A weird but remarkably common type of apparition that terrifies benighted travellers
By Richard Holland
One of the strangest yet most widespread forms of apparition is the Black Dog. The classic Black Dog description is a huge black hound of the mastiff variety but with a shaggy pelt and fiery eyes. The size is commonly stated as being similar to that of a calf. 
Not all Black Dogs are black, not all are huge, not all have shaggy fur 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. Black Dogs have been seen for centuries in all parts of Britain (and indeed the world) and have gone under a variety of regional names, such as Padfoot, Trash, Shriker and Gwyllgi. They have a very unpleasant habit of following solitary travellers, keeping abreast of them or pacing along unnervingly behind. They have never been known to attack a person but in some areas they are considered death omens.
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. I have personally received reports of Black Dogs seen in North Wales as recently as the 1970s. Although they may seem archaic, figures to be found only in antiquated folklore, they are with us still.
East Anglia has long been considered the spiritual home of the Black Dog. This is partly because so many reports of its appearance have been collected and promoted by J Wentworth Day, a country squire and author who spent his happiest hours among the fens and waterways of the eastern low counties. Once, when out late duck hunting in the wild Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, he asked if anyone in the local pub would like to accompany him back home. His route was along an ancient causeway that had been raised in Saxon times to allow safe passage through the marshes. The tough old countrymen present that night all politely declined, one telling him (in the local dialect): ‘That owd Black Dog run there o’ nights, master. Do ye goo, he’ll have ye as sure as harvest.’
Another, ‘Fred’, an old fellow who had taught Wentworth Day many of his skills with line and gun, also refused the offer, saying that his own sister had seen the ‘owd Dog’ as she was on her way to meet her sweetheart at a moonlit tryst.
‘Big as a calf, sir, he come along that bank quiet as death,’ said Fred. ‘Jest padded along head down, gret old ears flappin’. That worn’t more’n twenty yards off when that raised that’s head and glouted [glared] at her – eyes red as blood. My heart! She did holler. She let out a shrik like an owd owl and belted along that there back like a hare. Run sir! There worn’t nuthin’ could ha’ ketched her. She come bustin’ along that bank like a racehoss, right slap into her young man. Ha! She did holler. And then, when he collared hold of her, she went off dead in a faint!’
This conversation was had in the 1950s. Conan Doyle, of course, based his famous Hound of the Baskervilles on just such a phantom and set the story in Dartmoor. Dartmoor, too, has its legends of the Black Dog (although there are claims he first got the idea while staying in East Anglia and another that he came up with it while staying in Mid Wales). He wrote his celebrated Sherlock Holmes story in 1902 but today huge, mysterious black animals are still being seen on Dartmoor, although these are described as ‘big cats’. Since not a single one has been caught or even found dead, one can’t help wondering whether they, too, are merely phantoms…
[SOURCE: Here Are Ghosts and Witches by J Wentworth Day, 21 and 25 and many others]
© Richard Holland 2008 / See also ‘The Flying Dog’ and ‘More From The Beast of Brymbo’.
