AlbionBlack
Legends
The myths, folklore, and dark traditions of these islands, gathered, examined, and set down.
Legend · East Anglia
Black Shuck
On the morning of 4 August 1577, a black dog was reported in two Suffolk churches during the same storm. People died. The scorch marks on the north door at Blythburgh are still there, though what made them has never been settled.
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Legend · Hampshire
The Tichborne Dole
A dying woman asked her husband for a field. He gave her as much land as she could crawl around by torchlight. She crawled twenty-three acres, and cursed his descendants if they ever let the dole lapse. They did. The curse came.
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Folklore · Lancashire
Jenny Greenteeth
In the ponds and rivers of Lancashire, something waits beneath the duckweed. She has green skin, long hair, and sharp teeth. She is very patient.
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Folklore · County Durham
The Cauld Lad of Hylton
At Hylton Castle, a ghost made mischief in the kitchens every night. The servants left him a gift to be rid of him. He was gone by morning, and something was lost with his leaving.
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Legend · County Durham
The Lambton Worm
A young heir throws something he should not have thrown into a well, and spends the rest of his life paying for it. The Lambton Worm is a story about what comes back.
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Folklore · The Borders
Redcaps
In the ruined towers of the Anglo-Scottish border country, something small and very old waits. It dyes its cap in the blood of travellers. If the cap dries out, it dies. It has not died.
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History · Devon
The Great Thunderstorm of Widecombe
On the afternoon of 21 October 1638, something entered the Church of St Pancras in Widecombe-in-the-Moor during Sunday service and killed four people. The survivors were in no doubt about what it was.
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History · Lancashire
The Pendle Witches
In 1612, twelve people were accused of witchcraft in Pendle, Lancashire. Ten were hanged. One died in prison before trial. The court record survives in unusual detail, and what it reveals is stranger than a simple miscarriage of justice.
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Myth · England
The Wild Hunt
Across the winter sky, a host of riders, hounds, and the restless dead tears through the darkness. The Hunt has been heard over Windsor, over Dartmoor, over the Pennines. It has never fully stopped.
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Folklore · Leicestershire
Black Annis
In the Dane Hills outside Leicester, a blue-faced hag once lived in a cave she had clawed from the sandstone with her own hands. Children were warned about her. Adults kept the warning alive long after they should have known better.
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Legend · London
Gog and Magog
Two giants stand in the Guildhall, as they have stood, in one form or another, for six hundred years. What they represent has never been entirely agreed upon.
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Myth · Cornwall
The Beast of Bodmin Moor
Something large and black has been moving across the granite uplands for decades. Farmers count their losses. The government has looked, and looked away.
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Legend · Yorkshire
The Barguest of Troller's Gill
A spectral black hound that heralds death, last seen at the limestone gorge above Appletreewick.
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