Shug Monkey

In the folklore of Cambridgeshire, the Shug Monkey is described as a strange creature combining the features of both a dog and a monkey. It was said to haunt Slough Hill Lane, the road that runs from the village of West Wratting to nearby Balsham. According to tradition, the being had the body of a shaggy black sheepdog and the face of a monkey with wide, staring eyes, giving it an unsettling and otherworldly appearance. Locals regarded it as a ghostly or demonic presence rather than a natural animal.

The first widely recorded accounts of the Shug Monkey came from James Wentworth Day, a local writer and broadcaster, who included it in his 1954 book Here Are Ghosts and Witches. He considered it a curious offshoot of the Black Shuck, the spectral hound of East Anglian legend. Folklorist Polly Howat later suggested that both figures may share a common origin rooted in Norse mythology. She also noted that no new sightings of the Shug Monkey have been reported since before the outbreak of the Second World War.