Black Annis

Region: Northern Europe
Location:Leicestershire, England — especially the Dane Hills region

Black Annis is a hag-like spirit said to inhabit a cave in the Dane Hills, known as Black Annis’s Bower. She is described as a blue-skinned, long-limbed woman with iron claws and tangled hair. Her teeth are sharp, her arms unnaturally long, and her skin stained with cold. She emerges at night to hunt livestock — and in older stories, misbehaving children. Her iron claws were said to tear through cottage walls or scratch at shuttered windows, searching for prey. Daylight sends her crawling back into her lair, where she is said to tan the skins of her victims.
  Folklore paints Black Annis as a remnant of older ritual beings — possibly a distorted memory of a local goddess, a cailleach figure, or a guardian spirit tied to the hills. Over time, rural fears transformed her into a cautionary tale to keep children close to the hearth and livestock secured. Villagers in older stories used to hang herbs or iron objects to ward her off, and some tales describe farmers building houses with no ground-floor windows to keep Annis from reaching inside.
  Black Annis represents a fusion of local geography, genuine danger from roaming predators, and older mythic archetypes of winter hags. Her stories persist because they resonate with the terrifying quiet of the English countryside at night — the sense that something might be watching from the tree line, dragging long claws across stone in the darkness.

World
Koina
Owner
kaixabu
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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