#braag

The Unexplained North: The Monsters of Northumbria

There are giants, monsters and supernatural shape-shifters out there in the North East. Brendan Riley takes a look into the legends.

Legends say that the old cobbled way stretching from Corbridge to Berwick, in Northumberland, known to some as the Devil’s Causeway, was built by a race of giants called the Yotuns, or Ettins. Not far away, near Alnwick, the Wooley Man of Rugley has been sighted over centuries.

The Newcastle antiquarian Richard Heslop (1842–1916) reported legends of a mysterious wild hominoid creature known in the Cheviots as the Broon Man o’ the Moors. Monster or lost cave-man?

Another mysterious creature recorded in our local legends is the shape-shifting spirit known as a braag. At Low Fell, in Gateshead, people feared the nightly apparition of the Portobello Braag. At Pelton, County Durham, another would appear in the shape of an ass, luring people into dangerous swamps and marshes.