A shield against shadows of the unseen; and community, nature and resilience

15 January 2026

Welcome to issue 21 of Tales from the Chase, a weekly newsletter for Cranborne Chase. Local events. Odd tales. Mildly strange goings-on. All delivered by email, free, and occasionally unhinged (in a charming way). Was this email forwarded to you? You can sign up for free by clicking below!

hail, wanderers of the chase

This week in the Chase

Read on to learn about Cold Hunger, Hollow Men, and how to return from the Chase with your heart and soul intact. And Hubert meets Chettle, an unusual village with a special retail experience.

of cold hunger and hollow men

Last week we heard from Rufus Penn about the Candle of the Roe, a special deer whose white blaze guides the lost to safety.

I was talking to Isla Cobb about this and she told me that there's a bit more to it than Rufus let on; some say that the Candle of the Roe is not just a guide for those lost in the Chase; he is also a shield against the "Shadows of the Unseen".

Over a drink in the Queen’s Head, I asked Isla what she meant by the Shadows of the Unseen. She smiled wryly. “They’re the things you don’t notice until it’s too late. The cold that isn’t just cold, the path that isn’t really there, the whisper that sounds like your own voice. The Candle of the Roe is the only guide you can trust when the dark side of the Chase tries to catch you out.”

"In one tradition the Cold Hunger is a creeping, numbing force that confuses travellers and lures them to their doom with illusions. The other is about Hollow Men, empty shells driven by the Cold Hunger to fill the void inside them. While the nature of the Cold Hunger differs in each, both traditions warn of the dangers that lie in the deeper parts of the Chase, and both tell of the Candle of the Roe as the protector against them".

"What types of illusions are we talking about here?" I asked.

"Well, unfortunate folk might come across a pool that looks like a solid path or a welcoming cottage door, and step forward to their doom; or they feel the breath of a phantom chill that numbs the mind, making them lie down in the damp, never to wake again. There might not be an illusion though, perhaps they are so deep in the wood that the things that have no faces "borrow" their life and breath".

"And it’s said that when the Candle of the Roe appears, it is because he knows that the Cold Hunger is at work and comes as a saviour".

She explained that the shadows cannot cross the path he treads. Having fixed your eyes on that flame on his brow, the whispers in the trees sound like nothing more than dry leaves, and the Cold Hunger can't touch you. Follow him out, and once you reach the safety, he will bark once and vanish.

I asked her to tell me about the Hollow Men.

“The Hollow Men aren’t just lost souls" she said. "They’re empty shells that drift across the land, drawn by a Cold Hunger that can reach inside you and steal the very things that make you who you are.”

She explained that they're the "husks" of those who were cast out from the light but rejected by the dark. In the deep woods, they manifest as figures that look human from a distance. If you are unfortunate to get close enough, you’ll see it’s not so.

From the front, they may look like a lost wanderer or a tall, slender man in tattered grey.

They do not breathe, and they have no heartbeat. They make a low, moaning sound that people often mistake for the breeze in the trees.

Their eyes are not eyes at all, but dark pits that reflect nothing.

"The danger of the Hollow Men isn't that they will strike you with a blade or a claw" she went on. "Their threat is emptiness. Because they have no "weight" or "substance" of their own, they are eternally driven by a "Cold Hunger" to fill the void inside them".

So if a Hollow Man touches you, or even stands in your shadow for too long, they begin to siphon away your vitality. You will feel a sudden, bone-deep chill that no fire can warm.

They feed on your memories, your name, the faces of those you love. A person caught by the Hollow Men might eventually wander out of the woods, but they will be “dimmed". Just a shell of who they once were, their eyes gone vacant and grey.

The Candle of the Roe is the natural enemy of the Hollow Men because she is "full." In folklore, deer are vessels of the earth's vital energy. The white blaze on his forehead is said to be a fragment of the Sun that stayed behind when the world was first made.

When he barks, it isn't just a warning to you; it is a command to the shadows to recoil. She places herself between your "weight" and their "void," ensuring that you return home with your soul intact.

I asked Isla if there are other protections.

"Yes, and you’ve already heard about one of them," she said. "Faelen, the mirror-eyed fox. He’s a very powerful guardian against the unseen. The Hollow Men can’t face him, and even the darker shadows hesitate when he’s near. They say his eyes reflect not just what is, but what should be. He reveals illusions, paths, and protects those who wander in the Chase from all dark threats."

Isla paused, thoughtful. "Well," she said finally, "there are some ‘Old Protections’ that some believe have kept travellers safe for generations. They’re small things, rituals and symbols that don’t require the Roe or Faelen to appear. They won’t replace their guidance, but they can give you a chance to return with your heart and soul intact."

She leaned back, thinking carefully. “The simplest, and maybe the most well-known, is the turning of your coat, what some call the ‘Mizmaze Break.’ If you feel the paths twisting, the trees shifting, or the way ahead growing unfamiliar, stop and turn your coat, or any garment, inside out. The Hollow Men and other shadows operate on a logic of symmetry. By reversing your clothes, you scramble your image in their world. You become a puzzle they cannot solve, they hesitate, they can't follow.”

“Rowan and red thread are powerful too,” she continued. “The rowan tree is said to carry the blood of the earth in its berries. Carry a small sprig tied with red wool. Red is the colour of life, of fire, of the things Hollow Men cannot touch. Or tie two twigs into a cross and sew it into your coat lining. Old travellers swore it could prevent a Hollow Man from siphoning your soul.”

“Salt is another,” she added. “These spirits are airy, drifting things. Keep a pinch of sea salt in your pocket. If you hear that whistling wind that isn’t the wind, scatter a little behind you. It makes your trail too ‘heavy’ for them to follow; they can't walk on the salt of the living.”

“And iron,” she said, tapping a finger on the table. “You don’t need a sword. Even a nail or a simple key will do. Touching cold metal reminds your own spirit of its weight, its substance. That alone can keep a Hollow Man from draining you. And they fear its touch; it burns them, can even unmake them.”

She paused and looked at me. “If you do all that, and stay vigilant, you have a real chance of coming back from the Chase in one piece. It’s not as flashy as the Roe or Faelen appearing, but it works, and that’s what matters.”

"These are just tales you realise" she said finally, giving me a small smile. “Don’t look so worried.”

I hadn’t realised I was looking concerned.

"The Hollow Men are mimics. They’ll use your voice to pull you off the path. Stay on the path."

"And when you get home, especially if it’s dark, don’t just step inside. They can become like wood-smoke, able to cling to the folds of your coat or drift in your wake. There’s a way to close the path behind you, a ritual called the Closing of the Way."

She described it as follows. Stand on your threshold, but don’t cross it yet. Then turn to face the dark. Tap the heel of your boot three times against the ground. That shakes off the dust of their half-world and signals that you’re back where you belong.

Keep a bowl of water near the door. Dip your finger and trace a small cross or circle on the frame. Hollow Men see their own void reflected in water, and they recoil from it.

Finally, turn on a light. Declare your house a place of warmth and substance. That light reminds the shadows that they cannot follow you inside.

She leaned back, letting the words settle. “Do this every time you return from walking in the Chase. It may feel strange, but it works".

When I left the Queen’s Head, Isla’s stories were still with me. The Chase isn’t just a place on a map, it’s a place in stories and imagination.

If you find yourself carrying a little rowan, salt, or iron, and remembering to close the way behind you, no harm done. Better safe than hollow.

A parish by parish tour of the Chase

This week, Chettle.

chettle

This week we head to Chettle, one of Dorset’s smaller parishes, right at the heart of the Chase. It's tiny; the population is only around 100 people. And it's an estate village, with almost the entire parish owned by a single family.

Chettle House is one of Dorset’s finest early 18th-century country houses, built around 1710–1720 for its first occupant, George Chafin, a Dorset landowner, Tory MP and Ranger of Cranborne Chase.

Being in the Chase, there are traces of prehistoric society in the area; a couple of long barrows dating from around 4,000 years ago, and on Chettle Down there’s evidence of Iron Age and British-Roman settlement from around 800 BC to AD 400.

Today it's well known for its village shop and its award-winning pies.

For more information, see Hubert's guide to Chettle below. All views expressed are Hubert's own, and are not necessarily shared by Tales from the Chase.

​

CHETTLE

Ah Chettle; small, obscure, and faintly pleased with itself. Depending on who is counting and whether someone is away on holiday, the number of permanent residents fluctuates between “barely viable” and “statistical rounding error.”

If you visit, do not expect excitement. Unless you find shopping for artisan bread exciting.

Notable for: being an estate village

For a long time much of the village has been owned by one family. Houses, farms, the shop, maybe the air itself. Rents have long been well below market rates, a fact that causes mild confusion among outsiders. The idea being that people should be able to live where they work, stay where they belong, and not be priced out by someone from the city with lots of money and a penchant for rural life. How revolutionary.

The Estate operates on principles such as community, nature, and resilience. Profit is firmly deprioritised in favour of long-term thinking, environmental responsibility, and not ruining things unnecessarily. This approach is pursued with calm confidence and very little interest in outside opinion.

Also notable:

Chettle House. A Baroque statement that looks like it was airlifted in by mistake. Built in the early eighteenth century for George Chafin, a Tory MP and Ranger of Cranborne Chase. It looks faintly embarrassed to be in Chettle at all, like a duke in regimental dress standing at a bus stop.

Chafin’s son managed to lose the family fortune with commendable efficiency, proving that inheritance is no guarantee of competence. The house slid into decay, was rescued, neglected again, spent some time converted into flats, and, post-2015, new owners eventually restored it to its former glories.

St Mary’s Church. Medieval in origins but, as usual, much of the building was rebuilt in the nineteenth century. So it has that familiar Victorian earnestness, as if someone thought God might appreciate a bit of tidying up but overdid it.

Pre-historic remains. Of course the chalk above the village contains the remains of ancient habitation, burials, and the ghosts of the people who built them. This is the Chase, so why would it not? There are a couple of long barrows and the (elusive) remains of a British-Roman settlement.

Dennis. While up on Chettle Down trying (and failing) to make out any lumpy remnants of the British-Roman settlement, I encountered Dennis, a local man of indeterminate age.

He introduced himself, with the air of someone who had been expecting me and informed me that the ancients had only come to Chettle because “the ley lines told them to.”

When I suggested that other more prosaic environmental, social and geographic factors might have played a role, he looked at me with pity.

Then he made a solemn face, as if he was about to explain quantum theory to a particularly dim pigeon.

“No,” he said. “It’s the energy. You can feel it. They felt the pull.”
​
He went on to offer that he’d never been further than Blandford “on principle” and advised me not to trust maps.

I left him communing with the invisible forces of the chalk. I suspect he may have some connection to the FFS.

The shop. Contrary to expectation, it is not a dusty purveyor of tinned peas and social suspicion. Instead, it is alarmingly modern. It sells award winning pies, organic locally grown fruit and vegetables, vegan and gluten free foods, local giftware, barista coffee; and there are eco-refills.

There are artisan foods, locally sourced things in tasteful packaging, and items that have opinions about sustainability. There is bread with a backstory, cheese that expects respect, and photogenic vegetables.

To be clear, this is not a bad shop. It is an excellent shop. That is the problem. In a parish whose population could comfortably fit into Chettle House’s dining room, the shop is unreasonably well-informed about global food trends. There are foods that appear to have been curated rather than stocked. Everything is local, ethical, or seasonal. Some items manage all three simultaneously. There is an unspoken assumption that if you don’t understand why the bread costs that much, the problem is spiritual.

It is less “village shop” and more “rural outpost of the Guardian weekend supplement.”

What unsettles me most is that it works. People genuinely rely on it. Locals and visitors alike drift in for coffee, provisions, and reassurance that civilisation has not entirely bypassed the Chase. The staff are unfailingly pleasant. This is not how village commerce is supposed to be; it is supposed to be transactional and faintly hostile.

And the shop has become a social hub, which is deeply inconvenient for anyone hoping Chettle would be aloof and slightly disapproving.

I bought a pint of locally sourced milk. I resented it. The shop won.

Suggested Itinerary

Arrive​
Pause briefly to take in the scale of the place. Yes, it is tiny, but announcing it aloud is considered gauche. Better to look impressed or contemplative.

Walk to St Mary’s Church. Mainly because from the churchyard there’s a good view of the House.

Look at Chettle House​
Admire the Baroque mansion. Reflect on ambition, inheritance, and the dangers of leaving things to your descendants.

Head up to one or both of the long barrows

Stand quietly and reflect on the fact that people once gathered here to bury their dead. If you were hoping for something more Instagrammable reflect that they were not built for you and your social media feed.

(Optional) Go to Chettle Down​
Search unsuccessfully for evidence of Iron Age and British-Roman settlement. Wonder why the OS bothered to mark this on the map. Wonder why this is optional on the itinerary, then realise its because it’s a waste of time.

Visit the shop​
Buy something ethical, local, seasonal. Avoid saying: “How much?” in a tone of shock.

Leave​
As you go, do not muse to yourself that you “could live here.” Chettle does not care. And under the rules of benign feudalism, you actually wouldn’t qualify.

NEXT WEEK: CHICKLADE

Prepare to be utterly underwhelmed.

Walk carefully. Watch the edges. And never, ever answer a voice that sounds like your own.

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