When Folk Horror Walked the Lanes of Yatton

A masked figure in the mud, a county gripped by fear, and the case that blurred the line between urban legend and criminal reality.

For five years, something crawled through the villages of North Somerset. Reports came in from Yatton, Claverham, Cleeve and Bleadon: a figure in a skin-tight black suit and a crossed-eye mask, writhing on the ground, stepping in front of cars, terrifying lone drivers on quiet lanes. The press called him the Somerset Gimp. The truth turned out to be far more troubling than the tabloid nickname suggested. In this episode of Peculiar Britain, we trace the timeline from the first sightings around 2018 to the 2023 conviction of Joshua Hunt, examine the psychology of rumour and rural fear, and ask what this very modern case of "gimp panic" tells us about the old folklore of the woods made flesh. Full write-up and sources at peculiarbritain.wordpress.com.