The perfect warm-up to Halloween comes from our favourite eerie Fens folksters Straw Bear, and the track The Land Witch taken from their excellent album Black Bank.

A boy stares out from a car window as it meanders through a rain-soaked wood.

“Don’t let the boys go in there with the Land Witch,” his grandmother mutters, and from the backseat the wide-eyed child scours the darkness to catch a glimpse of the cannibalistic hag.

And so it was that a misheard phrase from singer Ian Ray’s childhood became a terrifying child-catching spectre in the band’s chilling, swampy folk-rocker.

Listen here.

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