Reported encounter Barmston Drain, Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, UK (sighting reports); Halsham, East Yorkshire (August report, nearby village)
Hull's "Old Stinker": A Drain-Side Beast, a Moonlit Hunt and a Council With No Werewolf Policy
Hull locals claimed an 8ft "half-man, half-dog" at Barmston Drain. A moonlit hunt and a council reply on werewolf policy followed. What the reports say.
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A tall, hairy something. A German Shepherd in its jaws. A fence it cleared in one jump.
That is the account that, according to the Hull Daily Mail, reached a Hull historian in the spring of 2016. By late May the story had a moonlit search party, a freedom-of-information reply from the city council and a Yorkshire folklorist's theory. It never produced a photograph. Here is what each report actually says.
The first report: Hull Daily Mail, May 6
The Hull Daily Mail ran the earliest report on record on May 6, 2016. Local historian Mike Covell told the paper that "more than seven people" had come to him claiming to have spotted a "half-man, half-dog" creature along Barmston Drain, the channel that runs through east Hull toward Beverley.
Covell described three accounts. A couple said they saw something "tall and hairy" eating a German Shepherd by the water. They said it jumped an 8ft fence and vanished, prey still in its jaws. A woman said something bounded along the drain on all fours, stopped, reared up on its back legs, then ran down the embankment and across the water. A second woman said she saw something "half-man, half-dog" while walking her dog, which started shaking and would not go any further.
Covell said he knew the couple for years and called them "trustworthy and very sincere." He added he wasn't sure what they had seen, only that they were "genuinely scared by something." He also said he had walked the drain with recording equipment and had already arranged a night hunt.
None of the witnesses is named in the coverage. None of the reports includes a photograph, a recording or a carcass.
How the story grew: May 15 and 16
Nine days later the national tabloids picked it up, and the details shifted. The Daily Mail and Metro on May 15, then the Mirror on May 16, said "several" people had seen it. The Daily Mail and Metro credited the Daily Express for the woman's account, and in that version she said the creature "vaulted 30ft" across the drain. Metro's text says she saw it "mid transformation"; the quote it prints from her says only that it was standing upright one moment and running like a dog the next.
France's Paris Match went further. Its May 16 item was headlined "7 témoins pour le loup-garou de Hull," citing the Express. The English pages say "several" and the Hull Daily Mail says Covell was approached by more than seven, so the number depends on who is counting and what they are counting. These May 15–16 pieces credit the Express or repeat Covell's account to the Hull Daily Mail, so they are one story retold, not independent confirmation.
Two other voices entered the record. Labour councillor Steve Wilson said he was "happy to keep a diary of sightings by people around here and report them to Hull Council." And Norfolk-based barrister and author Charles Christian, who wrote about the legend in a guide to Yorkshire's Wolds, linked the reports to Old Stinker. That is a werewolf said to roam the Yorkshire Wolds, a "great hairy beast with red eyes" nicknamed for its bad breath. The Mirror says the most recent earlier report dated to the 1960s, when a lorry driver claimed it tried to smash its way into his cab.
The hunt: May 21
The next full moon fell on May 21. The Daily Star reported that a party that included one of its Sunday reporters searched graveyards, allotments and abandoned factories by torchlight.
According to the paper, shortly after midnight the group encountered "a creature with glowing eyes" crashing around in the undergrowth on the drain bank. Christian said he saw "two eyes moving through the undergrowth" and thought it "a large animal, not a cat." He said the eyes were yellow, then seemed to turn green. Clouds drifted over the moon, so his camera was useless. Covell said bushes had been "crushed and plants uprooted like a tank had gone through." The ground, firm despite a shower, held no prints.
Nothing was photographed. Nothing was recovered. Covell said the hunts would continue every full moon and blamed a nearby tannery's smell for masking the creature's. He also said some residents thought the whole thing was a joke.
The council's answer: May 23
A local resident put the question to Hull City Council in a freedom-of-information request. The WhatDoTheyKnow page lists the request on May 9 and the council's reply on May 23, two days after the hunt. The request asked whether the council had a written policy on werewolves, whether a risk assessment had been done on the drain, whether the Environment Agency had been consulted, and whether dog wardens had access to firearms with silver bullets.
A July 28 write-up on werewolves.com says the council's information governance officer replied that Hull has no werewolf contingency plan. The Mirror later reported that the council had no written policy on dealing with werewolves, no record of werewolf-related risk assessments and no secret stock of silver bullets. The Mirror's late-August story also dates the request to "last month," which is loose on timing. The WhatDoTheyKnow page says May.
August: a second location
On August 29, the Mirror and, two days later, Metro carried a new claim, credited to the SWNS agency. A 24-year-old animal-rescue worker said she was driving with two friends through Halsham, a village in East Yorkshire, when "this beast on all fours started to walk towards my car on two legs." She said it looked "like a big dog, probably bigger than my car, but it had a human face," with cream and grey fur, and that it turned and ran off diagonally.
Staff at a nearby petrol station, she said, told the group the story of the Beast of Barmston Drain. She said she had never heard of it before and that reading about it afterwards matched what she saw. That order of events is her account. No one has corroborated it.
October: the folklorist's theory
On October 21 the Yorkshire Post carried the University of Hertfordshire's Dr Sam George, a gothic scholar who organised the UK's first International Werewolf Conference the year before. She said Old Stinker is "thought to inhabit a landscape which saw some of the last wolves in England," and argued he represents "not our belief in him as a supernatural shapeshifter, but our collective guilt at the extinction of an entire indigenous species."
The paper adds that the reports even drew a question from rock singer Alice Cooper: "Do you think it could be real?"
What the record shows, and what it doesn't
The story runs from December 2015 to October 2016 and has four strands. There are witness accounts that nobody has verified, a hunt that came back with eyes in the dark and crushed grass, an official reply that found no werewolf policy on paper, and an academic reading that treats the whole thing as folklore. The Mirror and Metro say a woman reported a human-faced beast on two legs in August. Dr George says the cultural memory of wolves is the story. The two are not in conflict, but they answer different questions.
What the sources don't give: a photograph, a print, a body, a police statement, a named witness or a second location confirmed by anyone but the person who saw it. Until one turns up, the Barmston Drain reports remain unconfirmed.
Our earlier report on the Hull woods, Old Stinker: The Werewolf Hull Woods, covers the legend's background.
Bottom line
Per the Hull Daily Mail, Covell says more than seven people reported a half-man, half-dog beast at Barmston Drain. The Daily Star says a May 21 hunt found glowing eyes and flattened undergrowth but no images or prints. A reply dated May 23 says Hull City Council has no werewolf policy. A woman says she saw a human-faced beast at Halsham in August, and Dr Sam George says it may be a memory of lost wolves.
Attribution / source table
- Claim: First report; "more than seven people"; three accounts; Covell's "trustworthy and very sincere" and "genuinely scared by something"; planned hunt
Attribution: Hull Daily Mail, May 6, 2016 (archived copy)
Link: Wayback capture - Claim: "Several" witnesses; 30ft vault; Cllr Wilson's diary; Christian and Old Stinker lore; December sighting; hunt planned for full moon
Attribution: Daily Mail, May 15, 2016 (citing the Daily Express)
Link: Daily Mail - Claim: Several people said to have seen it; "mid transformation" line; May 21 full moon
Attribution: Metro, May 15, 2016
Link: Metro - Claim: Barmston Drain reports from about Christmas; Christian on 1960s lorry-driver claim and the Wolds' wolves; Covell and Wilson quotes
Attribution: Mirror, May 16, 2016
Link: Mirror - Claim: "7 témoins" headline and seven-witness claim
Attribution: Paris Match, May 16, 2016 (citing the Express)
Link: Paris Match - Claim: May 21 hunt: torchlight search, glowing eyes, Christian's description, flattened undergrowth, no prints, hunts to continue
Attribution: Daily Star, May 22, 2016
Link: Daily Star - Claim: FOI request date (May 9) and council reply date (May 23); the four questions asked
Attribution: WhatDoTheyKnow request page and requester's user page
Link: Request page - Claim: Council reply: no werewolf contingency plan; the questions asked
Attribution: werewolves.com, Jul 28, 2016
Link: werewolves.com - Claim: Council had no written werewolf policy, no risk-assessment record, no silver bullets (Mirror's "last month" timing is loose); Halsham claim; Old Stinker 18th-century and 1960s claims
Attribution: Mirror, Aug 29, 2016 (SWNS)
Link: Mirror - Claim: Halsham claim, repeated
Attribution: Metro, Aug 31, 2016 (SWNS)
Link: Metro - Claim: Dr Sam George's "collective guilt" reading; Alice Cooper's question; August Halsham report
Attribution: Yorkshire Post, Oct 21, 2016
Link: Yorkshire Post - Claim: Earlier Monstrum report on the Hull woods
Attribution: Monstrum Athenaeum, June 9, 2016
Link: Old Stinker: The Werewolf Hull Woods
Legal / disclaimer footer
Entertainment and cryptid-news commentary only. Nothing here confirms a werewolf or any other creature. Witness accounts, hunt results and official replies are reported as the cited outlets gave them, and the claims belong to the people who made them. Witnesses are not named, and the map location is approximate to town level. If you walk Barmston Drain, stay on public paths and keep clear of the water.
Dramatic recreation based on the attributed account.
