#spectral dog

[see-arcane]

In which there's more than one reason Dracula and dogs don't mix.

Ko-Fi Commission info here

[julieschulerart]

A hound from The Wild Hunt is sometimes left behind in a household through which it has passed. The hound will repose on the hearth for a whole year, during which time it lives upon ashes and howls and whines, until the spectre horsemen return, when it jumps on its feet, wags its tail with joy and rejoins its ancient comrades. There is only one way amongst the Germans of ridding the house sooner of the unwelcome guest, and that is to brew beer in eggshells. The hound watches the operation and exclaims, "Though I am now as old as the Old Bohemian Wold, yet the like of this I ween, in my life, I ne'er have seen!" And it goes and is seen no more.

-Traditions, Superstitions and Folklore, Chiefly Lancashire and the North of England, by Charles Hardwick, 1872.

(picture: https://ghostsnghouls.com/ghost-dog-2/)

[fiannach-blog]

Ive been trying to come up with some sort of mega-fauna/monster for my story and I got really excited when I remembered that the Black Shuck is a thing so Im gonna be doing some doodling B)

hes a very non conventional boy and a friend except he eats people 

[raskolnikovismyboyfriend]

Like all spectral creatures, this dog is difficult to photograph clearly. When she does fully materialize in your presence, however, you are blessed with eight days of good luck.

[see-arcane]

Barking Harker Cast Snapshot 10: Dogs

They that dwell up in the steeple,

All alone,

And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,

In that muffled monotone,

Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone—

They are neither man nor woman—

They are neither brute nor human—

They are Ghouls… —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Bells”

“It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel, that's what it be and nowt else. These bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an' bar-guests an' bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women a'belderin'. They be nowt but air-blebs. They, an' all grims an' signs an' warnin's, be all invented…” —Mr. Swales, Dracula

Dogs were not always dogs. 

Once, they were wolves. They were wild. They hunted what there was to hunt. Whether that was the beasts of the forest or farmland fodder, it did not matter. No more than it mattered whether the latter were livestock or their human minders. It took time, training, and generations of care to create the dog.

To create every dog. Each born to an innate purpose rooted in the bones and blood of the ancestors who came before.

Dogs that guide. Dogs that track. Dogs that guard. Dogs that hunt. Dogs that fight. Dogs that help. Dogs that love.

Dogs who keep the wolves away or chase them down or lead the lost home.

Humanity domesticated the dog in all the creature’s variations of duty and devotion over the course of a scant few millennia. It stands to reason that for Powers which existed before the concept of Earthly life itself, rearing creatures to their own purposes would be ancient child’s play. So it was. So it is.

So two Dogs of unique pedigree find themselves crossing paths with a Wolf one summer night…  

More details about Barking Harker here.

[vultures-art-ref]

church boy good boy

[frickwoodsmonster-blog]

BLACK DOGS (pages 100-103)

    “’Footprints?’

    “’Footprints.’

    “’A man or a woman’s?’

    “Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered:

    “’Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!’

    “And thus we are introduce to The Hound of the Baskervilles, the most celebrated fictional treatment of a very real belief, a belief in a monster or phantom dog, often called the black dog.

    “In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel, Sherlock Holmes finds a perfectly natural explanation for the apparently supernatural hound. But it really isn’t the explanation that sticks in our minds after reading the book, it is the idea of the hound itself.

    “’The moon was shining bright upon the clearing, and there in the centre lay the unhappy maid where she had fallen, dead of fear and fatigue. But it was not the sight of her body, nor was it that of the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of those three dare-devil roysterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a great black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon. And even as they looked the thing tore the throat out of Hugo Baskerville, on which, as it turned its blazing eyes and dripping jaws upon them, the three shrieked with fear and rode for dear life, still screaming across the moor. One, it is said, died that very night of what he had seen, and the other twain were but broken men for the rest of their days.’

    “Conan Doyle may well have drawn his inspiration for the Hound of the Baskervilles from the legends attached to a creature called the Black Dog of Dartmoor, which was sort of a demon in the shape of a dog. But black-dog or phantom dog stories occur in all parts of the British Isles, and some have been imported to the United States as well. And the dog of the accounts is not always as terrible as the Hound of the Baskervilles either.

    “Here is a story told by a Mrs. Jewell of her firsthand meeting with a creature called the Black Dog of Torrington. The event was said to have taken place in the 1870′s when the narrator was only about ten years old.

    “Late that night she was walking down the road with her father. ‘It was a moonlight night,’ she said, ‘and suddenly a sound of something panting came from behind us, and a great black dog, big as a calf, with great shining eyes, came along side us. I caught my father’s hand and cried out. Father said, “Tis the Black Dog! Hold my hand, don’t speak, walk quietly, and don’t cry out.”’

    “The dog trotted along side them for about a quarter of a mile. Then father and daughter turned to go into their cottage. The dog showed no further interest in them and continued on down the road. The girl’s father said that he had seen the black dog many times but had never known it to harm anyone.

    “Mrs. Jewell added that later in life she also saw the dog several times, but never again at close range. She insisted that many other people in her district had seen the dog, but would not talk about it with outsiders because they feared being ridiculed.

    “The woman who collected old Mrs. Jewell’s account, Barbara Carbonell, said she believed the story because her own daughter had reported an encounter with the animal. This incident took place in 1932, when her daughter and son-in-law were driving down a road in the Torrington region at night, Suddenly an enormous black dog appeared in the middle of the road, illuminated by the car’s headlights. The driver slammed on the brakes, but was sure that it was too late and that there was no way to avoid hitting the beast. They waited for the impact. It didn’t come. When the car stopped, the couple got out to investigate; they could find no trace of the animal that both had seen so clearly.

    “A more typical black-dog story comes from a place called Tring in Hartford, England, at a spot where legend had it that a woman had been hanged for witchcraft and a demon dog appeared from time to time. This account comes from the early nineteenth century.

    “A man and his companion were riding home in a cart late one night when they passed the accursed spot. There was a sudden flash of light.

    “’What was that?’ the man cried out.

    “’Hush,’ said his companion. and he pulled the horses to a stop.

    “’I then saw an immense black dog just in front of our horse. It was the strangest-looking creature I ever saw. He was as big as a Newfoundland dog, but very thin and shaggy. He had long ears, a long tail, and eyes like balls of fire. When he opened his mouth we could see long teeth. He seemed to grin at us. In a few minutes the dog disappeared, seeming to vanish like a shadow, or to sink into the earth.’

    “Black dogs, or spectral dogs of one color or another, have often been regarded as harbingers of evil news. Several old English families are supposed to be cursed with a black dog, and whenever the dog appears someone in the family is supposed to die. A small white dog was reputed to appear before every execution at the notorious Newgate prison in London.

    “Throughout the British Isles there is a tradition that graveyards were guarded by a spirit in the form of a black dog. Though the black dog was supposed to protect those recently buried in the graveyard from the Devil, it was considered to be extremely bad luck for any living person to see the dog. In fact, anyone who saw one of these graveyard black dogs was fated to die within a year.

    “The tradition of the graveyard dog was carried over to the United States. The author encountered it while growing up in Chicago in the 1940′s. A cemetery near the house was supposed to be haunted by a white dog, and anyone who saw the dog would die within a year.

    “One of the favorite pastimes was to take a new kid in the neighborhood through the cemetery and tell him the story. After a few minutes of walking, you would point and shout, ‘There it is. My God. Don’t look!’”

“See also: PHANTOM LIONS”