Werewolf

Our Spirits
are in
another
Dimension

Spirits
from the passed
life

Paranormal
Research

THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE SHADOWY WEREWOLF

Dr Anne Ross is an eminent Celtic scholar, archaeologist and author of many erudite works on ancient legends and folklore. It was while doing research for a museum that she had what she terms "the most horrendous and disturbing experience of my whole life".

Today some 25 years after the awful events, which touched the lives of her whole family, Dr Ross remains loath to recount her story. However, she did agree to give a single, gripping first person account.

In 1971, Dr Ross was asked to examine two ancient carved stone heads which had been unearthed in Northumberland, near Hadrian's Wall. What happens next she describes in her own words: "Although there was nothing unpleasant about the appearance of the heads, I took an immediate, instinctive dislike to them. I planned to have them geologically analysed, and then return them as soon as possible to the North.

"A night or two after they arrived I woke up suddenly at about 12 am, deeply frightened and terribly cold. There was a dreadful atmosphere of icy cold all around me.

"I looked towards the door and in the corridor light glimpsed a tall figure slipping out of the room. It was about 6 feet high stooping and black against the white door. My impression was that the figure was dark, like a shadow, and that it was part animal and part man; the upper part, I would have said, was a wolf and the lower part human. I would have said it was covered in very dark fur.

"Although I was panic stricken, I felt compelled, as if by some irresistible force, to follow it. I heard it, whatever it was, going downstairs, and then I saw it again, moving along the corridor that leads to the kitchen; but I was too terrified to go on. I went back upstairs to the bedroom and woke Dick, my husband. He searched the house, but found nothing. We thought I'd had a nightmare.

"A few days later, my teenage daughter Bernice came home from school before Dick and I arrived from London. When we arrived home, she was deathly pale and clearly in a state of shock. She said that something horrible had happened, but at first would not tell us what. Eventually, though, the story came out.

"When she had come in from school, the first thing she had seen was something huge, dark and inhuman on the stairs. It had rushed down towards her, vaulted over the banisters and landed in the corridor with a soft thud as though its feet were padded like those of an animal. "It disappeared into the music room, and she had felt that that she had to follow it. At the door, it had vanished. Suddenly she realised she was terrified, and this was the state in which we found her.

"Feeling puzzled and disturbed, searched the house. Again, there was no sign of any intruder. More than once since then I have heard the same soft thud of an animal's pads near the staircase. Several times my study door has burst open for no obvious reason. And on one other occasion, when Bernice and I were coming down stairs together, we both thought we saw a dark figure ahead of us - and we heard it land in the corridor after vaulting over the banisters.

"Later, I learned that on the night the heads had been discovered, the woman who lived next door to the garden where they had been unearthed was putting her child to bed when a horrifying creature - she described it as half-man and half-animal came into the room. "The strange thing is, the heads have gone now, back to the museum. But this thing doesn't seem to have gone with them."

Examination of the heads showed they were carved from local Northumbrian stone, probably about 1,800 years ago. They had possibly come from a military shrine or temple of the Celtic legionaries who made up a large part of the garrison on Hadrian's Wall.
Celts were head hunters who believed that severed heads could convey fertility and ward off evil spirits. Similar powers were vested in the stone heads. Once, those sent to Dr Ross may have guarded over a god who has long departed. Or has he?