Wednesday, May 7, 2008

The Wild-Man of the Beach

One of the strangest stories I ever heard - and that can be said to fall firmly into the realm of the British "Wild-Man" - came from a man named Morris Allen, who told me how, early one morning in 1968, he had been walking with his dog along the coast near the town of Orford (which also happened to be the site of another man-beast encounter centuries ago), when in the distance he saw someone squatting on the sand and leaning over something.

As he got closer, Allen said, he could see that the man was dressed in what appeared to be animal-skins, and was tearing into the flesh of a dead rabbit. The man was dirt-encrusted, with long, tangled hair and had wild, staring eyes.

Allen held his dog tightly, and could only watch with a mixture of fascination and horror. Suddenly the man held his head aloft and quickly looked in Allen's direction, as if he had picked up a scent.

The man quickly scooped up the remains of the rabbit, bounded off into the grass and was lost to sight. He was never seen again. We'll probably never know if this was some sort of true Wild-Man, or an eccentric soul who had taken to living in the woods of England's east-coast.

2 comments:

Kithra said...

Orford seems to be a very strange place. And it's also right next to the UK's very own purported UFO landing case in Rendlesham Forest. Actually, that whole area is full of weird events that have been going on for many years.

Nick Redfern said...

Kithra:

Yes, there's loads of weirdness all around there: big-cats, ghostly black dogs, the Shug Monkey, UFOs, and a lot of witchcraft, too!