The Last Wolf In England... Wasn't The Last Wolf In England!

[BIAD]

It is accepted by the system that the last wolf in England was slain in 1390 by a chap called
Humphrey Head in the Lake District area (Coniston) of these cold rainy isles.

However, when the sun goes down across the northern lands...

[F2d5thCav]

Yeah, ran across a juvenile wolf in a part of Germany the "authorities"   stated hadn't had wolves in a hundred years or more.

The way a natural predator moves is SO different from the movement of dogs.

Cheers

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Only supposed to be wolves in Michigan's UP, not down here in the mitt, but there have been sightings for 20 years now. With coydogs (coyote-wolf hybrid) here and a proven fact, I don't see why the Department of Natural Resources would lie and say there are no wolves in the lower peninsula now (yeah, sure). Also, they couldn't accept the mountain lion sightings until there was too much evidence to deny it, so they said no breeding populations (yeah, right). Black bears are a problem now, they don't deny that one at least.

Now to get them to admit there are big feet here and lake serpents like Nessie, may take a while.

[xuenchen]

[BIAD]

Just an 'Add-On' to the strange northern area not far from BIAD's shed!

Hexham In The News Again.

Since The Hexham Courant newspaper is mentioned in a previous thread from the archived site, I will use their article
regarding the needless vandalism of a well-known tree next to Hadrian's Wall. I took the liberty of adding the older
stories of Hexham's strange history below this modern piece from Rogue Nation's 'Myths Of Britain'.

Sycamore Gap vandalism: Suspect arrested by Northumbria Police
By Natalie Finnigan

'Officers investigating the vandalism of an iconic Northumberland tree have this afternoon made an arrest.
A full investigation has been launched after the Sycamore Gap Tree was felled overnight in what police believe
was a deliberate act of vandalism.


It's official, we can't have good things.

A range of enquiries are ongoing, with the support of partners, as officers look to ascertain the full circumstances
surrounding the damage and identify anyone involved. This afternoon (Thursday) officers arrested a 16-year-old
male in connection with the incident. He remains in police custody at this time and is assisting officers with their
enquiries.

Superintendent Kevin Waring, of Northumbria Police, said: “This is a world-renowned landmark and the events of
today have caused significant shock, sadness and anger throughout the local community and beyond.
“An investigation was immediately launched following this vandalism, and this afternoon we have arrested one
suspect in connection with our enquiries...'

Hexham Courant:


Long ago before the invention of Drag-Queen story-hour, the electric car and TikTok, there was a kingdom in the British
Isles that has expanded and decreased as politics by the sword and the written-word dictated its growth. Northumbria
(the people or province north of the Humber) has had many rulers during its time and now is a shadow of it former self.

Hexham is a small market town close to Hadrian's Wall in this diminished region and owns a history that has dripped
with the blood of feudal lords, raids from the Border-Reivers and a murder of their own king. Along with this violent past,
whispers of strange mysteries lurched across the wind-blown moors, riddles that are still pondered on today and in the
winter of 1904, one of these conundrums surfaced that could have echoes that reverberated over sixty years later.


Northumbria, Then & Now.

With the first World War still a decade away, the Hexham Courant newspaper reported in early December of 1904 that
a farmer from the nearby hamlet of Allendale had began to stable his sheep due finding torn-apart remains of his animals
in a nearby field. One of the sheep had been disemboweled and another had been totally eaten leaving only its skull to be
found. The terrified remainder of the ewes survived, although many had been bitten around the neck and legs.

                              Hexham on the map.                                                        Hexham Badge                   The Wolf of Allendale.

It was generally agreed that wolves had become extinct in England during the reign of Henry VII in 1509, but for the farmer
discovering his livestock on that cold winter's morning, those who had reached this conclusion didn't keep sheep here out
in the rurals.

Then the sightings of a wolf began to be whispered amongst the communities of Allendale and Hexham. After a large
prowling animal was reported to have been seen lurking around Allendale's Primary School, several hunting parties of
both villages took to finding the 'black and tan' sheep-killer, but found their pursuit fruitless. As the dark cold winter rolled
on and the fearful villagers lit lanterns in their windows, the Hexham Wolf Committee was founded in efforts to bring
wolf-trackers to find this spectral beast.

Even after the renowned Bloodhounds of Haydon were called in to find the spoor of the elusive animal and turned up nothing.
Tales were abound of sheep and folk being attacked on both sides of the River Tyne in the same night and a rumour that
'The Girt Dog' -a huge hyena-like creature was committing this foul-play.

As holly wreaths adorned the fire-hearths of the communities for Christmas and carols were sang in Hexham Abbey and
Allendale's St Cuthbert's church, eyes were still watching for the ghostly invader that left no tracks. Then two local men
travelling to work witnessed a dog-like animal leaping over a high wall as they approached and the following day, a wolf
was seen attacking a black-faced ewe in a field.

As the short December days raced towards January, the wolf was encountered again by a group of women and children.
However, the shouts and screams of the frightened party drove the daring outremer away and supported the notion that
the wolf was becoming more audacious in its actions.

Some thirty miles of Hexham, a dead body of a wolf was found on a railway track in Cumwinton, Cumbria. It was 1905
and the Hexham Courant newspaper quickly deflated the hopes of its readers by stating on the 7th January that the corpse
was not that of the Wolf of Allendale. Since the skinny cadaver didn't match any of the descriptions from witnesses, it was
suggested that there was perhaps an entire family of predators living in the receding surrounding woods and vigilance should
be maintained.

But by the end of January 1905 reports of the wolf began to wane and eventually the sightings and livestock killings ceased
altogether. The wolf had died or gone away and for the little thorps of Allendale and Hexham, that was good enough for them
and life could return back to normal.
.............................................................

1971. Hexham.

Eleven year-old Colin Robson was farting around in the front garden of his Hexham home in Rede Avenue with his brother
Leslie when he -or as others have sometimes written, the young boys discovered a strange stone about the size of a tangerine.
Casually cleaning the dirt from around a protuberance on the small rock, Colin found that it was a crudely-carved neck and
head of an effigy of some sort. To even the scales in alliance, the pair dug around until another head-like stone was located
and then both items were examined.

Colin Robson's appeared to be a young male face with slash marks on top of the head to perhaps signify hair. The other
resembled a hooked-nosed hag-like female and both heads had nodules protruding from the necks, perhaps eluding to
bodies they were once attached to. Fascination is fleeting in the young and so after showing their find to their parents,
they left the two pale -greenish stone heads on a window ledge and Leslie and older brother retired to their bedroom for
the night.

The next morning, the Robson family saw that the heads had moved on the window sill and now faced the location where
they'd been excavated. This odd activity would regularly occur and a foreshadow of what was about to happen next. A couple
of nights later, one of the sleeping boys felt his hair tugged at by an invisible hand, objects would be found broken and one
of the Robson sisters discovered shattered glass in their beds.

If one peered out of the window of No.3 Rede Avenue, one would see a glow in the area of the garden where the stone heads
were found and the television set constantly tried to reach a different frequency or channel even though nobody was trying to
change it.

The heads still moved when faced away from their burial place, their cold gaze was always found in the morning staring
back towards the garden. But the worst was yet to come, Colin and Leslie's mother would witness a frightful sight that
would relegate the poltergeist happenings to commonplace. In the middle the night, Mrs Robson saw a shambling thing
she described as a half-man, half-goat creature in her house... a comical characterization, to say the least! Staring at the
abomination, the terrified woman watched the bestial presence stumble to the front door and leave the semi-detached
(duplex) end-street home.

The neighbours who shared the building were not exempt from these weird happenings, the Dodds family -namely Mr Isaac
Dodd, Mrs Ellen “Nelly” Dodd and her sons and daughters, Brian, Carol, Marie, and Trevor also endured strange goings-on.
One night, Mrs Dodd was comforting her daughter -Marie, during an ear-infection and after hearing someone enter the girl's
bedroom, happened to look up and see a chimera of a creature standing before the horrified pair. The 'thing' touched Nelly
Dodd and as she screamed, it scampered away on all fours. The distraught mother described the invader as 'half-person,
half-sheep'!


(Left-to-Right) No. 3 Rede Avenue, a diagram of the Hexham Heads and Colin & Leslie Robson posing with a later-made head.

The traumatised Dodds assured the Hexham Town Council that they couldn’t live in that house anymore and were rehoused
not long after. Around this time, the enduring Robsons, realising a power beyond their understanding was sharing the corner
house in Rede Avenue, gave the troublesome stone heads to a Guide of Hexham Abbey called Betty Gibson for safekeeping.

The national newspapers turned up late, but still managed to sensationalize the 'Evil Heads of Northumbria' and enticed
Colin and Leslie to pose for their cameras with copies of their discovery. But the strange malefactors that had terrorised a
quite street in Hexham were gone and with them, a Werewolf-like apparition from their worst nightmares.
.............................................................

The horror-show that newspapers portrayed -but didn't appreciate, was over and after a short time, Mrs Gibson of  Hexham
Abbey had handed the stone heads to Richard Bailey, a Professor who worked at the Museum of Antiquities at Newcastle
University. However, it was the media that attached the legend of The Wolf of Allendale to the modern visitation of the
Were-goat/sheep/wolf of Rede Avenue and with this vague connection, came the idea that the heads were Celtic in origin.

A collector of such ancient objects named Dr Anne Ross eventually took possession of the Hexham heads for analysis at
her home in Southampton and not aware of this supposed kinship between the Wolf of Allendale and the Robson finds
over three hundred miles away, had no idea what was to occur at her Rose Road home on the south coast of England.

A few nights after obtaining the heads from Newcastle's Museum of Antiquities, the woes that the Robsons and Dodds
experienced began to manifest in Dr Ross' home in the form of the strange creature that seemed to enjoy appearing in
bedroom doorways. In Dr Ross' own words:

“It was about six feet high, slightly stooping, and it was black, against the white door, and it was half animal and half man.
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 towards the back of the house.”


Dr Ross & The familiar shape seen.

Being one of a pragmatic and scientific outlook, Dr Ross accepted that she may have dreamt the whole weird incident.
But when arriving home one day with her husband -Richard Feacham, they found their teenage daughter Berenice in a
distressed state.

Berenice explained that she had used her key to unlock the front door and entered the house that afternoon to witness
'a large, black shape rushing down the stairs; halfway downstairs the creature vaulted the bannister, landing with a soft,
heavy thud like a large animal with padded feet.'

Through further research, Dr Ross came to realise that the presence of the stone heads could be responsible for these
events and passed on her whole collection to other collectors. Eventually, the Hexham Heads found their way to the British
Museum, although were soon removed from public display and mothballed amid reports of unsettling events associated
with the small relics.
.............................................................

Where the Hexham heads currently reside, nobody knows for sure. But the rumours are abound with where they came
from and where they are today. Des Craigie, a local truck driver in Hexham claimed he made the heads in the 1950's for
his daughter -Nancy, to play with and ergo, not of ancient Celtic origin.

Yet, Frank Hodson, Professor of Geology and Dean of the Faculty of Science at Southampton University dated the stone
heads as ancient. But to counter the claim, Douglas Robson (no relation) a Senior Lecturer in Geology at Newcastle University
dated the Hexham heads as modern cement by taking a sample.

The debate on where the stone heads are at this time still rolls on, Some say that up until 1978, a mysterious London-based
individual called Frank Hyde purportedly became the last custodian of the Hexham Heads after accepting them from a
Materials chemist called Don Robins. Mr Hyde is no longer with us and trail seems to have gone cold...

...But somewhere out there, two small stone heads are watching and waiting to see the light again and with them, that shambling escort we can call 'The Other'.