Black Shuck of East Anglia

The tale: There are many tales of this creature: a huge, rough-coated black hound with fiery red eyes and slavering jaws. One eyewitness tells how, in 1960, he was cycling along a lonely road between Tolleshunt D’Arcy and Maldon in Essex on a sultry summer night when he heard a panting sound behind him.

Looking back he saw two red lights – like taillights, except that they were coming closer and closer. He pedalled as fast as he could, but the panting grew louder and soon he could feel the beast’s hot breath at his heels. The cyclist got off his bike and waited for his fate. But the Shuck, having caught up with him, turned sharply left through the bike’s front wheel – and vanished!


The shaken cyclist stopped at the nearest pub and told his tale. “Only a fool would ride that road after dark,” said the oldest drinker, and the others nodded in agreement.

The history: The man who claimed to have seen Shuck on that summer night in 1960 wrote about it 20 years later in the East Anglian Magazine. There are lots of other Shuck stories on the Shuckland pages at www.hiddenea.com. Shuck’s earliest recorded appearance is at Bungay in Suffolk in 1577, where he is said to have burst into a church and killed two people; today his claw marks can supposedly be seen on the church door in nearby Blythburgh.