Thread by @OddThisDay

4 August! 446th anniversary of the documented and very real appearance of the Terrifying! Satanic! One-Eyed! ghost dog Black Shuck at two churches in Suffolk, where he wilfully murdered “two persons, as they were kneeling uppon their knees, and occupied in prayer”

We know this happened, because a pamphlet was published (which I haven’t been able to find a copy of, so I’ve put the text in an old-looking typeface). Apparently, at 9am, there was a huge thunderstorm, and the beast manifested himself at St Mary’s Church, Bungay

The dog, being, as he was, yer actual Satan, was not content with merely putting the frighteners on people https://t.co/nZRgDrZF47simonsherwood.co.uk/Bungay.htm

That wasn’t all, though. The story is taken up by Enid Porter in 1974’s The Folklore of East Anglia:

And, after that, for a bit of variety, he trotted off to Holy Trinity at Blythburgh, a few miles away, and

But we don’t just have to rely on eyewitness testimony – renowned though it is for its accuracy, especially at this historical distance – because the church door at Blythburgh still bears scorch and claw marks, known locally as THE DEVIL’S FINGERPRINTS

...and Enid reports that

William Dutt, in his 1901 work ‘Highways and Byways in East Anglia’, reports that the beast still visits the area, especially on “a stormy night”, for “he revels in the roaring of the waves and loves to raise his awful voice above the howling of the gale”

Now, you may be thinking by now that this is pure balls (not least because the incidents on 4 August began at 9am, rather than after dark), but William has an answer to that

...and if you’re thinking ‘shuck’ is a silly name, Walter Rye’s 1877 work The Norfolk Antiquarian Miscellany can explain why you should be much afeared

...and in ‘Folklore’ Vol. 122 No. 3, we learn that: “Fleming made the whole thing up. A Cambridge graduate, he was whiling away the wait for a benefice by writing the sort of tabloid Calvinism that mingled amazing phenomena with pious reflection”

Ahjstor.org/stable/41306607

Yes, of course it’s balls. “The one verifiable fact in his pamphlet is inaccurate; although two men died in the storm, they were not praying in the nave as Fleming states, but ringing bells in the tower.” The scorch marks on the church door were caused (probably) by lightning

In fact, rather like the “bone from the finger of our Lord” in Black Adder, which Baldrick thought “only came in boxes of ten”, there are, in fact, spectral hellhounds all over the bleedin’ place https://t.co/0o3kBwnc8M

The Black Dog of Uplyme, for example, “grew bigger and bigger as he went along, till he was as high as the trees by the roadside, and then seeming to swell into a large cloud, he vanished in the air” and was “greatly surpassing a hippopotamus” jstor.com/stable/1258857

Walter Rye points out that, even in Suffolk, the shaggy dog in question comes in a number of varieties

But when you’ve got a legend like that, and tourists to cater to, why would you print the facts? There’s a very good reason why the Bungay weathervane looks like this

In the vicinity, you can buy @blackshuckgin, @BlackShuckBooks (“Publishing the Peculiar since 2015”), and – of course – local boys @thedarkness immortalised the gigantic hound in song

@blackshuckgin @BlackShuckBooks @thedarkness (We’re going to skate over the fact that ‘Folklore’ Vol. 122 No. 3 described them as “a kind of herring-flavoured Spinal Tap”, because that’s clearly outrageous heresy)

@blackshuckgin @BlackShuckBooks @thedarkness So, get yourself to Bungay, try some of the beer from @StPetersBrewery while you’re there, and look out for...

[sniggers behind hand at illustration]

@blackshuckgin @BlackShuckBooks @thedarkness @StPetersBrewery ...and, if you like, amuse yourself with this fine example of A Headline To Which The Answer Is No from exactly the newspaper you’d expect dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2…

@blackshuckgin @BlackShuckBooks @thedarkness @StPetersBrewery ...or you could try this, from a more upmarket outlet newstatesman.com/quickfire/2023…