Beasts & cryptids

The Rabbit-Headed Man of Beckett's Wood

Also known as: Big Ears

Beckett's Wood, Aston, near Sutton Weaver, Runcorn

1931

The only source found is a walking blog about the paranormal history of Runcorn. It describes Beckett's Wood as an innocent-looking patch of deciduous woodland with a brook running through Mare's Clough, on the edge of the town's boundary at Aston, near Sutton Weaver.

In 1931, it says, a six year old girl called Lizzie from Frodsham was playing with friends in the wood when she was startled by what she described as a man with the head of a rabbit. She ran back to tell the others, who laughed at her, and she realised she had left her doll behind. A few days later the children went back. A local poacher met them and warned them not to go into the woods, because 'big ears would skin them'. He described the man, and the children recognised him from Lizzie's description.

The blog's text breaks off in the version found before saying how the story ended, and it does not name a newspaper or a book as the origin. There is an obvious non-supernatural reading, a poacher trying to keep children out of a wood, but the tale is kept here as a thin single-source local legend. The pin is a best estimate of the wood's position.

Evidence
Single witness account
Access
Access unrecorded
Location
53.315, -2.705 (Parish-level only, treat as an area)

Sources: Joe the Cocker Hikes, "Paranormal Runcorn" [other]

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