A British Man-Beast

Over at the main Centre for Fortean Zoology blog, Neil Arnold has a new post titled Black Dogs and Hairy Men - the latter part of which focuses on a British Bigfoot-style report from Neil's home-county of Kent.

Here's what Neil has to say:"Wouldham is a small village in Kent which sits right next to Blue Bell Hill, which for me remains the countries weirdest village.

"In my book I noted several bizarre tales concerning witnesses who’d seen red-eyed man-beasts and very recently a lady, who now resides in Norfolk, contacted me to say that when she was a child growing up in the ‘60s at Wouldham, her grandmother used to tell her intriguing tales.

"One of these was said to date back to the 1920s and her grandmother, who passed away, made notes of this. The lady said that her grandmother used to tell her about the ‘hairy man’ of Wouldham. A humanoid often seen in local woods by children, and certainly adults were made aware of this being.

"It was completely covered in hair and the story had become embedded in her psyche and was triggered again when she purchased my MYSTERY ANIMALS OF THE BRITISH ISLES: KENT and saw, at the front, an image of a hairy humanoid standing at Blue Bell Hill’s Kit’s Coty House, an ancient structure on the landscape.

"It’s clear to me that we aren’t dealing with tales of escaped monkey’s, but indeed something very much embedded in the fabric of the place, as some kind of folkloric creature which has existed for possibly centuries. It seems as well that the more I write about the creature, the more it stirs up. Around 1997/’98 there was a report in the local newspaper of a gorilla-type creature seen at Blue Bell Hill, and I recall scoffing at the report and believed it was simply down to media drama.

"Now, it seems that there is, and always has been, a strange humanoid prowling the dark lanes and thickets of a place that I’ve been obsessed with since I was a kid and my dad used to take me there and terrify me with tales of the phantom hitchhiker..."