Lair of the Beasts

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The Hexham Horrors Part 2

Werewolves on the Rampage

By Nick Redfern February 07, 2009

A woodcut of a German Werewolf in 1722
© Woodcut, 1722

Following on from part-one of last week, here’s the second- and final-part of my look back at one of the strangest monster-based stories of all time, that of the eerie Hexham Heads: carved faces of stone that seemed to have the uncanny ability to manifest paranormal werewolves in the midst of those that dared to study them.

And we pick up directly where last week’s Lair of the Beasts ended: with a startling piece of testimony from one of those who personally handled the Hexham Heads, Dr. Anne Ross - who had a close-up, nighttime encounter with one of the fearsome man-beasts.

“It was about six feet high,” Dr. Ross recalled, “slightly stooping, and it was black, against the white door, and it was half animal and half man.”

She continued: “The upper part, I would have said, was a wolf, and the lower part was human and, I would have again said, that it was covered with a kind of black, very dark fur.

“It went out and I just saw it clearly, and then it disappeared, and something made me run after it, a thing I wouldn’t normally have done, but I felt compelled to run after it.

“I got out of bed and I ran, and I could hear it going down the stairs; then it disappeared toward the back of the house.”

In the wake of this startling and terrifying event, the doctor and her family saw the huge creature materialize within the confines of the house on several occasions.

It invariably appeared on the stairs, said the doctor, and then jumped over the banisters to land in the hall, whereupon it always exited at high speed on what sounded like padded feet.

At other times, the beast was heard moving around, yet it remained unseen, while doors flew open, seemingly for no reason at all.

On another occasion, Dr. Ross and her husband, the archaeologist, and author of the books A Guide to Prehistoric Scotland and From Windmill Hill to Hadrian’s Wall, Richard Feachem returned home one evening after a visit to London to find their daughter in a state of considerable distress after she too encountered the mysterious animal.

According to Dr. Ross, there was “an evil presence about the house,” and she eventually decided that the stone heads were the direct source of the problem and promptly got rid of the entire collection.

At some point afterwards, the heads are known to have been briefly displayed at the British Museum; but were reportedly withdrawn amid whispered rumors of “eerie events” allegedly having occurred in their presence.

The Hexham Heads also reached the hands of Don Robins – author of Circles of Silence, and a player in British author Paul Devereux’s Dragon Project; the purpose of which was to study claims that certain British prehistoric sites, such as ancient stone circles, had unusual forces or energies attached to them, including magnetic, infrared and ultrasonic anomalies.

Don Robins subsequently provided the Hexham Heads to a dowser named Frank Hyde, who tried to determine if they possessed paranormal qualities, and who created a copper mesh coating for the heads in an effort to lessen their strange and seemingly paranormal effects – something that was reportedly successful.

The two Hexham Heads then fell into the hands of other collectors, none of whom experienced any werewolf-like encounters in the dead of night. Some, however, did report that the sense of pure evil, which seemed to specifically emit from the witchlike head, made them feel extremely uncomfortable.

Interestingly, the previous owner of the house in Hexham, where the heads were discovered, claimed later that he had, in fact, carved the heads as toys for his children in the 1950s and that they had been lost in the yard years before.

Yet, this claim is disputed by many that have delved into the puzzle and studied the heads for themselves.

And although tests were undertaken at both Southampton University and Newcastle University to try and confirm the real ages of the heads, the results of those tests remain tantalizingly unknown, and they were eventually and somewhat mysteriously lost.

The current whereabouts of the Hexham Heads remains unknown.

Nick Redfern is a full-time monster-hunter and the author of four books on the subject: Three Men Seeking Monsters; Memoirs of a Monster Hunter; Man-Monkey; and his latest book: There’s something in the Woods.