HALLOWEEN / BLACK SHUCK

England must have been home to some pretty nasty dogs because the country is riddled with legends of Baskervilles-type killer hounds. There's The Galleytrot, The Shug Monkey, The Evil Thing, The Churchyard Beast, The Hell Beast, The Swooning Shadow, Snarly Yow, and The Black Dog of Torrington, just to name a few. The worst of all of them, though, is Black Shuck who claims victims even today. 

If you haven't heard of him it might be because the locals who live in the afflicted areas  believe it's bad luck just to mention his name. A coastguardsman spotted the hound in 1972 and made the mistake of officially reporting the event. He died under mysterious circumstances within 10 weeks and his father died under equally mysterious circumstances only a few months later. Just to see the dog is to incur a death sentense. 

Black Shuck officially enters history in 1597 at Holy Trinity Church in Blythburgh. A clap of thunder burst open the church doors and a hairy black "devil dog" came snarling in. It ran through the congregation, killing a man and a boy and causing the church steeple to fall through the roof. Scorch marks still visible on the church doors are purported to have come from Shuck's claws as it fled.

The rector of the church described it this way (below):

The door of the church still stands. There they are (above), the scratch marks right where Black Shuck left them. But the hound didn't stop there. The next stop was Bungay, where two worshippers were killed at St. Mary's church. One was left shrivelled "like a drawn purse" as he prayed. 

Then there's "The Black Dog of Newgate" (above). Legend has it that the dog is the ghost of a boy who'd been eaten by other starving prisoners. The act of cannibalism caused the prisoners to imagine that they had seen the black dog in the night, his jaws open in preparation for his revenge.

Lots of countries have stories about vicious dogs but the English seem to have more than their share. You can't help but wonder why.

Maybe giant wolves thought to be long extinct survive in the English countryside. Maybe Norse folklore got it right; Wotan brought to the UK his fearsome war hound and it somehow escaped into the forest.