Searching for England’s Most Feared Mythical Beast

Local legend says that a man was once found dead just down the road from here after going in search of a legendary beast. A huge black hound with sharp teeth and saucer-like eyes that's been whispered about in northern England for centuries. It goes by many names but here in Yorkshire it's called the Barghest and right now we're heading towards the valley where it was said to have taken the life of a sceptic. We're going to try and see where some of these stories came from and whether anything still lingers there. Let's go and take a look. Now this is a category of folklore that spans many regions, comes in many different forms and as I mentioned has many varied names. Most commonly here in Yorkshire the Barghest but there are two spellings of that. Other names include things like Padfoot, Black Shuck and Guy Trash and a lot of these tales have overlapping elements but some of them unique characteristics as well and right now we're heading towards a place known as Troller's Gill which has a particularly strong connection with this dangerous black hound. Before we get to Troller's Gill though, what is it? What's the deal? Well the Barghest usually comes in one of two forms. It's either a physical manifestation, something which if you were to see you know you're in immediate danger or it could be in a more ethereal form, more ghost-like, in which case it's more likely to be a bad omen, a sign of something terrible to come. Now Troller's Gill, where we're heading to, is a narrow limestone gorge. Think of a very narrow valley. In the driest seasons it's completely dry and you can walk through it. A situation that I was hoping for today but there's been a lot of heavy rainfall recently so I'm a little apprehensive, I'm not sure what we're going to find. But weather aside there are many stories attached to Troller's Gill from over the years and when it comes to the Barghest probably the most well known was recorded in 1827 in a local ballad. Now ballads at that time were used to communicate all kinds of things, stories and news and in this particular one tells the tale of a man who was a sceptic, didn't believe in the Barghest and one night after having several ales at his local pub he decided to face this tale head on and he made his way to Troller's Gill at midnight. As he drew near to Troller's Gill a huge storm blew in and as he was down there in this narrow valley he saw the beast on top and the next morning his body was found with marks that couldn't possibly have been made by humans. Now there's probably a few details from that that will jump out to a few of you straight away. Firstly the fact that he had a few drinks, interestingly that's a detail that comes up not in all of them but in a fair few stories about sightings of the Barghest and secondly that he made his journey here at midnight in the midst of a huge storm. Now I'm not just trying to pick apart the story and zap all the fun out of it but these details tie into a few theories that certain folklorists have about the origins of these particular stories. Some people think for example that in this case of Troller's Gill the Gill is the Barghest. It's potentially a cautionary tale about a dangerous stretch of natural land. I've never been here before but I imagine we'll see once we get there how in the few drinks it could be a deadly place and so any tales that would deter potential drunk wanderings or children from getting into trouble could possibly be very useful. The other side to these tales of the so-called phantom hounds involve this more ethereal sighting. You can feel some rain coming in. Now these more ghostly sightings would happen in various places. You might witness a Barghest in a church graveyard or an alleyway late at night and it could symbolize something terrible about to happen. But there's good news and bad news because the good news is that it might not be something terrible about to happen to you or a family member. Many of these tales tell of a Barghest sighting which terrify the witness who then goes home scared to wake up the next day to find that somebody from the local community has died. No alcohol involved in these particular retellings but there is another element in some of them that I thought was particularly interesting and it's that in a number of cases the person who tragically lost their life just so happened to be a particularly hated local figure. Somebody very unpopular in the local town or community. And so once again looking back we're kind of left with a number of different possible explanations. Number one I guess the beast is real. Number two could just been a series of coincidences and human nature to try and find links and connections to explain what's happening around us came into play. But the side of my brain that's probably watched too many TV shows and films is thinking hold on a minute unpopular local figure hated in the community passes away and I'm not sure what the procedure would be back then let's say in the 1700s when a dead body is found but I can just imagine the ruling class come to investigate what's happened. People are quietly celebrating about the death of this person whatever they may have done and right as the investigation's about to start somebody pops their hand up and says hold on Johnny from down the road saw a bar guest last night. We saw a bar guest. Oh right. Call off the investigation. Mystery solved. This was no murder. It was an act of the elements out of our control. Troller's gill is somewhere over here so we should be looking out for a stile. It's going to take us over this wall and off somewhere in that direction and we're also going to be passing some other interesting anomalies in the landscape here. Something called Hell Hole which I'm not the most inviting name but we'll see if we can find it and also some remains of mining activity here so we'll see what we come across. I'm not sure whether to be more worried about Hell Hole, an accident in an old disused mine or a bar guest. I also need to give a shout out to the channel members in this video because thanks to you I've got some new equipment the right word and anyone who's recently mentioned my questionable choice of footwear during the recent weather is going to be happy to know that today I have some wellies. Steadily getting more well equipped for all these excursions so thank you very much. Now there may be people watching this who are either from inside or outside Yorkshire to whom some of these details might not quite match with your stories of you know this area of folklore and actually the whole category has come under I say questioning not necessarily criticism but questioning from some modern day folklorists. It's believed that throughout the Victorian era the beliefs and the occurrences of these stories were kind of fading out and some people suggest that maybe the folklorists and antiquarians of that time oversimplified all of this information in an attempt to neatly categorize it. So whilst a lot of the time when we look back on these stories from today in 2026 they talked about among each other with all these overlapping characteristics it could be that actually there were more distinctions than we might be aware of. It's a bit of a rabbit hole but if you're interested in taking a deep dive I would recommend it because if you just start looking for Vargest or Phantom Hounds, Black Shook, whatever it may be, have a look at a number of sources and you'll start to see some interesting differences in detail and opinion that might start to surface. There's a rather ominous looking ditch down there that I've got a feeling may be the entrance to Hell Hole. You might detect a little bit of tone because I'm not the biggest fan of closed off tight spaces but we've got to have a look haven't we? See exactly what's going on here. It's being guarded by a sheep or is it? Maybe it's a shapeshifter. That's another thing that's quite common in folklore over the centuries particularly in medieval times so we're talking hundreds of years ago. Sorry to disturb you. No this isn't it this is just a maybe a sinkhole. The rain is coming in now as well. The one time that I actually wouldn't mind walking into a cave. Oh I thought we would have passed it. I wonder if it's fenced off now down there. Anyway we might still get a glimpse but let's head on to our main destination Trollers Gill. Now a lot of these stories of shapeshifting are quite interesting as well for a few reasons. The barghest and all its other regional counterparts is often described as an unnaturally large dog and it's compared to being for example the size of a donkey, the size of a calf and conveniently in some of these tales of shapeshifting there'll be a sighting of a barghest which on closer inspection shapeshifts into a donkey. There's one that I read that I particularly liked because I thought was a little bit spooky and it was of one of these mythical beasts that roamed the moorland on the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire and this particular one in order to evade I don't know maybe capture would shapeshift and if you're ever walking through the countryside or on the moors and you see just like a thread of white material linen or something attached to a tree blowing in the wind or stuck on a thorn bush it may be the barghest in an evasion attempt shapeshifted and left the area. I mean that looks like it probably used to say Trollers Gill a long time ago so let's go this way. I'm not sure what this little structure's for maybe to keep keep animals out? I'm pretty sure we are descending into the gill now. I can see an awful lot of water flowing down from the hills there. Okay let's check this out. All right is this filling everybody with confidence? That's seen better days certainly. Oh my god what happens from now I don't know. Now two questions that you might have as you're watching this video that haven't been answered yet. First one why do I keep filming when there's been let's call it less than desirable weather conditions? Well simple answer is that I don't have a lot of choice since I'm doing content creation full-time I have to kind of work with the winter months and this is my first winter doing full-time content creation and it's definitely a challenge. What an amazing place though. And secondly the name Trollers Gill well if you've had a guess you're probably right. The origins of the name are admittedly a bit ambiguous but it seems to have earned its name through its history of attachment with folklore tales. So there are stories of trolls residing here and it's said that if you're making your way through Trollers Gill then they might chuck stones and rocks at you from above. In fact there are said to be many various mischievous beings that live in the nooks and crannies here that also have an interest in disrupting your adventures. And to be honest now that we're here it's not difficult to see how it could have attracted all these tales. It is a little Tolkien-esque. Has anybody spotted a giant black hound though? That's the question. It is interesting in folklore how a lot of these creatures have such strong connections with natural places, oftentimes water. Sometimes you'll hear tales of white horses which presumably are kind of cautionary tales that are inspired by the movement and you know what you can see when you're on a ferocious stretch of water. The Strid is another place where we've been recently that has an old tale of a white horse and particularly when somewhere's quite dangerous it all makes a lot of sense. Oh my god that's probably YouTube safe. When I first saw that in the distance I thought it was an old fire pit but it's not. It's like a melted sheep. Fortunately I can't think of any folklore I know whereby coming across a sheep skeleton is a bad sign so we can probably safely assume that that's good luck. Oh the sun. This is like pure fairy tale landscape. It's amazing. I'll mention visitor information at the end of the video as usual so if you're seeing this and thinking I'd like to visit I'll show you how. More impressive dry stone walls. For any new viewers by the way because the question still comes up quite often, understandably, wondering about these ancient walls there's a whole video on this channel dedicated to how they're made. Oh my god should have looked then there's a whole thing missing. Okay I think we have to go in the water now. You know I think I can say with confidence if I was to come here after seven or eight pints in the pitch black of night during a huge storm I don't think I'd make it out. Is it just nothing? It kind of looks like something. This place. Okay I'm getting spooked out now. It says it's an old mine shaft on the map. We have to have a little look don't we? I mean it's very low down. This is the height we're dealing with. Whoa it's weird because it doesn't look. I just realized I don't know what I'm talking about so I'm just I'll say less. I was thinking back to the the North Yorkshire mines from a few weeks ago where the entrances were all brick lined but I assume there are a lot of different ways to to mine depending on the area, the material, just a trick of the light maybe. Does this mean anything? Low air quality? Well I'm not going to go far don't worry. It kind of looks like a dead end. We'll just have a look here and then we'll go. Oh it is. Okay not a big fan of being in here so I'm gonna leave. This is one of those things where I've unknowingly gone through some kind of time warp and it emerged out of the shaft in 1827. That's weird isn't it? Why is it so short? Oh my camera is covered. I don't know what's going on anymore. Between the atmosphere of the gorge, the valley, whatever plain that was and then the randomly appearing mine shaft but there's no time to think about it because I need to make it down here on foot. I do need to seriously consider though if we are approaching a turn back point. It's actually not too bad underfoot. There's a lot of grip. Look there's a path there. Okay apply critical thinking skills. Thinking back to Jürgen from the mountain rescue video. What would Jürgen do? He would say know your limits, know your experience and trust your instincts. So we've got two options really. We can cross down here but that is probably shallow but fast flowing or we head over the other side but looks potentially slippy. So I'm going to try one thing. If it's no good we'll go back. I'm going to try and get over the slower flowing part and see how safe that other side is. I think that's our only reasonable option to be honest. That was actually all right but I'm going to be pretty strict with myself from now on because what I also want to avoid is getting so far that I can't come back and I've got a feeling that's a possibility. So let's get a good feel. Terrain feels all right here. I don't feel like I've overstepped my abilities. Well I think there's another mine up there as well. Okay I think we might have reached the end. I'm not sure how easy it is to see the gradient of this on camera but it might be walkable, scrambleable but the consequences of a slip are pretty severe. Combine that with the wet weather it's just not worth it. We've managed to make it safely this far with minimal risk so I guess on a day like today when there's been this much rainfall we need to call that a win. Definitely due for a revisit in some of that I think if anyone's interested and we can walk all the way down this when it's either totally dry or when the water levels are much lower. I'm going to slowly and carefully make my way back to where we came from. We'll cut to that and then I'll tell you how you can visit here if you want to. Okay we made it out. You know I did come into this trip with scepticism but there's something about that place. Unfortunately we didn't get to see Hell Hole or make our way all the way to the bottom of Trollers Gill but a pretty good adventure nonetheless. If you wish to visit Trollers Gill for yourself well the good news is you can do. I would definitely recommend visiting when the weather's been drier. So springtime, summertime. The terrain as you can see is not massively accessible depending on any kind of movement restrictions you may have. An old barn here or a sheep. That's probably a bit big for a sheep shelter. So depending on your preferences you might want to bring sticks, whatever it is you might need and some grippy shoes even in dry weather. There are a few parking spaces nearby. There's one particularly close actually. I parked a bit further away so I could get a bit more walking in to get here, see some more of the countryside. I don't remember the distance off the top of my head from the nearest road to here but I'll put it on screen because I think it's not very far. And aside from that it's pretty accessible. I'll be adding the OS Maps links and the GPX download links into the members area very soon. So aside from that I just want to say thank you for watching. Hopefully you've enjoyed the adventure. Sorry we didn't make it all the way to the end but I'm sure you'll understand why. Maybe we'll come back for an episode two if anybody wants to see that. Thank you so much to everyone who's been supporting the videos recently through every possible means. Massive high five to the members who helped to finance these trips and these welly investments as well. They've been a massive saviour today and you saw why. So thank you so much. As always questions about the location or more information, local stories, very welcome in the comments section. It's getting windy. So thank you so much again. I'm going to cross this danger bridge and head home and cross my fingers hope to see you next time.