The skeleton of “Snippy,” an Appaloosa found mutilated on the King Ranch in the Sangre de Cristo foothills in September 1967, is for sale on eBay. [Auction ends March 8] Snippy, whose real name was Lady, belonged to the late Nellie Lewis, who was convinced her horse had been dispatched by aliens. Link
The Snippy case is quite a famous one in the annals of UFO history, although a vet who examined the bones believed the mare had in fact been shot. (By people)
Yep, I’ve got another blog and it just went live tonight. Uncanny Canada is a little side project of mine, a repository for Canadian Forteana, general weirdness, and whatever shiny things catch my eye. If this intrigues you, pop on over! More stories will be added soon — oof, it’s hard to get a new blog off the ground. We now return you to your regularly scheduled equine-ness.
Img 426 Dartmoor Pony, originally uploaded by Bryan26.
Hallowe’en is over, I know; will you forgive me for posting another spooky tale? This one is from the Fortean Times site:
I live on the edge of Dartmoor, England which is range of moorland steeped in ancient history. Whilst being on the moor several strange things have happened to me. I’ve heard children laughing by a gate on a ruined farm and I’ve had had feelings of terrible evil in the area where many people have inexplicably driven off the road and been injured. The ghost here is known as the “hairy hands”.
However, this story is one about a horse. I kept my horses on a farm on Dartmoor because the riding is so good. One day we all went off to the horse market leaving one man behind to care for the other animals. Apparently, whilst we were gone he went out in the yard to feed the horses and saw a grey horse standing by the gate. At first he couldn’t think how he got in as the gate was padlocked. Then he thought perhaps we had bought him at the market and sent him back with a neighbour giving the neighbour a key and he had locked it again after him. Off he went to get another feed but when he got back the horse had gone. Very shocked he went into a neighbouring cottage and told the old man who lived there.
“What did the horse look like” asked the old man. Jerry described him. “Well years ago there was an old horse just as you descibed, who always stood at the gate on market days and when I came home from school, I’d give him my lunchtime apple.” We all pulled Jerry’s leg about knocking back the whisky whilst we were out but two weeks after this happened, the old man died and no-one ever saw the horse again.
Illustration from Paranormal Animals of Europe via SixthWorld Wiki
The Each-Uisge is a supernatural horse believed to lurk near bodies of water in Scotland. More at I Gallop On and Mysterious Britain.
Sorry for not updating more; I’ve got a few more horse stories for you, but they’re not quite ready yet. I hope this creepy classic will tide you over in the meantime: Black-eyed kids, Black-eyed kids FAQ.
Found some more equine Forteana for my loyal reader readers; this one is from Suite101.com and tells the story of four horses whom even death could not part. The author also includes a few other tales of spectral horses, one of which is just plain weird. Then there’s the ghostly stallion spotted in southern Texas…
Good ol’ Shadowlands. 😉 Cleaned up for reposting. (Has there been a catastrophic failure of shift keys worldwide that I didn’t hear about?)
Hello everyone. This story happened to me when I was about 13-14. I live on a small farm in New Mexico. I guess you could call it more of a petting zoo rather than a farm. We have dogs and cats, but we have more horses than anything else. Well anyway, my first horse, Abby, was the cutest little (and fattest) pony that you ever saw. We had her until I was around 9, and then she got so old and blind that she couldn’t eat and the other horses just treated her awfully. So we eventually had to put her down and the was one of the most horrible things that’s ever been done to me. So, anyway, here I was, horseless, and with a giant ride coming up the next week, so my mom, (unable to find a horse in that short span of time), very reluctantly let me ride Savanna, a very sweet, but very high-spirited palomino Tennesee Walking Horse. Only my much older sisters had ever been able to ride her, but as soon as I got on, we clicked beautifully and we were a pair from that day forth. About four years went by and Savanna got horribly sick with an illness called bastard strangles. It’s a nasty illness that causes the animal’s throat to fill up with a nasty pus-like fluid. We thought she was getting better so we let her out into the arena while we were gone. My sister got home first and found her dead in the arena. They already had her buried by the time I got home, which was good, and I soon got another horse (a devil pony by the name of Barbie). About a month after Savanna died, my sisters and I were out riding and playing a game called butt tag when each and every one of us distinctly saw Savanna running with us. All the other horses were put up and we all recognized her by her signature stop, which would throw any inexperienced rider off. We looked for her again but we couldn’t see her; as we were running around my sister ran through an icy cold spot ( it was about 85 everywhere else). Of course all of us had to go see for ourselves, and sure enough it was cold there. We were all happy because we felt as if Savanna was trying to tell us that she was okay. We could feel her every once in a while, and still to this day (about 3 years later) we can still see her running across the property, and we can sense Abby and the other animals are out there following behind her.
According to local lore, an out-of-control horse and wagon went into a bottomless pond in Abington’s Mount Vernon Cemetery many, many years ago and never came out…
Strange Maine (utterly fantastic blog, btw) has a tale of a man and horse who disappeared along a road on Vinalhaven…
In the spring of 1914, the shadowy figure of a horseman appeared in the sky over Columbia, South Carolina…
The BBC brings us a report of a ghostly horse encountered along a Warwickshire canal…
A Michigan woman often finds intricate braids in her horse’s mane and thinks Bigfoot may be responsible… (via WWT)
This is probably more “WTF?!” than “eek!”, but Damned Interesting (a site which more than lives up to its name) reports on the tale of a jockey who died on Thursday, then won a race on Friday…
While there are no horses involved (yet), you can still find a few fine spooky tales at http://theghosts.wordpress.com…
Reports of zombie horses here…
Another Shadowlands submission, also edited for clarity.
My father’s home in the canyon
Hi, my name is Jess, and from 1998 to 2000, my father lived in a tiny house at the bottom of a canyon in Crosbyton, Texas. In this canyon, there are two other houses, but they are both on the other side of the Caprock and we hadn’t ever really met them, other than a chat while my fater and I occasionaly rode our horses past (Crosbyton is an old, run down ranch town where there aren’t a whole lot of people). Anyway, when my father was showering one morning alone, he claimed he heard someone calling his name. Thinking it was my aunt who lived down the road about 7 miles, he quickly dressed and went out to look for her. He called her name, and when there was no reply, he assumed she had returned home. About 10 minutes later, he called my aunt, and when she picked up the phone, she had been asleep! While in that house, my sister was less than a year old when they moved in. She would lie in her crib and smile and laugh when my stepmom would be sewing or something. When she walked over to see what Emmy (my sister) was excited about, she saw Emmy watching something dash from one side of the ceiling to the other. While on my grandparents ranch (also in Crosbyton — the L7 Ranch) my father took his old horse Dudley out in to an isolated pasture that my Grandpa didn’t use much. As he entered the pasture, Dudley, who by nature is a very calm horse, went wild. There was absolutely no way that horse was going to go inside the pasture. Wondering what was wrong with Dudley, my Dad dismounted and checked his hooves for something that might have hurt him. There was nothing. He finally got Dudley calmed down, but as soon as he mounted him to try to get him inside the pasture, my father heard the faint crying of a baby. When he realized there wasn’t a living person within a mile’s radius, my father and the quite shaken horse got out of there as fast as he could. Later on, they discovered many Comanche grave sites that haven’t been touched in over fifty years, as the ranch has owned that land for quite some time. In those graves, they discovered a chief, a few men, and, in one grave, a tiny child no older than 3 years. To this day, neither my father, nor the horses or cattle will enter or graze this sacred pasture.
(Wonder if he means this L7 Ranch)
Devil Horse II, originally uploaded by wintermute23
This tale was posted by FreeFilly at HorseCity:
Well my horse ghost story isn’t scary at all but… Back story first.
We owned a very beautiful spirited Paso Fino mare who I had a very strong bond with. But we had to sale her because she was my dad’s horse and he would hit for not understanding what he was doing (one time he beat her for not loading in a trailer) which him and I would get in HUGE fights over. I did the most unselfish thing in my life and let her go to a wonderful woman who was good with her. About a year later the mare dies after going to her first show of colic. Not anyone’s falt.
I didn’t find out she had died untill a few days after she passed. But the day she passed I was home alone watching T.V. and the song that I call her song came on and I thought about her and was planing on writing her new owner to see how she was doing. But things got busy and it went to the back of my mind.I got a email from the owner telling me how well the mare did in the show (good news first) and how they won their classes. Then after reading that part to my family I see the bad part. That the day after the owner saw there was something wrong and it was colic they had the vet out but the nicest they could do for her was put her down. Even though I had sold her I was so sad and to this day I think of her daily.
About a month after she died my mom was helping me feed and she asked if there was any horses over by her. There wasn’t they were all asking for treats from me. She then tells me that she just saw Chiquita (the mare) running by the barn.
And not long after that first time we have all seen her around our horses, by the barn. I see her mostly at feeding time. Out of the corner of my eye. I still miss her but I know she hasn’t left me.
Here’s another from the rec.equestrian archives:
I know half of you think I’m nuts anyway, but this really is a true story…
A few years ago I rode at a big show barn in Northwest New Jersy that had one of its barns burn down in 1985 or 1986. About thirty horses died in the fire and it was pretty widely reported because three people died too. Anyway, they built a new 40 horse barn with an indoor attatched to it on the same spot. I was at the barn pretty late one night, finishing up after lessons and I was the only one around. I thought I heard horses running aournd in the indoor. Thinking that someone had left their horse out by mistake, I went out to bring it in, but there was noone there. I was pretty freaked out and I finished what I was doing as fast as I could. Of course once I went back into the barn, I heard the horses again. I left as fast as I could.
I know all this sounds a little far fetched, but has anyone else had similiar experiences.
Barn by Night, originally uploaded by jscene1.
Story found at The Shadowlands, a fantastic site with hundreds (if not thousands) of true stories submitted by readers. I’ve cleaned up the formatting, spelling and grammar somewhat (a perpetual problem at that site, unfortunately).
The Man in the Barn
My grandfather always told me and my cousins about experiences that he had had with ghosts. This first sparked my interest, and I became fascinated with ghosts and other paranormal activity. However, I never really wanted to see a ghost; I just liked hearing other peoples’ stories about strange happenings.
Our family lived in the city for most of my life, and when the decision was made to move to the country I couldn’t have been happier. We quickly moved onto an old farm. There was a ranch house and a huge barn. Both the barn and the ranch house had been rebuilt just 10 years earlier and were in great condition. The stalls in the barn were made of cedar and oak, and the aisles of the barn were made of beautiful interlocked brick. I loved it here and for the first time in my life I loved where I lived.
It wasn’t long before things started happening though. The first time that I felt something was when I was in the barn tacking up my horse and getting ready for a hack with a boy that I had met from down the road. Well, there was a cellar entrance just below the cross ties that had been bolted shut. The barn was built on the old foundation, so this cellar was from the original barn that had been built over 100 years ago. My horse started to freak out; he was rearing and trying to break free. I tried everything I could think of to calm him down, but he continued to rear. I finally got him off the cross ties and into his stall, which was at the other end of the aisle; he quickly calmed down. I decided to take out my mom’s horse instead. I put him on the same cross ties and started to tack him up. After about ten minutes he started to freak out like my horse had done before. I was a little rattled and put him back into his stall. He quickly calmed down. I decided to just wait for Brian, the boy that i was going riding with, and then he could help me tack up. He was much taller and stronger than I was, so I figured it would be easier for him to handle the horses if they freaked out again.
take my hand, originally uploaded by littlelakey.
Recommended: The Horse (by W. Towrie Cutt) and The white horse o’ Clumly.
(“Orkney?!”)
A Midwinter’s Night originally uploaded by vinny27911
I found this one through Google Groups; the poster said it was originally posted on the Draft Resource Board.
Charlie Feathers
by Shelby Weeks
“It will take a few minutes to work.” I injected calcium into the cow’s jugular vein, slipped the needle out, capped it, and returned it to my breast pocket. Like all of Dean Paulus’ cows, she was a registered Holstein that would produce a remarkable amount of milk once she was over the milk fever that I’d been called out to treat.
It was a fine night for October, mild and clear. A breeze stirred wisps of hay in the mow. The barn was dark beyond the circle of light cast by a dim light bulb hung overhead on a knotted extension cord.
A flutter of barn sparrows in the rafters drew my eyes upward.
“It is haunted, you know,” Paulus offered from the hay bale where he sat leaning against a massive beam that supported a shadowed roof fifty feet above us.
evil inside, originally uploaded by Cilest.
I’ve decided to start my Halloween horseapalooza posts a little early.
This story is one of my Google Groups finds; originally posted on alt.folklore.ghost-stories, October 2001.
Haunted Horsey
by Ed Price
Three-year-old Billy Vernon loved the house where he lived with his parents. It was large and roomy and there was plenty of room for a young boy to play. He had thoroughly explored every corner, every room, and even the attic. There was nowhere on earth that Billy would rather be than the house on Paca Street in Baltimore, Maryland.
Christmas in 1911. One of Billy’s presents was a little wooden horse. The toy was on wheels. A string was attached so Billy could pull the horse all through the house. Wherever he went, his “Horsey” was sure to go. Unfortunately little Billy fell victim to scarlet fever that spring. A week later he closed his eyes for the final time, his beloved Horsey cradled in his arms.
Bridlepath
Bridlepath 