Sunday, February 17, 2013

There's Something at the Bridge...


There's a new Lair of the Beasts column from me at Mania.com. The subject: a case that has long fascinated me. Namely, that of the so-called Man-Monkey of England.

The post begins...

"In her 1883 book, Shropshire Folklore, Charlotte Sophia Burne detailed a deeply curious tale of a bizarre, ghost-like ape encountered near woods surrounding an old stretch of English canal:

"'A very weird story of an encounter with an animal ghost arose of late years within my knowledge. On the 21st of January 1879, a laboring man was employed to take a cart of luggage from Ranton in Staffordshire to Woodcock, beyond Newport in Shropshire, for the ease of a party of visitors who were going from one house to another.

"'He was late in coming back; his horse was tired, and could only crawl along at a foot’s pace, so that it was ten o’clock at night when he arrived at the place where the highroad crosses the Birmingham and Liverpool canal."

"Suddenly, said Burne a fast-moving animal leaped out of the shadowy trees and propelled itself aboard the cart, sending the horse into a state of frenzy."

What happened next?  This is what happened next...

PS: Yep, that's the bridge above where all the weirdness went down. And still does!

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