| SHUCKLAND Introduction Alphabetical List of Locations | |
| Location: | Wicken area, CAMBRIDGESHIRE |
| Legend: | Speaking of Spinney Bank, running between Wicken Fen and the Spinney marshes: "' That owd Black Dog run there o' nights, master', said Jake Barton..." (1) "'He run along that bank o' nights, big as a calf, Master Wentworth, [said a man named Fred] black as night, wi' eyes that glower at you like bike lamps! Do he see you you'll up and die. There ain't a man living what can see that owd Dog and live. Do he does, he'll goo scatty'." (2) "His lair is supposed to be in the Devil's Ditch...The penalty of meeting the Hound is that you will die within a year or go mad in a month or two." (3) "From here [Upware, in Wicken parish] southwards and particularly around Devil's Ditch, is the haunt of the Black Shuck." (4) |
| Source: | (1) James Wentworth Day: 'Here Are Ghosts & Witches' (Batsford, 1954), p. 21. (2) Ibid, p. 24-5. (3) John Harries: 'The Ghost Hunter's Road Book' (Muller, revised edition 1974), p. 69. (4) A. D. Hippisley Coxe: 'Haunted Britain' (Pan, 1975), p. 112 (originally Hutchinson & Co, 1973.) |
| Comments: | Spinney Bank once divided Wicken Fen from the former fens of Spinney Abbey. The Devil's Ditch is a probable early Saxon defensive earthwork. |
| Place Name: | Wicken - OE 'dairy farms' |
| Other: | See encounters below, and also Upware. |
| Location: | Wicken |
| Encounter: | Only a few years before a man named Fred told this story to the author J. W. Day, his sister was on her way to a "moonlight tryst" with her young man "by the black draining mill." She saw the 'Black Dog' coming along the Spinney Bank, "quiet as death" and "big as a calf." It was padding along with its head down, and its "gret old ears flappin'", then when it was no more than twenty yards away, it raised its head and glared at her, with "eyes red as blood."
The girl let out a shriek, ran like the wind along the bank, fainting dead away when she ran straight onto the arms of her young man (who saw nothing.) Although she didn't die, she was "laid up" for a week, and didn't stop talking about the Dog for ages afterwards. |
| Source: | James Wentworth Day: 'Here are Ghosts & Witches' (Batsford, 1954), p.25. |
| Location: | Wicken |
| Encounter: | "'Yew recollect what happened to one young woman. She up and died arter that owd Dog runned her!"'" |
| Source: | James Wentworth Day: 'Here are Ghosts & Witches' (Batsford, 1954), p. 21. |
| Comments: | This also occurred on Spinney Bank, possibly in the 1940s. |