When you think about why there's so many creepy stories about peatlands, it’s probably not hard to explain – bogs in their healthy state are wet and squishy, and easy enough for a person to fall into and get stuck – combine that with some mist and people have often attached myth and legend to people’s disappearances.
Petrifying peatlands
Neon jumping spider. 07.06.2026. Little Woolden Moss. Ali Rajabali
Peatlands are absolutely chock full of spooky tales. From will-o'-the-wisps, to druidic worship, and ritual beheadings they have some seriously creepy tales surrounding them.
We hope you’re ready for the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up as we delve into some bog mythology this Halloween!
We hope you’re ready for the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up as we delve into some bog mythology this Halloween!
Will-o'-the-wisps - across bogs and marshes worldwide
Walking across a bog, you see a strange blue light hovering in the air – is it a spirit? A ghost? Will it lead you astray and off the path to your untimely demise?
Will-o'-the-wisp illustration from rawpixel
Research recently published by a physical chemistry team at Stanford University has seemed to provide an answer to these weird blue lights that have seemed to appear out of nowhere through the ages – microlightning, or tiny, spontaneous sparks of electricity that occur because of differences in charge on water droplets’ surfaces, that ignite methane on the bog.
The term ‘jack-o-lantern' initially was a name for will-o'-the-wisp.
Two lads - Winter Hill
Two massive stone cairns stand on Winter Hill on the Woodland Trust’s Smithills estate. Medieval ministers would avoid the area, believing that Druids worshipped and sacrificed there, and other tales tell of two small boys who perished up on the moor in neolithic times (Woodland Trust).
Two Lads ©Anthony Parkes via Geograph under Creative Commons Licence
Whether that ever did happen or not it’s hard to say, but it certainly is true that people avoided the area until much more recently.
Two lads is currently being rebuilt to preserve it for the future and make it safer where it has started to topple. Lancashire Peat Partnership recently got to attend an archaeological dig at the site as part of the restoration.
Worsley Man - Chat Moss
You go to work, digging peat out on Chat Moss, when you come across something that looks on first glance like an old human head. Unfortunately on second glance it also looks like a head.
Peat extraction on Astley Moss in the 1960's - photo courtesy of Dave Woodward
In 1958, in trench eight of flat six, just north of Astley Moss, a skull was found with his hair and deformed right ear and surrounding flesh still attached. His skull has been dated to the Romano-British period 131–251 AD and the damage shows he was struck two blows to the head, then decapacitated, and his head placed in the bog.
Worsley man is just one of many bog bodies found through Lancashire and Greater Manchester, with others found on Ashton Moss, Pilling Moss, Red Moss and famously, Lindow Woman and Man from Lindow Moss.
We’ll never know who these were buried like this, why they were killed, or even who they were. There may even be more still in the bogs around Britain.
The Greater Manchester Environment Trust has a brilliant blog about Worsley Man - check it out here:
Jenny Greenteeth - Lancashire/Yorkshire
“Hey lads! Hey, lads, run for yo’re life. Owd Jinny Greenteeth’s comin’ with a knife.”
Chat Moss would once have been a lowland raised peat bog, including the remaining fragments such as Little Woolden Moss - credit Jenny Bennion
Also known as Jinny, this water witch has long green hair and skin like a frog, with long arms, claws, huge orb-like eyes and sharp teeth for eating her favourite food – young children that fall into the green bodies of water that she calls home.
Most likely just a story that adults made up over the years to stop their children from venturing into still water with lots of moss or duckweed in and preventing drowning, it has woven itself through the centuries – with Jenny even appearing at the start of Terry Pratchett’s ‘The Wee Free Men’.
If you'd like to learn more about the real 'magic' of our peatlands - science and fact, why not join one of our volunteering sessions?