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'Me and my friend were walking along Gunton cliff on a misty night. We saw a black dog with glowing yellow eyes running on its hind legs, towards the park which we were walking from. It paused and looked at us, before it carried on running towards the park. (The creature) had large eyes the size of coffee mugs, but it had a tiny head compared to its body and eyes, it stood around 7 foot tall and ran and stood on its hind legs...'

Gunton Cliffs

One of the more prevalent British paranormal entities is the black dog or hell hound. Over the past five years, I've received 31 reports of these phantom canines; most a retelling of local legend, though a handful are first hand accounts, such as the opening paragraph. The phantom hound is well known throughout the UK, though normally under different names depending where in the county it is seen. Across East Anglia is the entity is known as Black Shuck, the north of England has the Barghest, Padfoot and Skriker, in Wales the creature is called Gwyllgi, while Yeth Hounds run around southern England.

A single descriptive profile of the entity is difficult. While all reports agree that the creature is a larger than normal dog, the similarities end there. Some of the cases I have on file report large glowing red eyes, or green eyes, or eyes all the colours of the rainbow, or no eyes (in the case of the headless hound). The dog is normally jet black, but can have a hint of red fur, or can be white. It normally runs on four legs, but as the first story shows, it can run on two.

Another story, this time from Cardiff:

'It was really stormy here about three nights ago and it was about 7:30 in the evening. I wasn't at all tired or stressed and had in fact just had a relaxing shower when I looked out of the back window and I saw a creature that looked like a wolf with roving red eyes, its paws were thick and padded. At first I thought 'trick or treaters' playing pranks, but as I lay on the bed I heard the scratch of its paws on the window.

A common theme amongst shuck sightings tends (although by no means exclusive) to be bad weather conditions. Probably the most well known location of a shuck appearance is Blythburgh, Suffolk. On the 4 August 1577, a large black hound manifested in the church during a storm, killing two (or possibly three) parishioners and gouging blackened marks into the door, still visible today. The church tower also collapsed during the incident, though whether caused by shuck or storm is unclear.

Scratch marks on Blythburgh Church door

In the cold, rational days of the twenty-first century, the number of Hell Hound sightings appear to be decreasing, while the number of out-of-place big cat sightings are on the increase (earning nicknames such as 'Beast of Bucks' and 'Fen Tiger'). So far in 2008, there have been over 200 news stories about large cat sightings - are there lions, tigers and pumas really running around the UK, leaving no evidence other than the occasional blurred photograph and muddy footprint? Is it any less plausible that these creatures are the continued manifestation of our Shucks and Skrikers, miscategorised into the known zoological family of felid as it is now easier to believe an animal escaped from a zoo than from hell?

Darren Mann
www.paranormaldatabase.com