Scary Stories Black Dogs

9 Scary Stories and Legends About Black Dogs

It’s dark, and you are tired. Suddenly you see an enormous black dog. It’s silently observing you with its glowing red eyes. You gasp. Let me tell you some scary stories about black dogs.

Throughout many countries, but especially in the UK, legends are being told about black dogs. The black dog is supernatural and evil. Large and with glowing eyes. Sometimes they harm. Sometimes they warn.

1. The Black Dog at Ivelet Bridge

A black dog haunts the Ivelet Bridge (located near Ivelet in Swaledale, Yorkshire).

This dog has no head. You can hear its bark. It leaps over the side of the bridge into the water.

I hope you have never seen it because they say that when you see it, you will die. Not immediately, but within a year.

Luckily it has not been seen for a hundred years. Or, at least, nobody is alive to tell about it…

2. The Hound of the Baskervilles

The most famous scary story about a black dog is The Hound of the Baskervilles, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It features England’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes.

The black dog with the red glowing eyes, the ‘Hound,’ kills members of the Baskerville family. Or so they say. When Sherlock Holmes is called in, he investigates the case with his trusty assistant John Watson.

He finds that there is indeed a hound, but a man controls it, and there is nothing supernatural about it. In the end, the hound gets killed, and the real criminal drowns in the mire.

Every trucker knows the Legend of the Black Dog

3. The Trucker Legend of the Black Dog

After long hours driving your truck, your eyes might start to close. You feel yourself slipping into the unconscious. Suddenly a black dog with red eyes stares you into your face.

With a jolt, you hit the brakes just in time.

The Legend of the Black Dog is well known among long-haul truckers. Some say the black dog is there to warn you about an impending crash. Others say the black dog is the last thing you will see before the crash.

There is a rational explanation for this phenomenon, but it is not proven. It might be that when the eyes start to close, you see a black spot in the corner of your eyes, which your mind interprets as a black dog.

💡 Looking for fairy tales about dogs?

4. The Black Dog Of Lyme Regis

All black dogs are scary and deadly. Well, not all of them. In Lyme Regis, they tell you a different story.

Near this town lived a farmer. An enormous black dog frequently visited his farm. One night the farmer was drunk and attacked the black dog. It fled to the attic and lept out.

Where the dog disappeared, the farmer found a treasure of gold. The legend says that he used this treasure to build the inn now known as ‘The Old Black Dog.’

What happened to the dog? Nobody knows for sure, but it is said that you can still see it, walking at midnight along Haye Lane.

Storyteller Eddie Lenihan tells about a real Scary Big Black Dog

5. The Black Dog of the New Gate Prison

In 1596, a new prisoner arrived at the New Gate Prison in London. Luke Hutton was to some a scholar, to others a sorcerer, and a few whispered that he was a wicked warlock.

Famine raged the land, and the food supply to the prison faltered. The prisoners had started eating each other in the last effort to stay alive. Luke Hutton was taken, and they feasted on his flesh.

Shortly after this heinous act, a specter of a monstrous black dog started to visit the prison. The inmates were convinced it was the sorcerers’ spirit coming after them. So they took matters into their own hands and started killing everyone who had partaken of Luke Hatton’s flesh.

Before they killed them all, some of them escaped. It is said that the black dog tracked them down and ended their lives.

And so we all learn a valuable lesson: Hungry prisoners should not eat each other, less they might be hunted down by the great black dog.

6. The Church Grim

The church stands protected. Protected by a fierce black dog. What?

The Church Grim is a guardian spirit, protecting the church from the devil.

All well and good, but why a dog? Here the story gets dark. It is supposedly the first who was being buried in the church’s cemetery. It was long believed that the first buried would serve as its guardian. However, because they did not want to give this task to a human, often a dog was sacrificed and buried.

Or worse: buried alive.

So don’t mess with Church Grims. They are fiercely protective.

7. The Black Dog tries to take Nun Benedetta Carlini

A long, long time ago, the Italian mystical nun Benedetta Carlini was attacked by a black dog. She was still a child but screamed loud enough to scare the dog away. Her mother came in time to rescue her.

Who was this dog? The devil, her parents, and Benedetta concluded.

Maybe, however, it was just a phantom image from her overactive imagination because the black dog incident was not so strange compared to the rest of her life.

Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark: The Little Black Dog

8. The Little Black Dog

Bill Mansfield fought Silas Burton and killed him. What was more, he also killed his little black dog.

Since that defining moment, he saw a little black dog following him everywhere. He smelled dog. He found dog hairs everywhere.

Nobody else ever saw the little black dog. However, nobody was there when they found Billy dead lying in the snow. No footprints. Only tiny black dog hairs on his body.

💡 Are you interested in telling one of these stories yourself?
Check out my guide on telling scary stories.

9. The Black Dog and the Miners

Earl drives his rolling story through the Kentucky South.

One evening he sees a big black dog on the road, staring at him, blocking the way. Traveling further, he finds a village where many miners have been killed in a mining accident.

Then he sees the picture of the same dog he saw on the road. So he tells the people and…

Photo credits: Pixabay

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