BLACK BANG DOG
The report of this supernatural event came from the town of Bangui on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk in England. On Sunday, August 4, 1577, wrote Abraham Fleming, a storm broke over Bangui, and on the same day a huge black dog appeared in the church, which, “having run through the whole temple … ended up between two kneeling parishioners and broke both of their necks at one moment.
Having met a man on the way, the dog "grabbed him on the back so that … he … shrank like a piece of skin on fire." Other evidence that the dog really was ~ is "traces left on the stones of the church, as well as on the church gates, incredibly broken and broken, as if from its claws." The tracks disappeared, but similar marks survived in nearby Bleitberg, where the Black Dog allegedly visited on the same day.
All these traces could have been left by ball lightning. The thunderstorm is mentioned in the parish book for 1577 and in the Chronicles of the English historian Raphael Holinshed in the 1587 edition, but there is not a word about the dog. Fleming knew this because he was one of the editors of the Chronicle. He wanted to use local beliefs as confirmation that storm and lightning are God's punishment.
In eastern England, they believed in a ghost - a huge black dog with burning eyes the size of a saucer. The mythical dog was called Shak or Shock and was presented now headless, now invisible, with hot breath and silent steps; often he was a harbinger of death. For the Puritans, it was a guardian of hell, sent by God's command by the devil.
In parts of Norfolk and Suffolk, people still fear the Old Shak, as the locals call him. One evening in the fall of 1938, Ernest Whiteland, walking home from Bangui to Ditchingham, saw a dog the size of a calf, with shaggy black fur and red eyes sparkling with fire. Whiteland stepped aside, giving way to the strange beast. And then, to his amazement, the dog disappeared.
GLOWING BIRDS
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In his three-volume work On Animal Light, published in 1647, Thomas Bartholin described two unusual birds. Amazing chickens with glowing feathers have appeared on the market in the French city of Montpellier. One rooster was killed to study it better, and all parts of its body were clearly "glowing with amazingly strong light." The second was a chicken from Montebello in Italy, which "shone like a ball of white fire." Bartholin regretted that these two birds were not introduced, "because we could get a breed of dazzling chickens."
Since then, many glowing birds have been seen living in the trees, mostly owls. Their phosphorescence is usually attributed to the glow of fungi growing on the bark and sticking to the feathers of birds when they climb into the hollow. But this theory does not work for flightless domestic birds - their glow remains a mystery.
GHOST DOGS
Sir Richard Capel, owner of Brook Manor in Devonshire, died in 1677. On that rainy night, legend has it, the ghost hounds of the Wild Hunt rushed around his house, waiting for the moment to take his soul. According to another version, ghost dogs chased Sir Richard, famous for kidnapping young girls and hiding them in the nearby Hoson Court estate, and he fled from them through the hills and swamps of Dartmoor until he fell dead. A pack of these terrible hounds, or, as they were called in Devonshire, swamp dogs, accompanied the "wild hunt", and it was said that their barking can often be heard in the most desolate and gloomy places. One of these was Whistman Forest, which probably derives its name from a local word meaning "witchcraft, terrible." An eerie, dense forest with gnarled,overgrown with moss, century-old oaks fully justified such a name.
To be sure that Sir Richard would not walk after death, the coffin with his body was buried deeper at the south porch of the church. A heavy tombstone was erected on the grave, and a small structure was erected above it. On one side the entrance was blocked by a massive cast-iron grating, on the other - a small oak door with a large keyhole. Over the past centuries, rumor has turned Sir Richard almost into a vampire, and even at the end of the 70s of this century, the village guys had a game: walking 13 times around the grave, they urged each other to stick a finger into the hole, where he supposedly could be gnawed off by Sir Richard.
Sir Richard may have been the inspiration for the scoundrel Hugo from The Dog of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. The story takes place in Dartmoor, and in it the writer combined the legend of Sir Richard with the story of a black phantom dog, using the motives of legend.
There are many legends about ghost dogs in Dartmoor. In one of them the peasant was returning home on horseback. On the way, he was overtaken by a pack of phantom hounds. The hunter was with them. The peasant asked him to share the booty, and he shouted: "Here you go!" - and threw the package to him. Arriving home, the peasant turned it around and saw that it was the corpse of his child.
This scary story can be heard in Germany, where the souls of unbaptized children are believed to be the prey of the ghosts of the “wild hunt”.
WHITE BIRDS OF DEATH
In 1414, the Bishop of Salisbury, while in Europe, where he arrived at the historic Cathedral of Constance of the Catholic Church, fell ill and died. His body was exhibited for a solemn farewell in the great hall. On the same night, a flock of birds landed on the roof of the building and remained there until morning. No one could determine what kind of birds they were. According to the description, with a large body and dazzling white wings, they resembled albatrosses. In flight, their wings were motionless. It is known that albatrosses are able to fly long distances over the sea, using air currents, soaring on their huge wings and flapping them only occasionally. But why on earth did the seabirds need to gather on the roof of this building, and even when it contained the body of an important church dignitary?
Ever since, as John Michel and Robert Ricard write in Phenomena (1977), these huge white birds have flocked to the death of every Bishop of Salisbury. So, in 1885, when another bishop of Salisbury was dying in his palace, his daughter saw them fly out of the garden. And on August 15, 1911, a woman noticed two strange-looking white birds near Salisbury. Arriving home, she learned about the sudden death of the bishop.
According to legend, since 1414 the death of every bishop in Salisbury was marked by the appearance of mysterious white birds.
COCK COURT
In the Swiss city of Basel in 1474, a rooster trial was held, accused of witchcraft and solemnly burned at the stake along with an egg.
The prosecution stated that rooster eggs are highly prized by sorcerers for their magical power and that this bird is a tool of the devil, as an ominous basilisk, a poisonous creature, half serpent, half cock, emerges from the egg. The defense agreed with this, but objected that the laying of eggs was an involuntary process and, therefore, the law had not been violated. The accusation parried the blow by citing the biblical story of the Gadarene pigs possessed by demons. In the end, the rooster was killed on the same basis - possession by the devil.
Of course, cock eggs are as rare as chicken teeth. According to modern scientific authorities, the famous rooster was actually a chicken, which, due to old age or a congenital defect, showed the peculiarities of the structure and plumage of the rooster. This sex change is rare, but is well known in both domestic and wild birds.
Since the 15th century. animal trials have become more frequent. They coincided with the persecution of witches and reflected the view of the then society on animals and women as demonic beings.
Z MEA WITH A CAT HEAD
The Austrian historian and naturalist Johann Jakob Scheuchtser wrote about an amazing meeting with an unusual creature in 1723 in Notes on Switzerland. At the end of April 1711, a certain Jacques Tinner, on Mount Frumsemberg in Switzerland, met “a disgusting snake: its head towered over several rings, into which the body of a gray-black color was curled up; the snake was more than 2 m long, its head resembled a cat's, and its limbs were missing. Tinner wounded the creature with a musket shot and then finished it off. He also said that the inhabitants of the surrounding villages complained that their cows often returned from pastures without milk, and after the death of the snake, this stopped.
Since then, there have been reports of monsters from the Central Alps, such as the "Tatzelwurm" or "gingerbread worm", which was seen in southern Austria in 1921. However, nothing is known about the existence of an animal resembling the cat-headed snake described by Tinner. which have not survived. And on other continents, farmers have repeatedly claimed that North American black snakes, European vipers, Indian and African cobras milk cows.
The bloody victims of the builders of the middle ages
For example, the Scandinavian sagas talk about how the walls of medieval Copenhagen constantly collapsed here and there. A radical remedy helped to end the construction "marriage": a niche was made in the wall and a table with food and toys was placed there, at which a hungry girl was seated. While she ate and amused herself with curiosities, the workers quickly walled up the niche and folded up the vault. For several days then a team of musicians played around the crypt all day long to drown out the screams of the innocent victim. Believe it or not, the walls have stopped crumbling since then.
In Japan, slaves sentenced to death were heaped alive with stones in the foundation. In Polynesia, six young men and women were buried alive under each of the twelve columns of the Temple of Mava during construction. And the Franciscan Cathedral, located just two hours from Lisbon (Portugal), instills chilling fear in the souls of visitors: its walls and vaults are lined with human bones - this is how the monks tried to prove the frailty of earthly existence …
Most of the castles of old Bohemia were also built with human sacrifice. Troy Castle, Cesky Sternberg, Konopiste, Karlštejn - everywhere here during excavations in the walls or at the base of the foundation they found warriors walled up alive, so that, as the old chronicles say, “during the siege, they helped their brothers to fight, instilling terror and weakness in the enemy”.
In Italian legends, the bridge over the Edu River is often mentioned, which constantly collapsed until the beautiful wife of one of the builders was walled up in the central pillar. The bridge has stood for more than three centuries, but at night, say the locals, you can hear how it shakes from the sobbing and cursing of the unfortunate woman …
In Scotland, since antiquity, there was a custom to sprinkle the foundations and walls of all structures with human blood. The Scots and their neighbors, the British, are not far from the Scots: there is a legend in the country about a certain Worthingsre, who could not finish building the royal tower. She constantly crumbled, burying the builders under her. And only when the orphan boy's head was cut off and the foundation was sprinkled with his blood, the tower was safely completed. It stands in London to this day and is known as the Tower Tower, a medieval prison for state criminals.
Children were sacrificed quite often. For example, in Thuringia, during the construction of the Liebenstein castle, several children were bought from mothers for a lot of money and immured alive in the wall. In Serbia, during the construction of the Skadra fortress, a young mother with a baby was walled up into the wall. According to legends, the evil mermaid constantly destroyed what three hundred bricklayers were erecting day after day, and only a human sacrifice helped the builders finish their work. Until now, Serbian women come to worship the holy spring that flows down the wall of the fortress.
Its water has the color of milk, reminding the visitors of the unfortunate nursing mother who laid her head here.
East Slavic princes Yuri Dolgoruky and Dmitry Donskoy also left not far away … When starting to build the Kremlin, they always sacrificed young children. Usually, vigilantes were sent to the road with instructions to seize the first youths they came across. They were walled up in the base of the foundation. By the way, another ancient name for the Kremlin that has come down to our days is Detinets …
Paganism, with its sacrifices, existed for quite a long time in Christian Russia. Little girls were walled up at the base of bridges, disabled people and black roosters, which supposedly were supposed to increase the value of the sacrifice, - within the walls of the royal palaces. Not to mention the barbaric custom of adding human blood to mortar or even throwing people, for example, into boiling bronze, as Vietnamese craftsmen did. It was believed that if you weld a virgin in bronze for bells, they will turn out to be especially strong and with a surprisingly gentle ringing - as if the cry of a young girl …
They did not disdain such "methods" in Russia. And only God knows how many people disappeared without a trace in cauldrons during the mass casting of bells and cannons.
The victims were not just criminals or serfs. In Burma, to make the capital impregnable, the queen herself was drowned in the river.
But America has covered all the records in human sacrifice. The Indians laid people on the altar of their gods so often and in such horrifying numbers that all the tales of the cruelty of the conquistadors pale in comparison to their barbaric customs. The unfortunate were tied to pillars in the sun, and after their martyrdom, their muscles were torn from their bones; chained their fellows to the walls of caves, where they died of hunger and thirst, and their bodies were used for various ritual actions. In general, human life was worth nothing there. How else to explain entire settlements, in which houses were built of human bones and only from above were covered with animal skins?
The bloody deities of various peoples in all parts of the world demanded new and new sacrifices, giving in return, according to legend, the inviolability of buildings and longevity to the powers that be.