The Overtoun Bridge is a footbridge located in Scotland near Dumbarton, West Dunbartonshire. This bridge has the unofficial name "The Bridge of Canine Suicides", because dogs often mysteriously jump down from it and are smashed to death.
The bridge was built in 1895, but the first case of dog suicide was recorded only in 1951, and by 1955 there were more than 50 of them. Someone calculated that, on average, one dog falls from the bridge once a month and from 50 In 1900s, about 600 dogs committed suicide here.
Near the bridge is a solid 19th century mansion, and a little further there is a maternity hospital, a Christian mission and a picturesque place where many films are filmed. The area is quiet and calm and the behavior of the dogs is still a complete mystery.
There are several key points to this mystery. First: Dogs are being pulled down by something so strongly that if the falling dog miraculously survived, then after recovering, it still jumped there again. Second: All dogs for their death jump choose the same place - between the last two flights on the right side of the bridge.
There are many attempts to explain the behavior of dogs. According to one of the popular versions, the reason for such unusual behavior of animals is not mysticism, but the usual nature of animals. In the course of the experiment, ethologist David Sexton discovered that a very large number of mice and minks live under the bridge, and dogs simply run after their smell.
But in 2014, hunter John Joyce, who has lived in the area for 50 years, said there had been no minks for a long time and that he "confirms this with absolute certainty."
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Another hypothesis was expressed by local behaviorist Stan Rawlinson in 2006. He stated that dogs are color blind and therefore their perceptual problems associated with this can lead them to the fact that they can easily stumble and fall off the bridge while running and jumping.
Scottish researcher Paul Owens offers mystical hypotheses. He carefully examined not only the bridge itself, but the entire area around it. Owens was a professor of philosophy and religion and is currently a member of the Scottish Society for Psychical Research.
He spent 8 years researching canine suicides, collecting interviews with many dog owners, historians and researchers of anomalous phenomena.
Now he believes that the bridge is a so-called "thin place", where the world of spirits is in direct contact with the world of the living, and in this case with living dogs. But why do they make the dogs jump and die? Owens answers this question that the famous ghostly White Lady may be involved.
Owens' other hypothesis relates to the curse of John White, 1st Baron of Overton, who inherited the estate in 1891 and oversaw the construction of the bridge. He also owned Shawfield Chemical Works, which at the time was the world's largest producer of potassium dichromate, an oxidizing agent that is highly toxic carcinogenic and therefore extremely harmful to humans.
While John White was known as a philanthropist, he was also accused of paying extremely low wages to his workers and not paying attention to their health problems. And many workers suffered from skin contact or inhalation of chemicals.
The dust in factories was so toxic that workers were called "white dead". For such sins, a strong curse could easily have been imposed on the baron in those days when much more people believed (and practiced) in such a thing.
It gets worse. White was also a member of a secret society of alchemists known as the Kosmoid, who allegedly worked to create gold from lead, copper, and cast iron. What other secrets they kept remains unknown.
Another mystery is that the bridge attracts not only dogs, but also various inadequate personalities. In October 1994, a man threw his 2-week-old son off a bridge because he believed his son was the embodiment of the devil. The child died.
Then the father himself tried to commit suicide several times, the first time trying to jump off the bridge, and then opening his veins.