A group of friends was sitting and chatting on the banks of a local waterway when two of the group, including the eyewitness, saw what they described as a ‘Rabbit-Faced Man’ peeking over the bank at them.
“I grew up in the small Lincolnshire hamlet of Branston Booths, named in legislation as a “nitrate sensitive area”. It had a pub, an old wooden village hall, and a chapel, but no church or shop. What it lacked in amenities, however, it more than made up for in attractions for adventurous children, such as a mysterious island surrounded by a moat, a stretch of woodland with some old but occasionally inhabited caravans in the midst of it (always the operations centre for international crimes in our imagination), and a body of reedy water known locally as the Delph.
This waterway ran straight from the main crossroads at the Booths, via an intersection with the Car Dyke, to the Sincil Drain, ultimately feeding the county’s main watercourse, the River Witham. The Delph has high grassy banks on either side, accessed from the crossroads by the Car Dyke’s own bank, which runs crossways to meet them and provides a bridge between the Car Dyke and the Delph. The first Delph bank is about 10m (33ft) away from the crossroads access point.
One summer’s evening in 1985, as the day was slowly turning to night, I was with my band of adventurers at the crossroads – there were five of us, aged 12 to 14 – chatting idly, with the Delph and bank tops, and fields beyond, as our backdrop. Three had their backs to the Delph, I was facing it, and a friend, Darrell, was standing to my right on a slight diagonal so that he was able to turn to me and then to our friends during the conversation, giving him a broader view than the rest of us.
We were on the point of saying our goodbyes when something caught my eye. A head had popped up over the first Delph bank top, and as I turned to register it, my mind was troubled: was this a rabbit-faced man or a man-faced rabbit? And with that, the head, on a pair of non-rabbit-sized shoulders, shot hack down behind the bank. Open-mouthed, I looked to Darrell, who had a similar expression, and we both said in excited unison, “Did you see that?”
We tried desperately to explain what we had seen to our friends – Darrell found it difficult to articulate, perhaps because of the angle at which he saw it, other than describing this human/animal ‘thing’ popping up and shooting back down again. We searched along the banks to see if it was still there. We found nothing, but – if truth be told – we didn’t look very hard. It was a terrifying encounter, but mercifully short.
My friends were non-plussed – “You just saw a big hare or rabbit” – but Darrell had seen what I had seen, and he just shook his head. Over the years, I have sought to explain this away as a trick of the crepuscular light (but why would it trick two people in the same way?), as a larger-than-normal animal (but I have seen enough rabbits and hares to know that they do not pop up in that way, or have human-like shoulders), or as a person playing a prank (doubtful, given that it is one of those places where everybody knows everybody else, and we would definitely have heard about it later).
Was the entity, perhaps, a cousin of the “giant rabbits” of the mythical island of Hy-Brasil? I have also wondered about whether I had already seen ‘The Wicker Man’ and was simply imagining a man with an animal head mask popping into the shot, as they do most memorably in the film; but had Darrell seen that film too and had he really been having the same thoughts as me? None of these strike me as satisfactory explanations – I definitely saw something strange that night and it has stayed with me ever since.
We didn’t mention it again within our group, and while I have always looked at those banks hoping to catch another glimpse, none has been forthcoming. I lost touch with Darrell when I went to university and he moved from Branston Booths, and I hope he sees this account. It is the first time I have written it down and would welcome his and any other reflections on this brief encounter.” AM
Source: Fortean Times, Issue 6, June 2021, citing: Andrew Mitchell, Boume, Lincolnshire
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Have you had a sighting of a winged humanoid or huge bat-like creature in the Chicago, Illinois metro area / Lake Michigan region? The entity has also been referred to as the ‘Chicago Mothman’, ‘Chicago Owlman’ & ‘O’Hare Mothman’ or ‘O’Hare Batman.’ – Chicago / Lake Michigan Winged Humanoid Regional Interactive Map – Please feel free to contact me at lonstrickler@phantomsandmonsters.com – your anonymity is guaranteed. Our investigative group is conducting a serious examination of his phenomenon. We are merely seeking the truth and wish to determine what eyewitnesses have been encountering. Your cooperation is truly appreciated.
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