly withdrawn amid whispered rumors of “eerie events” allegedly having occurred in their presence.
The Hexham Heads also reached the hands of Don Robins – author of Circles of Silence, and a player in British author Paul Devereux’s Dragon Project; the purpose of which was to study claims that certain British prehistoric sites, such as ancient stone circles, had unusual forces or energies attached to them, including magnetic, infrared and ultrasonic anomalies.
Don Robins subsequently provided the Hexham Heads to a dowser named Frank Hyde, who tried to determine if they possessed paranormal qualities, and who created a copper mesh coating for the heads in an effort to lessen their strange and seemingly paranormal effects – something that was reportedly successful.
The two Hexham Heads then fell into the hands of other collectors, none of whom experienced any werewolf-like encounters in the dead of night. Some, however, did report that the sense of pure evil, which seemed to specifically emit from the witchlike head, made them feel extremely uncomfortable.
Interestingly, the previous owner of the house in Hexham, where the heads were discovered, claimed later that he had, in fact, carved the heads as toys for his children in the 1950s and that they had been lost in the yard years before.
Yet, this claim is disputed by many that have delved into the puzzle and studied the heads for themselves.
And although tests were undertaken at both Southampton University and Newcastle University to try and confirm the real ages of the heads, the results of those tests remain tantalizingly unknown, and they were eventually and somewhat mysteriously lost.
The current whereabouts of the Hexham Heads remains unknown.
www.mania.com/hexham-horrors-part-2_article_112854.html