Each month, James Franklin, online and educational resources officer at Culture Vannin, looks at a particular place in the island and gives a guide to some of its folklore.

Glens are great places to look for Manx folklore, and perhaps Glen Auldyn is the best of all.

To start at the very bottom, the turning from the main road out of Ramsey is Milntown Corner, a place teeming with traditional folklore.

As recently as the 1930s reports tell us of a moddey doo with eyes ‘like coals of fire’ forewarning of death, a terroo ushtey (a bull that comes out of the river to terrorise the nearby cattle) and a two-foot-high man in a red cap and blue coat guiding travellers through the dark with his lamp.

More serious is the cabbyl ushtey, a horse which emerges from water to loiter at the roadside.

If you innocently climb onto its back, it will race off and try to drown you in the river or the curragh. Watch out!

Further up the glen, in the Brookdale plantation on the eastern spur, an ancient chapel once stood.

Here people would come on St John’s Eve to watch through the night for lights in the glen below.

Each light spotted would foretell of a death from the community in the year ahead.

Church records discuss stamping out this ‘superstition’ in the 1630s, so we cannot say if it would still work if tried today.

Going back over the bridge and up Glen Auldyn proper, you pass by the tholtan of Tantaloo with a private track dropping off to ford the river.

It was here that surely amongst the oddest ghosts in the island used to be seen.

She wore a grey cloak and a sun bonnet-like headdress, but in her hand, she remarkably carried a frying pan.

It was with this that she threatened all those who had the misfortune of coming across her.

Indeed, seeing her was an ill-omen of something bad to happen.

In most glens, this might be the pinnacle of the odd stories on offer, but not so in Glen Auldyn. One night just over 100 years ago two young men were out hunting hares, using their acetylene bicycle lamp to dazzle them before grabbing them.

However, everything changed when they came across a hare of ‘gigantic’ proportions, and they immediately ran for their lives back down the glen.

Further up, where the glen opens up onto the hillside, there is the Black Dub, a distinctive pool in the river with a large shingle back on the far side.

It was here that a young man once came across the remarkable Daniel Dixon.

The sober upright 19-year-old had been working in the hills but he lay down by the pool to rest.

But as soon as he closed his eyes, he felt a weight on his chest.

He opened his eyes and saw a very strange little old man with teeth that stuck out and arms and legs unusually long for his small body.

The young man asked who he was, and the stranger sat on his chest replied: ‘I am the Fairy King, my name is Daniel Dixon.’

The young man then tried to grab him, but he was thrown back head over heels.

Upon looking back, the Fairy King had vanished, leaving behind a number of tiny beings wearing brown petticoats.

But these too all soon disappeared, leaving the man with nothing to show for his very strange encounter.

Take care the next time you’re in Glen Auldyn – you never quite know what you’ll come across there!