Loremen Podcast - Loremen S6Ep26 - The King Hare

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

James is joined by Dave Warneke of the podcasts Do Go On and Book Cheat to hear about one of the UK's breaking (and bounciest) cryptids. Check Dave's upcoming stand-up special here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIuGey7qQ50 This episode was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Joseph Burrows - Audio Editor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the LoreFolk at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ko-fi.com/loremen⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check the sweet, sweet merch here... ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @loremenpod ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/loremenpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.instagram.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.facebook.com/loremenpod⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm James Shake Shaft. And I'm also James Shake Shaft. What? Wait, what? The rumors are true? Yeah, it was just James all along. It's James all the way down.

I'm not in this episode, James. No, you are not. You're going to be in this episode with fantastic returning deputy law person Dave Warnocky without me because I was at a wedding. You were. Dave from Do Go On podcast, he joined us and I told him, well, you're going to hear as well now, Alistair, for the first time. Oh, nice. I told him all about the King Hare, which is a very peculiar English cryptid. And I

also showed him some pictures of some very big rabbits, which will be on the YouTube version. I can't wait to hear the sound of an Australian man seeing a rabbit. Alastair. Ah, no, there's no Alastair this time. He is in transit. So fortunately I have managed to rope in a friend of the show, former guest and, and well, literally a current guest now. It's weird because I'm introducing, I normally I introduce to Alistair the

guest, but he's not here. So I'm now talking directly to you, the audience, which is something I don't know if you notice, I don't normally do. And I don't know if you're noticing, I'm now talking directly to you, the audience, which is something I don't know if you notice, I don't normally do. And I don't know if you notice it. I'm not comfortable with it. So I'm going to introduce him and I'm going to imagine everyone going, Oh, whoa. Amazing.

So please welcome, but quietly, if you're on a bus, it's do go on Dave Warnocky. Welcome Dave. Hello. Please make it loud and proud of you're on the bus. I want everyone to think that you're having some sort of medical episode. Take your AirPods out and put it on speakerphone. Warnocki. They said it couldn't be done.

How are you doing, Dave? I'm doing great. Thanks, mate. How are you? I'm very well. Thank you. We've just had a minor by your standards heat wave in the UK. So I'm still reeling from that.

We had temperatures pushing 30. 30 degrees? My gosh. Celsius. Otherwise that's below freezing. We are basically, my main thing was there's two things. One of them, which is a new, a new addition to what I like to call operation chill out is I freeze a 500 mil bottle of water and

put it under my pillow. And then I'm flipping the pillow because of course we don't have air conditioning because it's hot for like six days. So you just suck it up. And complain. But yeah, I mean, of course. It's the English way. You've got to. But do you wake up feeling like you're in a water bed if this thing's, you know, sort of leaking?

It's not. It's just a little bit of condensation goes into the pillow, but because the idea is that you're consistently flipping the pillow. So you've always got a cool side of pillow. Yeah. It wicks away. It wicks away into the beard, the water. Yeah. Finally good for something.

Actually finally admitting that those, you know, the, I can't remember what they're called, there's a name for the type of window that's two slidey ones up and down. Oh yeah. Was that a sash? Sash. That's the one. It's one of them things that I've seen on a TikTok video and then didn't believe it. But if you open them both to the middle,

so you've got to open at top and bottom, that does actually circulate the air. And loudly shutting the window saying it's actually hotter outside than it is in here. That's all part of Operation Chillout, which as you can tell is an ironically named. But Dave, sadly, I didn't bring you here to chat about my toilet and habits outside. OK, I brought you here because I was listening to the Do Go On podcast, your podcast, and you had a episode 500 extravaganza, can I say? Yes, I'd be happy with that wording.

I'd be really happy with that, actually. Well, it was great. It was like you sort of broke it was obviously a live show that you broke up into four episodes over like a week long period or something. Yeah, we really milked it. We were like, this is 10 years in the making. We'll never get to 500 again. So we had to really wring out every, every drop.

It was great. There was like some top level stories and I was listening to that. And you mentioned you were really into cryptids and I was like, ah, I did not realize this about Dave. So I just thought, right, we'll get Dave back on. I'll find him a cryptid, somebody he's never heard of before. And- Oh, beautiful. I think I might have in this one, cause frankly, I'd never heard of it before.

I got sent the link to this by one of our law folk, sent it to me on Instagram, Kate Cornish. Thank you very much. This one only dates back to 1976. That's the first official sighting of this specific cryptids. That is really new for us. That is sub 50 years. Yeah, I love that. It's called is called the King hair.

King hair. Well, you've got me. I've never heard of it either. The King hair. Neither have I. And it's basically, I mean, spoiler alert, it's a big hair. I mean, how are we spelling hair? Because I've got two images in my mind. Sorry. Yes. No, it's not like a it's the it's like the animal that's like a rabbit rather than what were you imagining? Actually, was it like a full toupee?

You know, I was thinking I was thinking hair when you're thinking of, but then also like a cousin, it's type sort of creature that's just hair like a hairball. And they're like, that's the big hair. Like like the king rat that's like just load of rats tangled together. The big hair is you find it in the shower. Really long hair and that all stuck together and they can't get a part. You find them in the sewer. That's terrifying.

A terrifying image. Although you do sometimes do get a big hair, H-A-I-R, perhaps you're reaching that age where you just find one. Like one of your, one of your, one of your chin hairs is randomly, it's like one, one millimeter thick. Oh yeah. Just you get a thickie. What's with those?

Real, that's the, maybe that is the true King hair. That's the King. Maybe that is the true King hair. That's the key. That's the King hair. And if you, if you can defeat that, then you have power over the rest of the beard. Yeah. I try and cultivate that one hair. So I sort of shave around it sort of, you know, Oh, and let it just grow to all its glory.

Yeah. Let it inspire all the others to really, you know, thicken up a bit. I need it. I need this. But then it turns out you've got a beard and it's actually just made of five really, really wide hairs. That's actually what I'm dealing with. So don't give it away. But no, no, this is the animal. And I shut down the Wikipedia page that tells me everything I need to know about hair.

Just riff it. They are, they belong to the genus Lepus and they are, but so obviously my first port of call was the GOOGS and it was are hairs and rabbits related or are they the same animal to be honest is what I was asking. I mean, I've got, I've got to say it surely are they? Well, AI overview, your enemy and mine says, no, hares and rabbits are not the same species. They're both in the same family of Lepus or Leporidae, which is fancy.

The other type is the Pika, which is a tiny mountain dwelling mammal, which, to be honest, it looks more like a mouse without a tail than anything else. Right. The Pika. They're kind of like a rabbit, but with without rabbit ears. Yeah, cool. I'm looking right now just to get an image. They're kind of cute, aren't they?

They're kind of cute. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't want one in my house, but. No, no, certainly not. You wouldn't want to, yeah, you want to find a bunch of them all linked together in the bottom of your shower or something like that. Yeah. Kingpika.

The link that was sent to me by Kate was from, I want to give, give the website it's, it's due shout out. Well it's ultimately you can find it on the Cryptid Archives, but the main article is from the Karl Shooker blogspot.com. He also seems to be the main cited evidence for it or a cited original instance of it on the cryptidarchives.fandom.com. And that's where you'll find the basically the only picture, which not a photograph that was, that was making it too big. There's, there's a drawn image, a seemingly cartoon image. I'm just going to send it over to you now.

This would have been so great if it was just a photo and it's the only one they've ever actually managed to capture. But it's posed and it's dressed as a cowboy and it's in sepia tones. Right. I've got. Cause it got it done at the mall. It's got a series of them. That'd be amazing.

Wow. Oh, I say photo is drawing. It's the drawing of a giant rabbit by Warwick Woodard. And it's just described the image. You basically, you've got, you've got a bird bath in the foreground and then to the left of that towering over it, a good head taller than it is. What is the King hair? I mean, and then I'm only, I'm guessing only for scale in the background.

What have you got there on the ground? They've got what looks like a garden gnome. Yeah. And then maybe another normal size rabbit next to the gnome. Yeah, I think that's that hair or rubber is kind of looking around like, what at this garden gnome? We'll pop a link in the show notes. And obviously, if you're watching on YouTube, I'll pop the pop.

Just simply put the picture up. Yeah, it's that gnome looks smug, doesn't it? Yeah, it really does look smug. What's going on with that gnome? And it's wearing a blue hat, blue top. It looks like it's, I don't know if I don't want to criticize the artist, but this gnome looks like it looks like it's got something going on on its chest area. Oh, yeah.

It's got a bit of a like a dinner lady vibe. It looks like it's got, I can't remember what the name of the top is that dinner ladies famously wear. Not a lanyard. It's a word like a lanyard, but it's not that. Correct me in the in the comments. Thanks, everyone. The hair itself, like if I was to just.

The regular or the king. The king, the king. Regular got no problem with, but the king, I reckon, and maybe just as an Australian, I'm seeing too much into this here. But if you were to show me without the head, I would have assumed this was a kangaroo of some sort that someone's drawn. Well, that is that to be honest, Dave, that's why I brought that you brought you here and thought this would be ideal for you. I got a feeling this could be a miss identified kangaroo or wallabies. And you know what my second search was after our hairs and rabbits related. Yep.

It was our hairs related to kangaroos. Fun fact. No, they're not closely related at all. They share a common ancestor from a hundred million years ago. It really is just a coincidence. Is that like the kind of thing where like we all share the same common ancestor, a bit of sludge or something? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's like how whales and cows are the same kind of thing. It's like, like every, almost everyone I meet seems to tell me that they have someone they know who looks like me. It's like, yeah, we're not related. We've got a common ancestor that may be, and this person that you're talking about carries its young in a pouch in his belly. It's not me. It's simply not me.

We are unrelated. But yeah, so the first tale of this comes from 1976 from Dorset, in Dorset, catchphrase of the show. Of course I would. I bloody love the place. So the story was that Louise Hodgson was doing like a mega walk from the Cotswolds, which is kind of near where I live, all the way down to the coast in Dorset, which was taking like two months long of hiking.

And in 1976, she'd got as far as the town of, now it's spelled Uploders or it could be you plotters. It's U-P-L-O-D-E-R-S. It's such a small village that there, if you try and search for the pronunciation of uploaders, it automatically redirects you to the pronunciation for uploaders without even giving you a did you mean? It's that unheard of. I'm actually excited to hear that even in the UK, like you aren't sure how to say

a lot of things, because that. Oh, good God. Come from us that we try and mention a place in the UK on a pod. And we always get it wrong. And people are like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you said that. Getting slammed. Any of the SESTAs, the CESTR based places. Yeah, you're screwed. Yes. But this is you plotters or upload.

I think you should go with you plotters. That sounds like something from like World War I, you're like cursing the Germans or something. Oh, you plotters. You plotters. Oh, it sounds a bit as well, given that they're on this two month long walk. They would be like, yeah, you plotters get a job. Right.

I thought, right, fine. I'll be able to work out the pronunciation. If I find out, cause there's a town next door called Lodders and that's the only link on the Wikipedia page for you plotters. Yep. And, uh, it's another village and obviously, you know, the external link of you plotters is a, is a, is a sub part of the Lodders website. Clicked on that. Just got a 404 error.

Even Lodders doesn't want to acknowledge the existence of Uplodders or Uplodders. But yeah, this is near the Jurassic Coast. Are you aware of the Jurassic Coast? Oh, I know that a bunch of fossils have been discovered around there, but is it actually called the Jurassic Coast? Yeah, that whole bit of beaches along there is called the Jurassic Coast, which again, as a parent, really sells it to the kids. But when you get there, it really is just a normal beach.

Although there are some bits where you can actually find fossils and I have been fossil hunting to give it its due. There are a lot, there are generally a lot of those little ammonites, you know, the little sort of round ones. Yeah. Man, I'd be stoked if I got one of those. That's awesome. The Jurassic Coast. Yeah. So she's, she's walking down there and she's got a couple, she's walking with a couple of other people and they come across a field and in that field, right, I'm going to go to, this is from the Schucker website, apologies if I'm pronouncing your name wrong. So they're walking along with their dogs and they're on a lonely track. And it's, it's getting on into the evening.

The sun is starting to dip. And they're looking for hairs and rabbits to catch and eat. Cause this is the past. I know. Evidently that is a fine thing to do. And they come to this valley. You say it's the past. Is this still the seventies? This is 1976.

Yeah, it's 49 years ago. This is, you know, this is nine years after people landed on the moon. Yeah. And they get to, I think it's referred to as a blind valley. So I guess it's something that you can't really see unless you're right on it. And they see a bunch of about 10 hairs. So they're obviously thinking good dinner. That is unusual because hairs are normally kind of quite solitary creatures.

But the even weirder thing was, and I quote here, was the presence of what they initially took to be a roe deer amongst the hairs until they peered closer and realized to their amazement that it was a big hair, an enormous hair. It was a hair bigger than a bigger than a normal to big dog. Whoa. They, they gazed for a while in wonder at this prodigious creature and they kept hold of their dogs. So, cause the dogs wanted to chase after it.

Cause they're like, Oh my gosh, I love chasing hairs. I'm going to want to chase it. And it says, and I'm going to quote again before finally walking away, leaving behind the King sized hair and it's normal brethren, which I, I, we've met in real life before I'm quite a tall person and I, I like to think that some people see me out in the wild, you know, with a bunch of normal size people and they're like, Oh, should we chase, should we let our dogs chase him? No, we'll leave him.

We'll, we'll leave him and his normal size brethren. The last time I saw you, I was doing the who knew it with Matt Stewart podcast live in London. And it was me, you and Alistair and you and Alistair are both very tall gentlemen. And Matt's pretty tall. So I looked, I looked like the, the tiny hair to your three King hairs. So look, so I guess if someone was out walking, looking to catch some humans to eat, they would have seen us and thought, Oh look, there's, there's three normal sized humans and one of their childs with one big thick hair as a beard.

Look how small this, this human is. It must be the king amongst humans. We'll leave the king and his normal size brethren. Yes. So that is the sort of initial example. Now, obviously hairs, they play a lot of roles in particularly English folklore, which is forever turning into hairs. There's always a story of someone who like saw a white hair and they shot it

with an arrow or maybe even a gun, if it's a modern story, and they just winged it and then they go and see the local witch the next day and she's got like a hurt leg or something. So it's not out of the ordinary for hairs to be weird, but they're normally normal sized hairs. Maybe they're an odd color like a bright white one or a glowing one or something like that. But you don't always, you don't get, you don't get big guns. Yeah.

Is that the big, the biggest one you've ever come across? That's the biggest one I've heard of. Yes. It's, it's not the biggest, it's not the biggest in this sort of rabbit hair, leporidae, thanks, family. Yeah. Wow. It's not the biggest in the sort of rabbit hair leporidae, thanks, family that I've heard of as Carl Schuchers blogs what goes on to the next headline, which is the mega big bunny of Banbury. Now, Banbury is a town which is, I knew quite a lot growing up.

It is, I refer to it as the Croydon of the Cotswolds, which I admit is also, that's a bit of a, that's a difficult term to understand if you're fromdon of the Cotswolds, which I admit is also, that's a bit of a, that's a difficult term to understand if you're from out of town, basically. Are you aware of a Croydon? Do you know what a Croydon is or might be? No, we've got a Croydon here in Melbourne and it's a pretty average suburb. Yeah, yeah. No, our Croydon is, it's like a bit south of London and it's kind of technically a different

postcode, but it's obviously in London and it's kind of, it different postcode, but it's obviously in London and it's kind of, it's a bit of a punchline kind of thing. There's a bit of a nothing town, a bit boring, a bit suburb because it's quite difficult to get to from central London. So it's a bit of a like, oh, Croydon kind of thing. I've got family there. So I'm allowed to say what I want. Okay.

Great. Great. Great. And you just describe it as not that great. Sorry. And also fortunately they don't listen to this podcast. I'm having a dig. What, what I'm hearing is that Croydon, you would not endorse it.

Is that what you're saying? Lovely stuff. No. Am I getting this? Am I getting this? You are. You're well on the way. Yeah.

No. So Banbury is kind of, it's a bit more of an, it's quite an industrially town for the Cotswolds. It's, it's where the big cinema was. Like when we were kids, that would be where we went to the cinema to see your Jurassic Park, your, you know. All I know, like the Cotswolds, which I've been, I think I've driven through and visited a village or two on my

journeys across the UK. But and it was absolutely beautiful. And I know it's world famous for being beautiful, but is it the kind of thing where everything else is so beautiful that if I went to Banbury, is it, I'd still think it was beautiful. It's just that you guys are spoiled. Probably. Yeah. It's kind of a bit more red bricky than Cotswold stone.

Okay. There, I think actually just recently the, there was a big Kenco factory, which for all of my life has meant that Bambari smells of coffee, which is quite a nice smell. It's like, you know, if you're trying to sell your home, that's one of the things you recommended to do, isn't it? Like make it smell like Bambari. But apparently that is being shut down now. And so I don't know what it's going to smell like. Imagine if you find out what has been masking all these years.

Yeah, like when they got brought in the smoking ban and pubs suddenly smelled of just sick. Yeah, the carpet is just awful. But no, the mega big bunny of Bambury, this was spotted. This is from a bunch of sightings of big, and I am literally going to have to read every single time, Leporidae. And my God, I'm hoping I'm pronouncing that right. My very basic understanding of the phonic alphabet thinks I'm pretty much right on it. We've got a bunch of sightings from 2005. Oh, wow. Super recent, isn't it?

Exactly. So this is, well, this says driving home, just 20 miles south of Banbury. And I know you've driven around Britain for British people, 20 miles is far. That's a different place to the place where you started. Right. But no, this, so this is 20 miles away from Banbury. So it's not Banbury. Cause I think I'm, I think I'm 20 miles away from Banbury. And I can assure you, I do not live in Banbury.

But yeah, Clive Parker saw squatting at the roadside, what he thought was basically a gigantic rabbit. As big as a big dog. And I don't know if you've seen dogs, some of them are pretty big, especially the big ones. But I think the last, obviously this is a different animal or a different cryptid, the king hare potentially, but that was a medium to big dogs. This is even bigger. But it's that thing of like, like dogs vary in size so much from, you know, handheld mini dog format all the way through to through the midi dog up to the maxi dog. Yes. Like the one that looks like a small horse, like a what's it there? The Irish wolfhound.

Yeah, wolfhound. That's I think that's what I think of. But also if you point to like a very large Labrador, I'd also say that's a big dog. But then if it was next to the wolfhound. Yeah. Yes. You need a dog with you at all times for scale. You do. You need a dog scale at the very least in order to, you know. I was walking my mini Pomeranian.

It was six times as big and then we all know. Okay. Yes. I'm just going to send you a picture of an example picture that Carl uses on his website to illustrate the size of this big rub. Oh man, I'm really hoping for like a lineup photo. Well there is something in there for scale. Ironically, this is a Flemish giant forndo, which weighs approximately 20 pounds.

Oh, wow. Yeah. This is it. This is a heifer. Wow. And if you notice in the background, there's a child's toy xylophone in the format of a dog, I guess that's just to give you the idea that it's bigger than some types of dog.

That's great. I mean, there's obviously some sort of baby or toddler in this household as well as this giant. You would hope so. You're a rabbit and I'll be worried about, I'd be worried about leaving them alone together. Well, you don't know, maybe, you know, I don't know how smart the rabbit is potentially that is the child of the household.

Oh, right. Okay. You got a series of toys. Oh, yeah. This was, as I say, this wasn't the only one that was cited around this time. On the 24th of October, 2006, Tim Hill and his family were on a canal boat journey traveling on the Napton-Bambury route. And on the highest stretch of the canal, they

looked across a field and they saw what they first thought has to be a deer. This was roughly the size of a golden retriever, which as you said, can be a big dog. I'd say that's a pretty big dog. You know what I mean? Reasonably, yeah. Yeah. It had reddish gold fur, but hold on. Those ears seem too big for a deer's ears.

And they all, fortunately, I don't know what they were, what else they were doing on this canal boat journey. They all have binoculars and they were, and they all peered at it through their binoculars and were astonished to discover it was another big rabbit. See, James, I to pull you out there. The problem with binoculars is that they make small things look big. That's a really good point. They've just been a regular rabbit that they've just enhanced times 20.

That's a really great point. Yeah. But they were watching it and it bounded away into a hedge and was never, and they never saw it again. Now, I just want to address your point from earlier. These guys felt that it was too chubby and rounded to a bit of hair. And and it was not like a wallaby or kangaroo either. That's all they say. OK. OK.

But it was like it was it was a it looked like a normal rabbit, but really big, which, again, that could have been potentially have been explained away by the use of binoculars, a magnifying device. I'd never used them before and they're freaking out. Now in between those two sightings around the Banbury area, there was one in the village of Felton in Northumberland. It's not massively far from the Bambri area. I mean, it's not next door. Wait a minute, I've actually confused that with somewhere else. It's quite far away from the Bambri area.

I got it confused in Northampton there. So many of our places are almost exactly the same. Of course, the media reports emerged in April 2006 and local gardeners on their allotments complained that their prized vegetables were being trampled upon and munched during nighttime raids, carried out by a dog sized rabbit, black and brown in color, which left behind giant size footprints, bigger than a deer's. Whoa. And someone saw it in February. Jeff Smith saw it in February. in color, which left behind giant size footprints bigger than a deer's wall. Someone saw it in February. Jeff Smith saw it in February. I don't know if you are aware of the British animation company,

Aardman Animations. Oh, yes. And their flagship creation, Wallace and Gromit. Big fan. Now, at that time was the release of the film, The Curse of the Were Rabbit. Oh yeah. Okay. Which is where, spoiler alert, Wallace gets bitten by a rabbit or something.

And I think it's that he gets his brain swapped with a rabbit and he basically turns into a rabbit when there's a full moon. So it kind of got mixed up in the media attention around that. And you know, there was a lot of humorous, because I think people didn't take it with the seriousness, with the amount of seriousness that these allotment owners wanted. There was articles dubbing it Biggs Bunny. And the Biggs Bunny, that almost works. That almost works. I quite like it. It also sounds a bit like a rapper.

money that almost works. That almost works. I quite like it. It's also sounds a bit like a rapper. Raelle Rawlinson, an 18 year old student. She was driving along the road near Felton with her friends late one night. And she saw what she, and I quote, referred to as a massive, abnormally big rabbit that bounded across the road directly in front of them. Okay.

I got to ask one question. Was she wearing or using binoculars whilst driving? That's a good point. We don't know how concave her window screen was. Exactly. Could have been consistently terrified by like flies. Look at the size of that thing. It's coming right for me.

Unfortunately, in this case, she ran over the rabbit. Oh, she hit it with a car. And not not on purpose. Like she wasn't like, oh my God, what is that? That beast? I've got to take it out. It was it was accidental, do you think? I we can only assume that it was an accident, really. It was seems it seems, you know, it seems a bit much that she's all of a sudden had a vendetta or maybe

she'd had a lifelong vendetta against rabbits, rail order, rail Rawlinson. But no, so she hit it with the car and it says such was the impact of the collision that her car's bumper had been cracked and was virtually hanging off. And when they examined it, their tuft of rabbit fur was attached to the bumper, to the bumper, and the bumper. And she scrutinized the creature's body, which she says was at least two feet long and very tall too. She didn't think to salvage it, but she told some other people what had happened and they visited the spot to find the body. But, and it does seem that around that time, the stories of the mega rabbit died out. So those are big.

A lot of the Flemish giant is a natural rabbit that does get to a normal size. I've got another picture of it posing with a lassie. Oh, that's good. Yeah, that's good for scale. Thank you. Yeah. Everyone knows a lassie. All right, let me check it out.

Oh my goodness. This thing is huge. That's a big rabbit. It's bigger than a lassie dog. It's bigger than a lassie. Let me check out. Oh, my goodness, this thing is huge. That's a big rabbit. It's bigger than a Lassie dog. It's bigger than a Lassie. Unless that's a particularly small Lassie dog that's hired out for photo shoots. Because would this thing be two feet long? Is it possible that it is just one of these Flemish giants?

It could maybe someone had one and it just got loose. Because before seeing this and knowing about the Flemish giant, if I'd seen that in public, I would be like, oh my God, in public, like I'm at the shops. I don't think I saw it out in the water. A monster. That is a monster. Yeah. I think I would think, what the hell?

That's the biggest rabbit I've ever seen. Yeah. That is not normal. That's not normal. I would put, is this, is this encrypted? Is this like, I'd probably take a photo because I'd be like, this is the, this is crazy. This rabbit is too big. I think I'd be terrified of it.

Like I've never been scared of a rabbit before, but that's too big. And you put, so yeah, they kind of say this rabbit comma is too big brackets. This was not taken through binoculars. I'd have to say that, have to say. too big brackets. This was not taken through binoculars. I'd have to say that, have to say. So those, I mean, those are pretty scary just in the sort of uncanniness of those things, but I do have one final tale from you from friend of the show, mystery animals of Britain and Ireland by Graham J. McEwen.

And I've got a tale of the Abbey house animal. And I've got a tale of the Abbey House animal. So this is a place in Cambridgeshire and various strange phenomena has been recorded there. Several apparitions have been seen, the most curious of which is an animal resembling a large hair with close cropped ears. And this was first seen during the spring or summer of 1904, when Mr. JC Lawson, a distinguished classical scholar and his family moved into the house and one day Mrs. Lawson went to fetch a three year old son from the nursery, but she would, as she was going there to get him, he ran out crying saying, where's it gone, mommy?

Yeah. And she was like, what, what you're on about? And he said a little brown thing ran from the doorway of the nursery to the curtains and then disappeared. So far, so rat, right? Yeah. Later, Mrs Lawson saw it and this is a quote she described as a nondescript kind of animal resembling a large size hair but with close cropped ears is always seen and heard running about on its hind legs. Oh, the pattern of its footsteps being very distinct and characteristic. It was never seen standing still or moving slowly.

Its haunts were the downstairs part of the house. It was generally seen in Twilight, but it was also seen quite clearly by artificial lights in the drawing room. And the children named the animal Wolfie. Wolfie. OK. The size of a small wolf or a large wolf. Or a, I think we're going to have to start measuring dogs in the size of rabbits now. Yeah, it's easier.

One occasion, Mr. Lawson heard it coming down the passage and it came into view and dashed past him, dashed past him. He was convinced of the solidarity of the thing and they saw about 30 times. This wasn't just like a one-off. You think, okay, that family, they had a rat maybe or whatever it was, mistook it. They moved out. A new family move in. In 1920, Mr. G. Granville Sharp, his wife and his daughter move into the house. Now, shortly after, the little girl was frightened by the animal and Mrs. Granville Sharp describes describes in a letter to the Society

for Psychical Research, specifically Professor F.J. M. Stratton. Now you've got a child, haven't you? I don't know if your kids got to the age where they've started pointing at empty areas of their room and saying, what's that, daddy? I'm not getting what's that, but I am getting, just everything's a dog. Even if there's not a dog in the room and it sometimes is a bit freaky. Like, what are you seeing in here? Yeah.

Is it the size of a dog or is it? Exactly. And what size of dog? A small, medium, large? Yeah. What format of dog? So the question is, we'd been in the old Abbey just a week when I heard one morning my little girl Charmaine crying in the hall, I went to see what was the

matter and found her in the doorway of the dining room, crying hard with tears rolling down her cheeks. When I asked her what was the matter, she pointed at the far corner of the dining room by the cupboard and said, Will it hurt me? I answered her that there was nothing to hurt her, but she would not go into the room at any time. About a week later, the same thing happened again.

And this time I asked her what it was that she saw and she said it was an animal, she called it. From this time, she often spoke of the that she saw and she said it was an animal. She called it from this time. She often spoke of the animal and said it came in at the window. She was only two years and nine months old at the time and had heard nothing whatever about the subject, nor would she have understood if it had been mentioned. I myself had heard nothing more than that. The house was haunted until afterwards and she was always with me, but couldn't

have been told it by anyone else. So basically, yeah, the kid's not got this from anywhere else. The kid is corroborating. And then the last appearance seemed to have been in 1947 when Mrs. Celia Schofield, a friend of the tenant of the house, described it in a letter to a friend, how her son, Christopher, then about two years old, had run into the kitchen shouting, Oh, look, tiny doggy. So I think that brings us full circle to the, you know, the tales of hairs that are the same size as a dog, the same type of thing as a dog.

Easily confused with a dog or deer. Are they possibly all just dogs, do you think? Is that how we're going to explain this one? Dogs just be big eared dogs. Yeah, maybe. Just be a dog or deer. Are they possibly all just dogs? Do you think, is that how we're going to explain this one? Dogs just be big dogs. Yeah. Maybe just be here. Dogs. There's all sorts of breeds of dog.

He goes, like a, like a, like a hair. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it sounds like that, that house, I don't know if it still exists. Let me check. Let me check. Well, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you have, you me check. Well, you have a worth a drive over. Obviously, you have to take three or four weeks to get anywhere in your beautiful country because you've got to stop off at the. You have to stop off, Tidiness Girls.

I wonder if it's like National Trust or something. Abbey House, Cambridge. Oh, he's got his own Wikipedia page. Imagine. Oh, wow. Because, yeah, I was wondering if it's the kind of thing where like, if you know it's haunted, when you're selling it, do you mention that to the next people or do you just try and palm it off? Well, on the wiki, it says it's been described as both the oldest inhabited house and the

most haunted house in Cambridgeshire or Cambridge. It's currently, according to Wikipedia, is currently owned by the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. Oh, there you go. Yeah. So those are the hairs. Are you ready to score? I think you're going to need to score these today, Dave, because we haven't got Alistair for scoring. Okay. Okay. But we'll trim it down. We'll just have the one bonus category. So we'll have the two standards. We'll have first up naming. Now remember these are out of five, maximum five. And before you ask Dave, no, we don't do half points. We do it at 10 if we did.

Is there a standard where you go, all right, can't do a half, but I'd round up. Or do you automatically round down? Just believe in yourself. No, you believe in yourself. You know, what's right. You know what's right. You know the right thing to do. So naming wise, what we haven't, I mean, we've got a lot of things that I'm not sure I've pronounced, right?

Sure. Yeah. I think I'd give you the full five. It was, it was to give the pronunciation. Oh, I didn't mention on the crypt, crypted archives dot fandom dot com. When you visit that site, you've that site, you've got the article there for the King Hair, which basically covers all the things that we've seen. It says, like, others like you viewed the kind of, like, you know, the suggestion bits.

It's called the Satochin, which is a cryptid from the boreal forest of the Yukon in Canada, also known as the beaver eater. I mean, can I give that a five? You were leaning towards a four or five, I believe. What should I take? What should I put in the book? Give me a four. Give me a four.

Okay. Properly in the book. Give me a four. Yeah. Okay, put it in the book. Now, second category, supernatural. This is always a dicey point when we're talking cryptids, because if you- if these things exist, that's not supernatural. That is just natural, but not seen often. Yeah, but then we had a bit of the supernatural, I felt, with the Cambridge house towards the end. There's something supernatural there.

And it sounded like that was the house was haunted for decades. The little child saying, pointing at an empty space, saying, will it hurt me? Yeah, that's sending chills. Yeah, that really that freaked me out a little bit, I gotta say. So I think that's doing the heavy lifting, because, like you say, the rest of it is like it exists or it doesn't. So it's not that much. So maybe we'll give it a three because of that. Fair enough.

Good shout. Fair point. Good, honest judgment. And my final category is dog scales. Okay, great. So this is, this is the idea that you can measure anything. I really think you can. I really think you can. I had a massive roast dinner.

It was the size of a small dog. That is that's pretty big. That's a big dinner. And like even you can even do like a height like a site. Oh, how how tall is my car again? Oh, it's about four Labradors stacked on top of each other. Yes, exactly right. Yeah.

Well that way. And then you sort of do this kind of get, yeah, that'll fit in the, fit in the boot. Yeah. I reckon we'll get it. I reckon in the boot would probably get four. What do we get about 12, 13 bagels? Probably. Yeah. Yeah.

I reckon, you know, you could probably fit like it's a big boot. You know, it's like a St. Bernard. It's a big boot. You know, it's like a St. Bernard. It's a St. Bernard, a golden retriever. And then just like a couple of Chihuahuas, if you can get them to tessellate nicely. I'm there.

I'm imagining it. I know the space. You know how big it is, right? Yep. Yeah. I think that it's honestly, I think that's a five out of five. That's a perfect scale. Yeah.

The dog's we're going to use it now. Yeah. We all get it. Yeah. Nice one, Dave. Well, thank you very much for joining us. If people have enjoyed hearing your voice as much as I have, where can they hear more of it? They can hear me regularly on two podcasts.

There's Do Go On, which you've been a guest on, where we take it in turns to report on a topic. Like we were saying earlier, there's over 500 in the back catalog. So there's everything from the Hindenburg disaster to the life of share, a bunch of cryptids, like we said, the one on the 500th episode, that was the, the phook monster. Oh yes. That was a lot of fun in America. So that was definitely five out of five for naming. A lot going on there.

That was great. And also book cheat, which you've also been a guest on. Oh yes. I read the classic books. So you don't have to. So I, your Shakespeare's, your Bronte sisters, your 100 years of solitude, these kinds of things I've read it. I tell guests about them.

So, you know, you can pretend you've read it cause you've heard the plot. Will you just make some jokes about it? Yes. That is a valuable resource, to be honest. If I ever want to pretend like I've read a book, I check if you've covered it and then listen to your episode. Beautiful. Beautiful.

The system works. If you want to see me and hear me, you can watch my standup, what I'm calling quote unquote a special, because that's what everyone calls them, but it's just basically my standup. It's, it's very, very special now on a very special website called YouTube. Oh yes. I'm aware of this work. Yeah.

So I still go to everyone to watch from Saturday, July 26, myself and my buddy, Matt Stewart from Dougal one. We recorded our, our festival shows back to back and we're now releasing them as separate videos, but on the same day, we're having a bit of a launch on July 26th on YouTube and then they'll be up forever. How will people find it? How will people find it? What are they going to find it on?

Apart from going to YouTube. So they're simply going to go to YouTube and Google it. Well, they could do that. The show is called Even Hotter in Real Life. That's the name of the show. It's Dave Warnocki, Even Hotter in Real Life. And it's on the Humdinger YouTube channel. Our friends at Humdinger produced it for us.

So wicked. Well, I will definitely be checking that out. Thank you very much. And Matt's as well. Also a friend of the show. Well, thank you very much, Dave, for joining us and well, we'll see you again. So, Oh, any Australian, any Australian listeners, Dave's in Melbourne. You you'll be able to find him.

So small enough city, right? Yeah, that's right. Just look out for me. I'm about the size of like a Wolfhound plus a Chihuahua maybe. I'd say a start of Dalmatian. Yeah, start there. That's good. Yeah. So there you go, Alistair.

Now we're a little peek behind the recording. We recorded this at the same time as we did the intro, so you actually haven't listened to the episode. I have no idea what happens. Was it good? It was good. It was good. I'll take your word for it then. If you would like to support our endeavours, please join us at patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod. There's also lots of bonus episodes and access to the Law Folk Discord where you can meet like-minded law folk. Thank you very much to everyone who already does that.

Thank you very much to Joe for editing this episode. Joe, Joe, Joe. Thanks, Dave, for joining us as well. Please check out Do Go On Pod and Bookcheat podcast and his YouTube special, which is out imminently. We'll pop a link in the notes. But that's really good. Yeah, me too.

And we'll see you again soon. We'll be back to normal soon enough. I will be back. I am. It's still in the podcast. Yeah. What's this about? It's not a figment of my imagination. It assures me.

I've been driving the UK with Dugo on when we were doing live shows and we were driving from, I don't know, like Birmingham to Manchester or the other way around. And we stopped like on a roadside garage, maybe you call it, like a, which had a pub and a petrol station attached. And we're having lunch there and the, I don't know, the guy behind the bar is like, Oh, what are you off to? I said, Oh, we're driving to Manchester. And the guy's like, well, you're going to stay here for the night though, aren't

you? And then keep going. And we're like, no, it's only another hour. But he thought we were going to get in. Oh, you need to get your rest. Tiredness kills.