As a curious addendum to yesterday’s entry, it is worth noting that the witchlore of Horsingdon is replete with stories of unseen things haunting the region’s woodlands, offering to make terrible pacts with local coven members. The wooded slopes of Horsingdon Hill being especially associated with such tales.
Typical elements of these stories include the following: strange lights witnessed in the sky above the Hill, which would pulse and change colour; a sound as of great flapping wings pushing against the air; and then the voices: hoarse, buzzing whispers issuing from strange presences which remain concealed within the woods - whispers communicating a monstrous arcana to any who would listen. Witches who were recipients of those hoarsely-whispered words were, it is said, often left awestruck by what they had heard, thereafter refusing ever to speak of that which had been imparted to them - even when subject to the most unendurable of tortures at the hands of local witchfinders.
The fact that similar elements appear in contemporary yarns concerning things supposedly spied and heard in the skies and woods of Horsingdon speaks to the pervasive and enduring power of folklore to inform the cultural imaginaries of the present - for surely that can be the only reasonable explanation behind the narrative and thematic consistency and uniformity of tales whose telling is separated by centuries…
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