"Hell dogs" are mentioned in the legends and myths of many peoples of the world, but especially often they appear in the folklore of Great Britain. Huge black dogs with hair phosphorescent on the back of the neck look quite material, but they can pass through any obstacle, and when they disappear, they are enveloped in clouds of smoke, as if they are burning out. The easiest way would be to attribute the stories about these monsters to the superstition of our ancestors, but reports of encounters with them continue to arrive today
Where did the Baskervilles dog come from?
Having ruined the brilliant Sherlock Holmes by the hands of Professor Moriarty, Arthur Conan Doyle sighed with relief - now no one will stop him from creating historical and fantastic novels - But it was not so! Outraged readers demanded that the great detective be resuscitated at all costs. The writer did not want to hear about it. And then, unexpectedly for everyone and for himself. he claimed to have written The Hound of the Baskervilles. The plot of this story, according to Conan Doyle, was prompted to him by numerous stories about sinister black ghost dogs that appear from time to time in different parts of Foggy Albion. He was especially inspired by the legend of the black dog Hergest, which is very popular in the counties of Herefordshire and Powys.
Holmes managed to successfully cope with a difficult task, and, having finished off the dog of the Baskervilles, he took up another business. But, according to eyewitnesses, ghost dogs in the UK have not diminished. Well. perhaps by one, which apparently did not significantly reduce their population.
Unpleasant meetings
Legends of demons in dog form are very common in British folklore, and in different parts of the country these mysterious creatures are known by different names: the Black Werewolf. Rubbish. Soft-footed … Messages about meetings with them come across not only in old chronicles, but also in newspapers of past years. For example, an ominous-looking huge black dog, met by an eyewitness near Leeds in 1925, when barking, he said, spewed phosphorescent steam from its mouth. And the creature that attacked the inhabitant of Norfolk in the same year breathed a "poisonous spirit" on her.
On April 4, 1931, while visiting Ireland, in County Derry, a student from England saw a huge black dog floating along the river with terrible teeth and eyes like glowing coals. Perhaps it was still - the legendary Irish ghost dog.
On an August evening in 1939, Ernest Whiteland, on his way home between the Suffolk village of Bungay and Moltings, noticed something moving towards him. At first he thought it was a pony, but as he approached, he realized that there was a big black shaggy dog in front of him. Whiteland walked more slowly, keeping closer to the side of the road, in the hope that the dog will pass peacefully, but he, having caught up with the man, simply disappeared, as if disappearing into thin air.
In Bredon. Worcestershire, a girl during World War II saw a dog whose eyes seemed to sparkle with coals; and in 1963 in Norfolk, a driver driving along the road in early summer hit a black dog, which exploded on the spot.
In 1970, a woman from Somerset was terribly frightened by a dog she met at Budsley Hill - a huge creature with "eyes like a saucer" - just like Andersen's dog from the
fairy tale "Flint".
Mephistopheles in the guise of a poodle
Usually, stories about encounters with black dogs are not full of details and are quite similar to one another. A traveler wandering alone in the night suddenly discovers that a large black dog with blazing red eyes is blocking his path or is slowly moving towards him.
Sometimes the eyewitness remains in the dark about the intangible nature of the creepy dog, sometimes he disappears before his eyes, turning into fog, or disappears in a blinding flash of light. Sometimes the traveler immediately guesses with whom fate brought him together: by the huge, sometimes calf-sized, size of the dog; over the eyes - huge and phosphorescent. And sometimes, simply out of the panicky horror experienced at the meeting with the otherworldly creature pretending to be a dog, just as Mephistopheles took the form of a poodle to get into Faust's house.
However, it's not about the strange appearance of the mysterious dogs. For centuries, they were considered the fiends of hell, because usually meeting them brought misfortune.
They do evil and portend trouble
“On 4 August 1577, on Saturday,” wrote the priest Abraham Fleming, “the devil's offspring in the form of a huge black dog appeared in the local church, in the midst of the service. Having swept over the venerable audience, it rushed to the crowd of parishioners and burned two kneeling worshipers. After that, the monstrous dog disappeared in a blinding flash, but still on the stone floor in the place of its appearance you can see deep grooves left by the monster's claws. It happened in Bungay, near which, more than three centuries later, Ernest Whiteland met with a huge black dog, which made an indelible impression on him. A huge creepy-looking dog, met in 1928 by a student from Trinity College in Dublin, was the harbinger of his father's death.
In July 1950, writer Stephen Jenkins met a huge black dog on the road near his Devonian estate. The terrible creature barked and howled, and as it turned out, not in vain - a day after this meeting, Stephen Jenkins lost his brother.
In the spring of 1966, residents of Droza, County Louth, John Farrell and Margaret Johnson, were driving along a country road. Suddenly, a creature resembling a horse blocked their way, while its head resembled … a human! The creature blocked the path of the car for several minutes, and then disappeared, leaving behind clouds of smoke. The bumper of the car in which the couple were traveling was melted in several places.
A pony-sized black dog invaded a Dartmoor farmhouse in 1972, demolishing walls, a roof, and damaging a power line. According to a married couple who saw a black dog in 1978, it was from the day they met him near the village of Exford in Somerset that their family was swept by a wave of misfortune and death.
The list of troubles caused by the "hell dogs" can be continued, but the carefully recorded eyewitness accounts will not add anything fundamentally new to what has been said. At the same time, this list is so long and is so often replenished with new reports of meetings with ghostly black dogs that scientists finally became interested in them.
Hypotheses are endless
Researchers explain the phenomenon of "hell dogs" in different ways. Some consider them a hallucination or phenomenon of distorted vision, when an ordinary dog is mistaken for a terrible monster. Others refer to them as cyclical visions - energy imprints of real-life dogs, whose ghosts were caused by certain meteorological effects.
Experts on anomalous phenomena claim that "hell dogs" are found only in certain places - on such and such a road, a cemetery or on the banks of a river and never go beyond the boundaries of their territory. In their opinion, the places where black monsters appear are often located in the vicinity of ancient ruins or in the area of anomalous zones.
A group of Scottish scientists engaged in the study of anomalous atmospheric phenomena under the leadership of Dr. D. Trevers. believes that the "hell dogs" are somehow connected with fireballs, since most of the evidence indicates signs of the electrical nature of the phenomenon. September 1997 was especially "fruitful" for meetings with black dogs, when they were seen at least nine times by trustworthy people. According to the observation of Scottish scientists, these meetings coincided with a period of increased activity of ball lightning over North Scotland.
Some people are of the opinion that black dogs are a kind of plasma object that attracts many small earth particles and dust to itself. There are many hypotheses, but none of them can yet fully explain this eerie phenomenon.