The Werewolf of Dogdyke: A 1926 Fenland Tale, Two Hares and a Window Print

A skeleton with a wolf's head. A rap on the window at night. A cottage barricaded until dawn.

That is the whole of the old Lincolnshire legend, and on Halloween 2016 a national tabloid asked whether it had come back.

What the 1926 story says

The BBC Lincolnshire history page, created in 2005, reproduces the text the Star leans on. It is credited to "Legends of the Fenland People as told by Christopher Marlowe M.A., author of 'The Fen Country', 1926." (The page's heading also carries the dates "(1815–1864)," which it never explains.)

In that text a young archaeologist who lived in Langrick Fen, "not far from Dogdyke," is digging in the peat when he finds what looks like "a human skeleton with a wolf's head." He assumes it is a fairground monstrosity and takes it home. That night he is woken by a "sharp rat-tat on the window pane" and sees "a human being with a wolf's head." The creature snarls and raises its arm to smash the glass. He bolts into the kitchen, bars the door and waits out the night to the "stealthy pad-pad of feet" outside. At dawn the table is overturned and a window is shattered. He buries the remains again, covers them with peat, and is never disturbed again.

Note who is in the story. It is the young man, not the author, who is visited. The Star's summary says "Marlowe was later awoken by the head of a wolf looking at him through the window." On the BBC text, that is a mix-up.

Where the 2016 report began

The Skellingthorpe account is older than the werewolf headline. A blog post dated October 2, 2016, relaying the Lincolnshire Echo, frames it as a big-cat story. In that version the family's outbuilding had marks on the lower half of its glass doors, with a span slightly smaller than the woman's hand and what looked like paw pads. Her husband first took them for window-cleaner smudges. Two hares were found dead on the lawn the same day. She told the Echo the hares "have been pecked by crows, but it wouldn't have been crows that killed them," and the blog adds that big-cat sightings had been reported that autumn in Mablethorpe, Toynton All Saints, near Spilsby and Partney. Nobody in that version says werewolf.

What the Star reports for 2016

The Daily Star piece of October 31, 2016 says "thick black hair, savaged rabbits and large paw prints" have been spotted, "sparking rumours the Werewolf of Dogdyke is back." The detail behind the headline is thin. It names two incidents, and the first is the same household report, now a month old:

• A woman at a remote home in Skellingthorpe says she found two mutilated hares in her garden and two very large paw prints on a window. She says she has "never seen a cat, dog or fox anywhere even near our property," and has been "a bit wary" since.
• In December 2014, a man found a huge footprint in woods near Friskney and photographed what he calls "a shadowy figure stood within the trees staring at us from afar."

The Star writes of "numerous sightings … across the county in recent weeks," but its piece names nothing beyond those two, and the second is nearly two years old.

The heritage voice

The Star quotes Roger Parsons of the Lincolnshire Heritage Trust. The first line it gives him, "The story of the Werewolf of Dogdyke was recorded in 1926, and even today it sends shivers down my spine," is almost word for word what Parsons wrote for the BBC page in 2005: "The story was recorded in 1926, and even today it sends a shiver down my spine!" The Star's headline sentence, that he "believes the legend could be true," is the paper's paraphrase; the quotations it prints do not say that. The second quote, that the find "seemed to awaken some creature … which some say are still happening in the area today," was not found on the BBC page.

The police line

A Lincolnshire Police spokeswoman is quoted in the same piece, but her words are trick-or-treat safety advice: accompany children, check the door viewer, "Not Sure Don't Open the Door." It does not mention a werewolf, the hares or the prints.

What's missing

No photograph of the prints appears in the pieces read. The household's own account points to a big cat, not a werewolf, and nobody has identified the animal. The two incidents sit nearly two years and many miles from each other and from the legend's setting, and the link between them is the paper's framing. The Skellingthorpe household's own account, as relayed, concerned a possible big cat. A folklorist's blog that week, Open Graves, Open Minds, retells the tale, but adds no new witness. The Echo's original text could not be found online, so the Echo wording is as the blog gives it. The Star page also shows an edit stamp of July 2019, so the version online today may differ from the October 2016 text.

Related reading on the site: Old Stinker, the Hull werewolf.

Bottom line

A 1926 fenland story of a wolf-headed figure at a window is real as a story. The October 2016 additions are a woman's report of two dead hares and paw-like marks on glass (told to the Echo as a possible big cat), a 2014 photo of a dark shape, and a heritage quote that the Daily Star turned into "believes it could be true." Nothing ties the incidents to each other or to the tale.

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Attribution / source table

• Claim: The 1926 text: young man, Langrick Fen, skeleton with wolf's head, window, barricade, reburial; Parsons' 2005 line "sends a shiver down my spine!"; "(1815–1864)" heading
  Attribution: BBC Lincolnshire (page created Aug 18, 2005; archived), quoting C. Marlowe, The Fen Country, 1926
  Link: BBC
• Claim: Skellingthorpe hares and prints; Friskney 2014 print and photo; Parsons quotes; police advice; "numerous sightings"
  Attribution: Daily Star (Douglas Patient), Oct 31, 2016, edit stamp Jul 20, 2019
  Link: Daily Star
• Claim: Oct 2 relay of the Lincolnshire Echo report: outbuilding glass doors, hand-sized prints, hares, crows, other big-cat reports
  Attribution: Blog post "Did A Mystery Beast Savage These Hares?", Oct 2, 2016 (quoting the Lincolnshire Echo)
  Link: Blog
• Claim: Folklorist retelling, no new witness
  Attribution: Open Graves, Open Minds (undated, week of Halloween 2016)
  Link: OGOM
• Claim: Related Hull "werewolf" report
  Attribution: Monstrum Athenaeum, 2016
  Link: Old Stinker

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Legal / disclaimer footer

Entertainment and cryptid-news commentary only. Nothing here confirms a werewolf or any other creature. The 1926 text, the 2016 reports and the quotes belong to their sources and are attributed as published. The witnesses are not named, and the map location is approximate to town level.