Revealed: the bizarre mystery of the 'giant deer-sized hare'

Louise Hodgson is convinced she saw a hare the size of a roe deer surrounded by normal-sized hares in a Dorset valley. Louise, who now runs sacred site tours in Dorset, said she was on the

nearby downs when she met a small group of Romany Gypsies with some lurcher dogs. She said: "We came to a blind valley and it was early September, so it was an unusual sight for that

time of year, but there was a group of 10 to 13 hares with what we thought was a deer. "But it wasn't, it was a hare the same size as a deer. It was a wonderful experience. It

shows there are still some secrets in nature." Louise said the "magical" experience was in 1976, during a country trek she took from the Cotswolds to Dorset, but the vision

has haunted her ever since. She recounted the tale during a question and answer session with Marian Green, 77, at the annual Occult Conference in Glastonbury Town Hall, in Somerset, which

ended yesterday. She said: "Has anyone else come across that?" Marian, who was explaining about magic in the natural world, replied: "In the countryside many things happen,

the 'king' or 'queen' hares are out there. "So are fairies, elemental spirits, or ghosts. "If you want things to happen, if you let them happen, they can if you

are open to it." Earlier in her talk, Marian had said fairies and sylphs, small mythological elf-like creatures, were real. She said: "Sylphs, and all living beings, are around

us. Some want to speak to us again, connect with us again and we can be oblivious to what is going on around us." After the lecture Louise told Express.co.uk she had been near the

village of Uploders, near Bridport, in Dorset, when it happened. Asked if she could have actually seen a deer, she said: "No, they were proper Romany Gypsies, so used to the country and

I was used to the countryside. It was a hare with the ears and everything. It was extraordinary." Marian told Express.co.uk she had heard of one other person seeing a gigantic hare in

the countryside. She said: "If you are open to seeing these things, it can happen." According to Dr Karl Shuker, a cryptozoologist, who is aware of Louise's sighting, it is

not the only one, but there have been more sightings of giant rabbits. Cryptozoologists research the existence of mythical creatures and if extinct species are still alive. Dr Shuker said

there have been two giant rabbit sightings in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and another one in Felton, Northumbria. In a blog post he also said there have been many giant rabbit and hare sightings

in Ireland since the 1970s. However, he is not convinced there is anything supernatural about the sightings. In a blog post on his website, he said large rabbit sightings are likely to be

escaped domesticated large species such as the Flemish Giant, the Continental Giant, which can grow up to 55lbs and the size of a cocker spaniel. He added: "But what of the king hares?

The British Isles is home to two indigenous species of hare.  "The most common, widespread, and familiar of these is the brown hare Lepus europaeus. "One of the world's

largest species of hare, it can attain a body length of up to 30 inches, plus a tail length of up to sixches, which means that individuals at the upper end of this species' size range

can be as much as 3 feet, and can weigh up to 11lbs, i.e. as big as a decent-sized dog. "As many people do not realise that hares in Britain can attain such notable dimensions, the

sight of an exceptionally large hare coupled perhaps in some cases with less than accurate size-estimation skills on the part of its observer may be sufficient to 'create' a king

hare.  "Moreover, there might be individual hares possessing a mutant gene that expresses extra-large body size, or even suffering from a hormonal imbalance that results in gigantism,

comparable to various endocrinologically-based conditions recorded from humans."