(I thought this ancient English folktale to be neat so I'm making it an oc of mine!)
The Clutchbone is the name of a seven-foot monster that used to stumble around Nordic countries in the 1800s. It had flames for a head, and used to kill its prey by burning and dismemberment. The legend particularly interests us as we've only known about it for just over a week. Not only that, but the internet has but little information on the creature - but what it does have we've assembled for you right here!Because we want you all completely informed.Here's a physical description of the Clutchbone as found on History mania!:"...black in colour, between 190 and 230 cm tall and with leathery skin, the Clutchbone is said to have a head consisting of a lit torch positioned within a large, raised collar of material resembling rawhide. Other variations of the general description of the creature describe the collar as consisting of a sort of meshed black metal."Clutchbone sightings were reported in England, The US, Finland and Sweden, and generally included the creature burning and dismembering its victims. We've found nowhere online that explains why specifically the creature allegedly killed, and we've come across absolutely no specific accounts of his murderous ways, but we did find this: "Violent events featuring the Clutchbone often followed previous sightings of lightening balls created by severe weather conditions leading some to assume that such a creature might arrive into this dimension or world by way of these natural phenomena."Its also been described that even while standing still the creature would bend, sway and bow constantly, perhaps implying the above mentioned inter-dimensional presence. Other than these scraps of information the general scarcity of documentation on the beasty makes us pretty dubious as to its historical presence - mythological or actual. But this lack of information has also been explained away:"The chronology of accounts relating to the Clutchbone is uncertain at best, due to the largely oral nature of the legend."For a horrible murderous creature to exist only orally in the 17 and 18 hundreds sounds pretty preposterous. The printing press was in full swing and people were glued to stories like Jack the Ripper andSpring Heeled Jack. Any account of a crazed-killer in this time frame, be it exaggerated, fictional or otherwise, would have moved tons of newspapers. Editors would have no reason not to print the tales.What's more, Wikipedia had a Clutchbone article that was taken to some sort of in-house court to decide the story's validity. It was determined that the story lacked all merit, and it was removed completely.So the Clutchbone's not even good enough for Wikipedia? That's interesting as the story of the three-foot alligator that's lived in our Aunt Clara's stomach for 20-something years has been posted since 2003.
