Shug Monkey

The Shug Monkey is a mythical creature, in the folklore of Cambridgeshire, sharing the features of a dog and monkey, which reportedly haunted Slough Hill Lane which leads from the village of West Wratting to nearby Balsham. The creature, said to have the body of a jet-black shaggy sheepdog and the face of a monkey with staring eyes, was not believed to be an escaped primate nor a cryptid hominoid (like bigfoot or the yeti) but rather a supernatural ghost or demon. Local writer and broadcaster James Wentworth Day, who first related stories of the Shug Monkey in Here Are Ghosts and Witches (1954), described it as a curious variation of Black Shuck, while local folklorist Polly Howat suggests that both share common origins in Norse mythology.