mystery black dogs of britain

On the 150^th anniversary this year of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle birth, I began thinking about the tales of ghostly hounds and whether these stories may have influenced Conan Doyle to write the Hound Of the Baskervilles. Tales of encounters with strange black dogs abound in Britain form a part of local folklore. These dogs are not conventional dogs but have something mysterious or ghostly about them. They are often described as being particularly large, and having red glowing eyes. Stories of encounters with strange black dogs have been told in Britain since the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, written in the 12th century, which details an account.

They have different names depending on the area the stories come from;
Barghest alternately described as a small as a bull mastiff or as large as a bear with shaggy black fur and fiery red eyes. Seen around the northern English counties of Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland, it only appears at night in certain locations, mainly coastal villages and churchyards. It is said that the sighting of a Barghest is a guaranteed portent of disaster and misfortune.( I would think the sighting of any such animal would be a misfortune in more ways than one!)
Cu Sith is the name of the Black Dog of the Scottish highlands, It is said to be of a huge size and carry off people.
Freybug – A monstrous Black Dog that terrorized English country lanes in medieval times.
Galley-Trot is said to appear on the lonely roads of Dulwich and Woodbridge, and the Bathslough bog of Suffolk. It is another large shaggy dog.

Gwyllgi or dog of darkness–Is the Welsh equivalent of the Black Dog. Again said to be a giant mastiff that seems to enjoy frightening people.

Gytrash seen around Lancashire and Yorkshire and said to be a portent of imminent death and disaster. Again described as a huge Black Dog with shaggy fur, and red eyes that glow.
Mauthe Dhoog was a Black Dog that allegedly haunted Peel Castle n the Isle of Man in the 17th Century.. In 1871, the remains of Simon, Bishop of Sodor and Man (died 1247) were uncovered during excavations. The bones of a large dog were found at his feet. Maybe the origin of the story ?
Padfoot seen on the moors around Leeds, in Northern England. Called padfoot because you can hear it padding behind you.

Typically, these dogs are encountered at night in lonely places. Perhaps the most celebrated black dog story is the one set in Suffolk, where the beast was called Black Shuck from the Old English scucca, a demon. During a storm on Sunday, 4 August 1577, Black Shuck is said to have appeared in St Mary's church in Bungay, Suffolk, and run between two worshippers, apparently wringing their necks and killing them. On the same day, a similar scene unfolded in Blythburgh church seven miles away. The hell hound of Norfolk is another popular tale and one which in 1890, came to prominence when a young boy was rescued from the North Sea and told a tale of being forced to swim further and further from the shore by a huge black dog who had chased him into the sea. Even during the 1920's and 1930's there were reports from the fishermen of Sheringham of hearing a hound howling on the cliff tops during stormy nights. As recently as 1970 a sighting of Black Shuck made the headlines. When a huge hound was seen pounding over the beach at Great Yarmouth. Then in 1980, a woman claimed to have met the black dog , whilst out walking with her young son. near Wisbeach.

It all sounds like a it is a fairy story ,or so I thought and then I came across this account:

Towards the end of June 1999, I had been out walking my dog, Ben, along the green avenue leading from Monkton Farleigh Manor to South Wraxall. It was late in the afternoon and we were coming to the end of our walk. We were probably only a mile or so from the village when I noticed a huge black dog standing on the path, about 200 yards ahead of us. Normally this wouldn't have seemed out of the ordinary to me, but my dog Ben is a rather anti-social animal, who always barks non-stop and chases after any other dogs that he comes close to.

As we came closer to the dog it suddenly dawned on me that Ben hadn't made a sound, which was really strange because he must have been able to see it as it was on the path, and it was now only 100 yards away. As we walked closer, Ben started to run off ahead towards the big black dog. I thought he was going to run up and start barking at it, but as he reached the other dog, he just carried on past it as if he hadn't even noticed it at all. As Ben carried on running the other dog turned around and started to run up along side him. They ran together for about thirty seconds before I lost sight of them over the hill.

When I came over the top of the hill, Ben was just sitting on the path waiting for me. I looked around but there was no sign of the other dog. The surrounding area was quite open, and as I was only thirty seconds or so behind the dogs I was sure that I would have seen it somewhere. The strange thing was that Ben hadn't made a sound during the whole encounter, where as with all other dogs he would have barked at it the whole time. It was only later on when I mentioned it to some friends that I realised that what I had seen must have been a ghostly black dog".

So real dog or ghost? It has certainly been around for a long time!

Bolivian and South American living dinosaurs and giant apes

There have been reports since the 1800’s of living dinosaurs in Bolivia and other South American countries. At the end of the 19th century Scientific American recorded the following remarkable events: "The Brazilian Minister at La Paz, Bolivia, had remitted to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Rio photographs of drawings of an extraordinary saurian killed on the Beni after receiving thirty-six balls. By order of the President of Bolivia the dried body, which had been preserved in Asuncion, was sent to La Paz." The "monster" was reported to be twelve meters long (39 ft) from snout to point of the tail, which latter was flattened. It’s head resemblance the head of a dog and its legs were short, ending with formidable claws. The legs and abdomen sported a kind of scale armour, and all the back is protected by a still thicker and double cuirass, starting from behind the ears of the anterior head, and continuing to the tail. The neck is long, and the belly large and almost dragging on the ground."( "A Bolivian Saurian," Scientific American, 49:3, 1883.)

It sounds like a crocodile like species but reports continued to trickle in. Franz Hermann Schmidt, a German traveller told of an encounter in 1907. Schmidt was travelling along the Solimoes River in Colombia along with Captain Rudolph Pfleng. Pfleng and Schmidt encountered some huge tracks along the shores of a small lake and trees nearby were stripped to a height of 14 feet. The following day, Schmidt, Pfleng and their Indian guides saw a dark shape among the trees on the shore. A large tapir-like head was suspended on a snakelike neck more than 10 feet above the ground. The creature advanced towards the party but did not seem agitated. It was some 8 or 9 feet tall, with clawed flippers in place of legs. The explorers opened fire on the beast and it dove back into the water. Sounds Like a strange sight, almost giraffe like head and neck .

In 1931, Harald Westin reported seeing a creature along Brazil's Rio Marmore . He said it was 20-foot long and resembled a legged boa constrictor. Leonard Clark reported that he heard tales when travelling up the Rio Perene in Brazil and was told of herbivorous creatures which sounded much like a prehistoric sauropod. . "In 1907 Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Fawcett of the British Army was sent to mark the boundaries between Brazil and Peru. He was an officer in the Royal Engineers and was well known as a meticulous recorder of facts. In the Beni Swamps of Madre de Dios Colonel P. H. Fawcett saw an animal he believed to be Diplodocus... The Diplodocus story is confirmed by many of the tribes east of the Ucayali..." (The Rivers Ran East by Leonard Clark, 1953.)
Then in 1975, a Swiss businessman was told by a guide called Simon Bastos, about such a dinosaur like creature. The long-necked creature had destroyed Bastos' canoe after he had landed along a riverbank. Bastos was later told that such long-necked creatures frequented deep waterholes, and rarely came out on land.

All hearsay and inconclusive and the report in Scientific America was later thought to be a hoax. The reports taken at face value seem to describe different creatures, creatures that we may recognise now but were not known then.

Then there are tales of giant apes ,like King Kong. The evidence amounts to mainly to a grainy photo published in a 1929 London newspaper. Sitting on a packing case, propped up with a large stick, was what purported to be the body of a giant ape, the “Mono Rey.” It was said to have inhabited the dense jungles of northern Bolivia, around the Madidi river.The last person to explore the region, Major Percy Harrison Fawcett , in the 1920s, disappeared without a trace. Simon Chapman, along with two companions, took a canoe into the swamps and rainforests of Bolivia to find the mythical monster of the Madidi. The story became a book: The Monster of the Madidi - Searching for the Giant Ape of the Bolivian Jungle. Simon Chapman.

He, however, did not find anything, but an interesting tale if you get chance to read it.

So the stories continue ,but I think the sightings may turn out to be creatures we now know and have named.I just love the romance of these tales though, the explorer hacking their way through the jungle , and coming across new wonders and unknown creatures.

Snömannen -the Scandinavian Bigfoot.

IS there a Scandinavian "bigfoot"? The legends about trolls might indicate a long history of sightings. There has been a small number of reports from Sweden and Norway. A type of wildman, the Snömannen or bigfoot purportedly inhabits northern Scandinavia in Lapland and the arctic regions of Norway, Sweden, and Finland. It is described as a dark, ape-like creature covered in thick, dirty, stinky hair. The face is broad with prominent brow ridges, nose pressed flat, with a mouth that juts out from a huge jaw.(Sound familiar?).
The following report has been collected by Jan-Ove Sundberg. This report is from an area north of Stockholm. There are lots of pine woods in that area, which sounds familiar.In the summer of 1985 a Swedish radio reporter talked about strange growls being heard in province of Helsingland. Two elderly moose hunters described how they had been tracking something big and smelly and finally released their dogs to give chase. "The dogs came back with their tails between their legs and were terrified", said Karl Johansson from Bollnas. A couple of month before this , a woman who remains anonymous, went out to a recreation area at Voxna to clean the family cabin ready for the summer holiday . She suddenly heard what she described as "pretty heavy feet moving around outside". She sensed that this was not an ordinary intruder and actually hid under a bed. "I never saw the creature but when one hour had passed I got up and went outside and then found giant footprints in the garden and around the house", she told Jan. She claimed that the footprints measured 45 cm in length and were 30 cm wide. Following this a couple of weeks later two teenage girls were skinny-dipping in a nearby pond when they suddenly heard someone or something moving about in the thick undergrowth nearby. Teasing and calling the intruder a pervert who spied on nude girls they moved closer and closer towards the shore, planning to surprise or even catch the culprit. Instead something right out of a nightmare suddenly rose up in front of them. Tina, 15, told Jan : "It resembled an ape but it was uglier and very large". Her friend Petra, 16, agreed and say´s that at the same time "a terrible stench" came from the creature, which growled at them pounding it´s chest. Tina and Petra swam ashore a bit further down, ran through the woods without their clothes and didn´t stop until they were home, a couple of kilometres away. Petra´s father didn´t believe their story but admitted that something had given the girl´s a pretty bad scare. "I thought it must have been a bear", he said on the phone. "There is bear in the area and if this one had a cub on the side it could´ve seen the girl´s as a potential threat". The girls themselves, badly whipped by lashing branches, during their hysterical run through the woods, said they did not see a bear but something far more frightening. "It was like a monster out of a movie and it walked upright on two legs", Tina said . "Even if it was ugly it more resembled a man than an animal".

Another sighting took place just south of Bollnasin Sweden Mrs. Gustavsson and her husband not only saw the Swedish Bigfoot but also heard it several times and even claim they found its droppings.. "It came quite close to our cabin and would kind of howl in the moonlight with a voice that reminded us of a human with a bass, very very deep. We saw it more like a silhouette against the sky and it never came so close so we could identify it properly", Mrs. Gustavsson said . "It was huge, powerful and gave the impression of being primitive but also intelligent". She also claims it had a whistling sound and at times they would hear what was either an echo or another bigfoot, answering the call. When Mr. Gustavsson investigated the area in daylight he found the classical, large footprints and also fresh droppings. "Its droppings reminded me of human excrement and first I thought that it was but they were left in such places a human never would go and I always found it in the area where we had seen this creature", said Mr. Gustavsson.

The sightings all sound familiar to the North American bigfoot. Sighted in the wooded isolated areas and the whistling and foot prints. Bigfoot may have a Scandinavian cousin.

Selma ,the Norwegian lake monster

Close to Telemark, Norway, is a Lake called Seljordsvatnet. It is twelve miles long and one and a half miles wide.Like Loch Ness is was formed by glaciers during the last ice age. There have been reports of a large creature living in the lake since the 1750’s.Eyewitness reports, generally describe the creature, dubbed Selma by the locals, as a 30 to 45 foot serpent like creature.

A documented account of an encounter with the creature dates back to 1880 when Bjorn Bjorge, and his mother Gunhild, were said to have cut a creature that attacked them in half. According to the document the lower portion of the creature squirmed back into the lake while the front half was left to rot on the shore.

In the summer of 1918, Karl Karlsson walked down to the bridge at Sandnes to fish.Suddenly he saw an animal in the water. It came very close ,moving very fast and Karl Karlsson became frightened and ran away ,leaving his fishing rod.. He described the head of the animal as being like a horse. It held it’s head about three feet out of the water and then it stopped, sank straight down and disappeared.

Two years later, Eivind Fjodstuft went out to fish. When he came to the point he saw an animal on its way out of the lake.It turned back when Eivind came towards it and slipped down into the water.He described the animal as 15-20 meters long, with a head resembling the head of a crocodile. The animal was black in color and had finlike feet at the front part, right below its neck. He saw no eyes or mouth, but the animal turned its head from side to side and seemed to scout and listen. It quickly went back into the water again. In 1996, two men were fishing around dusk on Lake Seljordsvatnet when there was a sudden commotion in the water. A horse like head attached to a ten foot long neck rose from the water, the creature starred at the two fisherman from about 8 inches away before slowly submerging .In in July, 2001, an unnamed father and son from Oslo,were taking a walk down to the lake to go swimming. They were about 100 yards away when they noticed something strange on the beach. The two stopped about 30 feet from the beach as they witnessed what they could only describe as a giant snake just at the waters edge.The animal held its head towards the water unaware of their presence but as they watched the son stumbled, making a noise, and the beast turned its long neck around and stared at directly at them They described the creature’s head as like a calf. The beast swung its head back towards the lake and glided into the lake. The two described it as having an enormous body, which was at least 30 feet long, and was as thick as a car tyre.

See this report :

It all began with an absolutely ordinary day of fishing on a tranquil summers day. We’d been fishing the entire afternoon. As evening arrived and the sun begin to go down we decided to head for shore for a cup of coffee. I looked back across the lake and suddenly, there it was. I managed to take a picture with my cell phone before it disappeared he told Nettavisen (this publication. Sandnes, who has a nearby farm has a very clear memory of the episode that occurred in June of 2005. We became absolutely certain that it was something strange and unusual and wondered what it could be.The creature appeared very close at hand to them. Specifically, at a distance between 20 to 50 meters, near the shore. It was summertime and still daylight and they could clearly see it.Sandnes is well-known in the area around the 48 kilometer long lake located North of Steinkjer in North Trønderlag.He says there are many stories of sightings about sea monsters in Snåsavatnet. There are certainly rumors around the area. Sjøormen is also known as – Kudulla. He believes that was the original name of Snåsavatnet. Charts indicate that the lake is around 21 meters deep (78 feet). Sandnes notes that the firm NTE detected depths there of up to 250 meters while preparing to lay cable. So it may not be surprising that there is a sea monster there, he says. Einar Johannes Sadnes has been in no hurry to share the photo of a possible sea monster, having had it in his cell phone for more than a year and a half. Now he tells Nettavisen- I was a bit afraid to tell anyone. I was afraid that no one would believe me says Sandnes.

Source:Nettavisien. Tranlation by s8int.com using InterTran

This creature has attracted worldwide attention including that of such organizations as GUST (Global Underwater Search Team). The team set out in 2000 on a research expedition with the hopes of capturing the creature .They took along a specially designed trap which they named a “Comet”. It was a professionally built monster/eel trap. The 18-foot (6m) long tube-shaped trap, comprising a metal frame with nylon netting, was lowered into the lake . Unfortunately the team and their trap came up empty, but they did get some interesting sonar readings during the trip.

Despite over 500 reports of sightings, claimed photographs of the creature and a number of attempts to scientifically prove its existence, Selma remains a mystery.