๐ฆถ CRYPTID SIGHTING ยท EXP. Nยบ0555
ACTIVE
Black Annis
Black Annis is a cryptid โ a creature whose existence is unconfirmed by science โ with reported sightings near Leicestershire, GB. This file collects the accounts and folklore surrounding it.
Where and when was Black Annis sighted?
- Location
- Leicestershire, GB
- Date sighted
- Unknown
- Coordinates
- 52.64, -1.15
- Testimonies
- 0
- Last updated
LOCATION
What is Black Annis?
Black Annis is a blue-faced hag of Leicestershire folklore said to live in a cave she clawed out of the sandstone of the Dane Hills, west of Leicester, known locally as Black Annis's Bower, where she was said to wait for children and lambs to stray close enough to catch. Local tradition, recorded by antiquarians from the 18th century onward, describes her with iron claws, a blue face, and a taste for hanging the skins of her victims to dry on the branches of an old oak that once grew outside her cave. A rhyme once recited to frighten Leicestershire children into staying close to home went: "Black Annis' Bower Close I fear, and Black Annis will have you, my dear." An annual Easter Monday hare hunt from her bower to the town, mentioned in 18th-century sources, was said to have originated as a ritual reenactment of the community driving her back from its borders. Historians trace her name and character to a blending of local memory of an actual anchoress or hermit who lived in the caves, the Celtic goddess Anu or Danu, and a Scottish hag figure called Gentle Annie, folded together into a single cautionary bogey figure used for generations to keep children away from a genuinely dangerous, cave-riddled hillside.
๐ Source: Enigma Atlas
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