The Werewolves of Wales

Records of a giant wolf-like creature in North Wales date back to 1790, when a stagecoach traveling between Denbigh and Wrexham was attacked and overturned by a big black beast that was said to be as long as the coach horses.

This werewolf pounced on and savagely ripped apart one of the horses, the other horse broke free of its harness and ran off.

According to the story, this attack took place just after dusk, with a full moon shining brightly in the sky. The moon that month looked blood red (probably due the dust in the stratosphere from a recent forest fire in the area). The locals thought the moon’s color was a sign that something evil was lurking in the shadows. They would whisper to travelers “bad moon on the rise” all across the inns in the region.

In the winter of 1791, a brave farmer went into his snow-covered field just seven miles east of Gresford, and he saw enormous wolf-like tracks. He followed the track for two miles, and they led to a scene so horrifying that it filled all the villagers with fear.

What they found was no longer a snow-covered field, but a lake of blood full of the carcasses of sheep and cattle.

Shortly after the farmer was found locked in his home, unharmed but petrified. He had barricaded himself in after seeing an enormous black wolf-like beast ripping the throat out of his sheepdog.

The creature had then gone after the farmer, but he managed to run into his farmhouse just in time. He quickly bolted the heavy oak door and hid under a table armed with only a pitchfork. The farmer said that the wolf pounded on the door, almost knocking it off of its hinges. The animal then stood up on its hind legs like a human and looked into the farmhouse windows. Its eyes were blue and appeared intelligent and almost human-like. The beast, foaming at the mouth, then ran from the window to attack more of the farm animals.

The church set up patrols in what they suspected was a werewolf, and groups of villagers braved the freezing weather with lanterns, muskets and pitchforks in search of the creature, but all they found were its tracks.

Seven years later, two men walking across the Bickerton Hills in Cheshire one evening when saw a black creature that made them run for their lives. They hurried into an inn and refused to continue their journey until morning. At dawn on the following day, the mutilated bodies of two beggars were found in a wood just five miles from the inn.

Eventually attacks by the black wolf died out and the people of Cheshire and Wales breathed a sigh of relief. But… two centuries later, attacks by a large, black unidentified animal were reported again.

In February 1992, a national newspaper reported sightings of a strange bear-like animal that had been seen across Wales. The farmer who had spotted the animal on the night of a full moon said afterwards he found two of his lambs dead.

And in 2001 the local newspaper ran a series of articles about sightings of big, strange animals spotted in the area.

Perhaps the werewolf is still there now.

– Moonlight

By moonlight

One of the writers for werewolves.com, as well as vampires.com.

11 comments

  1. i can confimr that the story is true i rode the newspaper when i was eleven so yes u can count on this one

  2. Lol see if any thing i can belive this sotry i find it halarious tho the type of pictures people come up with about werewolves . btw i noticed the smiley at the bottom above the E

  3. I wonder if this legend inspired the character Bran from Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson novels. The most powerful werewolves in that series are from Wales and for awhile Bran was a crazy werewolf a long long time ago.

    It’s a little eerie though to hear that a similar animal was spotted recently in Wales. Gives me the shivers.

  4. It could be a wolf hybrid. That some city kid dropped off after fido went a little wild, thinking that it was the best thing to do. They get big trust me a family friend had a dog that got frisky with a wolf hybrid. It was dropped off. The police had to kill it. With no hunting instincts and no fear of humans there was no hope. He kept one of the pups it was a behemoth of a dog. But that was years ago.

  5. aren’t you confusing the stories of the Black Dogs with werewolves? The stories of those dogs often depict them as pitch-black, big-eyes, calf-sized and awfully frightened. You might also mixed it up with Phantom big cats.

  6. No one ever believes me when I say me and a friend seen a strange beast down bryn estyn lane about 4-5 years ago. We were walking back from the rugby club when we seen car head lights in distance! The car didn’t seem to get closer so we crossed over and went on eh cycle path into the redrow estate. We heard a weird noise so we turned around to look and we saw this huge beast run past, it was bigger than a dog but smaller than a horse and was hairy! The car was inches behind it and it went past at what seemed a 100mph! We were terrified and ran home! No one ever believes us

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