Awesome Or Off-Putting: The Ghastly Black Shuck

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts or just the plain unexplainable.

This week: Cryptozoology/Myths

Dogs are nice unless they were born in the very bowels of hell. Keep that in mind if you're ever at the local RSPCA thinking about taking home the ghostly black K-9 with eyes made entirely of flame. Because chances are that dog is Black Shuck, a horrifying murderous apparition that has haunted England for hundreds of years. He's been sighted as recently as the 1970s as far as we can tell, and is even said to have once chased a would be victim far into the North Sea.

Sherlock Holmes once had to do battle with a gigantic black glowing dog on a marshy Grimpen Mire in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book The Hound Of The Baskervilles. Many believe Conan Doyle's literary inspiration for the book comes from the legend of Black Shuck. Black Shuck, you see, is an age-old legend of a phantom dog that roams the country side, sometimes terrifying it's unfortunate witnesses only to leave them be, and sometimes tearing them to shreds in the sanctity of a church house. A sighting of the hound is said to bring death within one year to anyone who beholds it.

Almost every county in England had it's own sightings of gigantic black ghost dogs roaming about. One description, as written back in the day by Reverend Worthington-Smith, gives one of the accepted descriptions of the four-legged monster:

"Another belief is that there are ghostly black dogs, the size of large retrievers, about the fields at night, that these dogs are generally near gates and stiles, and are of such a forbidding aspect that no one dare venture to pass them, and that it means death to shout at them. In some places the spectral dog is named "Shuck" and is said to be headless."

A headless dog? That doesn't sound so bad, right? Well he's not only described as headless, so don't go thinking an encounter with the beast would leave you unbitten. There are two stories in which Shuck stormed a church and slaughtered members of the congregation. On August 4, 1577 in a Blythburgh house of worship, the dog is reported to have exploded through the doors and charged down the aisle. He killed a man and a boy causing such an unholy ruckus that the church's very tower came down crashing through the roof. As the dog exited the building, he left scorch marks on the church door. Those marks are referred to by locals as 'the devil's fingerprints'. Those 'fingerprints' can still be seen today.

A very similar account is held by church in Bungay. This one actually comes with a hard-to-decipher quote from Reverend Abraham Fleming, an eye witness to the terrible events (also in 1577):

"This black dog, or the divel in such a linenesse (God hee knoweth al who worketh all,) runing all along down the body of the church with great swiftnesse, and incredible haste, among the people, in a visible fourm and shape, passed between two persons, as they were kneeling uppon their knees, and occupied in prayer as it seemed, wrung the necks of them bothe at one instant clene backward, in somuch that even at a mome[n]t where they kneeled, they stra[n]gely dyed."

There you have it - the legend of Black Shuck in a nutshell. It's easy to laugh off nowadays, but this spectre is said to be the one thing many ghost hunters would never take on. hecklerspray doesn't want to meet it either, but we carry giant haunted squeak-toys just in case.

Read More:

The tale of Black Shuck - EDP24