The bizarre Fenland ritual that gave people psychic control over horses

It involved people who made a deal with the devil

A ritual once practiced in our county, supposedly gave people psychic power over horses. Cambridgeshire is filled with wacky tales and historic beliefs.

From the ‘lantern man’ being spotted around Wicken Fen to the ‘Shug Monkey’ who is said to stalk the roads close to the village of West Wratting, our county has a lot of folklore to its name.

One particular tale of a ‘toadman’ is a sacrilegious legend of a ploughman from 19th-century Cambridgeshire. A toadman according to Fenland folklore, is someone who made a deal with the devil which gives them control over horses. The bizarre tale gets its name from an unsettling ritual that someone would perform involving a toad.

The initial ceremony involved catching a male toad, hanging it from a thorn bush or pegging it to an anthill until its bones had been picked clean. People would then carry the bones until dried. Even more peculiar, the bones were then thrown into a running stream on a full moon at midnight. Supposedly, all except one would be swept downstream.

As unsettling as it sounds, after this appalled ritual the last remaining small fork-shaped bone would then, through insane means, grant its holder psychic control over horses, according to the local legends.

This eerie attempt at gaining power was also used in Lincolnshire. The toadman’s powers were believed to enable them to instantly calm wild or dangerous horses or alternatively turn them into an unmanageable animal.