In this instance of paranormal canines we’re not referring to vampires, but rather the mysterious black dogs that have been spoken of throughout history along with far lesser paranormal entities like them. And one of the most chilling aspects of the ghostly dog phenomenon is how unchanged it has remained throughout history even as other paranormal subjects such as vampires and even to a lesser degree more “conventional” ghosts have been changed by the sands of time and the face of culture.
The ghost dogs predominantly seen in Britain and the United States halfway across the globe are often depicted as howling demonic entities with a sheer malevolence in their eyes and an unexplainable thirst for human fear. The creatures have been tracked from the foggy streets of London in the late 1800s to Bray Road in the US as recently as 2010 with only slight variations on the central theme of a ghostly dog that is not bound by the laws of physics and can disappear and appear just as mysteriously in one incident. Even the late Sherlock Holmes had his own encounter with the creatures in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hounds of the Baskervilles,” although a more mundane explanation was attributed to them in this legendary work of fiction.
But what part of the human psyche is triggered in an incident involving paranormal canines? Are they a true supernatural entity or merely a human fixation on the creatures that used to threaten us in our primitive villages with their eerie howls at the moon when they were wolves? One other interesting aspect of ghost dogs is that with all the photography of everything supernatural from UFOs and Bigfoot to ghosts of other forms, the body of evidence supporting the appearance of ghostly dogs seems somewhat lacking. In searching for famous images of paranormal dogs it’s difficult to pinpoint a confirmed case. And the very nature of the sightings seems to rebel against the collection of evidence as well. The beast of Bray Road, for example, hunts down lone drivers in their cars and follows at incredible speeds running alongside the car but never able (or wishing to) actually attack the vehicle itself.
But one cryptozoologist, Richard Freeman, has declared a call to arms for the public to attempt to gather evidence of the creatures so their nature can be better understood. In an interview with the UK news firm Express, he suggested a thermal image of one of the creatures would alone go a long way toward explaining the nature of their existence. And by looking at the sheer number of reports out there on the subject, there appears to be a large number of opportunities for this evidence to be gathered. In the meantime, those wishing to examine the stories that are left behind by frightened witnesses will be left with only the chilling prospect that the creatures seem to show up on lonely stretches of highway or sidewalk when the witness least expects them.
