Does
a huge phantom mastiff emitting an eerie blue phosphorescent glow haunt Rose
Hill in the vicinity of Port Tobacco, Maryland, USA? (© Dr Karl Shuker)
Telling ghost
stories during the Christmas season is a longstanding Yuletide festive tradition, so here is
ShukerNature's contribution for Christmas 2016. But what makes this particular
story very special is that its phantom protagonist may actually be real! The
apparition in question is the blue ghost dog of Rose Hill, just outside Port
Tobacco, a once-thriving seaport in Charles County, Maryland, USA.
According to
local tradition, during the political unrest leading up to the American Civil
War (or leading up to the American War of Independence, a century earlier, in
some versions), a Yankee soldier-peddler called Charles Thomas Sims,
accompanied by a huge mastiff-like tick hound with unusual blue-grey fur,
sought warmth and shelter one very wintry 8 February at the St Charles Inn, one
of many waterfront taverns in Port Tobacco at that time.
Rose
Hill Manor (public domain)
Once inside,
however, he soon became so intoxicated that he clumsily spilled a number of
gold coins out of his purse. This attracted the keen attention of a gang of
rough youths, led by a ne'er-do-well named Henry Hanos, who lost no time in luring
him out of the inn and the town, leading him instead along Rose Hill Road and
up to the vast grounds of Rose Hill Manor atop a lonely hill just outside Port
Tobacco.
Here, securely
out of sight of the town's populace, Hanos and his mob clubbed the hapless Sims
and his dog to death on a big rock in the manor's grounds, near the roadside, and
then stole his gold, burying it under a holly tree alongside the road on the
hill for safekeeping, but planning to return later and retrieve it. When they
did return, however, they were horrified to see a monstrous dog surrounded by
an eerie blue phosphorescence howling on the rock, the site of its master's
murder and its own too - and as soon as
they tried to draw nearer, the dog raced towards them in hellish fury!
Artistic
representation of the phantom blue mastiff of Rose Hill (© Unknown artist/All
About Dogs, January-February 1998, reproduced here on a strictly
non-commercial, educational/review Fair Use basis only)
Screaming with
terror, the youths fled, never coming back, and Hanos swiftly fell ill, dying
abruptly soon afterwards. Since then, several others have boldly ventured to
Rose Hill to seek Sims's gold, including some troops of General Joseph Hooker
fighting near here in the Civil War - but when confronted by the unearthly
luminous blue dog, they have swiftly departed this accursed spot, leaving the
gold untouched. Moreover, the former owner of Rose Hill Manor in whose grounds
the killings allegedly took place, Olivia Floyd, an erstwhile Confederacy spy
during the Civil War, claimed in an interview with the Port Tobacco Times
newspaper in 1897 to have once seen the great glowing hound there herself – the
earliest written documentation of it.
Today, the blue
ghost dog is very much a local celebrity in Port Tobacco, which is home to an
ornate sign depicting it and even boasts a Blue Dog Saloon containing a huge
and very beautiful oil painting by local artist Don Zimmer portraying the
tragic scene of the slain Sims lying dead amid a desolate snowy landscape and the
teary-eyed ghost of his faithful dog lying close by. Moreover, prints of this
magnificent painting can actually be purchased, with all proceeds going towards
the Nanjemoy Neighbors Water Project (click here to visit the official website at which to buy a
print of the painting).
Magnificent
oil painting portraying the tragic death scene from the legend of the Rose Hill
blue ghost dog (© Don Zimmer/TheBayNet.Com 2016 – reproduced here on a strictly
non-commercial, educational/review Fair Use basis only)
The legend of
the blue ghost dog of Rose Hill is often stated to be the oldest ghost story in
the entire USA, but is it more than just a local folktale? And, if so, are
sightings of this terrifying canine apparition still occurring today? (I've
read claims that sightings have reputedly occurred as recently as the 1970s,
and most frequently during the month of February, but with no details supplied.)
I have no idea
of the answers to these questions, so what I'm going to do now is what I always
do in situations like this. Namely, request that if anyone reading my present
ShukerNature article has further information concerning its subject, and
especially any details regarding possible modern-day encounters with the
phantom dog itself, please do post them here, as I'd be very interested indeed
to receive and read them. Thanks very much!
Could the phantom blue mastiff of Rose Hill look something like this? (© Dr Karl Shuker)
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