1: Maldon Mer-Man
In the spring of 1780, local eccentric and prestidigitator, Alan Mulvane, claimed to have caught a bizarre sea creature whilst out fishing on the Essex salt flats, ‘Thee lykes of wiche fulle horribele it wass and no mistayke’. It was immediately put on show in what was to become one of England’s most famous freak shows, drawing crowds of up to twenty people at a time. Some claimed it was just an old boot that Mulvane had stuffed full of sandwiches, but still others noted an uncanny resemblance betwixt it and the sea trout of the nearby tidal estuary…
2: Essex Throttler
Years before London’s Jack the Ripper would stalk the streets of Whitechapel in search of victims, a far more vile and mysterious entity began a reign of terror throughout Essex that would last well into the next century. It became known simply as ‘The Essex Throttler’, for that is what it did: its prey were seldom granted the sweet release of death, as in Jack’s case; but instead were throttled to within an inch of their sanity and left as pallid, idiot revenants, white haired and wild eyed, to wander the streets of Essex townships, babbling incoherently about their experiences. It is said the rise of the British ‘Chav’ population has its genetic roots in these poor and damaged souls.
3: Beast of Beacon Hill
Doubtless the reader has heard of the Bodmin Moor Beast, and Norfolk’s ‘Black Shuck’, but Maldon’s Beacon Hill plays host to its own, peculiar specimen of crypto-zoological obscurity. ‘Dangly Ubb’, as the locals have christened it, is neither lupine nor feline, but is reportedly a giant, hairy, breastlike monstrosity that has often been seen flopping around the hilltop. Originally thought to be a joke amongst the local milkmen (it is said to be most active in the early hours of the morning), the legend was lent significantly more credence when in 1992, councillor Donald Spavins claimed to have seen it lactating atop a streetlamp. Spavins later saw that the streetlamp was replaced in accord with health and safety town ordinances.
4: The Butcher of Beeleigh Road
John Compton’s trade was no secret: he ran the local butcher’s shop on Maldon High Street from 1955 to 1978, and was known by all to be a large and ruddy-cheeked fellow who took great pride in his work, and always spoke the best of people. Yet what of the other John Compton? The one who hid away from prying eyes, long into the evening each night in his home on Beeleigh Road? Could he have been laughing maniacally to himself as he sharpened his butcher’s blades, eyeing the children of the local comprehensive and imagining their blood washing through the streets and into the gutters? Could he really? He had to be hiding something, did ‘Jolly’ John Compton.
5: Crabbus Man
‘As any fool know, to walk after dark through Promenade Park is to walk in the shadow of death; for there the Crabbus Man lurks and scuttles, with his clacking claws and twitching eye stalks, ready to leap upon the unwary and clack at them, they whose souls shall know no peace for all their remaining days upon the Earth…’ Or so wrote the Reverend Joseph Arkwright in his diary for the year 1863. Arkwright never saw the creature himself, though his borderline obsessive documentation of the Crabbus Man, including many incidents of its manifestations as sundry simulacra throughout Maldon (be it a cloud that ‘rather resembled a crab’s claw’ or a shadow upon a grass verge that ‘seemed to scuttle most unwholesomely’) has become the go-to source for Crabbus lore.
6: 151 Church Street
God it’s terrifying here.
7: Viking Road
The hideous deeds committed by the Northmen are well documented, most notably by the Venerable Bede of Lindisfarne, where in the Year of Our Lord 793 they did slaughter the innocent monks and didst desecrate their most holy altar with pagan blasphemy to make even the most ignorant of modern heathens shudder with disgust. Their raids into Essex are less well-documented, but you can be sure they did some pretty terrible stuff here as well.
8: Downs Road
The writer, in his youth, has actually walked down Downs Road on a dark Autumn evening, in the late 1980s. He cannot be certain the shadow that fell across the path in front of him was anything but a trick of the light, but he fears it was something worse. How did Downs Road get its name? Could an actual Downs have lived there, and if it did, was it left to wander unsupervised, to harass the good Maldon townsfolk?
9: White Horse Lane
Our English countryside is famous for its prehistoric hill figures: the Cerne Abbas giant, the Long Man of Wilmington, and a veritable herd of white horses; the Uffington White Horse being perhaps the most famous. But White Horse Lane does not derive its name from these pagan relics. Instead, so the story goes, a coaching inn was once located here, attended by the Tally-Ho line which plied between Birmingham and London. It was pulled by three bay stallions, and one notably ghost-white mare. The filthy, superstitious peasants of Maldon had never seen such a beast, and would cross themselves every time they saw it.
