Werewolf (Flixton, England, 940-1970s)

Flixton is a small village that sits on the Southeastern edge of the Vale of Pickering, about five miles south of Scarborough on the North Yorkshire coast. Although Flixton is a bleak and desolate landscape nowadays, it would have been wild and remote in the 10th century - and the first report of the eponymous werewolf only serves to enforce this idea.

There is a chance that the Flixton Werewolf story goes back further than this, but the lycanthrope situation was so dire in the year 940 that a roadside hostel was constructed in Flixton solely for the purpose of protecting travellers from the beast. The werewolf supposedly attacked sheep and local people as well as travellers. Food was scarce in the cruel Northern British Winter, and the beast dug up and devoured freshly buried corpses. Anyone who went out after dark was at risk of being attacked. These attacks became quite infamous in Flixton and the villages around it, but reports stopped for a while before the monster resurfaced around 1150. Interestingly, there was speculation around the time of the first wave of attacks that the werewolf was connected to a local magician, who either used the monster for his own gains or was a shapeshifter himself. In 1150, what could be assumed to be the same creature devoured a local shepherd and a young girl, as well as attacking farm animals. This werewolf walked upright and smelt awful, and had a long tail and ferocious-looking eyes which were described as glowing in the dark. As a continuation of the trend, the werewolf vanished without a trace for 600 years, before once again manifesting in 1800 when a carriage travelling to York was attacked just outside Flixton, when a huge wolf-like creature first mauled the driver and then the occupants of the carriage. One of these travellers reported shot the creature, but the beast was unharmed. Although there were still wolves in Britain at this time, they were very rare and would have had to be extremely desperate to attack a carriage full of people. Finally, local reports appeared in the 1970s that relayed the tale of a truck that was attacked when a canine beast jumped onto the front and tried to smash its way through the windscreen.

Another point of interest is that Flixton is situated on the site of Star Carr – a Neolithic lake village dating back to the end of the last ice age. This makes the place extremely ancient and thus a perfect location for esoteric legends to take root. Although officially confirmed reports of the Flixton Werewolf only date back a thousand years, who knows what strange creatures featured in the stories of people way back in the mists of time.

Source: http://earthworks-m.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-flixton-werewolf.html