Cheshire Troll

**Habitat** | Open field

The **Cheshire Troll** was a humanoid cryptid that was sighted many times before mysteriously disappearing.

## Description

The Cheshire Troll was a bulky humanoid-like creature that stood 18 feet tall. It had no hair, was very pale, had glowing yellow eyes, big ears, a hunched back, a torso wrapped with a loincloth, and distorted body parts, i.e. hands and feet. Due to all of its sightings happening at night, it leads people to believe that it was a nocturnal monster. The creature in general was never aggressive to people, but did eat pests, and in some cases, possibly pets!

## Sightings

The first sighting was in 1974, by an anonymous family who were driving home late at night. As they were driving along a rural road south of Warrington, they claimed they saw "glowing eyes" amongst the wheat crops. Then, an "enormous grey creature darted in front of [our] van" they said. "It stood around 15 or so feet tall. I hit the brakes just before we hit it. The thing stopped in front of our car as if it was waiting for us to pass. All we could see was its torso, which was wrapped in a loincloth. It was walking on its knuckles like a gorilla, but it had no hair. We sat there for, well, who knows how long, but it felt like 30 minutes before we finally decided to move around it. We did so and then sped off. I could make out its head somewhat as we passed it; it had huge ears and glowing yellow eyes. It looked like a troll from fables."

Another sighting later that year said that the creature took shelter inside an abandoned cheese factory. It would only come out at night to hunt for rats, in which one sighting said, it would "grotesquely bite off the head [of the rat] then lap up the blood and leave the carcass for the wolves." Many rat carcasses were found in Cheshire with their heads bitten off and their blood lapped up from the neck.

Sightings of the "ugly creature" escalated in 1975, where an average of 17 sightings were reported per month. The creature definitely made a big bang in the lives of the people. "Everybody locked their doors at night.", said one deputy.

Sightings began to decrease in 1976, but many were still recorded. One sighting in this year saw it "rocking a tree to knock the bird eggs out of the nest". The creature, however, seemed to be getting *larger*. The sightings in the previous years said 12-16 feet tall. But in 1976, the animal was said to be 18-20 feet tall.

In 1977, the sightings almost came to a halt. The last report of the creature was on June 6, where the "troll", or whatever it was, abducted a dog, perhaps for food, or perhaps for companionship. Either way, the monster mysteriously disappeared.

## Possible Explanations

1. The fact that the creature took shelter in the day and only came out at night sounds very similar to a mythical creature known as the troll, where the Cheshire Troll got its name. The most common theory was that this was an actual troll.
2. A laboratory experiment makes some sense; perhaps government officials captured the creature.
3. An extraterrestrial was proposed.
4. A mutated gorilla that escaped from a lab, could have been the case, but probably wasn't.