Dogs of Darkness

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

RICHARD HOLLAND tracks down some ‘frightful fiends’ that are still said to prowl around the British countryside.

Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

When Coleridge wrote those famous lines in his ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, he may well have had in mind a particular kind of supernatural horror that has been terrifying night-bound travellers throughout Britain for centuries: the Black Dog.

These weird apparitions fall into a class of their own. The classic Black Dog appears in the form of a huge black hound of the mastiff variety, with a shaggy pelt and big, fiery eyes. The size is commonly stated as being about the size of a calf.

Not all Black Dogs are black, not all are huge, not all have shaggy hair or glowing eyes, but they all have certain characteristics in common: they are more or less canine and they haunt lonely lanes at night or twilight. They share the unpleasant habit of following solitary travellers, keeping abreast of them or pacing along unnervingly behind – literally dogging their footprints. In some areas death is believed to follow if you catch sight of one – and on rare occasions instant death has been reported from direct contact.

So well-known are the Black Dogs in certain regions of the UK that they have local names: Shriker and Trash in the North West of England, Padfoot in Yorkshire, Black Shuck in East Anglia and Gwyllgi (‘Dog of the Twilight’) in Wales.

The origin of the Black Dog phenomenon is a mystery. Certainly they are not considered apparitions of once living dogs (although ghostly pet dogs occur, too). They are otherworldly, terrifying spectres – minor demons of the British countryside. It has been suggested that the Black Dogs represent a form of ‘ancestor memory’ of being pursued by wolves when they still ran free in Europe’s extensive forests. The fact that they prefer to haunt lanes and footpaths rather than open countryside is interesting because it is possible the routes they choose are ancient ones, perhaps spirit ways sacred in pre-Christian times, or old ‘corpse roads’ used to transport the dead in medieval times. Many pubs named the Black Dog may stand at the end of lanes known to be patrolled by these phantoms.

You can read the rest of this article in issue 28 of Paranormal Magazine

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