Tuesday 31 October 2023

Mystery Animals of Suffolk and bigcatsofsuffolk.com





I am pleased to announce the publication of my book Mystery Animals of Suffolk - including an account of over 150 mystery big cat sightings, published by Slack-jawed Amazement Productions and printed in Suffolk by Leiston Press.


It's available from its distributors Bittern Books and yes, it's on Amazon UK too. If you're in East Anglia, you can buy it at Dunwich Museum, Aldeburgh Bookshop, The Halesworth Bookshop, The Chocolate Box, Bungay and the Arts and Craft Centre, Old Hunstanton.


So far I have been interviewed about Mystery Animals of Suffolk by BBC Radio Suffolk twice (most recently here) and on Gen-X Suffolk Radio, also by East Anglian Daily Times and Suffolk News website.


It's all on my website bigcatsofsuffolk.com, which has updates on Mystery Animals of Suffolk and events around it. It also has a "report a big cat sighting" form - I'm getting about one report a week now. The website also has footage of what looks like a black leopard in Wortham from 2010 and a video showing a very strange animal just over the Norfolk border on the edge of Thetford Forest.



Big cats around Bournemouth

This book review first appeared in Fortean Times magazine.


The British Big Cat Phenomenon – Differing Theories, Eye Witness Reports, and the Predators Diet, Jonathan McGowan, Hangar 1 Publishing, North Haven, 2022, 190 pages

The British Big Cat Phenomenon -Searching for Evidence and Territorial Marks, Hangar 1 Publishing, North Haven, 2022 191 pages

The British Big Cat phenomenon – Sightings, field signs and bones, Hangar 1 Publishing, North Haven, 2022, 183 pages

The British Big Cat Phenomenon - Environmental impact, politics, cover ups, and revelations, Hangar 1 Publishing, North Haven, 2022, 153 pages
Black and white photos, no index or bibliography





















Jonathan McGowan's achievement in gathering so much evidence for big cats in Britain over a lifetime is extraordinary.

The British Big Cat Phenomenon comprises four slim volumes. It's unclear what order they're in, but I'm guessing Differing Theories comes first, followed by Searching, then Sightings and then Environmental as the final in the series. Differing opens as an evocative natural history memoir, describing McGowan's first sightings of big cats as a teenager in the 1980s. After an abusive childhood with periods in foster care, the young McGowan sought solace in watching wildlife, badgers in particular. It was through nocturnal badger watching that McGowan had his first big cat encounter - with a Dorset puma apparently stalking badgers.

McGowan's experience as a "field naturalist" frequently leads him to big cat sightings - the warning calls of birds alert him to a big cat in the area. He has received multiple reports of a British "running cat" observed while it's on sustained, long-distance chases after deer. This is different behaviour from leopards and pumas – ambush predators that can only manage short sprints.

Searching for Evidence dives straight into the evidence accumulated from McGowan's decades of experience in his "study area" around Bournemouth and Poole. Evidence includes scats (big cat poo) and scent sprayed on bushes and posts. There partial deer skeletons that have fallen out of trees after storms. There's much detail on scent markings and "scrapes" - claw marks in the ground made by big cats scent-marking, on big cat footprints and on how to distinguish them from dog tracks, as well as scratch marks on trees made by climbing leopards.

There are even urban big cats - their scats show up on Poole's parks, golf courses and streets. They travel along Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole green corridors and leave scratches on garden gates and they feast on rats, foxes and domestic cats.

People report hearing the low guttural growls and coughs of Dorset leopards. Puma screams are more cat-like or human-like. Police have been called out when a puma scream was mistaken for a human's.

On camera traps and why they produce so few big cat images, McGowan describes the phenomena of bait suddenly disappearing from them. "Something very strange is going on." I'd have appreciated sources for McGowan's assertion in Sightings, the next(?) volume, that cats can avoid the infra-red of camera traps by sensing electromagnetism through their whiskers.

Where is the big cat road kill? In some thinly-populated parts of the USA, a third of all young pumas are killed on remote roads. But given the UK's road traffic density British big cats would, McGowan believes, already be acclimatised to constantly passing cars and better at be dodging them. Big cats would probably survive most collisions anyway – just as many domestic cats somehow manage to crawl home after a road collision.

McGowan and others have seen big cat roadkill on busy dual carriageways where it's too dangerous to slow down to investigate. Returning a few hours later there’s nothing left, the remains squashed so flat as to be unrecognisable. He found the Blackwater Junction Black Cat – "totally pancaked out", its skin had melted to the tarmac and its bones were all crushed.

Sightings includes 69 photos of big cat field signs and kill signs. Included are many photos of big cat paw prints with McGowan's boot for size comparison, together with images of big cat feeding places littered with bones and grisly images of kills including dead swans and a half-eaten fox.

Stomach-churning detail describes how big cats kill their prey. Leopards clamp their jaws round the muzzle of a deer in a full-face hold to suffocate them, pumas often bite deers' noses off. Kills by dogs and foxes are much messier than those of a big cat.

Why are there so few photos of the big cats themselves? "This is a valid point," admits McGowan. There are a few in Sightings - a blurry photo of a "blonde puma" and a clearer trail cam image of a big cat sharpening its claws on a tree.

Environmental includes a guide to British big cat scats, with 22 monochrome photos of long thin twisted spiralled scats of leopards, lynx, puma and jungle cats. Some big cat scats McGowan's found contain bones and deer hooves.

There is no bibliography, index or referencing. Nor is McGowan's mostly compelling thesis helped by ranty digressions on how results of DNA tests are "covered up by the authorities". He asserts that the population is "brainwashed" into big cat scepticism, and so on. He's let down by his editors too, with basic typos too numerous to mention.

McGowan concludes Environmental by convincingly asserting that "the evidence for large cats living in Britain is overwhelming." Issues with the format and structure notwithstanding, the content of the four volumes of The British Big Cat Phenomenon make it essential reading for any serious British big cat investigator.

VERDICT: 4 stars ****


© Matt Salusbury 2023


Big cats in Dorset - expedition with Jonathan McGowan (June 2013)

Jonathan McGowan's large cat update (October 2012)


Britain's secret wildlife - lizards and big cats with Jonathan McGowan


Big cats of Suffolk website


Wednesday 22 February 2023

Goat riders in the sky - the bokkenrijders

This article firsr appeared in Fortean Times 428, February 2023.

FOR MOST OF the eighteenth century, border provinces of what's now the Netherlands and Belgium were gripped by a reign of terror. Mysterious gangs of armed robbers carried out nocturnal raids and blackmailed the population with brandbrieven (arson letters), leaving demands for money or their houses would be burnt down.





< /br> < /br> These bendes (gangs) carried out arson attacks and robberies with great violence. Victims were tortured, raped and killed during their operations, with children among those murdered. Gang leader Joseph Kerckhoffs allegedly gave the order during one robbery "in the event of resistance to shoot dead or strike down everyone." ("Derselven chirugijen [Kerckhoffs] ordner hadde gegeven ingevalle van resistentie alles doot te scheiten of te slaan." Rijksarchief Limburg Maastricht LVO inv.no 8172, quoted in De Bokkenrijders in Nederlands and Belgisch Limburg 17726-1794, Tom Oversteegen, eigenboekuitgeven 2014.) Preferred targets were church estates, priests' homes, farmhouses (preferably isolated ones), inns, monasteries and castles. The gangs had an apparently supernatural ability to cover distances at speed and to melt away before law enforcement could mobilise. The gangs became known as the bokkenrijders - the billy goat riders, or buck riders.

Defendants testified in court that gang members used witchcraft - they flew through the air riding on the backs of billy goats. They were said to have sworn "ungodly oaths" in which they renounced God and pledged themselves to the Devil. Courts heard how they used in their robberies "hands of glory", dried and pickled severed human hands, in magic to prevent their victims raising the alarm. They were alleged to have gangs of 50 to 100 or more at their disposal, or even small armies.

An estimated 600 bokkenrijders were tried and convicted in three waves of persecution over a 75-year period. At least 350 – nearly all men - were executed. But did the bokkenrijders gangs even exist?

The provinces where the bokkenrijders committed "robbery in the Devil's name" are now roughly Nederlands-Limburg - a province in southern corner of the Netherlands - and Belgian-Limburg, a border province of Belgium. Some operated in Herzogenrath, now a corner of the federal state of North Rhine Westphalia in Germany.

Back in the days of the bokkenrijders, the region was the Land van Overmaas - the Land over the River Meuse (Maas in Dutch, hence the city of Maastricht). An earlier peace treaty had divvied up in this territory between the Republic of the Seven Provinces of the Netherlands and the Spanish Hapsburg Empire.

The Spanish territories were seceded to Austria from 1714, so in the time of the bokkenrijders there was two versions of the Land over the Meuse. There was the "Staats" version of Overmaas - Dutch territory. The States General, the Parliament of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands, was officially very Protestant. It didn't trust its Catholic provinces of the South. So the very Catholic Dutch Overmaas was under direct rule by a States General-appointed Guardian.

Nextdoor was another version of the Overmaas, ruled by a Councillor of State on behalf of the Austrian Empire, with the Empress Maria Theresa as its sovereign for much of the bokkenrijders period. (It's now part of Belgium.) The Overmaas included the Land of Hertogenrath - nominally part of the Austrian Empire in whose name a steward of a local abbey ruled, but effectively an autonomous dukedom where a dialect of German was spoken. There were "neutral" roads connected scattered bits of Austrian or Dutch territory with each other. Within the Overmaas were territories of prince bishoprics and monasteries that were also local lords, with their own courts, ensuring a chaotic administration of justice.

Being the border between empires, the Land over the Meuse bore the scars of several recent wars. Both versions of the Overmaas remained backwaters of their respective states, but as border provinces they were sorely taxed and compelled to billet troops. Some saw the modus operandi of the bokkenrijder gangs as inspired by the armies that passed through the region, plundering and living off the land.

The earliest documented robbery by a bokkenrijder gang was in August 1726, silverware was looted from the castle as Huis Oost near the Dutch city of Valkenburg. The robbers tried to fence the loot through pawnbroker Levi Jacobs in the town of Sittard. When he asked how they came by it, they threatened to shoot Jacobs dead, forcing him to accept 1440 guilders-worth of silver. The robbers showed up at Huis Oost again in 1738.








Bokkenrijder images generated by AI website Dall-E by the author, in the reasonable belief that copyright rests with them, although in the knowledge that this is about to be tested in multiple court cases.

The bokkenrijders covered their faces with scarves and wore wigs during robberies to disguise themselves. One Michel Hendrix was sentenced to death as a bokkenrijder after a search of his house uncovered a quantity of wigs that he couldn't explain. Witnesses occasionally described masked-up women in men's clothes among the bokkenrijders keeping watch during robberies.

In the West-Herck region of the Austrian Netherlands, one Francis van Leuwe in 1753 led a local bokkenrijders gang known as the zwartmakers ("those who made themselves black"). This was a revival of an old name. The original zwartmakers, who had already passed into folklore by the 1750s, were a gang operating further north, in the Dutch provinces of North Brabant and Gelderland, in the 1690s.

Jacobus van der Schlossen led the original zwartmakers - ex-soldiers who hid in the forests of Slabroek. They blacked up for their night raids to disguise their faces. They would batter down the doors of houses with thick poles and lock the residents in their cellar while they robbed them. Van der Schlossen was eventually hanged in Ravenstein Castle in 1695, in front of 20,000 spectators. Other Zwartmakers gangs operated from the heath at Teteringen near Breda and in Gelderland at around the same time.

Supernatural elements attached themselves to the zwartmaker stories, as they later did to the bokkenrijders. Anna Dirks, hanged in 1707 in Rhenen along with her mother and her aunt, was said to have brought to robberies a severed child's hand that she burned to bewitch the residents of houses so they didn't wake up. Van der Schlossen was said to have once avoided capture by jumping into a marsh and transforming into a bullrush, while the corpses of the hanged zwartmakers were said to roam the sites of their execution in Gelderland.

The peaks of bokkenrijder robbery came in 1726-1743, 1749-1750 and 1751-1774. While bokkenrijder crimes within the Dutch Republic were predominantly robberies, in the Austrian Netherlands they were also blackmailers, extorting money through their brandbrieven letters threatening arson. Many such "arson letters" survive in the Limburg historical archives, usually demanding the addressee leaves money in a particular place - under a stone, in a hole in the ground, by a wayside cross or shrine. One such letter, from Arnold de Wal to the innkeeper at Gerlingen warned "I will set fire to the four corners of your house" in the event of non-payment.





More bokkenrijder images generated by the author using Dall-E.

In the rural municipality of Wellen in the Austrian Netherlands there were between 20 and 30 such threatening letters received in less than a year in 1773. It was in one of these arson letters received in Wellen that the term bokkenrijder first appears. Its author wrote that "the Devil hunts us, now you shall know how the bokkenrijders live... through the Devil's intervention we rule..." The name bokkenrijder started to appear in local court documents. Previously there had just been "gangs", "rbbery gangs", "ungodly thieves" or "the Overmaas gangs." By 1790, bokkenrijder was a term in common use, with interrogators in Bree (now in Belgium) asking suspects if they were "with the gang of Overmaas or Valkenburg or the so-called bokkenrijders."

According to Belgian folklorist Signe Maene,riderless flying goats were already a phenomenon in Belgian skies before the bokkenrijders made their bokkenvluchten flights on the backs of billy goats. Some were afraid to go out at night because of "ghost goats" that "screeched eerily" as they flew overhead. Less fearful folk would gather to watch their flights.

At the time, a day's ride on good roads in daylight was 51km, a day's walk was 40km. Bokkenrijder "goat flights" seem to have shaved at least an hour or too off usual travel time, with travel by horse at night next to impossible anyway. At least six written testimonies of nocturnal "billy goat flights" from the Netherlands and four from Belgium survive.

Mathijs Smeets told how in September 1773, after an oath ceremony in the Saint Rosa Chapel in Sittard, he was led him to a crossroads out of town where a "long-bodied, black thing appeared, standing no more than a few feet from the ground." His description is vague, "we were so amazed we couldn't tell what it looked like," it resembled some enormous dachshund-type goat. All 42 bokkenrijders present could climb up onto its back, with the gang's "major" and the "captain" both "sitting at the head of it." On this beast they were whisked through the air from Venlo to Roermond in the space of four hours, less than it would take to walk it in daylight. There they carried out a robbery. The supernatural long-bodied black goat thing brought them all back to Sittard "in no time" by early next morning.

Reiner Sijban, detained in a Dutch prison, recalled flying from Klimmen to Maastricht with two other men on the back of a "bok", a flying billy goat, on night in 1774. There they found "a number of perpetrators" who'd also arrived on goats. They all did a burglary, then flew back to Klimmen.

Arnold Gielen, held in an Austrian prison in Wellen in the same year, told how following a meeting on the heath outside Abswellen, there appeared "nine or ten beasts in the form of a billy goat, slightly bigger and longer." Gielen's "captain" assembled the men to "fly over the treetops" on goats to rob a tenancy farm on the other side of Maastricht, leaving their goats "standing there" before returning to their Abswellen assembly point within two hours. (It's a four-hour walk in daylight.) A cross-border goat flight from Abswellen to Meersen in the Dutch Republic featured in testimony by Peter Willem Stassen. He recalled being in a group of about 30 gang members, each "sitting on a billy goat the greatness of a horse."

Some "eight or nine hundred people," including "three or four parties from Wellen," made a cross-border billy goat flight in 1770 from a point on the Meuse between Liege and Maastricht, according to Mattijs Goffins, "with three or four men on a billy goat". The flight took in the Linen Tree Inn along the river, the town of Tongeren and a castle where "hundreds" stood on guard while bokkenrijders climbed in through a window. Another account by a bokkenrijder named Gerits had the Devil himself transport "accomplices" from the Our White Lady convent outside Maastricht into the town. The Devil, summoned by chanting the bokkenrijder oath, appeared "in the shape of a great billy goat with horns and the rear of a horse." In other testimony the Devil appeared as several large billy goats to transport bokkenrijders to robberies.

"I forswear God and pledge myself to the Devil!" That was the bokkenrijder's oath. Both Dutch and Austrian authorities regarded such oaths as a threat to the social and spiritual order - it was these "ungodly oaths" that earned many bokkenrijders the death penalty.

Gang members were inducted in blasphemous oath ceremonies, often ending with tips or "change" - coins being pressed into their hands. Ledgers with membership lists were produced, some showing members' military "ranks". Ceremonies featured stolen holy wafers -participants spat these out - a green drink that "drove men mad" (probably absinthe) and a red-coloured, bitter oil sprinkled on food. Sometimes they held their ceremonies in chapels, with participants crawling in on their hands and knees, some oaths were administered in the woods. Sometimes a drawing of the Devil or a goat's head was displayed, or a dried pickled "hand of glory" was on show. Arnoldus Zander testified to being at an inn in Hertogenrath where alleged bokkenrijder Joseph Kerckshoff was administering oaths and had with him a "death's head" - a severed human head.

The oaths included terrible punishments for those who betrayed their comrades, one read, "so the Devil break my neck." Some bokkenrijders described having to take the oath several times over. In some accounts, a hooded figure walked among the congregation, said to be the Devil or at least to represent him. Once a year, bokkenrijders were said to visit their master, the Devil, on the Mookerheide, a wasteland near the River Waal, north of Overmaas. Such details suspiciously resemble those in dodgy 15th-century witchfinder's manual Males Meleficarum

Joseph Kerckhoffs, a former officer in the Austrian army and the respectable town surgeon of Hertogenrade, was fingered as the leader of the bokkenrijders. But multiple testimonies described a supreme bokkenrijder commander for both the Dutch and the Austrian Netherlands, above Kerckhoffs. There were sightings of a tall, fat man of military bearing, wearing a fine pale blue officer's tailcoat with silver trim and silver trim on his hat too. He spoke High German and French, and was seen giving orders over a fifteen-year period up to 1775. He was named as Baron Joachim Reihold van Gleasnap (aka Hean). He is believed he died of natural causes.






This "robbery in the Devil's name" brought surprisingly little loot to individual bokkenrijders. Mattijs Goffins testified that an almost thousand-strong raid at a castle netted a total of only 20 shillings, while other bemused bokkenrijders said they earned as much in their "tips" after oaths as they did in shares of booty. Some bokkenrijder captains seemed overly keen on recruitment - court testimony regularly stated than ridiculously large gangs - 100 or 200-strong - turned up to (unspecified) robberies to "stand watch." Willem de Kamp stated of one 1756 robbery he was part of that "the portion was not great because the band was so strong" in numbers.

Jabobus Offermans claimed he had "heard say" that there was a plan "to make themselves masters of town and city and to ravage everything." The City Council of Maastricht in March 1770 got wind a vague conspiracy by some 500 persons who threatened the lives of the city government's officials. They took this seriously enough to post a reward of 100 gold ducats for "discovery of conspirators" - assumed to be bokkenrijders.

It's likely that these bokkenrijder numbers, along with their billy goat flights and their ungodly oaths, were exaggerated or planted under torture. The three biggest waves of bokkenrijder persecution came in 1743-1775 (with an estimated 200 people tried), from 1750-1751 (35 people tried) and 1771-1777 (400 tried). Some were on trial for crimes committed 12 years earlier.

In Dutch Limburg, the aldermen's courts tried bokkenrijders in "extra-ordinaire" trials. Prosecutions included a "first interrogation" within 24 hours of arrest. Then followed the streng verhoor the "strict interrogation" under torture - always in the presence of two magistrates, a secretary and a surgeon. Joseph Kerckhoffs, said to be a bokkenrijder "general", was tortured for months, including one torture session after he'd been sentenced to death. But he never confessed to anything, telling judges, "Gentlemen, you can tear my body to pieces, but I have nothing to say."

During prosecutions, courts would usually order the suspect's property confiscated to pay for the costs of the trial. In 1773, The States General in The Hague, while vigorously pursuing bokkenrijder gangs within the Dutch Republic, expressed alarm at the expense of bokkenrijder prosecutions. States General resolutions from this period request detailed breakdowns of the cost of prosecutions, remuneration for the executioners, secretaries and surgeons, how much was paid to informers, bills from carpenters who built gallows and so on. The States General imposed fixed fees for officers of the court trying and sentencing bokkenrijders and established systems for the speedy liquidation of their confiscated property.

Particularly in the Austrian Empire, bokkenrijders and thieves generally were executed on "the breaking wheel" or the "Catherine Wheel". They were tied down in a prone position while the rim of a heavy cartwheel was dropped onto them, starting with their legs and working their way up, dropping the wheel on their chest was usually enough to kill them outright. Hanging or garrotting was more common in Dutch jurisdiction. On one busy day for an executioner in the Dutch town of Heerlen, seven convicted bokkenrijders were hanged.

The first written account of the bokkenrijders was Origin, Causes, Proof and Discovery of an Ungodly, Sworn Band of Night Thieves and Assailants within the Lands of Overmaas and Adjacent Regions written in 1790 by "S.J.P. Slienada", an anagram of A. Daniels, a Dutch priest who knew some of the bokkenrijders personally. Daniels wrote of the bokkenrijders' pacts with the Devil, and how "the common people" told stories of their nocturnal billy goat flights. His book includes a spell used to achieve goat flights - "Over houses, over gardens, over stakes, even to Cologne and into the wine cellar!"("Over huis, over tuin, over staak, en dat tot Keulen in de wijnkelder!")



Frontispiece from Origin, Causes, Proof and Discovery of an Ungodly, Sworn Band of Night Thieves and Assailants within the Lands of Overmaas and Adjacent Regions, the first published account of the bokkenrijders from 1790.


The bokkenrijders may have been an exaggeration or invention to cover up the weakness of the authorities of the Dutch Republic and the Austrian Netherlands, and their inability to deal with what was probably just lots of small gangs operating at the same time, mostly with impunity.

Records of bokkenrijder prosecutions are less frequent from the late 1780s onwards. 1789 saw a brief uprising in the Austrian Netherlands. A subsequent military campaign against revolutionary France ended badly for the Austrian Empire, with the Austrian Netherlands annexed to the Republic of France in 1795. The Dutch Republic became the pro-French Batavian Republic in the same year. Maastricht and environs was ceded to France, with all of the Netherlands eventually annexed to Napoleon's empire in 1811. The bokkenrijders disappeared, international criminal networks emerged operating across the Netherlands and into Germany, benefitting from the upheaval of regime change. The haphazard feudal courts were abolished, their revolutionary successors had no room for superstitious conspiracy theories. The Kingdom of the United Netherlands that emerged in 1814 after Napoleon's fall retained its secular courts. These were no longer inclined to hear testimony of suspects flying through the air on goats.

Having an ancestor who was tried as a bokkenrijder is now a badge of honour in both Dutch and Belgian Limburg. Today they have a reputation as Robin Hood-type anti-authority figures, celebrated in monuments and guided walks. There is a Bokkenrijders Festival in the Dutch town of Klimmen every August, and a Bokkenrijders Week every October in Valkenburg. Some municipalities in Belgian Limburg mark 11 May - the day Joseph Kerckhoffs was sentenced to death – as International Bokkenrijders Day.













Witches - mostly female - riding on billy goats was already a thing in European demonology long before the bokkenrijders. Shown here are details from engravings of the witches' sabbaths on the Blockberg in the Harz Mountains of Germany, 1688 or earlier and all out of copyright.


Further Reading in English
Jacobus van der Schlossen - Wikipedia
Zwartmakers gang - Dutch Folklore
Joseph Kerckhoffs of Herzogenade (video)
The Buck Riders' Fellowship (English pages)

Project Bokkenrijders have an English-language podcast series. They have an online transcription of Slienada's Origin, Causes, Proof and Discovery into modern Dutch, with an online English translation appearing soon. Thanks to Project Bokkenrijders for suggested translations of bokkenrijder terminology for this article.








Bokbier ("bock beer") is a special beer - usually dark in colour and on sale in the autumn, when Northern Europe starts to drink less outdoors in cafe terraces and starts to move indoors to drink. The label, pump art and beer mats for bok bier usually feature a billy goat. (Young stags and male rats as well as billy goats are also "bucks" in English.) Above is an out-of-copyright late 19th century ad for a "Bock" beer and a selection of images of 21st-century bok beers from Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands or the USA.






The craft beer themed Bok Bar in Leece Street, Liverpool, complete with billy goat's head logo.

Sunday 11 December 2022

Fortean Traveller – Ros Beiaard, Dendermonde, Belgium

The mostly unremarkable Flemish city of Dendermonde, half way between Brussels and Antwerp, is one tourists normally wouldn't bother with. But every ten years (Covid permitting), over 80,000 descend on Dendermonde for the Ros Beiaard parade, named after its centrepiece, the red horse Beyard. This gloriously bonkers and very Belgian phenomenon involves a gigantic horse cavorting through the city, escorted by a considerable retinue including dancing giants. Occasionally the huge horse rears up, the four boys dressed as knights riding it raise their swords in the air, the crowd goes wild.



The Ros Beiaard on its "rounds" through Dendermonde, April 2022

The Ros Beiaard originates in the chivalric romance. The Four Sons of Aymon, a French-language work sung by the earliest of the proto-troubadours, was first written down around 1300. The Four Sons of Aymonwas an international bestseller in manuscript form before the age of printing in French, Dutch, German, English and Italian versions. A printed Dutch translation - Historie van den Vier Heemskinderen - appeared in 1508. William Caxton, who started England's first printing press, produced several English editions of The Right Plesaunt and Goodly Historie of the Foure Sons of Aymon, but the story never seems to have caught on here.

Most of the action of the story takes place around Dordogne and the Ardennes. Aymon of Dordogne is a loyal vassal of a fantasy version of the Emperor Charlemagne. Each of Aymon's sons - Ritsaert, Writsaert, Adelaert, and Reinout - receives a horse from him. Reinout is the strongest - so strong he accidentally kills one horse and maims another just by riding them. So Aymon takes Reinout to a castle where the much feared reddish-brown coloured stallion Beyard, who had "never had a master", was kept. Reinout faces Beyard, who rears up and kicks him over, he gets up again and "after a heroic battle" tames Beyard. (In other versions, Charlemagne gifts Reinout the horse.) Beyard was strong enough to carry all four sons on his back.



The sons of Aymon appear at Charlemagne's court, where in a brawl over a chess game, Reinout kills Charlemagne's son Louis in self-defence. The four sons are declared outlaw and flee to the castle of King Loup of Gascogne, escaping again on the huge horse after Loup betrays them.

There follow many adventures of the four sons and the horse Beyard, involving stays in and then escapes from castles. They hide out in the Ardennes forest and escape imprisonment by the wizard Maugis. Finally cornered by Charlemagne's forces in Aquitaine, a siege follows after which a deal is reached - the four sons surrender and are rehabilitated, Reinout gives up the horse Beyard, who has a stone tied to him and is thrown in a river and drowned. This event occurs where the River Schelde meets its tributary the River Denderhence the city of Dendermonde’s involvement. (Dendermonde means "the mouth of the Dender." The Ros Beiaard first appears as an entry in that city’s accounts for 1461.



The Ros Beiaard, with a stone tied to it, in his desperate death throes after being thrown into the River Dender.

Many of these elements of the story - knights fighting in the street, the proclamation of the Four Sons as outlaws, the escape from the wizard Maugis, a huge statue of a desperate, wide-eyed drowning horse flailing in a river – featured in spectacular carnival floats in the 2022 Ros Beiaard parade. There was even a battering ram pushed through the streets by medieval re-enactors and a gigantic open book in which a troubadour sat against an illuminated page of The History of the Horse Beyard and the Four Sons of Aymon, strumming his lute and declaiming from its verses.



A troubadour declaims verses from The Four Sons of Aymon from among its illuminated pages

The Ros Beiaard's normally a once-in-a-decade event, but Covid meant we'd had to wait "twelve long years" for the 2022 edition. Tickets for the 18,000 seats along the route sell out within hours. So the only way to see the "apotheosis" - the climax of the event in the Big Market square when Renaissance musketeers open fire on the gigantic horse - was to get press accreditation. Even then, I only got to see the "general rehearsal" night before the main event - there's no press allowed in the Big Market on the day of the Ros Beiaard itself. The police in their Thunderbirds-style forage caps arrived and banished most of the press pack to a platform in the corner of the square with a less good view.

When I signed up for my press accreditation, I agreed "not to startle the animals with brusque movements or flash photography". Little did I know at the time that the animals included over 150 heavy horses pulling the carnival floats, as well as a flock of geese trained to walk in single file and two Belgian mastiffs trained to pull little dog carts.



Belgian mastiffs pull carts in the Ros Beiaard, as they pulled ammunition carts in World War One


A flock of trained geese walk in formation past social housing in the back streets of Dendermonde. They and their trainers are celebrities who tour the festivals of Europe

While out and about in the streets in my "PERS" (press) bib, I was collared by a resident of the city, a Dendermondaar. He told me with great passion that as an outsider I couldn’t understand the fervour that Dendemondenaars had for "our horse," their Ros Beiaard. He told how townspeople in their seventies would turn up aware it may be their last chance to see the gigantic horse come by. There were many ancient local ladies with Zimmer frames or in wheelchairs, wrapped in emergency rain ponchos, who had already taken their seats along the route by early morning.



The author in their official Ros Beiaard Association "Press" waistcoat, in the Press Centre



My colleagues in the Press Pack, shortly before the police banished them to a platform at the edge of the Big Market Square.


On my way to the press centre before the parade, I suddenly saw ahead of me, silently emerging from a side street, the Ros Beiaard himself! The massive wooden horse was making his way to his parade starting point. He's tall enough that his dark brown head, carved from oak in the 16th century and decked with a plume in the red and white colours of the city, can touch spectators watching from first floor balconies. He wears a long equestrian coat that goes down to the ground. Under this coat you can just see twelve pairs of white trainers walking in short steps in unison, like a millipede.



The Ros Beiaard escorted through the streets by a band and an entourage of halberdiers. On the left is Kalleke Step, the jester, who leads the horse. The Fiddler (centre) sets the tempo for the march of the horse.



The strong men of the Pijnders guild escorting the horse

The Ros Beiaard is carried by twelve very strong men from the Pijnders Guild. Back in the day, these used to be market porters and pull boats into the their berths in the harbour on ropes. The Pijnders are selected five years ahead of the parade in The Wildmen Run, in which candidates strip to their underpants and glue feathers to themselves so they look like hairy wildmen and perform feats of strength. The big horse with four riders on it weighs almost a metric tonne, so his 12 bearers lift around 85kg each.

There are a total of 60 Pijnders, with the reserve shifts walking behind the horse. There's also a Pijnder pulling a handcart full of fortifying strong drinks. There are frequent shift changes in which the huge horse is raised on little trestle stools while one crew free themselves and another take their place.

Round the corner in one of the backstreets, the reuzen, the Guild Giants, stood waiting. They were slightly taller than the huge horse.

There are over 1500 giants in Belgium, with Dendermonde’s three "Guild Giants" among the best known. The oldest is Goliath, David's antagonist from the Old Testament. He wears a 16th century floppy hat and sports a villain’s moustache. Then there's Mars, the Roman god of war and The Indian, the latter sporting a peacock-feather headdress and carrying a bow and arrows. He's a 17th century take on fantastic tales of "Red Indians" emerging from the New World when it was still brand new. Both Goliath and Mars have swords with ornate handles hanging from their belts.

I followed the huge horse and its gigantic escort to Our Dear Lady Church, with the giants occasionally dancing, whirling like dervishes with their tunics billowing and their arms flopping by their sides. It being Sunday, there was a service in progress, which the Pijnders joined after parking the massive horse at the door. Passing local families lined up, holding up their babies and small dogs, to have their photos taken with the Ros Beiaard. A priest came out and blessed the Ros Beiaard and the Pijnders with quick sprinkle of holy water, declaring that the parade represented "solidarity".



Cavorting Guild Giants - Mars and Goliath



The Indian, Mars and Goliath

Then it was on to a cordoned-off road on the edge of town, where the Ros Beiaard, giants and all were again parked awaiting the considerable number of horse-drawn carnival floats and trained animals, marching bands and - in a rare nod to the 21st century - an interpretive dance troupe re-enacting in the streets Reinout's chess game with Louis. People pushed along their accompanying sound system in a vast wheeled box. There were more townsfolk on horseback in Medieval attire than you could shake a stick at. Each float was followed by a suitably costumed volunteer pulling a small trailer and carrying a shovel to scoop up the horse poop.

Endless marching bands played over and over The Ros Beiaard Song. The crowd frequently sang along, as did some of the regional press photographers while at work. In local dialect as spoken in 1754, the song describes how the "beautiful horse" and the boys sitting on it is the most beautiful sight in the world, and - more importantly, how the citizens of the rival city of Aalst further down the river Dender, "are so angry/Because the Ros Beiaard is going past…"

Showing contempt for people from Aalst is an important element of Dendenmondenaar identity. Turning ancient insults from Aalstenaars into badges of honour is a Dendermonde thing. "Shipdraggers" was one such taunt, as was kopvleeseters - "head meat eaters", cheapskates who ate the meat from animal’s heads. This resulted in a surreal float in which costumed kopvleeseters prepared the local cold meat delicacy and served it up to the audience as canapes.

The mayor put in an appearance as "Kalleke Step", the jester, showed up. Costumed in the city's red and white colours, the jester pulled the horse along by long ribbons while throwing various capers, handstands being his speciality. With him was the fiddler, walking to the left of the Ros Beiaard, playing The Ros Beiaard Song all afternoon. An honour guard of halberdiers formed up the rear.

Finally, the Heemskinderen, the Four Sons of Aymon, arrived after being made ready in the doctor's surgery over the road. Tradition dictates they must be four brothers, with no sisters in between. Dendermonde has ten years to find such a family, even today they somehow still manage it. Clad in spray-painted plastic and zinc armour and plumed helmets, one by one the four helped by the chief of the Pijnders, ascended a ladder to climb onto the back of the huge horse - in the rain, with the youngest in front.



Assisted by the chief of the Pijnders, one of the Heemskinderen takes his place on the back of the "beautiful horse"

And then we were off! It's hard to describe just how bizarre the parade was - I often felt I'd stumbled into a deleted scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail that had been cut because it was too weird. (Especially the bit with the stilt-walking knights!) There were floats celebrating footnotes in Dendermonde's history - the opening of its law courts, the building of its city walls, a local farmer's daughter becoming Duchess of Burgundy and so on. Town criers are big in Belgium (they'd borrowed some from as far away as Ghent,) some of these went ahead of each float declaiming in rhyming couplets what these represented.



Stilt-walking knights!

Occasionally the huge horse on its "rounds" through the city would turn and tilt forward, as if rearing up towards the crowd. The Heemskinderen would raise their swords, the crowd would go wild. At one point I felt a tap on my shoulder and it was the random Dendemondenaar who'd collared my earlier, he said, "It was worth it, wasn't it?"

You could tell the giants and the huge horse were approaching when a posse of strange armless brown furry figures appeared, with vaguely wolf-like heads with clacking jaws. They ran amongst the crowd threatening them with their teeth - snap, snap, snap! These carnival velociraptors are the knaptanden, the "snapping teeth". Not even police officers are immune from their harassment.

They're actually teenage boys looking through the necks of the costumes, operating a spring-loaded jaw mechanism built on top. Cryptozoology enthusiasts will be interested to note they're inspired by a very big fish seen in the local river in the 16th century. Their name is believed to be another ancient insult thrown at the townsfolk by the people of Aalst.



The knaptanden harrass spectators

Ticket-holders only were allowed into the Big Market Square for the "apotheosis" of the Ros Beiaard, but I'd got to see its dress rehearsal the previous night, from a very long way off. With the ancient Town Hall decked with the flags of Burgundy, medieval England and the Hapsburg Empire, the apotheosis involved the jester and the fiddler leading the gigantic horse into the square.

There the horse reared up in front of a phalanx of the Schuttersgilden - the shooter's guilds - Dendermonde's Renaissance citizen's militia, a bit like Rembrandt's Night Watch, only even older. Now they're all off-duty firemen. At the climax of the parade, the Schuttersgilden lined up and fired from shotguns three volleys-worth of gunpowder only into the air, aiming at the Red Horse Beyard. (Earplugs were provided at the press centre.) Three times they opened fire on the Ros Beiaard and prevented him from leaving, until they eventually gave way, allowing him to break through their cordon to escape from the Big Market. Each time the enormous horse reared up, the crowd went wild.





The apotheosis of the Ros Beiaard, from the dress rehearshal at night

The parade finally ended at the massive old brick former army barracks on Barrack Street. I waited there for the ceremony in which the Ros Beiaard, the giants and all the floats were put back into storage for the next decade. Before long, the marching bands, the snapping-jawed knaptanden, the whirling dervish giants and the huge horse itself showed up. As the huge horse came down the street, it stopped and reared up, the crowd went absolutely wild.

The big horse then began to move through the huge arched doorway of the barracks. The crowd booed - as this meant it would all be over soon. The huge horse hesitated, moved back and forth as if unsettled, then marched out of the barracks, and up and down as if at speed, as if cantering, occasionally rearing up, with the Heems Children waving their swords in the air, at which point the crowd went wild again.

Then the giants, starting with The Indian, danced, walked toward the big horse. He reared at them, the crowd went wild, the giant walked past the horse and into the barracks. There followed half an hour of the big horse teasing the crowd by trotting up and down in front of the barracks. He appeared to go into the arch a couple of times, to booing, then he came out again, charged up and down, reared (the crowd went wild and sang The Ros Beiaard Song), before he finally backed into the huge arch, the Schuttersgilden launched a final couple of loud volleys at him above their heads. To boos, Dendermonde's "beautiful horse" finally disappeared form view and the doors finally closed.





The Ros Beiaard's swan song outside the Old Barracks before he put into storage for another decade

The next Ros Beiaard is in May 2030.

Dendermonde has The Katuit, a shorter parade featuring just the Guild Giants and the knaptanden every year - the next is in August 2023.

The next Wildemannenloop (Wildmen Run), with feats of strength to select the Pijnders, is planned for - provisionally - August 2025.

There is a permanent display of giant blown-up photos of elements from the Ros Beiaard on the walls of the old barracks in Kazernestraat,, Dendermonde. There is a permanent exhibition of Ros Beiaard artefacts in the Vleeshuismuseum (Butchers' Hall), Grote Markt, Dendermonde.

© Words and photos Matt Salusbury 2022

Flag wavers throw the official Ros Beiaard flag on the air




The escape of the Heemskinderen from the castle of the wizard Mauigis, complete with revolving astrolabe, immortalised in a horse-drawn float in the 2022 Ros Beiaard



The Knaptenden again



Medieval equestrianism in the streets of Dendermonde



A medieval battering ram dragged through the streets, referencing Charlemagne's siege of the castle where the Four Sons of Aymon sought shelter in Aquitaine.

Saturday 13 August 2022

The Talking Cross

(This article first appeared in Fortean Times)



The flag of the Cruzob, the Mayan state founded by the followers of the Talking Cross

Around 1841 the Yucutecos, the Creole population of the Yucatan peninsula, broke with Mexico. The Mayan population of Yucatan soon rose up against their Creole overlords, beginning a fifty-year conflict. The Mayans quickly drove the Creoles back to the north of the peninsula before abandoning their siege when the corn-planting season started. Yucuteco reinforcements pushed the Mayans into the jungles of the south and east of the peninsula.

A band of Mayan insurgents took refuge around a small spring at Chan Santa Cruz, ("the Little Sacred Cross"), where a mahogany tree grew at the edge of a cave. The tree’s trunk bore several carved cross shapes a few inches high. At least one of these carved crosses appeared to produce sounds. The Cult of the Talking Cross was born, which inspired the Mayans to at least 50 years of resistance against first the Yucutecos and then the United Mexican States. The bizarre Talking Cross faith survived at least three incidents of capture or destruction of its talking crosses and possibly up to three exposures of ventriloquist fraud. And the Talking Cross whistled!

Juan de la Cruz Puc first heard the cross talk, although others could hear it forming sounds. Puc shared with his neighbour Manuel Nahuat what the cross had told him. Nahuat, who was a ventriloquist, projected his voice so that everyone could hear the words from the Talking Cross. Proclamations by letter also appeared, signed "San Juan de la Cruz", St John of the Cross. The Proclamation of St John of 1850 founded the rebel Mayan regime known as the Cruzob with Chan Santa Cruz as its capital.

The Talking Cross – now freestanding, much bigger and made of wood – was moved to a large church built to house it, the Balam Na (the "House of the Jaguar" or “House of the Priest”). In the darkened interior of the Balam Na, the booming voice of the Talking Cross issued pronouncements to a prostrate congregation. It’s unclear how much of the current church on the site is from the original.

The Talking Cross's earliest verbal pronouncement, in December 1850, said “The Whites will never win... These people of the Cross who will win". It ordered an attack on the nearest Yucuteco garrison at Kampochche. It was a disaster. A promised immunity to bullets didn’t materialise, the Mayans were driven off with heavy losses. The Yucutecos attacked Chan Santa Cruz in March 1851, seizing the Talking Crosses (there were now two of these) and killing Nahuat.

But the Yucutecos lacked the forces to occupy the Cruzob capital. A new Talking Cross and two other crosses immediately appeared at the shrine by the spring. Puc now claimed the Talking Cross spoke via "three mysterious personages" with himself as interpreter or secretary, and that the Yucutecos "will be severely punished." Bankrupt and facing the prospect of endless war with the Maya, the Yucutecos eventually accepted Mexican sovereignty in 1853, so it was Mexico that the Cruzob now fought. English visitors and Mexican prisoners described the Talking Cross being taken into battle by the Cruzob armies.

The Cruzob’s survival was assisted by the neighbouring little colony of British Honduras (now Belize). With their tiny garrison, the British realised they stood a better change of survival against the much bigger Mexico if a Mayan state prevailed. So the British for a time supplied arms to Chan Santa Cruz. In a letter to the "magistrates of Belize", a Cruzob leader wrote, "the Holy Cross begs you to give them powder and shot and all the implements of war."





The Balam Na today. Adam Jones Phd, Wikimedia Commons

While the Latinos had for centuries refused to ordain Mayans as priests, Mayans now served as priests to their own congregations, but their version of worship became only loosely based on mainstream Catholicism. In Cruzob cosmology, there were several versions of God, there were angels and other lesser gods, elementals such as the jaguar and also the "Beautiful Grandmother" – equivalent to the Virgin of Guadeloupe.

Venancio Puc emerged as the new "interpreter" of the Cross and tatich (Pope). The Talking Cross now spoke to Venancio Puc and occasionally to his generals, with his son Atanacio Puc performing ventriloquism via a barrel-shaped device in a hidden space near the Talking Cross. The cross spoke sometimes in words, sometimes in a sharp, whistling voice – a "fine, thin whistle" according to one witness.

Lieutenant Plumridge of the British Army described being made to wait all day and much of the night until “God came”, when a "rather weak voice... which seemed to originate in the midst of the air" told them "If the English want a fight, let them come... and I will dispose of (them) at once." A escaped Mexican army prisoner described being led to the Cross, which ordered him to repay the 28 pesos he’d won playing cards with his guards and to receive 25 lashes.

In 1867 the tatich was a mezito, Gerardo de Castillo, who admitted to the superintendent of Belize that "Divine Providence"had caused himself and colleagues to seize power from Venancio Puc and kill him. De Castillo admitted that the voice had been produced by Puc’s son, and explained that "the use of ventriloquism to make the cross speak was the work of evil men and a thing of the past". While the tatich still maintained the holiness of the Talking Cross, his admission had lost the cult much of its power. San Juan still communicated his proclamations by letter.

Cruzob authority was now fragmenting. Travellers to Tulum – an ancient pyramid and fortress complex on the coast North of Chan Santa Cruz – described in 1866 seeing there another church shrouded in darkness where the high priest and his wife were patrons of the cross, which talked in a whistling voice to a kneeling congregation. There were by then other Mayan statelets where the "parents" of the Speaking Cross kept it in their houses. By 1872 a third rival centre of Talking Cross worship appeared at San Antonio Muyil. In the 1890s there were at least four such competing Talking Cross centres. The Mayan community at Ixchanha rejected the Cruzob’s break with traditional Catholicism, preferring to accept nominal recognition of the Mexican state. The Cruzob made war on all of these Talking Cross variants. By 1895 Chan Santa Cruz was all but abandoned, still guarded for visits by Cruzob officials, who had reportedly relocated their base somewhere to the northwest.





A contemporary map of Yacutan.

In 1901, a Mexican army under General Ignacio Bravo finally occupied Chan Santa Cruz for good, its troops bringing measles and smallpox which devastated the local population. Bravo's army reported discovering the hiding place near the Talking Cross where a ventriloquist could have hidden, their voice amplified by the barrel-type device. Maya guerrilla warfare against Mexico persisted, ending only with a formal peace treaty in 1935.

In 2002, the Mexican Government finally recognised the Church of the Talking Cross as a legitimate religion. A more moderate version of the Cult of the Talking Cross still exists. The spring where the Talking Cross first manifestedis a hangout for students, in a town now with the more secular name Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Some claim the cross at the spring continues to talk to this day.

It turns out the symbol of the cross long predated Christianity in the Yucatan anyway. Mayan cosmology features the yaxche (mahogany tree), the Tree of Life, the navel of the world, a straight tree vaguely in the form of the cross. In some representations of the yaxche, the cross shape is formed by a double-headed serpent spread out in its branches and by a bird perching atop the tree. The yaxche anchored the various parts of the universe in their place and spread from the earth into the heavens and reached with its roots down into the underworld. Amen!


Copyright Matt Salusbury 2022




Tulum, the ancient pre-Columbian Mayan temple and fortress complex on the coast where Mayan insurgents took refuge. Wikimedia Commons.

Tuesday 19 July 2022

Headless phantom coach horses


This article first appeared in Fortean Times.

There are a remarkable numbers of traditions from around the British Isles featuring phantom coaches. These phantom coaches are often driven by headless coachmen, sometimes with even the horses pulling the coach being headless too.

The village of Olney, Buckinghamshire, is allegedly the home of a phantom coach pulled by headless horses and with a decapitated driver. Kingston Russell House in Long Bredy, Dorset, is said to be haunted by a coach with a headless coachman, a headless footman and four headless passengers, pulled by a team of four headless horses. Headless horses driven by a headless coachman were said to emerge at midnight from a hole at Rowlands Hill in Wimborne, Dorset. Another phantom coach, with a headless lady passenger as well as a headless coachman driving headless horses, was alleged to ride around the site of a former court building in Stackpole Elidor, Dyfed. To look upon the phantom coach said to appear on Christmas Eve with a headless horses and a headless coachman at the reins, at Penrhyn, Cornwall, causes death, and so on.

Toby's Walk in Blythburgh, Suffolk is haunted by "Black Toby", Toby Gill, a Jamaican drummer of the 4th Dragoons regiment lynched by locals around 1750. In most versions of the story he walks the heath on foot, in some he drives a hearse to Hell, pulled by headless horses. Research by Joan Forman, local author of Haunted East Anglia, concluded that the coach with the headless horses is a later – 19th century – story that became conflated with Toby Gill.



A British dragoon roughly contemporary with Toby Gill, athough as a drummer he would have had a more colourful uniform. Out of copyright.



Toby's Walks beauty spot and picnic area, near Blythburgh, near the scene of where Toby Gill was lynched. It was closed in recent years by Suffolk Coastal District, citing frequent incidents of "dogging". Locals told me that there were one or two dogging incidents, and that the cash-strapped Council had used these an excuse to close the site to save money. Photo: Matt Salusbury



In one version of the "Black Toby" legend, Toby in his dragoon drummer's uniform drives a hearse (or a mail coach) to Hell, via Beccles. In other versions he is walking the heath in the civilian clothes he was found in.


There's a veritable cluster of phantom coach traditions around Bungay, Beccles and Oulton on the Suffolk-Norfolk border, each with a version in which the horses and sometimes the coachmen are headless, associated with local aristocrats and their stately homes.

The phantom coach with a headless coachman (no details on the headlessness of its horses) at Bungay and Geldeston is associated with the Bigod family. The phantom coach at Nursery Corner on the Beccles to Bungay Road is linked to the Blennerhassetts of Barsham Hall (now a ruin) and bears that family’s crest. In some versions it headless horses pull it all the way to Hassett's Tower in Norwich. The coach emerging from Roos Hall near Beccles, Suffolk, on Christmas Eve also has headless horses and sometimes headless coachmen.



The drive of Roos Hall, in Barsham near Beccles, from where a phantom coach linked to the local Blennerhassett family is said to emerge on Christmas Eve. In some versions of the story, the coach horses as well as the coachman are headless. Photo: Matt Salusbury.

Boulge Hall, near Woodbridge, Suffolk (not far from Sutton Hoo, with its Saxon horse burial, see here) has a tradition of a coach pulled by headless horses, said to convey either the temperamental "Queen of Hell" Mrs Short or Mr Fitzgerald, both former owners of the Hall – now a farm.

While headless ghosts sort of make sense as the souls of those executed by beheading, comparatively few coachmen were actually beheaded. Beheadings were usually reserved for high-profile figures. These were anyway out of fashion in the golden age of coachmen in the 18th and 19th centuries, with England’s last beheading happening in 1747. Headless coach horses, though, don’t make sense at all – horses weren't beheaded.



Site of the excavated Mound among the Anglo-Saxon burial mounds at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk. This mound contained a horse burial with a young warrior and a horse buried in full harness.

The recent discovery of an Iron Age chariot burial in Pocklington, East Yorkshire, (FT 295;14-15), may help explain some headless coach traditions. Archaeology at the The Iron Age burial site at Pocklington has already uncovered over 200 burials. These included the first Iron Age chariot burial discovered in England – unearthed in 2017, this included a young man with grave goods buried in a two-wheeled chariot and the complete skeletons of two horses in full harness, found buried as if pulling a chariot.

The following year, an excavation at a different part of the Pocklington site uncovered a barrow containing another Iron Age chariot burial, from around 100 BCE. In this burial, a "high-status" man in his forties or older was found crouched inside the chariot. The chariot itself, with its team of two horses, was buried as if the horses were leaping up out of the ground. Paula Ware of MAP Archaeological Practice told the Yorkshire Post their heads may have even protruded from the earth and been above ground.

The heads of the horses were at the point in the burial that was nearest the ground. It's likely they had been destroyed through centuries of ploughing, leaving behind the skeletons of two headless horses. Ploughing, along with natural erosion, is known to have destroyed or damaged many ancient barrows and tombs over the years – the antiquarians of the 18th century were already recording traditions of local "giant’s graves" that had disappeared. Any chariot burials that farmers stumbled across while ploughing may well have remained unrecorded. The grave goods of "high status" Iron Age warriors buried with their chariots would have been made of precious metals, it would have been tempting to walk off with the loot and cover up evidence of the burial.

Could superstitious folk of the 18th century have uncovered one such unrecorded chariot burial, with horses in full harness buried upright but with no heads, and interpreted it as headless horses pulling a coach? The counties associated with headless coach horse traditions listed above are also rich in Iron Age archaeology.

Thanks to Paranormal Database (www.paranormaldatabase.com), @manukenken and @HilaryRSparkles for headless horse intelligence.


Update: (19/07/22) I have since had accounts of a phantom coach journeying between Harrow Hill and Long Compton, Warwickshire, report that both driver and horses are headless. The coach is most active in winter or after heavy rain. From Brazil comes the bizarre Mula-Sem-Cabeca, the phantom Headless Mule. This is said to be the ghost of a women who killed herself after having an illicit relationship with a priest. For some reason, the stump of the head of this dark-coloured headless mule is on fire.