In the Summer 1997, a hiker in the Peak District reported the discovery of a yellow tent in a remote patch of pine forest. The tent contained thirty six sleeping bags, thirty backpacks and over a hundred items of individual clothing. The Police report that this is an ongoing case and not open to public access.
In the Spring of 2002, an electrician checked himself into Oldham Royal hospital and was admitted to the psychiatric ward. He had been working on power lines in the Peak District and reported that he'd encountered a severe hallucination when he was returning to his vehicle. Apparently he saw someone, who he described as a farmer, watching him from over a stone wall. The electrician refused to describe the face of the individual, stating that the facial features were the hallucination he had experienced. Any attempt to encourage the description of these facial features caused extreme distress in the electrician, who was later diagnosed with a limited schizoaffective disorder.
In 2019 a dissertation was completed at the University of Manchester's School of Biological Studies. It described the phenomenon of the 'uncanny valley', a relationship between something appearing imperfectly human and a human's emotional reaction to it, typically a feeling of unease. The dissertation suggested that this phenomena was developed in early humans as a defence mechanism, implying that at some point there was a reason to be afraid of something that appeared human but wasn't.
Paddy Dobson
18th December 2020