Terrible Trolls of Slitting Mill

Barry and Elaine had just attended a hearty Christmas party in the Staffordshire town of Penkridge, and were on their way back home to their house in Slitting Mill. It was 1975, and the Staffordshire couple were in their late twenties. Their two young children were in the back of the car as they trundled along lonely country lanes through the early hours of a cold winter's morning. As they approached their tiny home village, their car engine suddenly started to splutter before entirely stalling. Concerned, Barry left the vehicle to try and find out what had gone wrong - and it was then that a troop of diminutive hairy humanoids would reveal themselves to the now-terrified English family.

## Boggarts in Staffordshire

Barry had just managed to successfully coast the car to the side of a country road near to the ancient Stone House on the outskirts of Slitting Mill using the last of the suddenly-useless vehicle's momentum, and had gotten out onto said road in order to open the hood of the vehicle and inspect the engine despite being '*mainly useless at mechanical stuff*'. He was not, however, sufficiently useless to be unable to see that there were clearly no loose wires, no problem with the vehicle's fuses, and that the radiator hadn't overheated. The car seemed to have just stopped for no reason.

Realising that it would potentially take quite a while to get the car started again, and noting that they were (roughly) less than half a mile away from their house - Barry decided that the best course of action would be to retrieve the picnic blanket they had in the trunk of the car and give it to Elaine so that she could keep herself and their children warm with it while he ran home and fetched Elaine's car in order to drive his freezing family home. The children were asleep at this point, seeing as it was in the small hours of the morning and they were only four and six years old, respectively, at the time of the incident. Barry and Elaine were planning to get '*someone out from a garage to look at it*' the following day.

Suddenly, Elaine screamed loudly as she witnessed the terrifying sight of a diminutive humanoid figure swiftly running across the road in front of them. She had apparently just managed to see the critter '*at the last second*' before it vanished from sight - but the couple's plans would only spiral further into supernatural chaos as Elaine realised that she was seeing another of the creatures following the first one, which was, in turn, followed by a third monster of the same '*hairy troll*' variety.

Under the silvery light of the moon, the witnesses could see that the small creatures had hunched backs and hooked noses. They were approximately 4ft tall. The witnesses felt the need to clarify that they could not see '*a stitch on them at all*' - and that their bodies were completely covered in hair. When the critters had all crossed the road, they could be seen loitering at the edge of the trees on the other side of the road, seemingly watching out for something like wary animals. However, the situation swiftly turned from one of curiosity to one of hysterical terror as the creatures suddenly started to slowly approach the witnesses.

They crept forwards, almost as if they were hunting prey. Barry has since thought that perhaps the entities were just interested in finding out who they were, but judging by what happened next I might be drawn to say that the creatures did much more than that. Elaine was utterly inconsolable with panic, and Barry was quickly approaching that state as well out of concern for his young children. It was at this point that Barry and Elaine suddenly experienced a total lapse in memory - and the next thing they knew was that it was two o'clock and the car would now once again start easily.

Neither Barry nor Elaine remembers seeing the entities leave the scene - and the former has been left with the nagging feeling that '*something happened to us*'. He had no way to access these hidden memories, but said that he did later have a dream about the creatures surrounding the car. All that he is sure of is that the entities really were there, and that '*they were real*'. The children seem to remember nothing of the event, and neither member of the tormented couple have ever had any more experiences with the unexplained - but this specific happening will haunt them for the rest of their days. Barry and Elaine are now in their mid-sixties.

## Alien Origins?

On December 22, 1954 - two men in Caracas, Venezuela were attacked by four hairy dwarves wearing loincloths while travelling on the road to nearby Petare. These creatures emerged from a spherical UFO hovering 6ft above the road - and when one of the men tried to confront one of them, it pushed him back and sent him flying 15ft through the air. The creature leapt at him and started clawing at him, while his terrified friend fled the scene to go get help. Before this help could arrive, however, one of the dwarves shone a beam of light at their victim - stunning him so that they could swiftly pile into their bizarre aircraft and quickly vanish from the scene. There would be at least two other reports of hairy dwarves attacking random hunters and truckers all across Venezuela that same year.

I think that the entities shown in the Slitting Mill case might've been of the same variety as the ones seen in Caracas. They are diminutive hairy humanoids, and are associated with the UFO phenomenon. The reason that I claim that the Slitting Hill creatures are connected with UFOs is because of the presence of missing time in the witnesses' memories - which is something that is often associated with alien abduction reports. It is also interesting to note that folkloric monsters such as Boggarts and Bogles from that area match the descriptions of hunch-backed hairy dwarves. Perhaps these hirsute aliens have been visiting the English countryside for longer than we may like to acknowledge?

## Bigfoot and Littlefoot?

Researcher Deborah Hatswell reports that, in 1995, a local woman by the name of Jackie Houghton had an encounter with a '*huge and lumbering*' hairy humanoid in the wee hours of the morning - also in the village of Slitting Mill. Another report comes from an unnamed witness who had a run-in with a similar hairy man-beast in 1998. On a star-filled night in Slitting Mill, the witness and their friends were driving home while laughing and joking amongst themselves. Suddenly, however, they all fell silent and noticed a '*man-like*' figure nearby. It appeared to be crouching forward, and turned to stare at the passing car as they drove past it in frightened silence. The witness described it as being roughly 6'8" and as having a dark black-brown pelt of hair. It apparently looked very strong, and just one of its legs would be thicker than two of the witness's.

These reports are similar to the one that makes up the main body of the article, but of course there is the major discrepancy in how tall the entities are represented as being. In the earlier reports, the creatures are diminutive and troll-like, whereas in the incidents that take place in the 1990s we are instead driven to draw parallels between these creatures and the North American Bigfoot. Perhaps what we are dealing with here is a case of a group of juvenile Bigfoot creatures? Then again, that wouldn't explain the missing time or the stalling of the car - which is actually another element associated with UFO lore.

## Sources

'The Monster Book: Creatures, Beasts and Freaks of Nature' by Nick Redfern

'Little Hairy Men of Slitting Mill' by Deborah Hatswell for her *ukwildman* blog

'1954: Earth vs the Hairy Dwarves' on *Think AboutIt Docs*