Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside. Brad Steiger
Читать онлайн книгу.
moved en masse, leaving their homes, the school, and the cannery. In 1950, the post office closed.
Naomi Klouda of the Homer Tribune (October 26, 2009) interviewed Malania Kehl, the eldest resident in Nanwalek, who was born in Port Chatham in 1934 and who remembers how the entire village left everything behind to escape the Nantiinaq. It was her uncle who had been killed with the piece of logging equipment. Once the people of Port Chatham left their community, Malania said, the Nantiinaq stayed far away from them and left them in peace.
According to Sugt’stun culture, the Nantiinaq may once have been fully human, but now, through some events not understood, he is a different kind of creature—half-man, half-beast.
BLACK DOGS THAT HERALD DISASTER
According to an old story often told in England, there was a terrifying thunderstorm that descended on Bungay on Sunday, August 4, 1577. The storm transformed the day into a darkness, rain, hail, thunder, and lightning beyond all imagining. Fearing the worst, a number of the townsfolk had gathered in St. Mary’s Church to pray for mercy.
As the lore tells it, it was while the people knelt in fear and prayed for deliverance, that a large black Hell Hound manifested suddenly in their midst. Without any challenge from the cowering congregation, the massive black hound charged many members of the church with its terrible claws and large fangs. According to a verse taken from a pamphlet published by Rev. Abraham Fleming in 1577: All down the church in midst of fire, the hellish monster flew… . And passing onward to the quire, he many people slew.
After the Hell Hound had finished ravishing St. Mary’s Church and chewing up a good number of its members, tradition has it that the creature next appeared in Blyth-burgh Church. Its appetite for human flesh had merely been whetted by its attack on the people of Bungay, for it viciously mauled and killed more churchgoers at Blythburgh.
According to the accounts of the Hell Hound’s attack at Bungay, the beast used more than its teeth and claws to kill. Fleming testified that in some instances, the monster wrung the necks of two churchgoers at the same time, one victim in each of its paws as it stood upright.
At Blytheburg, the Hell Hound burst through the church doors, ran into the nave, and then dashed up the aisle, killing a man and boy. In addition to leaving bodies strewn about before it departed the church, the monster left numerous scorch marks about the church—marks, which people swear, can still be seen to this day.
Tales of Black Hell Hounds seem to abound in the British Isles. Below, popular author and researcher Nick Redfern recounts a number of ghostly dogs that haunt British woods. Redfern can be contacted at his blogs: http://www.ufomystic.com and http://monsterusa.blogspot.com.
BY NICK REDFERN
In his definitive book Explore Phantom Black Dogs, English author and researcher Bob Trubshaw wrote: “The folklore of phantom black dogs is known throughout the British Isles. From the Black Shuck of East Anglia to the Mauthe Dhoog of the Isle of Man there are tales of huge spectral hounds ‘darker than the night sky’ with eyes ‘glowing red as burning coals.’ The phantom black dog of British and Irish folklore, which often forewarns of death, is part of a world-wide belief that dogs are sensitive to spirits and the approach of death, and keep watch over the dead and dying. North European and Scandinavian myths dating back to the Iron Age depict dogs as corpse eaters and the guardians of the roads to hell. Medieval folklore includes a variety of ‘Devil dogs’ and spectral hounds.”
And while the image that the devil dog or phantom hound conjures up is that of a sinister beast prowling the villages and towns of centuries-old England, it is a little known fact outside of students of the phenomenon that sightings of such creatures continue to surface to this very day.
According to the accounts of the Hell Hound’s attack at Bungay, the beast used more than its teeth and claws to kill.
Interestingly, one area that seems to attract more than its fair share of such encounters is a sprawling mass of dense forest in central England known as the Cannock Chase—a strange and eerie location that has also been the site of numerous encounters with UFOs, Bigfoot-like entities and strangely-elusive “Big Cats.” Indeed, among the folk of the many small villages that sit on the fringes of the Chase—or that, in some cases, can be found deep within its wooded depths—tales of the diabolical hounds of hell are disturbingly common.
Late one evening in early 1972, a man named Nigel Lea was driving across the Chase when his attention was suddenly drawn to a strange ball of glowing, blue light that slammed into the ground some distance ahead of his vehicle, and amid a veritable torrent of bright, fiery sparks. Needless to say, Lea quickly slowed his car down; and as he approached the approximate area where the light had fallen, was shocked and horrified to see looming before him, “the biggest bloody dog I have ever seen in my life.”
Muscular and black, with large, pointed ears and huge paws, the creature seemed to positively ooze menace and negativity, and had a wild, staring look in its yellow-tinged eyes. For twenty or thirty seconds, man and beast alike both faced each other, after which time the “animal” slowly and cautiously headed for the tall trees, never once taking its penetrating eyes off of the petrified driver. Somewhat ominously, and around two or three weeks later, says Lea, a close friend of his was killed in an industrial accident under horrific circumstances; something which Lea believes—after having deeply studied the history of Black Dog lore—was directly connected with his strange encounter on that tree-shrouded road back in 1972.
Throughout the British Isles, there are tales of huge spectral hounds “darker than the night sky” with eyes “glowing red as burning coals.” The phantom black dog of British and Irish folklore, often forewarns of death (art by Bill Oliver).
In the early to mid 1980s, reports began to surface from the Cannock Chase of something that became known as the “Ghost Dog of Brereton”—a reference to the specific locale from where most of the sightings originated. Yet again, the dog was described as being both large and menacing, and on at least two occasions it reportedly vanished into thin air after having been seen by terrified members of the public on lonely stretches of road late at night.
In direct response to an article that appeared in the Cannock Advertiser newspaper during the winter of 1984–85 on the sightings of Brereton’s infamous ghost dog, a member of the public from a local village wrote to the newspaper thus:
“On reading the article my husband and I were astonished. We recalled an incident which happened in July some four or five years ago driving home from a celebration meal at the Cedar Tree restaurant at about 11:30 P.M. We had driven up Coal Pit Lane and were just on the bends before the approach to the Holly Bush when, from the high hedge of trees on the right hand side of the road, the headlights picked out a misty shape which moved across the road and into the trees opposite.”
The writer continued:
“We both saw it. It had no definite shape seeming to be a ribbon of mist about 18 inches to 2 feet in depth and perhaps 9 or 10 feet long with a definite beginning and end. It was a clear, warm night with no mist anywhere else. We were both rather stunned and my husband’s first words were: ‘My goodness! Did you see that?’ I remember remarking I thought it was a ghost. Until now we had no idea of the history of the area or any possible explanation for a haunting. Of course, this occurrence may be nothing to do with the ‘ghost dog’ or may even have a natural explanation. However, we formed the immediate impression that what we saw was something paranormal.”
Possibly relative to the tale of the ghost dog of Brereton was the story of a man named Ivan