Beast
The Shug Monkey
Half shaggy dog, half monkey, with great shining eyes.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Quiet grassy bridleway across open fields
- Legend from
- Early 20th century
- Tone
- Eerie
Near this lane between West Wratting and Balsham, children once ran from the Shug Monkey: half shaggy dog, half monkey, all eyes.
Slough Hill Lane, an old track between West Wratting and Balsham, was said to be haunted by the Shug Monkey. In 1954 the writer James Wentworth Day printed a description sent by a Cambridge police constable who grew up nearby: a cross between a big rough-coated dog and a monkey, with large shining eyes, which sometimes shuffled on its hind legs and sometimes whizzed past on all fours. Later writers called it jet-black and shaggy, with a monkey's face and staring eyes, and linked it to the East Anglian ghost dog Black Shuck. Sightings reportedly stopped before the Second World War.
One sourceOnly one written account of this legend has been found so far.