In 1914 Machen wrote a story called "The Bowmen", about how British troops at the Battle of the Mons--which had recently occurred--were helped in their victory by the ghosts of medieval British longbowmen who appeared in the sky at the height of the battle and rained down arrows on the opposing German forces. The story caught on like wildfire and eventually began to be recounted as fact, despite Machen's protests that he had written the story as fiction and that it had never actually happened. Nevertheless, the story of the "Angels of Mons" is believed by many to this day to be true.
