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Welsh revenant of Hereford

Also called: William Laudun's revenant, Walter Map's Welshman
Folklore and mythUndeadVariesA bad death or burialMiddle Ages

Walter Map tells of a dead Welshman who walked nightly near Hereford and summoned his neighbours to death by name. The bishop's prescribed cure of holy water and a cut neck failed, and the haunting ended only when the knight William Laudun pursued the corpse to its grave and beheaded it. The name-calling motif turns up again centuries later in the Greek vrykolakas. Map also records gentler cases settled by a cross on the grave or priestly absolution.12

⚔️ Battle it
First recorded
1185
Walter Map, De nugis curialium, written about 1181-1192
Origin
Medieval English / Welsh borders
United Kingdom
What causes it
A bad death or burial
Map says the man died 'unchristianly'.
How you become one
A Welshman who died without a Christian end.
How it moves
Varies
Walks back from his grave into the village each night and calls residents by name.
Intelligence
Clever
Weak spots
  • holy water on the body and grave (tried first, and failed)
  • splitting the head from the neck with a sword

When did it first appear?

Ancient world
Middle Ages
1500 to 1899
1900 to 1967
1968 to 1999
2000 to 2009
2010 to today
1185

Walter Map, De nugis curialium, written about 1181-1192

field notes

What the sources say

1

Everyone he named fell ill and died within three days12

2

The English knight William Laudun took the case to Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford12

3

The bishop advised exhuming the body, cutting the neck with a spade and sprinkling holy water12

4

The remedy did not work, and the corpse then called Laudun's own name12

5

Laudun chased it back to the grave and cut off its head himself12

Could you outrun it?

Speed class from how the sources describe it (varies), not a measurement.

You, walking about 5 km/h
You, jogging about 10 km/h
Welsh revenant of Hereford about 10 km/h
A fit adult sprinting about 24 km/h
A fast cyclist about 37 km/h

Sources

  1. Elif Boyacıoğlu, 'The Revenant on the Threshold', Folklore 62 (2015)
  2. Revenant - Wikipedia

Every fact on this page comes from these sources, written in our own words. Spotted a mistake? Tell us at hello@zombiewiki.app.

Folklore from the same lands

AbhartachIrish, 1870Revenant (medieval England)Medieval English, 1100Berwick revenantMedieval English / Scottish borders, 1198Buckinghamshire revenantMedieval English, 1198Byland Abbey revenantsMedieval English, 1400Drakelow revenantsMedieval English, 1090

Same era: Middle Ages

DraugrNorse, 1250VetalaHindu (Indian), 1070GlámrNorse (Icelandic saga), 1300UpiórSlavic, 1100AsvithNorse (Danish chronicle and Icelandic saga), 1200HaugbúiNorse, 1250