Richard Gullick explores the West Midlands’ overlooked pre‑industrial folklore - from water spirits and haunted trees to the Bobhowler moth. Featuring author Dale Chatwin, this report uncovers why these local myths mattered then - and why they still matter now.
00:00Over centuries, our landscape has been reshaped by factors and shafts, but folklore isn't just a pretty back story.
00:08These myths warned people about local dangers, mapped out morality, tapped into our collective fears.
00:15Dal Chathamon, author of the upcoming novel The Bob Howler, believes that reliving them helps us reconnect with place,
00:21and our own anxieties about identity, memory and grief. So what draws so many to these tales?
00:29The West Midlands myths have a very unique quality to them, and I think a lot of that comes from our rich history in this area.
00:41There's also a unique sense of humour that bleeds into these myths, and I'll give a little example.
00:47In Birmingham, it's more of a contemporary myth, but there's a creature called the Wump Tay,
00:53and the Wump Tay is this mischievous spirit that often transforms into a double-decker bus,
00:59and plays cruel pranks on unsuspecting victims, mostly people waiting for the late-night bus during their late-night commute.
01:08The Midlands has its share of enduring myths. There's the chained oak near Alton, rumoured to kill a noble hare with every falling branch.
01:17Jenny Greenteeth, a water hag blamed for drownings in Shropshire pools.
01:22And tales of headless riders crossing Stavartshire moorland at night.
01:27And for every legend that survives, many more have slipped through the cracks.
01:31Industrialisation shifted our focus from land and spirit to labour and steel.
01:36The Bob Howler at Dal Chatwin's invented moth figure feels like a ghost of those lost symbols.
01:42So, where does fiction begin, and what parts are borrowed from forgotten lore?
01:47The Bob Howler itself is a creature, and the folklore that surrounds it, is a complete invention of mine.
01:53So I wanted to create a mythical being and a folklore for the region.
01:59Even though we have many ourselves, I wanted to contribute to that tapestry.
02:04Tracking these stories down isn't easy.
02:06The Midlands never had a central canon of myths, just scattered tales.
02:10Half-membered place names, or odd bits of superstition.
02:15Local archives hold scraps, but much of it sits between memory and invention.
02:20So when stories do resurface, that writes the question, where are they coming from?
02:25And how do we know what's real?
02:28A lot of it came from books.
02:30Mostly books by local authors, local history.
02:33More specifically, a guy called Andrew Homer.
02:36Of course, there's also a lot of internet diving.
02:40And the third one would be visiting the areas themselves.
02:44Visiting the locations, like we are here at Moorcroft Wood in Moxley.
02:48Just being in these areas and immersing myself in the time and the place.
02:53And trying to imagine what it would have been like back then, and what sort of myths were being told at the time.
02:58These weren't just ghost stories, they were warnings, wise to process grief, map danger, pass on truth without facts.
03:06Then came the factories and the stories faded.
03:09But they still echo, because the fears they spoke to never really left.
03:14So if we forgot them, the question now is, what do we stand to gain by remembering them?
03:20Well, myths are like a time capsule that's been buried in the collective consciousness.
03:26They're a gateway to our history, to a time when the written word wasn't a thing and it was more passed down through oral tradition.
03:35They also make great entertainment as well, and they have to be entertaining because otherwise they get bogged down in too much, you know, factual stuff that some people might find boring.
03:45So you create these heroic characters, all these mythical creatures.
03:48And also, they just have a lot of our fears and anxieties and our hopes and dreams.
03:57They're very much reflections of us.
04:00And we can learn a lot from myths, learn a lot of valuable morals, and also a lot about our heritage.
04:09We talk a lot about what the Midlands built, but rarely about what it buried.
04:13These old stories weren't just entertainment, they were survival tools.
04:17Emotional truths dressed as superstition.
04:20And in an age where we've lost connection to place, maybe it's the myths, not the maps, that show us where we really are.
