On the evening of November 3, 1888

 On the evening of November 3, 1888, farm animals across Oxfordshire were secured in their pens, and farmers had retired for the night blissfully, unaware of what was about to happen. At around 8 p.m., the people around Oxfordshire heard something they didn’t expect: the sounds of a mighty stampede outside their homes. Some looked out the windows; others ventured out to see tens of thousands of sheep running for their lives.

The huge throng of sheep had burst through their pens and jumped over walls and hedges, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. This event became known as the Great Sheep Panic of 1888. The account of one of the farmers’ who witnessed the stampede states,

“The extent of the occurrence may be judged when we mention that every large farmer from Wallingford on the one hand to Twyford on the other has reported that his sheep were similarly frightened, and it is also noteworthy that with two or three exceptions, the hill country north of the Thames seems to have been principally affected.”

According to this, every sheep in a 200-mile radius went berserk!

Those who had slept soundly through the stampede woke up in the morning to find their sheep were not where they had left them!
The tens of thousands of sheep were spread everywhere, many of them miles away from their usual fields. Although the stampede was over, many farmers noted that their sheep were still terrified; some hid under bushes or stood in the streets panting, while others had packed themselves into any corner of the fields they could find.

The farmers shook their heads in disbelief; they had no idea what had frightened their sheep so badly. Usually when sheep were scared, it was due to mischievous children, but the sheer magnitude of the numbers of sheep and the large area and multiple towns that were involved ruled out a childish prank gone wrong.

Another suggestion was that the sheep had been scared by foxes or a pack of wild dogs. Sheep are very skittish animals, and when they are being chased after by a dog or fox, they become extremely stressed.
This stress is known as sheep worrying, and the fear can be so consuming that it can make a sheep die and a pregnant sheep miscarry. But once again, this was not logical given the scale of the stampede and the multiple flocks involved. For a dog or fox to spook by tens of thousands of sheep at the same time across 200 square miles is impossible.

Farmers wondered if some atmospheric event had caused the Great Sheep Panic. A loud clap of thunder, drastic changes in the weather, vibrations from an earthquake, or a meteor falling to earth would all be terrifying to animals, but none of this was recorded on that quiet November night.

Sheep are always on guard, wary of threats. Their senses of smell, sight, sound, touch, and taste are incredibly sharp, and this makes them hyper-aware of their environment. You have heard that saying ‘like a flock of sheep’ and it is true that sheep have a very intense instinct to follow each other and gather together in flocks; they know that there is strength in numbers.

But is it possible that one spooked sheep set off the Great Sheep Panic of 1888, and the rest followed due to their natural instincts and herd mentality? Some believe so.

The cause was never determined, and a year later, a similar panic occurred in 1889 and again in 1893 in the Reading and Oxfordshire regions.
A naturalist named Oliver Vernon Aplin became interested in the panic of 1893, and after investigation, he came up with the theory that it was too dark the night the sheep bolted, and it was this that scared them.

All the witnesses said that in 1888, it was impossibly dark from around 8:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. The darkness travelled from the northwest to the southeast, blotting out the moonlight. As already mentioned, sheep are prey animals and tend to be skittish and highly strung, and Alpin believed that even though sheep can see in the dark, when it is exceptionally dark, it can make the animals feel trapped and they can become scared.

All it would take was a single sheep to start running in fear, and it would cause a domino effect soon; the entire herd would be panicking and rushing to escape an unseen danger they felt was after them.

The exact cause of the Great Sheep Panic of 1888 is still a mystery. While Alpin’s theory can explain a flock panicking, it doesn’t explain how so many flocks of sheep across a wide area all became spooked at the exact same time. Some theorise that the tens of thousands of sheep who went on the rampage saw something unexplained, maybe extraterrestrial or supernatural.

Source:
Lauren Dillon for Historic Mysteries
Alison Healy on the Great Sheep Panic of 1888.