Forteana

Have you ever heard of the Hexham Heads or Wolf of Allendale?

Now that Halloween is approaching you might want to clue yourself up because, well there's no easy way of saying this, a werewolf may be out there.

On 10 December 1904, we, the Hexham Courant, published a story with the title "Wolf at Large in Allendale".

The wolf committed a "great slaughter of sheep" on the moors above Hexham in the winter of 1904 and was believed to be an escapee from the private zoo of Captain Bain in County Durham.

A hunt quickly ensued among petrified locals thinking the wolf may move on from sheep and start attacking children.

After many weeks the drama soon came to a grisly end when the wolf was cut in twain by a Midland Railway express near Cumwhinton station on the Settle-Carlisle railway.

Too badly mutilated to be preserved, the wolf was beheaded and sent to the Midland Railway's headquarters at Derby.

For a week, the head of the Allendale wolf was displayed in the window of a taxidermist's shop in Derby before being mounted outside the Midland Railway's boardroom.

In 1936, the head was still there, but it has now vanished, and subsequent searches for it have been unsuccessful.

Now let's fast forward to the 1970s, when things start to get even creepier...