Welcome to #WeirdScienceWednesday! I am here to talk about the strange and unusual because let’s face it, I am strange and unusual lol Paranormal, aliens, conspiracies, Bigfoot… I am here to bring you some information! Enlighten you… maybe make you a new believer! I have studied all things weird since I was 8 years old. It’s time I shared my knowledge with SOMEONE!

The myth of the Black Dog

I am sure most of you have watched the movie Black Dog with Patrick Swayze. In the starting plot of the movie, he lost his trucker’s license and ended up in prison because he “saw the black dog” and crashed his truck into a vehicle that was broken down on the side of the road while falling asleep. He told everyone that the black dog had come for him through hallucination brought on by exhaustion. However, it was common trucker’s mythology that if you saw the black dog, “death was near” and you either wrecked your truck or killed someone. But where exactly did they get the idea for this small tendril of a myth in the movie? From Great Britain, of course!

A larger than normal dog with glowing eyes is what is most commonly reported for the Black Dog. Most commonly seen during electrical storms, at crossroads, places of execution, and ancient pathways, the Black Dog has a lot of ancient ideologies associated with death and is strictly seen at night. This is one reason it is called the death dog.

The legend/folk tale/myth of the black dog is indeterminate in origin. Some speculate Germanic origins and others speculate Celtic origins. Dogs had long been heralded by indigenous people throughout the years in ancient civilizations and on through modern as omens of the death and the visage of the Underworld. In Ancient Egypt, Anubis was the guardian of the Underworld and his effigy that was built by the Egyptians was that of an upright dog. The perpetuated belief of dogs being guardians of the Underworld very similar as to why condors, vultures, and other birds that feast on carrion are revered by indigenous people even today, such as Native American folklore. Dogs were considered to be scavengers. Scavengers helped carry your body off to the afterlife through a circle of life. A vulture feasts on carrion and then flies the soul into the heavens. Dogs dig holes and bury the bones; ashes to ashes, so to speak.

These beliefs evolved throughout time, and of course with religious persecutions of beliefs outside of the patriarchy set by the Roman Catholic Church, polytheistic and paganistic ideologies in folklore were demonized. The Black Dog turned from a guardian of the underworld that helped carry your soul into the afterlife into a scary omen of death. Many tales of the Black Dog mention how viscous the dogs are and to beware them. This can also be a deep seated root in the fear of death that evolved into a myth on its own as well outside of religious contempt. Many people fear death, and a hallucination of the Black Dog- entailing your death to come- could be seen as your own fear of the acceptance of your time to let go.

The Gurt Dog in Somerset and the Black Dog of the Hanging Hills Connecticut are believed to be benevolent apparitions of the Black Dog, whereas most of the time they are sinister or malevolent in nature- typically seen as “hellhounds” and most likely where the mythology of hellhounds originated.

I, myself, have never witnessed a black dog (I have witnessed shadows of the night). Have you ever seen the Black Dog and lived to tell about it?