As he approached a crossroad on an autumn night in 1984, a Devonshire, England, man saw "this bloomin' great black
thing… I put on my anchors (brakes) and in the headlights it slowed down and walked right up to the car. I could see its
eyes as plain as day, green and glassy they were, and he looked right over the bonnet (hood) at me, he was that tall, and
then he went!… like a light going out. I just couldn't see it anymore. It isn't real like an ordinary dog. I could feet the hairs
on my neck standing up."

This story was told t local naturalist Trevor Beer, who was investigating reports of large, livestock-killing cats in the area
(like the Best of Exmoor). Beer apparently saw no reason to disbelieve the account even when he was told the encounter
took place on October 31. To every appearance the story is a fabrication consciously based on a worldwide folklore,
known from England's West Country to the American South, about supernatural black dogs which frequently appear at
crossroads and which are associated with the underworld.

In rural Mississippi in the early past of the twentieth century, black people told folklorist N.N. Puckett of huge black dogs
with "big red eyes glowing like chunks of fire." In the 1930s Mississippian Robert Johnson, the great folk-blues
singer/guitarist, did not deny rumors - spread by both those who resented his talents and those who held them in awe -
that he had acquired his considerable musical skills in a midnight deal with a man in back (the devil) whom he met at a
crossroads, and event hinted at in his 1936 recording "Cross Road Blues." He reported on the consequences of this
pact the next year in another scary blues lyric:

I've got to keep movin'

There's a hellhound on my trail.

Theo Brown, a leading authority on black-dog lore, has written, "Oral traditions sometimes gives us a legend, but this
has probably been invented to explain the ghost." In other words, black dogs exist not just in thricetold tales but also in
firsthand reports, at least some of them from individuals meriting greater credence than Beer's informant. Brown adds
that the black dog "if regarded purely as a symbol must represent some universal guardian of the threshold personified
in various cultures."

A large and complex folklore surround black god. (Black dog is in some sense a generic term, meaning supernatural
canine. Most tales and reports of such creatures describe them as black, but white, gray, and yellow "black dogs" figure
in some stories.) Brown believe the legend is rooted in prehistory but acknowledges this conclusion is necessarily
speculative. In historical time, especially in Britain where the lore is most fully documented, black dogs may encounter a
traveler on a dark road and either guide him to safety or menace him, or their appearance may presage the death of the
witness. An example of this would be at the Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel Cemetery in Monroe Connecticut. This
cemetery also houses the ghost of the "white lady" but often a black dog is seen here. The creature supposedly chases
people out of the cemetery, or if the dog is seen, it means that either the individual that sees the creature will die soon, or
someone close to them will.

They may also attack themselves to families; such as real-life family legend inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write the
most celebrated of his Sherlock Holmes novels, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Black dogs are said to have glowing
eyes and often to vanish, as did Devonshire's Halloween apparition, in an instant. Sometimes, especially in medieval
and postmedieval chronicles of manifestations associated with witchcraft, the black dog is a shape-shifter, at some
point revealing his true identity: the devil.

Sightings

Traditional beliefs are one thing; however, actual (or alleged) events are another, and the latter are discussed here.

The first known example of sighting event survives in French manuscript, Annales Franorum Regnum (AD 856), wherein
a chronicler records that happened after sudden darkness enveloped a provincial church midway through a service. A
large black dog with fiercely glowing eyes appeared, dashed about as if searching for something, and vanished abruptly.
On August 4, 1577, in Bongay, 10 miles from Norwich, England, a black dog showed up inside a church during a violent
storm, ran through the aisle, killed two worshippers, and injured another, burning him severely. The same day a similar
attack occurred inside a church in Blibery seven miles away, or so wrote on Abraham Fleming in a broadside titles A
Straunge Wunder in Bongay, published not long afterwards. Fleming claimed to have been inside the Bongay church
when the apparition went on its rampage. His account, he acknowledged, "to some will seem absurd."

"This black dog... running all along down the body of the church with great swiftness, and incredible haste, among the
people... passed between two persons, as they were kneeling upon their knees, and... wrung the necks of them both at
one instant clene backward... The dog also passed by another man and '... gave him such a gripe on the back, that
therewith all he was presently drawn together and shrunk up, as it were a piece of leather scorched in a hot fire; or as the
mouth of a purse or bag, drawn together with a string."

Twentieth-century reports of black dogs tend not to share the wildly extravagant character of the older stories. Many
seem simply to be a variety of ghost story. Typical of these is the account Theodore Ebert of Pottsville, Pennsylvania,
gave to folklorist George Korson in the 1950s: "One night when I was a boy walking with friends along Seven Stars
Road, a big black dog appeared from nowhere and came between me and one of my pals. And I went to pet the dog,
but it disappeared from right under me. Just like the snap of a finger it disappeared."

There is no shortage of modern black-dog sightings, at least through the early decades of the century. Ethel H. Rudkin
collected a number of reports from her native Lincolnshire and published them in 1938 paper in Folklore. "I have never
yet had a Black Dog story from anyone who was weak either in body or mind," she wrote. "Perhaps it is because I have
seen the Black Dog, and can therefore believe that the narrator has also seen him, that I have been able to get such
good first-hand stories." Unfortunately Rudkin provided no details of her own encounter with this ghostly canine which,
unlike its counterparts elsewhere, was of a gentle nature. According to her:

The spectator may be started or annoyed, at first, by finding the huge creature trotting alongside, but fear of the
Dog never enters into it, once he is recognized for what he is. He is always "table high," sometimes spoken of as being
"as big as a calf" which often produced a muddled idea as to whether he is a calf or a dog. In the story he is often
associated with a woman. No matter how dark the night, the dog can be seen because he is so much blacker. He
seems to have a tendency to appear on the left side of the spectator, he crosses the road from left to right, and he is
definitely looked on as a spirit or protection… He is often heard, for when he disappears into a hedge the leaves rustle
loudly… In one description, his coat is wiry "like pig bristles" - in another he is "tall and think with a long neck and pointed
nose."

More recently, something that looked like a "Great Dane" reportedly stepped in front of a moving car on Exter Road in
Okehampton, England, on October 25, 1969. Before the drive could stop, the car passed through the animal, which then
disappeared. In April 1972 a member of Britain's Coastguard saw a "large, black hound-type dog on the beach" at
Great Yarmouth. "It was about a quarter of a miles from me," he told the London Evening News (April 27, 1972). "What
made me watch it was that it was running, then stopping, as if looking for someone. As I watched, it vanished before my
eyes."

Witnesses often mention the creature's glowing eyes. In fact, they sometimes see little more than the eyes but infer for
one or another reason that they belong to a ghostly dog. In the early 1920's young Delmer Clark of La Crosse,
Wisconsin, saw "something that looked with shining eyes, with the face of a dog"; in the darkness he though he could
make out vaguely a "dark black body." When he saw it again a week later in the same location near his home, he kicked
at it, only to find his food inside its mouth as if it had been anticipating the action. When he screamed, the creature
vanished. In 1976, when Clark recalled the incident for his son (the author of this book), he remarked, "I can still see it
clearly as I talk now. It was the strangest experience I've ever had.

Black dogs, or creatures much like them, occasionally are reported during mystery-cat scares. In the spring of 1974
some residents of the English counties of Hampshire and Cheshire halved the difference, they said the creature looked
"half cat, half dog."

Bibliography: Clark, Jerome. (1993). Unexplained!. Washington, D.C.: Visible Ink Press.

Black Dogs