Have you ever heard of the Hexham Heads or Wolf of Allendale?

Now that Halloween is approaching you might want to clue yourself up because, well there's no easy way of saying this, a werewolf may be out there.

On 10 December 1904, we, the Hexham Courant, published a story with the title "Wolf at Large in Allendale".

The wolf committed a "great slaughter of sheep" on the moors above Hexham in the winter of 1904 and was believed to be an escapee from the private zoo of Captain Bain in County Durham.

A hunt quickly ensued among petrified locals thinking the wolf may move on from sheep and start attacking children.

After many weeks the drama soon came to a grisly end when the wolf was cut in twain by a Midland Railway express near Cumwhinton station on the Settle-Carlisle railway. 

Too badly mutilated to be preserved, the wolf was beheaded and sent to the Midland Railway's headquarters at Derby.

For a week, the head of the Allendale wolf was displayed in the window of a taxidermist's shop in Derby before being mounted outside the Midland Railway's boardroom. 

In 1936, the head was still there, but it has now vanished, and subsequent searches for it have been unsuccessful.

Now let's fast forward to the 1970s, when things start to get even creepier.

In 1971 two young brothers by the name of Robson dug up two small, carved stone heads in the garden. They lived just 10 minutes from the wolf's favourite hunting ground.

Several nights later, neighbour Ellen Dodd and her daughter were sitting up late one evening when both of them witnessed a “half-man, half beast” enter their bedroom. The pair screamed in terror but the creature simply left the room, unbothered, and then “padded down the stairs as if on its hind legs”.

The stone heads then became associated with the possible re-appearance of the wolf, or, werewolf.

The wolf committed a great slaughter of sheepThe wolf committed a great slaughter of sheep (Image: Hexham Courant) Collector Dr Anne Ross took possession of the heads, as she had several other stone heads in her collection and wished to compare them to the Hexham pair.

A few nights after taking possession of the heads, Dr Ross awoke at 2am one morning, feeling cold and frightened.

According to MysteriousBritain, she looked up and saw a strange creature standing in her bedroom doorway: “It was about six feet high, slightly stooping, and it was black, against the white door, and it was half animal and half man.

"The upper part, I would have said, was a wolf, and the lower part was human and, I would have again said, that it was covered with a kind of black, very dark fur. It went out and I just saw it clearly, and then it disappeared, and something made me run after it, a thing I wouldn’t normally have done, but I felt compelled to run after it.

"I got out of bed and I ran, and I could hear it going down the stairs, then it disappeared towards the back of the house.”

But that was far the end of this tale.

Dr Ross came home with her archaeologist husband Richard Feacham one day, only to find their teenage daughter, Berenice, in shell shock.

Berenice explained that she had entered the house that afternoon to witness a large, black shape rushing down the stairs. Halfway down the stairs, the creature vaulted the bannister, landing with a soft, heavy thud like a large animal with padded feet.

That was the final straw for Dr Ross, who soon gave away her whole collection of stone heads.

Can't blame her, can you?

According to HexhamHistorian, a man named Desmond Craigie reported that he was the creator of the heads.

He claimed he made them in 1956 for his daughter while he was living in the house later occupied by the Robson family, along with a third head which became damaged and had to be thrown away. 

The original heads were analysed by Professor Dearman of the University of Newcastle, who concluded that the items had been moulded artificially rather than carved.

The legend of The Hexham Heads and its association with The Wolf of Allendale has since become a cornerstone of the local folklore of the area.