Searching for Old Stinker: Medieval Legends meet 21st Century Werewolf Hunters
It all began a couple of weeks ago when a journalist on an English national newspaper phoned me up out of the blue and asked “You’ve written a book about the history and legends of East Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Wolds, what do you think about these reports of werewolf sightings in Hull?”
Now this interested me as werewolves are not part of the traditional folklore of England. Yes, we have plenty of “ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night” (to use and old Cornish saying) but we don’t have werewolves. In fact, the only werewolf to be found in the legends is the Werewolf of Flixton, otherwise known as “Old Stinker” because of his foul breath, who was first reported in the 12th century.
An illustration from Topographia Hiberniae depicting the story of a traveling priest who meets and communes a pair of good werewolves. (Public Domain)
The intriguing aspect is Flixton is only 35 miles or 65 km (as the crow flies – or as the wolf runs) from Hull, so I replied “Sounds like your Hull werewolf might be Old Stinker taken to hunting in pastures new.”
It was a light-hearted remark, not least as the last reported sighting of Old Stinker was 50 years ago – and of course the credibility of even that depends on whether or not you believe werewolves really exist! But, the die was cast and I’d given the beast a name.
Over the next few days the story of Old Stinker, the Hull werewolf, went viral. There were reports in all the main national newspapers in the UK talking about the residents of Hull fearing for their lives because an eight-foot-tall, blood-crazed werewolf might be stalking their streets. And, on a personal note, most of them name checked me as the “expert” in local history and folklore who had identified the creature.
In the circumstances, it therefore should not have come as a surprise to me when the Sunday Express newspaper invited me to join their “crack team” of “paranormal investigators” on a werewolf hunt in Hull on the night of the next full moon. (The full team comprised newspaper journalist Mark Branagan, local historian Mike Covell, along with myself and my wife Jane Christian.)
And, that is how I found myself at 11:00pm, on the night of 21st May, in the abandoned and distinctly spooky precincts of Saint Mary’s graveyard, in the Sculcoates district of Hull, standing by a tombstone posing for press photographs.
