PHANTOM WHITE DOGS AND CELTIC FAIRY HOUNDS

A fairy hound, one of the Cwn Annwn - the hounds of Annwn, the Celtic Otherworld (© Simon Wyatt)

Characterised by their sable-hued pelage, blazing red eyes, spectral nature, and their traditional association with disaster and death, the zooform phenomena known as Black Dogs have been extensively documented. Equally mysterious, but far less familiar, are their pallid counterparts, the White Dogs and fairy hounds. Nevertheless, these canine phantoms are by no means rare.

One of Great Britain's most famous White Dogs is Gally-trot, reported in the North Country and Suffolk, which resembles a bullock-sized dog with a white shaggy coat. Gally-trot earns its name from its tendency to chase after anyone who runs away from it, and from its fearsome demeanour ('Gally' translates as 'to frighten'). What may be the same apparition has also been recorded specifically from a marshy pool near Burgh, in Suffolk, called Bath Slough.

During the years leading up to World War II, a White Dog was often seen racing across the road linking the Norfolk villages of Great and Little Snoring, and on one occasion an unsuspecting motorist drove directly through it! Equally intangible is the white hound of Cator Common, Dartmoor, which, in one particularly memorable modern-day instance, abruptly disappeared in full view of a lady who had stretched out her hand to stroke it.

A pack of White Dogs

Even more extraordinary, as brought to my notice by cryptozoologist Jan Williams, is the White Dog reported from Leek Brook in Staffordshire. Just like its Black Dog equivalent, East Anglia's Old Shuck, this particular White Dog has no head! Another Black Dog trait mirrored by certain White Dogs is their association with chains - as demonstrated by the white hound of Bunbury, Cheshire, which is normally observed dragging a length of chain behind it.

A few Black Dogs have actually materialised inside churches, and there is at least one White Dog on file with a similar claim to fame. Resembling a ghostly white hound, this preternatural beast reputedly appears inside the church at Pluckley, Kent - not too surprising a locality, perhaps, as Pluckley is popularly deemed 'the most haunted village in England'.

Mystery beast investigator Neil Arnold has publicised a fascinating but hitherto little-known, present-day sighting of a White Dog. One evening during the early 1950s, a soldier based at an army camp inside Richmond Park was returning to the camp after visiting London when he noticed that the park's deer seemed unusually disturbed. Suddenly, several deer raced by him in a state of great panic, and when he looked behind them he was amazed to see a huge, pure-white hound, of hideous appearance with immense teeth, chasing after them. However, it was no normal, corporeal dog. Instead of running across the ground, this uncanny entity was racing through the air, at a height of about 1 ft above the ground!

The Richmond Park White Dog (© C. Martin)

Although most reports of White Dogs emanate from Great Britain, there are varied traditions elsewhere too. For instance: Lamper, the Hebridean death dog, is white, and runs round in circles to warn of an impending death. Werewolf lore has it that the loup-garou (French werewolf) can assume the guise of a White Dog. And in Romania, gypsies claim that many cemeteries here are occupied by white spirit wolves, which guard the living by discovering and destroying any vampires that may arise within these graveyards.

In his book Animal Ghosts (1913), veteran ghost investigator Elliott O'Donnell recalled how an acquaintance called Rappaport had encountered a pack of spectral hounds one winter's night on the slope of Russia's Ural Mountains. Headed towards a lake, Rappaport had been riding aboard a horse-drawn coach when a fierce pack of wolves had begun pursuing it. Despite his success in shooting some of them, however, Rappaport and the coach driver, Ivan, feared that they would soon be overwhelmed by the savage, snarling horde. Then, without any warning, the air was filled with a loud baying sound. Racing towards their coach was another canine pack. However, this one was composed not of wolves but of enormous white hounds. At the sight of these weird beasts, the wolves turned tail and fled:

"On came the hounds - more beautiful dogs I had never seen; as they swept by, more than one brushed against my knees, though I could feel nothing save intense cold. When they were about twenty yards ahead of us, they slowed down, and maintained that distance in front of us till we arrived on the shores of the lake. There they halted, and throwing back their heads, bayed as if in farewell, and suddenly vanished. We knew then that they were no earthly hounds, but spirit ones, sent by a merciful Providence to save us from a cruel death."

Lancashire's gabriel hounds are phantom dogs that race through the air, rather like the Richmond Park beast, and are sometimes said to be luminous white in colour, but are readily distinguished from 'normal' canine spectres (white or otherwise) by having human heads.

A fire-breathing White Dog (Johannes Gehrts)

Another pack of ghostly White Dogs has been reported near Wellington in Somerset, whose open-mouthed members allegedly emit flame from between their jaws as they race along. This case has been investigated by renowned British folklorist Ruth L. Tongue, who has linked it to the longstanding British tradition of fairy hounds.

Also known as hounds of the hill, fairy hounds are said to be the hunting dogs of the Little People, who dwell in hollow hills. And according to Welsh mythology, a pack of these ethereal creatures, known as the Cwn Annwn, was also owned by Arawn, King of Annwn - the Celtic Otherworld. Resembling large white hounds with long slim legs, they are characterised by their ruby-red ears and eyes.

Celtic fairy hounds - the Cwn Annwn (© Roger Garland)

Researching Somerset fairy hounds, Ruth Tongue noted a modern sighting near Priddy. The eyewitness was a man who had seen two huge dogs, taller than Irish wolfhounds but with a rough white coat and red ears, walking by him, on the other side of the road, making no noise. According to local lore, he had been very lucky, because if they had walked by him on the same side of the road, or had uttered any sound, he would have surely died.

In her book Forgotten Folk-Tales of the English Counties (1970), Tongue included a story recalled in 1917 by a Mrs Foden of Long Mynd, and also known in Cheshire, with a similar variant in Irish folklore. It concerns a labourer's young assistant who was going home from work late one night when he saw a huge dog, larger than a calf, with a rough white coat and red ears, lying in some bushes. Thinking at first that it was a foot-sore foxhound, he collected some soothing dock leaves to wrap around its feet. After collecting them and calling the dog to him, however, he realised that it was "...one of the fairy hounds from the hill who bring death or ill-luck".

Although badly frightened, the boy boldly bandaged the animal's paws, then wished it good night before continuing his journey home. Nothing untoward happened to him, but one dark evening in November he was going back home along that same road when a huge demonic goat-like beast confronted him, with glowing green eyes. Transfixed with fear, the boy was certain that he would be killed - when suddenly a huge White Dog with red ears appeared from nowhere and ferociously attacked the goat-beast, enabling the boy to escape. Click here for my own detailed retelling of this folktale in an earlier ShukerNature post.

A porcelain fairy hound (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Of course, such tales as this could be dismissed as nothing more than charming but wholly fictitious folklore...except for the fact that such animals are still being reported today. Each year at sunrise on Midsummer Day, a ghostly priest reputedly enters West Kennet Long Barrow, a Neolithic tomb overlooking Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, and is followed by a spectral White Dog with red ears. A similar beast with fiery eyes is said to appear each evening at midnight in a Neolithic burial chamber called the Devil's Den, at Fyfield, also in Wiltshire.

Old traditions die hard, and those featuring White Dogs and fairy hounds are no exception.

A White Dog

THE TOP TEN PARANORMAL BEASTS IN BRITAIN - HORSE-MEN, HORNED CATS, AND OTHER HORRORS!

The Green Drive Beast (© Sam Shearon)


In modern times, Britain – reputedly the world’s most haunted country – has seen more than even its fair share of monstrous creatures reported, beasts assuredly more supernatural than natural. So here, in no particular order, is my own personal Top Ten paranormal terrors of the zooform kind (i.e. seemingly preternatural entities superficially resembling corporeal creatures). Encounter them at your peril!


HORSE-MEN OF THE APOCALYPSE?
One late evening in 1994, the husband of correspondent Nicky Knott was driving home through King’s Lynn, Norfolk, down a lonely rural back road when he saw a large creature in a field to his right. As it moved closer, it seemed to be a horse, with equine body and four legs, but its observer was horrified to see that it had the face of a man! Terrified, Knott slammed his foot on the accelerator and sped away, and even though he was sure that the ‘thing’ was pursuing him he never once looked back till he reached home. Amazingly, this is not a unique case. Back in spring 1966, a creature fitting this same bizarre, man-faced, horse-bodied, centaur-reminiscent description was encountered in the road ahead as Margaret Johnson and her boyfriend John Farrell were driving past the estate of Lord Dillon in County Louth, Ireland, blocking their way for a couple of minutes and emanating palpable malevolence before abruptly vanishing. Could it have been a pooka – Ireland’s evil supernatural goblin horse?

Horse-man (Richard Svensson)


BEWARE OF BIG-EYES!
During the mid-1950s, writer Joan Forman had spent time teaching at the school in the Kentish village of Goodhurst. One early morning during the summer holidays, when few others were there, she had awoken from sleep in her room, alone within the school building’s oldest section, and was shocked to see a grotesque creature crouching on the floor to the left of her bed, glowing slightly in the darkness and gazing at her with what she considered to be an unblinking stare of outright evil and obscenity. It was about the size of a large cat or corgi dog, but its most striking feature were its huge eyes, which she likened to those of a nocturnal lemur. She lay there, rendered immobile by its seemingly mocking, revolting stare for some time, before, with the onset of dawn, it slowly faded away, and the intense coldness that until then had filled the room vanished with it. Years later, she learned that her successor at the school also witnessed this entity, but in a different bedroom.


A WEIRDLING CALLED WOLFIE
One of the weirdest creatures ever encountered in Britain was nicknamed Wolfie by the Lawson children who first saw it, but it was like no wolf – or anything else, for that matter – ever reported. The Lawson family lived in Abbey House, Cambridge, from 1904 to 1910, during which time Wolfie was spied on many occasions by the children, and even once at close range by their father as it sped down a corridor. According to their descriptions, Wolfie superficially resembled a very large, brown-furred, short-eared hare but with some notable additional attributes – always running on its hindlegs, sporting a pair of flipper-like front paws, and equipped with a long bird-like beak. Wolfie was mostly seen on the ground floor and at twilight, or in the drawing room when lit by lamplight, but even when not observed its presence was readily evinced by the distinctive pattering sound of its footsteps. Wolfie was also encountered by Charmian, the daughter of the Sharp family, who moved into Abbey House in 1920, and in 1947 a mysterious “tiny doggie” was reported in the kitchen by the young son of Celia Schofield, a friend of the then tenant. Although Wolfie did not seem to be malign in any way, its zoologically impossible form, if described accurately, indicates that this inexplicable entity must surely have been paranormal rather than corporeal in nature.

Wolfie (Richard Svensson)


THE VAMPIRE CATERPILLAR OF EDINBURGH
Some zooform phenomena, like Wolfie, seem so bizarre that they defy belief, let alone categorisation, yet their eyewitnesses vehemently affirm that they were real. Another notable example is the entity that Godfrey H. Anderson claimed to have spied on 23 November 1904 while walking along a street in Edinburgh, Scotland. Suddenly, he saw a grotesque 'something' rise out of the gutter and spring up at the throat of a horse. According to Anderson's description, cited in Creatures of the Outer Edge (1978) by Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman, the horse's weird attacker was:

"[a] vague black shape about four feet long and two and a half feet high...[it was shaped] like an hourglass and moved like a huge caterpillar."

The horse reared up in terror, and as it did so its assailant vanished.


LONDON’S HORNED DEMON CAT
One evening in October 1943 during a World War II bombing session inflicted upon London by German aircraft, air-raid volunteer Howard Leland took shelter inside a derelict house, but as he sat at the foot of its staircase he sensed a presence nearby. Shining his torch up the stairs, he was petrified to spy a huge tabby-striped cat sitting crouched at the very top, gazing down at him with demonic eyes – a cat whose skull sprouted a pair of sharp pointed horns! Rooted to the spot with fear, Leland could only watch as this monstrous entity leaped down into the room below, but it vanished before it landed, so that only its spine-chilling yowl echoed in the shadows. Leland consulted renowned clairvoyant John Pendragon, who placed his finger on the house’s precise location on a map, only for his mind to be filled with swirling images of hate-filled cats and an image of a man about to hang himself. Leland made enquiries about this house, learning that others had seen the horned cat, and, significantly, that it had once been inhabited by a practitioner of black magic, who had sacrificed several cats during one foul ritual, but had become deranged, hanging himself from the top of the staircase. Pendragon concluded that the giant horned cat was an elemental, conjured into being by the restless, fury-fuelled ghosts of the slain cats, and which may persist there indefinitely. For a full ShukerNature account of this scary (as opposed to scaredy!) cat, click here.

Horned demon cat (Tim Morris)


A BONELESS TERROR
There are many British folktales telling of encounters with an eerie amorphous entity, animate and sinister, variously nicknamed ‘Boneless’ or simply ‘It’. One moonlit September night during the 1950s, however, railwayman John Davies was riding his motorbike back home to his cottage in Derbyshire’s Longdendale Valley when he saw what appears to have been a bona fide Boneless crossing the road not far ahead. Moments earlier, he had felt an uncanny, seemingly reasonless compulsion to brake, and as he did so he spied what looked like a huge black slug sliding across the road and up the moor, making a scraping noise as its massive but near-shapeless form moved along. Up closer, it looked a little like a massive whale, and even possessed an eye-like structure, and Davies later learnt that it had been seen by others. One such observer was a friend of Davies, who had seen it sliding across the valley below Ogden Clough, where it was also observed on a separate occasion by another of his friends. Both of them were convinced that whatever it was, it was definitely evil, and both had fled in panic after spying it.


THE LEVITATING WHITE DOG OF RICHMOND PARK
Phantasmal Black Dogs are widely reported in Britain; less familiar, conversely, but by no means unknown, are comparable reports of preternatural White Dogs, of which the following is certainly among the most remarkable on file. One evening during the early 1950s, a soldier was returning to his army camp, based inside London’s Richmond Park, when he was startled to see several deer running past him in a panic-stricken state. He was even more startled, however, when he saw that they were being pursued by an enormous pure-white dog with huge teeth – but which, instead of bounding across the ground like any typical earthbound dog, was racing through the air, about half a metre above the ground! For additional ShukerNature posts regarding White Dogs (aka Fairy Hounds in Celtic mythology), click here and here.

Richmond Park's levitating white dog (C. Martin)


A HARPY OF THE HIGHLANDS?
According to Highland legend, on the eve of the historic battle of Culloden in 1746, a hideous winged apparition called the skree appeared in the sky, emitting spine-chilling shrieks and hovering above a detachment of soldiers. It was said to resemble a monstrous bird but with a human head, black leathery wings, and burning red eyes – in other words, a Caledonian counterpart of the harpies from Greek mythology! Moreover, one of its claimed eyewitnesses was none other than Lord General Murray. Although this story is largely dismissed by historians, at least two additional skree appearances have been documented. One was on 22 May 1915, when this veritable bird of ill-omen appeared over Larbert railway station just as a major party of Royal Scots men and officers were about to board their train. So shocked were they by this grotesque entity that the men had to be forced to board at gunpoint by their officers; later that day, the train crashed, killing or injuring many of its passengers. Most recently, during summer 1993, a skree-like creature was reportedly spied on a mist-shrouded outcrop of rock by two lost hill walkers in Glencoe.


ON THE LOOSE IN LYTHAM ST ANNE’S
Highly-acclaimed graphics-fantasy artist Sam Shearon (click here to visit his spectacular artwork's Mister-Sam Facebook page) has long been interested in cryptozoology, but little expected that in 2005 he would have the chance to investigate a truly bizarre beast in his very own hometown of Lytham St Anne’s, Lancashire. As I learnt from Sam when he kindly shared his files on this entity with me, it all began during late April 2005, in the town’s wooded beauty spot of Green Drive, when a mysterious snarling creature initially likened to a large collie with very big pricked ears, a sizeable mouth, light-coloured fur, and a strange lolloping gait was spied there. Other reports soon emerged, but descriptions of the beast became ever stranger, with one eyewitness comparing it with a surreal giant hare, and another describing it as “like a monster out of Doctor Who”! When word of this extraordinary creature reached Sam, he lost no time in interviewing a number of eyewitnesses, and then prepared a highly-detailed illustration of it, based upon their accounts, which appeared in media reports worldwide and is also reproduced here in this ShukerNature post with Sam's kind permission. He also established a dedicated website for documenting sightings. Suggestions as to what the Green Drive Beast might be as put forward by the general public ranged from a lost greyhound or an escapee wallaby to a mystery big cat, or even a far-from-home chupacabra! A number of wildlife experts were also consulted as to the creature’s likely identity, but were baffled, eventually suggesting that it may be a muntjac.

Reeves's muntjac (Margoz/Wikipedia)

Alternatively known as barking deer, muntjac are not native to Britain. However, escapee specimens from captivity of Reeves's muntjac Muntiacus reevesi (native to China) have established thriving populations in several regions of the country, and are notable for their large, fang-like canine teeth – an incongruous feature for deer. In general appearance, however, these small, elusive bambi-like animals display scant similarity to Green Drive’s mystery beast. Eventually, sightings and interest in the Green Drive enigma faded, but in September 2007 a very old, mange-ridden fox bearing a superficial resemblance to certain descriptions of the beast was captured there, reviving interest, and later being dubbed by the media as the correct explanation. Yet how a very sick, elderly fox found two years after the classic sightings of a much more vibrant, larger creature can be deemed to be one and the same as the latter is as mystifying as the beast itself. In any event, Sam’s stunning picture of the 2005 Green Drive Beast remains as vibrant testimony of its erstwhile existence, regardless of its identity.

The Green Drive Beast, clearly no muntjac! (© Sam Shearon)


A LAKE DISTRICT DEVA?
While visiting the Lake District, Cumbria, in June 1922, theosophist Geoffrey Hodson claimed to have witnessed an astonishing being that he believed to have been a deva or nature spirit. According to his description of what he had seen, it was an enormous bat-like entity, brilliant crimson in colour with a human face and burning piercing eyes that fixed themselves upon him as its wings stretched out over the mountainside, before sinking into the hillside and disappearing. It later reappeared before him, but now in much smaller form, this time standing a ‘mere’ 3-4 m high.


It’s not every day that you encounter a malevolent horse-man, a demonic horned cat, or a murderous vampire caterpillar in modern-day Britain, but as can be seen from the above accounts, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility either! So next time you’re out and about, keep your eyes open – sometimes, the unknown and the inexplicable can be a lot nearer than you think!

Sam Shearon, primary investigator of the Green Drive Beast (© Sam Shearon)