From here in Britain, it can be easy to assume that supernatural 'black dogs' are a primarily British phenomenon. Most areas of the country you visit have their own local names for the unpleasant creatures, and we even have pubs named in their dubious honour. One was immortalised in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.
The Beast of Bhavnagar
People can only know me for so long before I inevitably ask them if they've ever had any encounters with the paranormal. I met Valerie (pseudonym) a couple of years ago and we've grown very close since then. She asked me about UFOs, and I started explaining my research into the topic. It was at this point that she volunteered to tell the story of a strange experience she'd had as a child.
Valerie grew up in the city of Bhavnagar in the Indian state of Gujarat. In the early 2000s (probably 2005), she remembers sitting on a jhula swingset in the back garden outside her family's house. On the other side of the garden was another swingset owned by the neighbours, backed up by a tall wall. She cannot recall whether anyone else was outside in the garden with her at the time, but she knows that there was at least someone else in the house - possibly one of her grandparents or her sister.
All of a sudden, something came over the wall behind the neighbour's swingset. Valerie described it to me as misty in texture, comparable to a cloud. It was in the shape of a dog or other four-legged animal, "very black and void-like". The spectral animal seemed to jump over the wall into the garden at great speed. Shortly after hitting the ground, the entity vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Valerie was young enough at the time that she couldn't "describe what [she] saw or make sense of it". She told herself that she might've just been dizzy or had some kind of waking dream. She remembers being "disturbed" by it, but deciding not to tell anyone else about it for fear that she wouldn't be believed or would be mocked [1].
Phantom hounds are not nearly as prevalent in India as they are in western Eurasia, but there are some mentions of spirits in the form of black dogs in religious lore. The Mahākanha Jātaka of the Pali Canon tells of how the god Sakka saw that mankind had fallen into a state of wickedness, and so he came to Earth with another god in the form of a fearsome black dog with tusks and chains around its body. He came to the city of Varanasi and pronounced the world doomed, allowing the monstrous hound to chase its residents.
Before returning to his heavenly abode, Sakka and his dog went to king Usīnara of Varanasi. The dog roared with rage, and the king ordered the monster fed. The dog ate all the food in the city and was still hungry, at which point Sakka told the people that the hound would devour all those who lived in unrighteousness.
To punish men, Usīnara, when I shall let him loose."
Terrified into following the teachings of the Buddha once more, the population was saved from their fate at the jaws of the hellhound. Sakka revealed himself to be the King of the Gods, before disappearing back up into his otherworldly home [2].
UFO Road-Rage at Vereeniging
It was late at night on December 13th of 1963 when the police phone-lines in the Vereeniging district of the Gauteng Province of South Africa lit up with reports of strange lights in the sky. A dazzling object was seen passing over Keyterskloof, roughly 20 miles northeast of Vereeniging city proper.
One Mr. Gericke, working on a farm near Keyterskloof, saw a "fiery object travelling low over the horizon" that night. He said that it lit up the whole surrounding area as it seemed to disintegrate, before disappearing with "a tremendous bang". The official explanation is given as a meteor. Shortly afterwards, two men approached the Afrikaans newspaper Die Brandwaag to tell their story, which suggests a different explanation for the eerie lights.
These men were Leslie Immelman and WT Muller. Early in the morning on the 14th, they had been driving along Potchefstroom Road towards Vereeniging and were about 50 miles away from the city. They were unaware of the UFO wave then hitting the surrounding area. Leslie was a sworn skeptic of "ghosts, fairies and any such nonsense", but that was about to change.
As they raced along the dark road, they passed something large and out of place in the road. Leslie later said that he initially thought it was a buck, and he impelled Muller to turn the car around so that they could look at it. They soon found that it was an "exceptionally large dog". Turning again to drive away from the strange dog, both men were stunned when the area around them was suddenly lit up as bright as daylight.
This shock quickly turned to panic as a glowing object appeared ahead of them, moving towards their car at enormous speed. Instantly sensing that the UFO was going to collide with their vehicle, both passengers fled the car in terror. As they stood beside their car, the light dove down over their car before ascending again at a breakneck pace.
Swinging like a pendulum, the object then turned back on itself and made another pass over the car. This time it hovered in place for a moment, bathing the road in its unearthly light. It stood still in the air roughly 50ft above the vehicle, and Leslie could see it clearly enough to describe it in detail.
It was round in shape, and approximately 50ft in diameter. It glowed an incandescent orange, with a blue light on one end, which seemed to emit a fiery tail of electrical-looking sparks. It was this light that was responsible for lighting up the surrounding environment. The object was accompanied by a gentle humming sound and no noticeable heat.
Turning to his companion in amazement, Leslie asked Muller if he was seeing the same thing, to which he responded in the affirmative: "Yes, but I don't believe it!"
Like a bullet from a gun, the object then shot away from the witnesses once again - travelling extremely rapidly southeast towards Parys before changing course northwest towards Potchefstroom. It made another pendulum swing down towards the terrified pair's car, and actually repeated this daring manoeuvre "five or six times" - each time "swooping low over us only to disappear into the distance".
Leslie and Muller had decided to keep their experience to themselves until they saw the coverage of the bizarre 'meteor' flap at Keyterskloof. Both men later swore statements before a Commissioner of Oaths to say that their testimony was "gospel truth", as Leslie later put it.
About six days later, on Friday the 20th of that month, residents of Krugersdorp (some 47 miles away from Vereeniging) were awoken by two defeaning explosions and an unexplained bright light. One Mrs. A Stoop says she heard a bang coming from an easterly direction at about 3am that morning, before seeing a blue luminous object "swinging... to and fro" over the town. This phenomenon lasted for about a minute before subsiding [3].
Conclusion
The latter story might appear to have very little do to with black dog folklore, but I contend that it is relevant to this specific category of zooform phenomena. A black dog reported from Budleigh Hill in Somerset was said to have gone "up in the air like a flash of fire" when it reached a stream of running water that it presumably could not cross. Another case from Dartmoor in Devon describes a shaggy canine entity that disappeared with a dazzling flash of light and the sound of an explosion [4].
Black dogs and other phantom hounds are found all across Eurasia and the Americas, with examples being known from as far afield as China and Guatemala. It seems likely that they are connected with the frequent mythological appearances of dogs as psychopomps, accompanying the souls of the dead. This archetype is not only present in Eurasia with famous examples like the Greek Kérberos and the Norse Garmr, but is also found in the lore of American civilisations such as the Aztecs and the Mayan Téenek people [5].
Sources
1. Personal correspondence.
2. Translated by Rouse, WHD. (1901) 'Jataka 469: Mahā-Kaṇha-jātaka' in The Jataka, Vol. 1V. https://sacred-texts.com/bud/j4/j4033.htm
3. ‘On the Road to Vereeniging’ (1964) Flying Saucer Review, 10 (3), pp. 27–28. Translated by P.J. Human.
4. Bord, J. and Bord, C. (1985) ‘Chapter Three: Mysterious Black Dogs’, in Alien Animals: A Worldwide Investigation. HarperCollins, pp. 80–108.
5. Cutchin, J. (2022) ‘Chapter Two: Psychopomps’, in Ecology of Souls: A New Mythology of Death and the Paranormal - Volume One. Horse & Barrel Press, pp. 47–72.
