Get cosy, grab a cuppa, and get ready for this terrifying tale from the Cambrigeshire Fens
Cambridgeshire has always been steeped in magic and local legend, and anyone who’s driven through the Fens at night, especially at this time of year, can tell why so many ghost stories began here. The vast, flat expanse of the Fens stretches far into the distance, with little signs of life besides the strange gurgles and soft splashes of the sluices and waterways.
No wonder then that our unique landscape has sparked some of the greatest tales of mystery. Sir Aurthor Conan Doyle’s most famous Sherlock Holmes thriller, The Hound of the Baskervilles, began from the Fenland legend of Black Shuck, a giant hellhound that stalked the bogs and marshes with its gleaming red eyes.
But these days, there’s little chance of seeing a hellhound in the Fens, but on that night you did pass through, perhaps you did see a light. Perhaps it flashed, perhaps it moved away from you as you got closer, and then maybe it vanished, leaving you alone again in the Fens.
If so, you would not be the first to encounter this strange phenomenon; more than just a folk story, this mystery of the Fens has been attributed to the death of one local man and the disappearances of others, for the Lantern Men also stalk the Cambridgeshire countryside and lure unsuspecting travellers to their dooms, if the tales are to be believed.
According to Fen folklore, the lantern men are often seen around Wicken Fen and other areas. Described as an atmospheric ghost light, the lights, believed to be evil spirits, attempt to draw their victims to a watery death in the reed beds of the Fens.
The lights dance and twist their way over the dark surface of the great mere, or skip erratically in and out of reed beds and are apparently drawn to the sound of whistling. Thought to be a variant of the will-o’-the-wisp folklore, one method for evading the terrifying spectres is to throw yourself face down in the muddy ground with your mouth pressed firmly into the ground.
While the will-o’-the-wisp is thought to have lured travellers to treacherous areas, the lantern men of the Fens appear to attack whoever comes into their vicinity. In a 1900 copy of the Eastern Counties magazine, a novel way of escaping their clutches is outlined for those who find themselves walking the Fens.
Apparently, if two men stand on opposite sides of a field and one finds themselves with a lantern man drawing in, attracted to their whistling, the two men could whistle in turn from the opposite sides – if they were far enough apart, this could lure the lantern man back and forth until they were able to make their escape.
If you thought that carrying your own torch would deter the lantern men, then you would be sorely mistaken, as reports from sightings said that he always, in fact, ran toward the light. In the 1870s, Walter Rye wrote: “Once I heard of one following a man while he was carrying a lantern one night.
“The man knew what to do. He set the lantern down and ran away as if the devil kicked him. When he ventured to look around again, there was the Lantern Man kicking the lantern over and over again.”
In the book ‘Cambridge Folk Tales’, available from Waterstones and other online suppliers, Maureen James tells of a local man who had attracted the attention of a lantern man while whistling to his dog, whom he was walking on the Fen. In an attempt to escape, the man had taken shelter at a friend’s home, who hung a horn on a long pole to distract the spirit. The following morning, the horn was found to have been burnt up.
The untimely demise of Joseph Bexfield
It is thought that the Lantern Man lured the unsuspecting Joseph Bexfield to his death in the Norfolk Fens. The wherryman had been enjoying a drink with his fellow sailors in August 1809 when he remembered he had left a parcel for his wife on the wherry.
Fearing her disappointment and cold reception more than any Lantern Man, Joseph decided to leave the inn to travel back to the boat and grab the parcel, before walking back home to his wife and two children. Despite the pleading from his friends not to venture out into the night, filled with lantern men, Joseph pointed out to his friends that he knew the marshes near his home well before heading off into the eerie darkness outside.
That was the last time he was seen alive. When Joseph failed to return home or show up to work the following morning, a search of the marshes was carried out.
No traces of the 38-year-old were found. Joseph’s body finally washed up on the banks of the River Yare three days later. His grave sits in a Thurlton churchyard, with his headstone inscribed with a verse which reads:
“O cruel Death that would not spare, A Father kind and Husband dear
“Great is ye loss to ye three he left behind, But he they hope will greater comfort find.”
According to the Fenland storyteller Jack Barrett in East Anglian Folktales, a ‘shadow figure’ can still be seen on misty nights wandering over the marshy ground. It is thought to be the ghostly figure of a wherryman, such as Joseph Bexfield, being lured to his demise by the lantern men.
The ability to ‘take away a man’s breath’ explained
Though to some the lantern men were just uncanny apparitions, a strange spectre floating across the fens, to others they were harmful to anyone unfortunate enough to cross paths with one. There was a belief that it was able to ‘take away a man’s breath’, though there is in fact a more scientific explanation for this.
The marshy fenland lets off gas, and it is now thought that the flickering lights seen were actually the spontaneous combustion of marsh gash which happened on warm nights in rotten swamps and bogs.
