DARK DOINGS IN BRAUNTON

My appeal for volunteers during the keynote speech at this year's Weird Weekend was answered by an enthusiastic young couple Tim and Graidi Taylor-Rose. Every other sunday they wind their way to Woolsery and do CFZstuff that has been long overdue to be done. This includes going through nearly a century's worth of the Transactions of the Devonshire Association which are on loan to the CFZ from our old pal Lionel Beer...

Transactions of the Devonshire Association 1953

Folklore 50th report.
Theo Brown
P220 BLACK MAGIC



Miss M. E. Abbott of Westward Ho! has sent these instances of ‘left-handed ’ magic:



Braunton. Perhaps three years ago. Told by an old inhabitant. A man had a grudge against another. He went to his enemy’s cottage. While he was talking to him, a young cockerel appeared in front of him, walking down the path. He only looked at it. The cock fluttered and fell dead.

A woman made a wax image of someone she did not like, stuck it full of pins, put it in the old fashioned chimney piece. The person it represented was seized with violent pains, and I think (am not sure) died as the image melted away.

To these may be added this remarkable case recorded by the Rev. H. Fulford Williams, M.A., B.D:

In 1896, a man at Sourton was committed to trial by the local magistrate for sheep stealing. His wife cursed the court, and told the magistrate " You black-nosed old devil. You’ll be dead in a week; and further, no one connected with the case shall die in their beds or live ten years."

Within a week one magistrate dropped dead talking to his bailiff in his own field, and was left to lie until the doctor came from Okehampton, who persuaded - with the local
constable’s help - three labourers to carry the body up to the manor.

The other magistrate committed suicide. The farmer who had prosecuted knocked over a lamp after market day and was burnt to death, and the clerk to the magistrates
dropped from his cycle outside Okehampton.

Note: Since reading this Report at Plymouth, I have received much information from relatives of the victims of this case and will quote this in a future Report.

EVIL CURSING IN BUCKS CROSS

My appeal for volunteers during the keynote speech at this year's Weird Weekend was answered by an enthusiastic young couple Tim and Graidi Taylor-Rose. Every other sunday they wind their way to Woolsery and do CFZstuff that has been long overdue to be done. This includes going through nearly a century's worth of the Transactions of the Devonshire Association which are on loan to the CFZ from our old pal Lionel Beer...

Transactions of the Devonshire Association 1953

Folklore 50th report.
Theo Brown
P220 BLACK MAGIC

Miss M. E. Abbott of Westward Ho! has sent these instances of ‘left-handed ’ magic:

Bucks Mills. Told me some years ago by a person who had lived for 15 years in Bucks Mills and it had happened in her lifetime. A woman - people were afraid of her had a strange power. If anyone annoyed her she went out on the cliff with a horn in her hand. When the person she had a grudge against appeared she blew her horn at him or her. Disaster always followed. Once a man who had the horn blown at him, woke up the next morning with a strange and obscure skin disease, rarely known in this country. The Specialist who, I think, cured it finally, was very puzzled.

These images of bygone Bucks Mills, by the way, have nothing much to do with the story but come courtesy of my adopted sister Kaye Braund-Phillips..

SORRY TO BE A LITTLE MISLEADING BUT...

We only actually started this blog a few weeks ago, and until this morning there was nothing on it. But, there are about thirty posts here, going back to early 2009. So there are dear reader, so there are, but until this motning they weren't here.

"But how can such a thing be?" I hear you ask, (the more superstitious of you clutching at talismans and muttering prayers beneath your breath, whilst wondering whether such chicanery is proof of dark forces at work). The answer, however, is simple.

We have been running a highly succesful CFZ Blog Network for some years, and when we decided to start this new addition to it, it seemed to make sense to copy sopme of the earlier entries from the main CFZ Blog which were partly or wholly about High Strangeness in North Devon. So we did, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that more will follow soon.....

HAUNTED SKIES: Triangular UFO over Woolsery

http://hauntedskies.blogspot.com/2011/04/triangular-ufo-over-woolsery-2010-still.html

LEOPARD HAIR UPDATE

On the 17th August I was happy to announce that Danish Zoologist Lars Thomas had examined hair samples found in Huddisford Woods near Woolsery, and pronounced them to be leopard. I offered the hairs (which were found by Lars, Jon McGowan and a team known as the Four-Teans) to any research group or academic institution who wanted to try and verify Lars's findings. The first person to contact me was Dr Ross Barnett from Durham University who has done DNA analysis on them, and has confirmed that they are Pantherine, probably leopard. He is carrying out further tests to establish the species and subspecies for certain and a full announcement will be made then.

OLL LEWIS: The Duerdon Tracks

If you were at Weird Weekend this year, or have read this blog in the past few days or even had much contact with anyone who attended the conference you’ll have heard about the leopard hairs that were identified by Lars. These were not the only evidence of leopards presented at the conference. You might recall that last January Graham and I were called to Duerdon Farm just outside Woolsery where the farmer had found a row of unusual tracks. As the light was fading when we got there the best we could do was take some photographs of the tracks and perform a preliminary examination of the tracks to see if they were potentially anything interesting. They were and we returned the next morning with the cameras once more and this time equipment for making plaster casts.

Before I set off however there was one problem to solve. The tracks may well be frozen in the snow but if I was to use room temperature water to make plaster casts of the tracks they would melt. In order to overcome this I used several large water bottles half filled with ice and snow from our water butts and toped up the remainder of the bottle with cold almost frozen water from deeper in the butts. This worked a treat and meant that the plaster would not melt the prints so I could take extremely accurate and detailed casts.

As well as taking the casts I decided to follow the tracks to see where they led and check any possible places where hair might have come off the animal, while Graham took photographs of the tracks and our casts in situ. Sadly, I was unable to find any hair but I was able to follow the tracks over three fields before they became lost among a well trampled field of sheep. All around the tracks was undisturbed virgin snow save for the occasional bird tracks, a single fox track and the tracks made by the wheals of the tractor when the farmer who had discovered the tracks had come off the road for a closer look.

Upon examination of the prints, tracks and subsequent casts in the daylight I can say with certainty that they were definitely made by a big cat of some sort. There were no claws on any of the prints, the shape of the pad and toes is feline, you cannot draw the typical X shape you can between the toes and pad you can with canines, the foot prints themselves were arranged in groups rather than being equally spaced and there were several prints where the animal’s hind paw had stepped in the same position as the front paw had. All these things are diagnostic of cat prints and all were present.

The fore paws of the animal measured 8 by 9 cm and the hind paws measured 5 by 6 cm and the stride length was 71 cm. These measurements are within the range that you would expect to see from a leopard.

NEIL ARNOLD: The Beast of Bideford!

Quite often local stories containing the word ‘beast’ in the headline are explained by domestic animals or on occasion, the local ‘big cat’. However, a good friend of mine, a Mr Vic Harris, who lives near Bristol, and who I consider to be a very sane person, had a peculiar sighting of a creature I hope the readers of this blog may be able to identify. His report reads as follows:

'Somewhere on the A39 between Bideford and Bucks Cross, 20/08/08 - 5pm
I don't really like driving, so on holiday I let my wife do all the driving and I get to look around and see if I can spot any interesting animals !!!

We were going pretty slow due to traffic, probably only 10 miles an hour , I was scanning the fields to my left , the field we were level with was empty and quite small only a few hundred yards wide. In the middle of the field was what appeared to be a furry red hump, as I drew level with it I got a pretty good look at it. It was definitely unlike anything I had ever seen roaming about our countryside before.

Overall length - tip of tail to tip of nose 6 to 7 feet

Height - 2 to 3 feet at the top of the hump.

Huge bushy tail.

Long thin face.

Colour was red, but not like a fox more like maroon, like the cushion below, but it also had some rusty brown around the shoulders and head.

The fur was short and course.

The creature seemed to be digging with really thick front legs.

My kids saw it as well and got quite excited as it looked so strange! I know the above description sounds pretty crazy but as you know I've spent a lot of time in the countryside and spent most of my child hood roaming the wilds around the river Wye, so I know what our wild life looks like and I'm very observant and take in visual details well and retain them easily, I usually know what I'm looking at when I see an animal and this was not a fleeting glimpse, I had a really good look at it, so I had time to dismiss any mistaken identities'.