A quarter of a century after her investigations into the mystery of the Beast of Bray Road began, Linda Godfrey’s research and writing continue and the sightings of the unearthly monster continue. Her published works now include The Beast of Bray Road, Werewolves, Hunting the American Werewolf, The Michigan Dogman, and Real Wolfmen. Collectively, they demonstrate something incredible: werewolves may not be creatures of fantasy, legend and mythology. They just might be all too real. And Bray Road may be just the place to see them.
CEMETERY WOLF-MAN
The United Kingdom is home to a wealth of strange and extraordinary animals, including Alien Big Cats, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui. Then, there is the matter of the nation’s werewolves. Reports of British wolf-men date back more than one millennia and contain the key and staple ingredients of so many werewolf reports, such as the matter of shape-shifting, a full moon, and even silver bullets. And while many reports of werewolves in the U.K. date from times long gone, that’s most assuredly not always the case. Take, for example, the matter of a certain wave of werewolf sightings that occurred in central England in 2007. It was a wave that attracted the attention of not just the general public, but of the local and national media too.
“…It must have been about six to seven feet tall. I know it sounds absolutely mad, but I know what I saw.”
It’s intriguing to note that each and every encounter with the marauding man-wolf occurred in and around the very same place. It was a certain cemetery located in central England’s expansive woods known as the Cannock Chase. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission notes:
“During the First World War there was a large military camp at Cannock Chase which became the base for the New Zealand Rifle Brigade. There was also a prisoner-of-war hospital with 1,000 beds, and both camp and hospital used the burial ground. Cannock Chase War Cemetery contains 97 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, most of them New Zealanders, and 286 German burials. There are also three burials of the Second World War. The 58 German burials in Plot 4 were all brought into the cemetery in 1963, as part of the German Government’s policy to remove all graves situated in cemeteries or war graves plots not maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.”
As for the monster of the graves, it became briefly infamous in April 2007, thanks to a story that appeared in the pages of the local Stafford Post newspaper. According to newspaper staff: “A rash of sightings of a ‘werewolf’ type creature prowling around the outskirts of Stafford have prompted a respected Midlands paranormal group to investigate. West Midlands Ghost Club says they have been contacted by a number of shocked residents who saw what they claimed to be a ‘hairy wolf-type creature’ walking on its hind legs around the German War Cemetery, just off Camp Road, in between Stafford and Cannock. Several of them claim the creature sprang up on its hind legs and ran into the nearby bushes when it was spotted.”
Nick Duffy, of the West Midlands Ghost Club, is the person we have to thank for bringing the story to the attention of the newspaper, as it was the WMGC that was the recipient of the initial batch of reports. Duffy said: “The first person to contact us was a postman, who told us he had seen what he thought was a werewolf on the German War Cemetery site. He said he was over there on a motorbike and saw what he believed was a large dog. When he got closer, the creature got on his hind legs and ran away.”
There was also a Cannock-based scout leader, who had an encounter with the creature, and right in the heart of the cemetery: “It just looked like a huge dog. But when I slammed the door of my car it reared up on its back legs and ran into the trees. It must have been about six to seven feet tall. I know it sounds absolutely mad, but I know what I saw.”
It was the publicity given to these two cases, in particular, that prompted additional people to come forward with their sighting reports and theories as to what might have been afoot. Of a mysterious and disturbing series of missing animals in the area, one source told the Stafford Post: “It’s a fact that there has been significant mining activity under Cannock Chase for centuries. And it’s a fact there is a high rate of domestic pet disappearance in the area—especially dogs off the lead. Just ask anyone who walks their dog near the German War Cemetery.”
Over the centuries that the werewolf legend has developed, some common ingredients have come to include shape shifting and the importance of full moons and silver bullets.
It’s intriguing to note that although the 2007 wave captured significant attention, and for a period of no less than three or four months, the area had been very briefly hit by a very similar wave in the previous year, 2006. For example, early on June 28, 2006, numerous motorists driving to work on the M6 Motorway reported seeing a large, wolf-like animal racing across the six lanes of the Motorway, at the height of the rush hour. The Highways Agency looked into the matter quickly and in concerned fashion. They came up blank and baffled.
As I grew up in the area where the werewolf encounters occurred, the local press contacted me on several occasions for my views on the werewolf wave of both 2006 and 2007. When my comments were published—in both the Stafford Post and the Chase Post newspapers—it led several people to contact me with their own, hitherto unknown sightings.
They were all eerily similar. The location was the same: the old cemetery. The nature of the beast was the same, too: it had the ability to run on both two legs and four, and when standing on its hind legs it reached a height of around seven feet. And there was something else: all of the witnesses got a sudden feeling—but for reasons they couldn’t fathom—that the beast was both supernatural and downright evil. In addition, the wave of publicity given to the 2007 encounters encouraged some people to come forward with reports that predated the then-current encounters. Certainly, the most fascinating account came from a man named Jim Broadhurst, who contacted me when my comments and observations on the beast were published in the Chase Post in 2007.
According to Broadhurst, on a bright, summer day in late June 2006 he and his wife were taking a leisurely and pleasant walk through the Cannock Chase woods when they saw, at what he estimated to have been a distance of around 150 feet, a very large wolf making its way through the trees. Broadhurst said that initial amazement and excitement were rapidly replaced by nothing less than cold-hearted fear. There was a very good reason for that: the animal suddenly reared up onto its hind limbs and stared intently in the direction of the petrified pair—making it abundantly clear it had seen them, and—as Broadhurst speculated—wanted to let them know it had seen them. As they watched, frozen to the spot, the “upright wolf,” as Broadhurst described it, backed away further into the heart of the woods, and keeping its eyes firmly fixed on the pair until it was finally lost from sight. The Broadhursts, very understandably, wasted not a second in fleeing the area and heading for the safety of their car. They stayed silent on their encounter until 2007, when the similar events of that year prompted them to finally speak out publicly.
The path through Cannock Chase woods seems pleasant enough … until one stumbles upon a large wolf where none should exist.…
Thankfully, there were never any human casualties reported in this very unsettling affair, and the sightings of the cemetery werewolf finally faded away, as the summer of 2007 became the autumn, and as the days became shorter and the nights became longer. We may never know, for sure, what the creature was, from where it came, or to where it ultimately vanished. But for the people who live in the vicinity of the Cannock Chase German War Cemetery, it’s likely to be a mayhem-filled few months that they will never, ever forget. After all,