Suffolk is steeped in history – some of it uncanny and mysterious. From green children who suddenly appeared in the village of Woolpit, to little green men landing in Rendlesham Forest. Are there rational explanations for the county’s abiding myths, legends and unsolved puzzles?
Since first publishing our list, a ninth strange case has been submitted – the unsettling story of three naval cadets seemingly lost in time on an exercise in Kersey. Read on – and let us know if we’ve missed any out.
•The Green Children of Woolpit
Perhaps the oldest and most famous Suffolk mystery of them all. According to 12th century abbot Ralph of Coggeshall, in his Chronium Anglicanum, two children with green skin appeared in the village of Woolpit, near Bury St Edmunds.
They were brother and sister, spoke an odd language that no one could understand, and only ate beans until they were introduced to other foods, which seemed to change their skin to a normal colour.
The boy grew ill and died, but the girl survived to learn English and inform villagers that she came from an underground world inhabited by green people, called St Martin’s Land. She found work as a servant and married a man from King’s Lynn.
•The Bodies on the Beach, Shingle Street
The story tells of the North Sea being set ablaze in the autumn of 1940, and corpses of German troops washing up on the beach at Shingle Street.
In 1992, the government released a Ministry of Home Security file detailing the ‘Evacuation of civil population from the village of Shingle Street in east Suffolk’. It described the military requisitioning of more than 20 homes at Shingle Street, plans to lay mines on the beach, and to use the area for bombing test runs, but revealed nothing of a foiled Nazi invasion.
Some think the rumour may have emerged from true accounts of beach flame-barrages created elsewhere along the coast.
•The Wild Man of Orford
Another tale from Ralph of Coggeshall, who reported a merman-like creature caught in the nets of fishermen in Orford, near Woodbridge, in the mid-1100s. There was a time when visitors to Orford Castle may have come face-to-face with the ‘Wild Man’ in the dungeons, where according to the legend, he was caged and tortured for six months before escaping.
•Black Shuck
Other parts of the country have legends of ‘devil dogs’ and ‘hellhounds’, but few are as famous as Black Shuck.
Since the middle-ages, legend has spread of the fearful beast – once said to stalk the region’s countryside and coastline.
The legend has given rise to tales of a fiery-eyed monster showing up in graveyards, forests and roadsides – and an account of claw marks appearing on the door of Blythburgh Church.
In 2014, archaeologists dug up what turned out to be the remains of a very large and ancient domestic dog at Leiston Abbey – but some speculated it could be the carcass of Black Shuck.
•Rendlesham UFO Incident
Now known as ‘Britain’s Roswell’, the legendary Rendlesham Forest incident still sparks passionate debate among UFO-spotters and conspiracy theorists, almost 40 years on.
It all unfolded in late 1980, when several American airmen witnessed strange lights above RAF Woodbridge and Bentwaters.
The sightings have been variously written-off by sceptics as an elaborate prank, or being caused by the glow of Orfordness Lighthouse, but believers are convinced the airmen experienced something otherworldly.
•The Battling Dragons of Little Cornard
Legend tells of a fight between two dragons in Sharpfight Meadow, next to the River Stour, in 1449. One was black, from Kedington Hill, Suffolk; the other red, from Ballingdon Hill, Essex.
An hour-long battle ended in victory for the Essex dragon – and both returned to their hills.
•Dunwich
Dubbed Britain’s Atlantis, the small seaside village of Dunwich was once a city with a population of about 4,000 people.
At the end of the 1200s and into the 1300s, Dunwich was hit by massive storm surges – one of which is thought to have wiped about 400 homes and two churches.
Some people swear to having heard the drowned church bells still ringing on certain nights.
•Peasenhall murder
The tragic tale of Rose Harsent, a 23-year-old servant girl found murdered in the kitchen of a country house in 1902. Her throat had been cut, and tests showed she was six months pregnant.
Rumours had spread of her relationship with a married foreman carpenter, William Gardiner. He was twice tried for her murder, but the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict, and he was freed.
•Kersey ‘time slip’
This mystery was recorded in a book called Adventures in Time: Encounters With the Past, by Andrew MacKenzie. It tells of three cadets from HMS Ganges, at Shotley, experiencing something very odd in Kersey in 1957.
According to the book, the three 15-year-old boys witnessed the village, near Hadleigh, as it was several hundred years in the past.
The cadets were “guided by bells in the course of a training exercise, but on entering the village they saw it as it probably was in medieval times.”
The trio made a quick exit from the deserted village, having all experienced a feeling of unease and depression.
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