Show Notes
On August 4, 1577, a violent storm descended on the English countryside.
Then something entered the church.
Witnesses described an enormous black dog tearing through the congregation, allegedly killing two people before disappearing into the storm. At another church twelve miles away, a remarkably similar story was unfolding.
The creature would become known as Black Shuck—a massive phantom hound said to stalk the lonely roads, marshes, and coastlines of East Anglia. Seeing it could mean death. Looking into its eyes could be worse.
But behind the legend is something even stranger: medieval accounts of spectral hounds, smugglers who may have deliberately kept the stories alive, the skeleton of an enormous dog unearthed near the site of the attacks, and a legend that helped inspire one of Sherlock Holmes' most famous cases.
Tonight, we're hunting the Devil's hound.
Welcome to Day Four of 31 Days of Halloween
More from Haunted American History
In February 1927, William Fuld fell to his death from the roof of his factory in Baltimore.
In the winter of 1590, an elderly Scottish healer named Agnes Sampson was brought before King James VI of Scotland.
In 1967, the RMS Queen Mary arrived in Long Beach, California, after more than three decades crossing the Atlantic.
In Savannah, Georgia, ghost stories are everywhere.
On November 13, 1974, a young man ran into a bar in Amityville, New York, shouting that his parents had been shot.