Esoteric Kent - Spooky Bedtime Stories
Columnist Anna Willatt aka Esoteric Isle talks about podcasts, the Wantsum Worm and the Mothman of Hythe
Images by Rebecca Dougals
The joy of exploring the esoteric is that the discoveries never end. I can sit here with a pile of books filled with post-its, having got lost in countless threads on long-forgotten message boards and feel prepared to write an article.
Then a podcast out of the blue sends me down another winding path. Seeing as it’s the season for getting cosy, putting the heating on and scaring yourself stupid, I wanted to let you in on some of my favourites.
I could say I’m not responsible for the esoteric rabbit holes that reading this article might take you on, but I’m delighted by the idea. Alice in Wonderland it up, friends.
Cryptids - unexplained creatures walk among us!
A friend put me on to The Three Ravens Podcast, a myth and folklore podcast hosted by Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux, and its episodes on Kent. What followed was a lot of smug head-nodding on my part, until we got to the Wantsum Worm - or wyrm if we want to go with ye olde English for effect - a serpent that stalks the waters around east Kent and has been spied as recently as 1950 by a tourist swimming near Cliftonville and 1999 by anglers off the coast at Folkestone. There’s also the Mothman of Hythe. Cryptids in Kent, let’s fricking go!
Eleanor explains: “Legends, ballads and plays about monstrous wyrms and serpents have been retold time and again throughout history. Humanity, it seems, has a fascination with big slithery monsters!”
The tale of the Hythe Mothman was shared on the podcast by Kent local Emma, who hosts another great podcast that we’ll get onto in a minute. But back to this Mothman - the year was 1963, it’s mid-November and four young people are walking back from a dance, on a quiet country road by Sandling Park.
Images by Rebecca Dougals
One of the group notices a super-bright star and points it out to his fellow party people and they stop and watch it get bigger and then drop behind some trees. Of course, like you and I would, they run. A gold light follows them as they try to get away. After hearing snapping in the trees, a monstrous figure comes out of the woods and moves towards them. It’s human-sized. No head. Expansive, bat-like wings. Then they really scarper!
Later that month, a man reports seeing golden lights crossing a football pitch in Sandling, while another group find flattened bracken and giant footprints on the site of the original sighting. When they return with local reporters to cover the story, they watch frozen in fear as the same woods pulsate with golden light for half an hour.
And I bet you thought the strangest thing about Hythe was the 1,200-skull-filled ossuary in the crypt at St Leonard’s…
Images by Rebecca Dougals
Ghostly goings-on
Emma’s love of everything ‘Fortean’ comes from growing up in Ireland, “where ghost stories and storytelling are just a part of the fabric of existence,” she says.
“Old folklore and folk magic still play a large role in life, so I always had a natural affinity for it. My love of the old stories led to a natural curiosity about contemporary ghost stories.”.
Emma presents Real Life Ghost Stories, a podcast dedicated to ghost stories from around the world. She says: “There is something so universal about ghost stories and they are something that people can really bond over. Everyone can enjoy the mystery of a paranormal experience.”
I was curious what type of ghosts we tend to have in our county. “There seems to be a prevalence of residual hauntings. According to paranormal investigators, these are hauntings with no direct interaction with the living. It’s like an echo through time, where a haunting is replayed like a recording.”
Emma’s podcast is chocca with amazing stories from Kent and beyond, but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to ask her about her favourite local yarn, which takes place in Tiny Tim’s Tearoom in Canterbury.
During restoration of the site, “builders uncovered the mummified remains of children and bags of teeth and hair behind a fireplace. When examined, the remains were those of three children who had died of cholera in the Middle Ages. In the early 90s, a local historian decided to stay the night and see if there was any truth to the rumours. He fled the building in the middle of the night after hearing children chanting a prayer that was traditionally said over people who were dying of the plague.” Jeepers!
It doesn’t end there. Emma shares that during another run of work in the early 00s the builders heard children’s feet on the stairs, while their tools went missing and appeared in the very same fireplace. They might as well have some fun, right?!
Whatever the truth behind these stories, and the many others that our county is rich with, I wish you a thoughtfully enjoyable time exploring the strangeness of Kent. From haunted castles, witch-trial history and spirit-filled pubs, you don’t have to go far to find a story worthy of a Hollywood movie. If you have an esoteric Kent tale to share, do reach out to me on Instagram @esotericisle - I’m dying to hear from you…
For more tales about spooky Kent:
