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BLACK DEMON DOG see below for more spooky links
The appearance and characteristics of Black Shuck vary from
place to place. He seems to
emerge from his secret lair only at dusk, and is usually described as a shaggy
creature the size of a calf, easily recognisable by his saucer-sized eyes (or
sometimes eye) weeping green or red fire. In Suffolk, Black Shuck is believed to be fairly harmless if left alone, but when challenged he may strike his aggressor senseless and death usually follows. At Clopton Hall near Stowmarket, where he guards a hoard of gold, his appearance is especially frightening for he has the body of a monk and the head of a hound.
In Bungay the black dog again appeared in church, bringing havoc with him. He departed leaving two dead worshippers, strangled at their prayers and another “as shrunken as a piece of leather scorched in a hot fire”. The Norfolk Shuck is a more sinister hound, more akin to the diabolical werewolves which haunted this area in the Middle Ages. He is an awful creature, as black as ebony, whose fiendish howls have been heard above the shrieks of the wildest gales. Even to-day motorists have reported swerving to avoid the hellhound crossing the road. The Essex Shuck however is a kindly hound and has been known to protect travellers on lonely roads. The Cambridgeshire Shuck, like his Norfolk counterpart, is both diabolical and sinister. Those who encounter him should look the other way, since his appearance is said to warn of death in the family.
British folk law & more on demon dogs
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Uncanny
black dogs are no strangers to East Anglia, as demon dogs have haunted different
parts of England, and particularly East Anglia, for over a thousand years. In
the eastern counties, the spectral hound is generally known as Black Shuck or
Old Shuck; the term “shuck“ coming from scucca, the Anglo-Saxon for
demon.
The Devil, in the form
of a black dog, once disrupted a service in the 15th Century
Blythburgh Church of the Holiday Trinity. On Sunday, 4th August,
1577, a strange and terrible tempest struck the church, toppled the spire
through the roof so that it shattered the font, killed three people and badly scorched others in the congregation. It was known that this was a visitation
of the Devil because the clawmarks were discovered on the door through which he
rushed towards Bungay.