AN eerie looking shape washed up on a beach in Sussex leaving locals “shocked” at the sight of it.
A local man and his partner were walking along Hove beach, near Brighton, when they spotted the ‘ghost-like’ shape.
A man walking along Hove beach in East Sussex ‘ghost-like’ carcass on the shoreCredit: Sussex News & Pictures
Havva Mustafa and his partner Yvonne, were out for a stroll when he spotted the mystery shape and went over for a closer inspection.
He explained how the object was “quite high up the beach” and “not close to the water’s edge.”
“When we first saw the carcass, we thought it was a seal, as we approached it we realised that there were four legs and hooves,” Havva told local newspaper, The Argus.
“We thought it was a sheep. It was a strange sight and confusing, the skin was pearlescent, with no wool, if it is a sheep.”
He continued: “We were shocked to see legs and feet and the absence of a head. We wondered how it ended up on the beach.”
But the “strangest thing,” according to Havva “was the pearly sheen all over it – ghostlike, almost lit from the inside.”
The local concluded it must be a sheep carcass, and started to create “all sorts of theories about how a sheep might end up drowned in the sea.”
The newspaper reached out to the Sussex Wildlife Trust to help find some answers.
But a spokesperson for the Trust said it was “really difficult” to identify the animal and it seemed to have been in the water “for a while.”
The spokesperson concluded that it was, “likely to be a sheep”.
Odd objects washing up on UK beaches was not such an unusual occurence.
In September, a 70ft carcass washed up on the beach in Pembrey, Wales.
Visitors and locals were shocked to discover the rare sight of the large corpse beached on the sand.
Researchers confirmed the sea giant was a “very large” fin whale, which comes second in size to the blue whale.
This is only the fourth reported sighting of a fin whale to wash up on Welsh shores this century.
It comes after a 41ft (12.5m) calf was stranded in the Dee Estuary of Flintshire, and died two days later in June 2020.
