Black Anna's Bower
Garrie Hall
			
		      ANOTHER CHILD MISSING
	The Dane Hill Estate was rocked this week when 
	another child, the third in as many months, 
	disappeared from her home. Dawn Smith (3) joins 
	Nicola Johnson (2) and Jason Dawson (2) in what 
	Leicester Police said is 'the most baffling and 
	alarming case of its kind we have had.'
	
	Local Counsellor Jack North called for more police 
	patrols in the area and visits to local schools by 
	an appointed welfare officer to get over the 
	'don't talk to strangers' message.
	
	This is not the first spate of disappearances in the 
	area. A similar series is recorded in the Parish 
	Records for 1760 when five children disappeared from 
	forest dwellings in an area known as Black Annis 
	Bower Close where the Lord Mayor's celebrations took 
	place each Easter.

	Black Annis Bower Close, where Leicester forest once bordered 
the old city along the Dane Hills, is now covered by the Dane Hill 
Estate but there are no records of this.
	Black Annis is another name for the Celtic earth goddess Danu, 
wife of the sky god Ludd. She dwelt in a round cave about ten to 
twelve feet across and five feet high. Known as Black Anna's Bower, 
she is said to have dug it out of the sandstone Dane Hills with her 
own fingernails.
	There Black Anna waited in the branches of an old oak growing 
over the mouth of the cave waiting for children to come past. She 
would then scratch them to death and drink their blood, hanging their 
skins out to dry.

Possibilities
1       Black Anna's Bower is an entrance to subterranean caverns 
inhabited by the descendants of the ancient Druids. They once used the 
cave for their sacrifices to Danu, and tended to the Children of Danu 
- Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath.
	They normally sacrifice their own young while saving a 
breeding stock of their hardiest children but, occasionally, run short 
of sacrifices. They are then forced to risk their secrecy and raid the 
surface world through Black Anna's Bower which is hidden in the Dane 
Hill Estate rubbish dump.

2       Black Anna's Bower is located directly under 17 Shakespeare 
Drive, the home of Stephen Johnson. Since moving in he has been 
possessed by a malign dryad trapped in the Bower since the tree over 
the cave was cut down. It has grown weak and forces Johnson to 
sacrifice children so that it can leave the cave for a new oak in the 
field beyond the estate. If it is not stopped children will regularly 
go missing, and their skins found hanging in the branches of the oak.

3       The Bower is a Gateway to the land of the faerie, renowned in 
legend for stealing human infants for their own. Only the innocent are 
allowed there, those that have not been corrupted by the adult world 
of humans. All three children were maltreated by their parents and 
have been granted sanctuary by the faeries. The Bower is guarded by 
Black Anna against the evils of the outside world.

Copyright (c) 1990 Garrie Hall