'A Big Thing' - The Red Path, Part 2

The following is a part of a second article by Richard Holland on his blog, Uncanny UK. On the same night that he spoke to the two ladies who met something strange on the Red Path, he also interviewed Malcolm Jones, another resident of Brymbo who encountered something just as strange many years previously.

"In the summer of 1971 Malcolm was walking home from visiting his girlfriend's house in the neighbouring village of Minera. The time was about 9 o'clock and it was twilight. As he walked up a lane which led into Brymbo, the silhouette of 'a big thing' emerged from the hedge on his right-hand side.

'At first I thought it might be a cow,' said Malcolm, 'but it wasn't. It was the wrong shape: too tall with long, thin legs. It had a similar silhouette to our lurcher dog when you see it running along the beach. But it was a bigger animal: not as big as a cow, perhaps, but certainly bigger than a dog. It had shaggy hair. It didn't make a sound, just stopped in the middle of the road and seemed to stare at me, although I couldn't see its eyes. Then it lost interest and carried on walking across the lane, where it disappeared into the vegetation on the other side.

'That's what made it so spooky. Apart from looking weird, it didn't behave like an ordinary animal. The way it looked at me, as if it was weighing me up. It wasn't fazed by a human presence and most animals are. I remember I just stood in the road for a fair while after it was gone, a little afraid to carry on walking. I'm not saying it was anything supernatural; I don't really believe in that sort of thing. But it was very strange. That's why I've never forgotten it. Just talking about it now, I can feel my hairs pricking up.'

In the daylight, Malcolm examined the scene and found no gates or openings in the hedges bordering the lane, nor are there any today. There is a steep bank on the side from which the animal emerged but Malcolm says that the way it walked into the road didn't suggest it had walked down a bank -- but as if it had walked straight out of the bank. The present author has examined this bank and it appears to be of industrial origin (Brymbo had an important steel works until recently), but it would be interesting if it did, in fact, turn out to have some antiquity, for the mysterious Black Dogs of British folklore are often reported as haunting prehistoric earthworks. Malcolm's 'beast' certainly resembled the Black Dogs, or Gwyllgi as they are known in Wales: it appeared at twilight haunting a lonely lane, it was the right size (they are commonly recorded as being 'the size of a calf') and it had shaggy hair (unlike the apparition seen in the village in the 1980s.)"

Holland goes on to say that there is not necessarily a connection between this spook and the creature seen in the village in the 1980s, and that in the 1920s, an archaeologist saw something on a bright, moonlit night in Pembrokeshire (the opposite corner of Wales from Brymbo) which bore a striking resemblance to both creatures: it was large and black, about the size of a St. Bernard dog, but with a head and forequarters more like that of a goat's or calf's, with short horns.

Source: www.uncannyuk.com/2008/05/04 copyright Richard Holland 2008

For something unrelated, here's a picture I took on my way home from work this evening. We are having very cool (not temperature, the other kind) weather....warm and windy with scary gray clouds and the slight smell of saltwater blowing in from the Bay. Ahh....the thin time of year when the days are getting shorter and things are dying and there is cold, bleak winter looming on the horizon! No wonder we think about monsters and spirits of the dead...so many reminders of ancient and primal fears. Today really does seem pretty "thin".....maybe there's more to this photo than meets the eye....