The Devil’s Bonfires

Stories about them go back generations, and in tales handed down through the generations they became associated with the devil, hence their local name, the Devil’s Bonfires. 

One resident remembers how back in the 1950s his granny would point towards Torside Castle and Glossop Low from their home in Old Glossop and mention ‘the lights’ which flickered and hovered above the Devil’s Elbow. Ten years later, as a volunteer in the local mountain rescue team, he heard about them again when motorists began to report lights resembling distress flares hovering above the moor

In tradition, the Devil’s Bonfires were said to hover around a mysterious mound near the summit of Bleaklow known as Torside Castle. Archaeologists believe the mound dates from the Bronze Age, others believe it is a natural lump of mud and rock left in a wake of the glaciers which once cut through the valley. Another tradition links the lights with phantom legions of Roman soldiers who are said to march along the Devil’s Dyke, a Roman road lining the fort at Glossop with the Hope Valley in the east. 
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In the 1960s, the new Peak District National Park authority built the first youth hostel at Crowden, not far from Woodhead. The hostel was designed to provide an overnight stop for walkers braving the first leg of the newly-opened long distance Pennine Way footpath which crosses Longdendale on its route north into West Yorkshire. It did not take long before visitors and wardens based at the hostel and surrounding cottages soon began to see beams and pulsating balls of coloured lights racing along the rocky gritstone crags on the remote western face of Bleaklow, along Bramah Edge and Shining Clough. On occasion’s police and rescue teams turned out to search the craggy heights but found nothing. Then one fine summer’s night in July 1970, teacher Barbara Drabble, who was at that time married to Peak Park warden Ken Drabble, was driving home to Crowden past the youth hostel when she suddenly passed through an invisible curtain which led into the Twilight Zone. 

She said ‘a brilliant blue light’. It lit up ‘the entire bottom half of the mountain, all the railway, the reservoirs and about a two mile stretch of road.’ The lights lasted several minutes and did not resemble daylight. It was ‘brighter, clearer and harsher’ and as Barbara drove into it she felt intensely cold, a sensation which caused the hair on the back of her neck to stand on end as if it had been affected by an electrical charge. ‘It was just all over the whole valley lighting up, with perfect clarity, every single feature. It was certainly bright enough to drive without lights, and I can remember the clarity with which I could see the contour of the stone walling and the features on either side of the hills beside the road. The drive must have taken about five minutes and when I parked, or more accurately hurriedly abandoned, the car on arriving home it had an icy sheen and felt cold”. 

Barbara was so intrigued that she made a point of visiting local farmers, asking them what they knew about the light. They shuffled uncomfortably when put on the spot by an outsider, and kept what they knew to themselves. ‘I drew a blank from everyone but their attitude made me feel they did see something,’ she said. But one year later, more than a dozen people staying at Crowden Youth Hostel including the warden, Joyce Buckley, were dazzled by the same or a similar brilliant light which shined in through the windows. ‘At first I thought it might be car headlights, but it reappeared on top of Bleaklow and no car can get up there,’ said Mrs Buckley, who now lives in Manchester. ‘It lasted three minutes, 25 seconds and was very powerful.’ 

The warden was so concerned about the light she called out a Mountain Rescue Search party, led by Mrs Drabble’s husband Ken. He led a team who searched the moor in vain, and said afterwards: ‘When we got to the top there was nothing - no trace of people, lights or even a fire.’ What is more, Ken and the team searched the tops carrying big gas-powered searchlights whose reflectors were the size of a dustbin lid. But high up on the moor, the lightbeams thrown out by the searchlight looked like a twinkling candle to the people below in the Youth Hostel. The mystery light, they said, had filled the whole valley with its radiance. Discussing the events of that night for a TV reconstruction in 1996, Mr Drabble, now a senior Peak Park official, told me: ‘I did not think someone was playing a trick. There were 15 people at the hostel that night and they did see something, and I would not disagree that it was something very mysterious.’  

After the sighting from Crowden Hostel, Barbara once again asked local farmers what they knew, and although reluctant to talk at first, eventually they admitted they were familiar with the lights and had been for generations. ‘One of them said they had known it to freeze young lambs when it came early in the year,’ explained Barbara. ‘Also someone said it had been coming for generations but never so close together as two years, usually about thirty or even fifty years in between. They were still reluctant to discuss it.’