MAKING MONSTERS by Stephen Laws. An article for Dorchester/Leisure Books (USA Publication)

In the North of England, there's a small village called Elsdon—and on its outskirts, on lonely hills, there stands a gibbet.

I first encountered it many years ago, and discovered that it was known as Winter's Gibbet. In 1792, William Winter (and his accomplices, Jane and Eleanor Clark) were hanged there, having been found guilty of the murder of one Margaret Crozier. Winter himself remained hanging there until he rotted. For more details, see - http://www.rothbury.co.uk/around/winters_gibbet.htm

The gibbet is a remarkable sight. If you head up into the hills by car, pass through Elsdon, you suddenly crest a hill—and there it is. A stark reminder of the past. I knew that at some stage I'd end up writing about it, or something like it. But for many years, my research notes and details remained on file—waiting for that further inspiration.

I'd decided when the time came for my third novel, that I wanted to create a unique supernatural threat—something that was my very "own"; something that didn't confirm to traditional monster "lore." On the basis that every reader knows the horror cliches, I decided that I wanted to create my own evil monster-spirit; something that had its own code of behavior and with a completely different modus operandi from anything else I'd read.

At some stage in the early stages of collating notes for that new novel, I was reminded of a North of England legend about a creature called The Lambton Worm. The monstrous creature laid waste to the countryside until the young heir to the Lambton estate returned from the Crusades and killed it. In some versions, the "worm" is a serpent and in others, a huge reptile.

Looking into the legend a little further, I discovered that in the North Of England—indeed throughout the United Kingdom—there are dozens of such legends about man-eating monstrosities called worms, or more precisely in old English—wyrms. I was also fascinated to discover that the word could mean "dragon" or "evil spirit," and those legends are many and varied, with wyrms of all shapes and sizes behaving in all kinds of anti-social ways.

It was then that I decided I could use just the word, the fact that these legends were so prolific in English mythic history—and go on to create my monster. Part of my research drew me back to author Bram Stoker's novel The Lair of the White Worm, and in the realization that he too had drawn on the same legends and created something distinctively his own from that raw material, I knew that I was on my way.

Three other key factors suddenly clicked into place. I read that in some folklore, a stake is driven through a vampire's body not to destroy the heart, but to actually keep the thing pinned down in its grave. Also—that in some parts of the world, suicides were buried at crossroads so that if they came back as vampires, they wouldn't know which road to take and would be stuck there. Tying those things into my strong desire to also write a novel about the sealing off of a small community from the outside world, and its struggle against a monstrous threat, I suddenly remembered the gibbet at Elsdon. What if that gibbet was actually performing the same function as a kind-of giant wooden stake? And what would happen if that stake was removed...?

That's when everything started to come together.

And the result is—The Wyrm.