The Baum Rabbit: the Lancashire and British tradition of Phantom Killer Bunnies

Rochdale's Baum Rabbit was one of Britain's most famous supernatural Victorian and Edwardian spirits. It appeared not only in local writing and the classics of Lancashire dialect, but in national reference guides and the pages of Punch. But how on earth did the town settle on an innocent-sounding bunny as its token of fear? As late as the interwar period Rochdale kids were threatened with 'The Baum rabbit will get you'! In this talk we look at the evidence for the Baum Rabbit and the wider British tradition of killer bunnies. The Baum rabbit might seem impossibly bizarre to us today, but it had many cute floppy-eared cousins who terrorised communities up and down the land.  

Simon Young is a British historian based in Italy. In 2022 he published The Boggart: Folklore, History, Place-names and Dialect with the University of Exeter Press."

 

Time: Apr 15, 2026 03:00 PM London