Is it just me or has the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland always seemed like a strange choice? Yes, I know, there’s plenty of strange stuff in the Alice books and when you consider that Lewis Carroll also came up with a mock turtle and a bunch of talking clams it might not seem so strange.

But it is. Most of the other characters have some grounding in the England of his day (mock turtle soup was very popular and was made from cow heads as actual turtle was prohibitively expensive for all but the richest diners), but the White Rabbit never really fell into that group. And it was a white rabbit, not a wild cottontail.

Well, I think I may have stumbled on the answer, which is…phantom white rabbits.

Yes, you read that right: phantom white rabbits. England is positively awash in stories of these creatures, most of which are harbingers of death, though a few are regarded as the departed spirits of actual people.

Take Thetford in Norfolk, for example, where there is an old story of a ghost called “The White Rabbit” which haunted the countryside. It was supposed to have large flaming eyes and could run very fast. (I’ve no idea why country people should have found this worthy of mention. Running fast would seem to be one of the main features of a rabbit – along with long ears and fecundity!) And in Staffordshire at Kidsgrove there was a spectral white rabbit that could be seen crossing the road to Clough Hall. This rabbit was said to predict a death in the family of anyone who saw it. There were also stories in County Durham of shape shifting creatures that could appear as white cats, horses or white rabbits.

These rabbits fall into the category of “bogey beasts,” of which the most common is the huge phantom black dog (black dog legends are found all over England as well as most of Europe), but there are also stories in which the rabbit is thought to be the ghost of a human being. In Etruria, Staffordhire, for example, there is the “White Rabbit of Etruria” which would appear in a clearing of the forest. It generally manifested after sundown when a piercing cry for help would be heard, after which the rabbit would slowly lope across the clearing. This creature terrified the local inhabitants and was thought to be the ghost of fourteen year-old John Holdcraft who had been murdered in 1834 by a friend after a gambling dispute. Similar stories can be found in Lancashire, Lincolnshire and Bedfordshire.

It might seem odd for people to be frightened of anything so ordinary and unthreatening as a white bunny, but the mind can play tricks when you’re out on a lonely road in the middle of the night, and anything incongruous can take on a dark meaning.

Of course, it wasn’t all death and haunting – in many parts of England, shouting “White rabbits!” on the first of the month before you say anything else is thought to bring good luck.

And we could all use a bit of that