Welsh Werewolves: The Beast Between Denbigh and Wrexham

Wales has no shortage of creatures hiding in its folklore.

There are spectral hounds, troublesome fairies, water spirits, dragons and things considerably more difficult to classify. Against such a background, a werewolf hardly seems out of place.

One particularly dramatic story supposedly begins in North Wales in 1790, when travelers between Denbigh and Wrexham encountered an enormous black animal unlike any ordinary wolf.

It attacked a stagecoach.

Killed livestock.

Left enormous tracks in the snow.

And, according to one frightened witness, stood upright outside his house and stared through the windows with blue eyes.

It is a wonderful story.

There is just one problem.

The deeper we look into it, the harder its supposed eighteenth-century history becomes to verify.

That doesn’t necessarily make the Welsh werewolf disappear. It simply changes the mystery.

The Beast of 1790

The traditional account describes a stagecoach traveling between Denbigh and Wrexham shortly after dusk in 1790.

The passengers supposedly encountered an enormous black, wolf-like animal.

Witnesses estimated the creature at approximately seven feet long, and one unusual feature stood out immediately:

It had no tail.

The animal attacked the coach horses, reportedly tearing into one of them while the other escaped.

The beast then began feeding upon the dead or injured animal.

If the description is accurate, this was no fleeting glimpse of something disappearing across a road.

People supposedly watched it attack at close range.

And the encounter was only the beginning.

The Blood-Red Moon

The story acquires an almost suspiciously perfect Gothic detail.

A full moon supposedly hung overhead during the attack.

Not merely a full moon.

A blood-red full moon.

Later versions even claim that frightened residents began using the expression “bad moon on the rise.”

That particular detail should immediately make us cautious.

The phrase is overwhelmingly associated with Creedence Clearwater Revival’s 1969 song “Bad Moon Rising,” and I have found no reliable eighteenth-century Welsh source establishing that people around Denbigh and Wrexham were using it in 1790.

It is precisely the sort of marvelous detail that can become attached to an old legend much later.

So we can safely discard that part without discarding the entire story.

There is still supposedly a very large animal attacking a stagecoach.

And the following year, according to the legend, it returned.

Tracks in the Snow

During the winter of 1791, a farmer reportedly discovered enormous wolf-like tracks in a snow-covered field several miles east of Gresford.

He followed them.

The tracks continued for approximately two miles before leading him toward a scene of destruction.

Livestock had reportedly been mutilated.

The trail eventually approached a neighboring house.

Inside, the occupant had barricaded himself against something outside.

His account transformed an unusually large wolf into something considerably stranger.

Something Looked Through the Window

The frightened man claimed the creature had approached his house during the night.

Then it stood upon its hind legs.

The animal was supposedly tall enough to peer through the windows.

Its eyes appeared blue.

Even more peculiar, the creature reportedly struck or scratched at the door as though attempting to gain entrance.

Whether those details belonged to the earliest version of the story is uncertain.

But they change the nature of the encounter.

A large animal killing livestock is one thing.

A wolf-like creature standing upright and looking through a window evokes something else entirely.

The werewolf had arrived.

The Historical Problem

This is where we need to separate a good legend from good documentation.

The story is repeated online as though a well-documented series of attacks occurred around Denbigh, Wrexham and Gresford in 1790 and 1791.

I have not found convincing contemporary documentation establishing that.

The readily available versions largely repeat the same details, often without identifying a newspaper, diary, parish record or other eighteenth-century source.

That doesn’t prove the story was invented recently.

Local traditions can survive orally for generations before someone writes them down.

But it does mean we shouldn’t present the 1790 attack as established historical fact.

For now, it is better regarded as North Welsh werewolf folklore with an uncertain documentary origin.

And frankly, that is interesting enough.

Were There Wolves in Wales?

Here the story encounters another difficulty.

Wild wolves had disappeared from Britain centuries before 1790.

The precise date of their extinction is debated, and historical estimates vary between regions, but a breeding population of wolves certainly wasn’t roaming North Wales in the late eighteenth century.

So if someone genuinely encountered a huge wolf-like animal near Wrexham in 1790, an ordinary native wolf would be an unlikely explanation.

An escaped captive animal is possible.

A very large dog is considerably more plausible.

Britain has a long history of powerful breeds that could appear decidedly wolf-like under poor conditions.

And darkness is notoriously bad at estimating size.

But neither explanation gives us a seven-foot, tailless animal standing upright and peering through windows.

Assuming, of course, that anyone actually reported those details in 1791.

The Bickerton Hills Beast

The original story also jumps forward almost two centuries to 1979.

This time the location is the Bickerton Hills in Cheshire, across the English border from Wales.

Two travelers supposedly encountered an enormous wolf-like creature that attacked two vagrants in front of them. The original article described the victims as being mutilated by the animal.

Again, this is an extraordinary claim.

And again, the documentation available to support the familiar version is frustratingly weak.

Two people being killed or seriously mutilated by an unidentified animal in England in 1979 should have generated police records and substantial newspaper coverage.

Without such documentation, the dramatic details shouldn’t be treated as established fact.

That doesn’t mean nobody reported seeing something strange in the Bickerton Hills.

It means the mutilation story requires evidence.

There is an important difference.

Britain Has Plenty of Phantom Beasts

The broader idea of strange animals wandering the British countryside is certainly not unique to this story.

For generations, people have reported unusually large black dogs, mysterious cats and other unidentified creatures.

Some undoubtedly represent escaped exotic animals.

Others are misidentified domestic animals or native wildlife.

Some reports may be hoaxes.

And then there are the sightings that remain difficult to classify.

British folklore is particularly rich in spectral black dogs.

Black Shuck in East Anglia is perhaps the most famous, but supernatural hounds appear under numerous names throughout Britain.

Some are omens.

Some guard particular locations.

Others pursue travelers.

The Welsh werewolf occupies similar territory, somewhere between cryptid report and traditional supernatural animal.

Wales and the Werewolf Tradition

There is also a genuinely old werewolf tradition surrounding the British Isles.

One of the most important medieval accounts was written by a Welshman, although his werewolves weren’t actually Welsh.

Gerald of Wales, or Giraldus Cambrensis, recorded the extraordinary story of the Werewolves of Ossory during the twelfth century.

Gerald described a priest traveling through Ireland who encountered a wolf capable of human speech.

The animal explained that he and a woman had once been human. Members of their people were periodically condemned to assume the shape of wolves for seven years.

The female wolf was dying.

And she needed a priest.

The Dying She-Wolf

The priest was understandably reluctant to believe any of this.

So the male wolf did something extraordinary.

He pulled back the wolf skin covering his companion.

Underneath was the form of a woman.

Confronted with something apparently human beneath an animal exterior, the terrified priest administered the Christian sacrament to her.

Gerald did not claim to have witnessed the encounter personally.

However, he reported that the affair became sufficiently serious for ecclesiastical authorities to discuss it and send information concerning the matter to Rome.

Whether we regard that as evidence of werewolves or evidence that medieval people could take extraordinary stories seriously is another question.

Either way, the account is nearly nine centuries old.

The Werewolf Wasn’t Always a Monster

Medieval werewolves are often considerably more complicated than their modern counterparts.

Consider Melion, an anonymous medieval lai probably composed around the end of the twelfth century.

Melion is one of King Arthur’s knights.

He possesses a magical ring that allows him to transform into a wolf.

His wife eventually betrays him while he is in animal form, stealing what he needs to become human again and abandoning him. Trapped as a wolf, Melion eventually encounters King Arthur, who recognizes that the unusually intelligent animal is something more than it appears.

The werewolf isn’t the villain.

He is the victim.

That is a long way from the Hollywood creature that emerges beneath a full moon and attacks anyone unfortunate enough to cross its path.

When Did the Full Moon Become Important?

Interestingly, many older werewolf traditions don’t depend upon the full moon at all.

Transformation might result from magic.

A curse.

A belt or enchanted garment.

A ring.

Divine punishment.

Witchcraft.

Or simply belonging to a particular supernatural lineage.

The now-familiar rule that a werewolf transforms specifically during the full moon became far more prominent in modern popular culture.

That makes the blood-red full moon in the 1790 Welsh story another reason for caution.

It may be old.

But it also fits the modern werewolf stereotype almost too perfectly.

What Was the Welsh Beast?

If there really was an unusual animal reported in North Wales around 1790, several possibilities remain.

A large domestic dog could have been responsible.

An escaped exotic animal cannot be ruled out without knowing more about the original circumstances.

A frightening encounter could have grown substantially through retelling.

Several unrelated animal attacks might eventually have become one story.

Or the entire account may be considerably newer than the date attached to it.

There is also the possibility preferred by anyone who enjoys leaving one door slightly open.

Perhaps people really did see something they couldn’t identify.

That doesn’t make it a werewolf.

But it doesn’t tell us what it was either.

The Creature at the Window

The Welsh werewolf story illustrates perfectly why old monster tales deserve better than either blind acceptance or immediate dismissal.

Accept everything unquestioningly and folklore becomes false history.

Dismiss everything and we risk losing the tradition itself.

Somewhere between those extremes lies the interesting part.

There is a story from North Wales about an enormous black animal appearing between Denbigh and Wrexham.

It supposedly attacked horses.

It left tracks through the snow.

Livestock died.

And eventually something followed those tracks to a frightened man’s house.

Perhaps the story grew with every telling.

Perhaps the blue eyes appeared later.

Perhaps the creature never stood upon two legs.

Perhaps there never was a creature at all.

But more than two centuries after the date attached to the legend, the image remains wonderfully unsettling:

A farmhouse surrounded by snow.

Something moving outside after dark.

The occupant bolts the door.

Then a shape rises slowly beyond the glass.

Too tall for a dog.

Too large for anything that ought to be wandering the Welsh countryside.

And two blue eyes look inside.

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Laura Wright

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