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Black Annis is a malevolent figure in English folklore. She is an evil witch or hag said to dwell in the county of Leicestershire. She is thought to take the form of a hideous blue-skinned woman with iron claws as sharp as talons who lives in a cave in the Dane Hills marked by an oak tree at the entrance. She serves as a kind of bogeyman figure, with mothers warning their children that Black Annis would take them if they did not behave.
The legend of Black Annis states that on winter nights she would leave her cave, known as Black Annis' Bower Close, looking for lambs and children to eat. She was known to hide in the branches of her oak tree waiting to pounce on anyone who passed underneath. If no victims were forthcoming she would seek out the nearest human dwellings and reach through open windows to snatch children and drag them back to her cave. Back at her cave she would skin and eat the children, tan their skins and add them to the pelt that she wore around her waist. She was also known to take and devour livestock. Cottages in Leicestershire were purportedly built with small windows in order to make it difficult for Black Annis to reach inside. One tradition states that when Black Annis howled and gnashed her teeth the sound could be heard from miles away, warning people that she was on the hunt and giving them time to bar their doors and windows.
Other stories tell that Black Annis has another form, that of a monstrous cat-woman known as Cat Anna. This creature supposedly lived in the cellars beneath Leicester Castle, where there was said to be an underground passage leading out to the cave in the Dane Hills through which she ran. This legend led to a local ritual to celebrate the end of winter wherein locals would drag a dead cat before a pack of hounds in front of Annis' Bower. This tradition persisted until the end of the 18th century.
In the nineteenth century one of the caves believed to be Annis' Bower was filled in by locals in an attempt to rid themselves of the hag. However, other legends say that Annis lived in another cave, often Scraptoft Witches' Cave five miles from Leicester city, and may continue to live there to this day.
Annis is believed to have been intended to represent a real woman, a local recluse named Agnes Scott who lived in seclusion for religious reasons. After her death, Scott's memory was distorted into an evil child-eating ogre due to religious bigotry after the Protestant Reformation.
