Maria Marten and the ‘Murder in the Red Barn’ on Film

More

Plymouth’s most famous ghost haunts White Lady Road

More

Dr Who: 10 Things You Might Not Know About The Daemons

More

Making of Trog (1970) Recreated in ‘Feud: Bette and Joan’

More

Spooky Isles

  • Haunted Places to Visit
  • Paranormal
    • Most Haunted Episode Guide
  • Horror Films
  • Television
  • Books
  • Home
  • Contact us
  • Our Writers
  • Write for us
  • Links

The Brag, Shape-shifting Devil Horse

We need new writers! Please contact us if you would like to submit an article for Spooky Isles.

JON KANEKO-JAMES tells us about shape-shifting devil horses from the north of England


I’ve only just started this column, so I’m not particularly worried about running out of ideas yet, but I did sit down for this one thinking, “I hope I can deliver something suitably strange.”

And here we are, a race of mischievous shape-shifting horses who terrorise the north of England: Brags.

Imagine the scene: you’re a medieval Geordie making your way back from the pub one night, feeling the toll of a hard day’s work and a hard night’s drinking, when you spot a perfectly good horse stand there at the roadside. Now, horses can be treated like bikes: there are places where someone can tie them up with some food and water, and go do their own thing. This, however, isn’t one of them. This is the roadside, not an inn or a stable.

So, you do the only thing you can do: you look both ways, call out feebly, and claim it for your own.

The beast behaves well. It walks well, it’s well fed and looks healthy. You decide to take it for a turn around the pond on your way home … which is where things start to go wrong.

As soon as you get near the water the beast tenses up, twitches, and bucks you straight into the pond. You splash and flounder in the water, coughing as you rise to the surface. What you see is a thing from your future nightmares: a shaggy, black, donkey-like thing with flaming blue eyes the size of saucers. You thrash to get away from it, but it turns tail and runs into the night, laughing an eerie, human laugh.

That’s a Brag, and that’s the tip of the iceberg. According to a woman of Pelton, in Sir Cuthbert Sharpe’s book Bishoprick Garland, the Brag was a malevolent shapeshifter and herald of death. Its more innocuous forms were animals, like a calf with a bushy tail, or a dog with a neckerchief, but the Brag had much more horror than that up its sleeve.

Perhaps it would follow you through the darkness as a white pony, or Galloway, as it did one terrified Durham midwife as she went about her rounds. Perhaps it would appear in the strange form of four men carrying a white sheet…

However it had a more terrifying form still, since Sharpe reports that his source told a story of a local doctor how was so frightened by the creature that he could bear no mention of it ever again, and a man from Bewick who committed suicide after seeing it, so terrified of the creature was he.

Perhaps it’s the creature’s last reported form that terrified the man so much: that of a naked, headless man. Or perhaps it was because of the fact that the Brag was not only a herald of death, but one who could lay curses in its own right. Our Pelton woman tells the story of a man cursed while wearing a white suit. He saw the Brag as four men carrying a white sheet and so badly cursed was he that he was never able to wear the suit again without terrible bad luck.

We can’t say for sure, but the Brag is even described as thundering up to a house with a sound like six horses, forcibly claiming the soul of an elderly man inside…

You may also like to read:

  • Most Haunted: Chislehurst Caves (Night 2) REVIEW
  • Director reveals creepy goings-on shooting The Haunting of Radcliffe House
  • 5 Haunted Places to Visit in Royal Tunbridge Wells
  • Plymouth’s most famous ghost haunts White Lady Road
  • 5 Haunted Places to Visit in Enfield
  • England’s most haunted and deadly roads
  • The 53 Spirits of The Man and Scythe, Bolton
  • The Curse of Peg O’Neil’s Ghost – a beheading won’t stop her!
  • Black Monk of Pontefract: England’s darkest poltergeist case revealed!
  • Pearlin’ Jean: A Ghost Story Of Umpteen Variations

Aug 14, 2012Jon Kaneko-James
Forest's Graveyard, Bodies & Twisted FacesThe Romance of Dracula author interview
Comments: 0

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

    Jon Kaneko-James

    Jon Kaneko-James is a London-based writer, with a particular interest in the history of magic and the medieval church. He works as a tour guide at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and maintains his own small guiding company called Boo Tours.

    14 August 2012 1 Comment FolkloreEngland
    Tags
    Film ReviewsEnglandScotlandGreater LondonIrelandHammer FilmsVampiresHaunted Places to VisitGhost HuntingParanormal ResearchDraculaOccultWalesRegular ColumnsPeter CushingChristopher LeeFrankensteinWitchcraftJack the RipperMurderBram StokerLancashireBook ReviewsBoris KarloffWerewolvesVideosMost HauntedNorthern IrelandYorkshireUniversal PicturesHorror Film MemoriesLanarkshireGlasgowCemeteriesZombiesVincent PriceHorror Film ListsDr Jekyll and Mr HydeDublinParanormal Investigator Q&AMy Ghost ExperienceSaintsCreepy Kids WeekArthur Conan DoyleAmerican International Pictures
    Meet our Spooky Writers
    Ryan O'Neill
    Darren Chadwick-Hussein
    Kate Von Dierk
    David Senior
    Mickey Gocool
    Andy Chaplin
    David Barrett
    Mark Fryers
    Dacre Stoker
    K.B. Goddard
    Sharon Clarke
    Emma Dark
    Josie Palmer
    Kerry Greenaway
    Terry Sherwood
    Kai Roberts
    Dr Fiona-Jane Brown
    Michael S. Collins
    Rick Hale
    Mike Covell
    Pollyanna Jones
    Philip Davies
    Amy Van De Casteele
    Kaja Franck
    Patsy Sorenti
    Paul Adams
    Chris Newton
    Katie Doherty
    Andrew Homer
    Janet Quinlivan
    Matt Wingett
    Tracy Monger
    Gregor Stewart
    Jay Hollis
    Selene Paxton-Brooks
    Dom Cooper
    Chris Rush
    Claire Barrand
    Peter Fuller
    LH Davies
    Howard Jackson
    Stephen Jacobs
    Paul Moynihan
    Jon Rees
    Barry McCann
    Becky Keane
    Eddie Brazil
    David Saunderson
    Ann Massey O'Regan
    Andrew Garvey
    Richard Phillips-Jones
    Guest Writer
    Search Spooky Isles
    About Spooky Isles

    Established in 2011, The Spooky Isles is the leading dark tourism website that invites all to enjoy the many historic horrors and ghostly goings-on that the UK and Ireland has to offer…

    Categories
    Archives
    This website and its content is copyright of The Spooky Isles © 2011-2017. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to www.spookyisles.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.