CRYPTOLINK: Cornish black dogs

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from the excellent Fortean Wikidot website

Few areas of the UK are as deeply swathed in myth and mysticism as Cornwall.

And this week’s CCN Fortean Report moves on from modern-day UFO sightingsto one of the great popular spook stories of all time – the accursed ‘Black Dog’.

Sightings of ghostly Black Dogs in the Duchy were interpreted either as portents of death, apparitions from the ‘other side’, simple manifestations of evil, or the embodiment of Satan himself.

Sometimes the ethereal visions turned out to be nothing more than forlorn lost farm dogs, and village hysteria would be ended abruptly by a no-nonsense farmer going and catching the errant beast.

But other bizarre sightings continue to fascinate to this day.

Superstitious tales of devil-dogs flourished in Cornwall’s thriving mining and maritime communities, so our first this week, and one of the most widely known, is the much-feared ‘Black Dog of Penzance Harbour’.

Read on...