Imagine that it is the darkness of the night. There is electricity in the air when the long-threatened storm finally breaks out. You are alone in an eerie place, somewhere perhaps like a cemetery, or at an old crossroads where many years ago, as local legend has it, there used to be an executioner’s gallows.
Suddenly, you feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and you have the unpleasant feeling that you are being watched. You turn around and there, right in the middle of the road, is the biggest dog you have ever seen. Its fur is so black that you can only make out its shape against the night and it stands silently, staring at you with its hideous glowing red eyes. The fear and the urge to run are almost unbearable, but even worse is the feeling of utter despair.
You have just received a visit from a Barghest.
This is how this supernatural hound is known here in Yorkshire, and while the mythological creature’s name may change, its eerie legend remains remarkably similar from Scotland and northern England to Wales, Cornwall, and the Channel Islands.
Across the country, since at least the 12th century, there have supposedly been sightings, usually at night, of monstrous black dogs the size of calves or even larger. They have huge teeth and claws, and eyes as big as saucers that can glow a devilish red. Sometimes they attack and kill people right away, other times they are known to be harbingers of death, either the person who sees the dog or one of their close relatives dies shortly after the sighting. In some stories, only one person in a group sees the dog, and his fellow travelers see nothing at all; evil will soon befall the poor lonely victim.
The dog often fades from sight when the poor soul looks on in horror, or has disappeared when the marked person looks back. Sometimes the animal is said to appear to members of the same family throughout the generations, usually announcing the disappearance of each person in turn.
It is said that if someone dares to return to the site of the sighting, they can find the ground where the creature was scorched or burned. This gives credence to the theory that the Barghest is a being from the fierce pit of Hell, who came to take the soul of a malefactor from whence it came.
In Wakefield, the creature is called Padfoot, while the Welsh refer to him, and curiously the dog is always male, like Gwyllgi, the dog of darkness. On the Isle of Man it is known as the Mauthe Dog, and in Norfolk they will speak of Black Shuck. Even the unfortunate ones on the wrong side of the Pennines know the creature. They call him Guytrash or Skriker. Whatever its name, the beast is always huge, black, and terrifying.
Sightings have gotten rarer these more enlightened days, but the Black Dog is still very familiar to us from the arts, and suspense literature in particular. Perhaps the most famous of all the black dogs in popular novels is The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In that famous Sherlock Holmes tale set in the mists of Dartmoor, it is said that a great black beast stalks the Baskerville family as a result of a pact made with the Devil by one of their clan. The Devil Mephistopheles first appears in Goethe’s Faust in the form of a Black Dog, albeit in the slightly less terrifying form of a small black poodle, but even this seemingly harmless pup leaves fire in its wake. And who is the main character in Susan Hill’s classic novel and subsequent full-length play The Woman in Black, if not a chilling human version of a Barghest? All black, silent, terrifying in the extreme, a harbinger of death, but only visible to those upon whom calamity is about to fall; she’s a Barghest through and through.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula tells how the arrival of the vampire in Whitby is in the form of a huge Black Dog that leaps from his ship onto the shore. Whitby is particularly associated with sightings of the Barghest, something Stoker would no doubt have been aware of when incorporating it into his novel. The city’s ties to the Spectral Dog have long been celebrated by the recently revived Black Dog Brewery, whose tasty
The products echo Barguest’s alternative spelling very well.
Many people have claimed to have seen the creature in our town over the centuries: the gloomy Troller’s Gill in Appletreewick, the old stone bridge over the River Swale where the pallbearers rested their heavy burdens on the way to Ivelet, a disused well in Slaughter. Lane in Baildon – Everyone has recorded Black Dog appearances. Likewise, Egton, Grassington, Nidderdale, Ilkley Moor, Sedbergh and Skipton. Even Sheffield’s Graves Park has supposedly been visited by the infamous goblin dog.
York also has its own special version of the legend, with the canine layman having been spotted by several lonely travelers in the narrow lanes that abound in that ancient city, usually with fatal consequences. It is very unusual for the Hellhound to be reported in an urban setting like this. Historically, most sightings have been made on lonely wastelands, cemeteries, or roads outside the city.
Of course, the image of a black dog is also associated with depression, as in Winston Churchill’s famous quote from his “Black Dog on My Shoulder.” However, this metaphor was not invented by Winston. The father of the English dictionary, Samuel Johnson (of whom Churchill was a fan), used the term in his letters in the 18th century, but its roots go much further back. Even the Greek classics have tales of black dogs that seem to predict premature death. Perhaps these stories were originally created as warnings against traveling alone in dangerous areas? Or maybe they were based on simple but dire coincidences. Or maybe, just maybe, is there something in them after all?
Whatever the truth, be careful if you find yourself in lonely and desolate places. If you hear heavy paws and the snapping of fierce claws following you, don’t look at yourself again. The Barghest can attack anywhere.
(c) Shaun Finnie 2011
