Ghosts & Hauntings

Mysteries revisited: the phantom bowmen and angels of Mons

By T.K. Randall
December 26, 2022 ·  10 comments

An illustration of the phantom bowmen. Image Credit: The Illustrated London News Stories of the ghosts of fallen heroes appearing to turn the tide of battle are nothing new, but during the Battle of the Mons in August 1914, British soldiers who had been attempting to hold the line against overwhelming German forces in Belgium were later said to have received unexpected aid in the form of phantom bowmen who had appeared out of thin air to attack the enemy.

Although the British were eventually pushed back, they did manage to inflict a disproportionately high number of casualties on the Germans despite being heavily outnumbered.

In the months that followed, more and more stories began to emerge of phantoms and angels appearing on the battlefield during the fight to help the British side.

Some of the stories described ghostly bowmen from the Battle of Agincourt as well as German soldiers with arrow wounds lying on the ground, but these tales were later attributed to author Arthur Machen who had published a fictional piece entitled "The Bowmen" in a local newspaper.Similar tales, including accounts of phantom bowmen and angelic warriors, would also later be published in Spiritualist magazine, prompting another wave of reports and coverage.

Some even came to believe that the appearance of these entities during the battle meant that the British had divine providence on their side, which lead to considerable controversy at the time.

Ultimately, though, few to no first-hand accounts of such sightings were ever reported.

While the stories certainly helped to boost morale among the troops, it seems that they were based more upon Machen's fictional short story than upon anything the soldiers saw themselves.

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Tags: Angel of Mons, World War I