This is a story that occurs in the United Kingdom. The writer is unknown. It is centered around some British folklore of an entity called the black Shuck. I can't remember what time of year it was, but judging by the scenery and what I was doing, it must have been the end of summer or the cusp of autumn. I can be confident that I was on one of the longer school holidays. Children are given much to the dismay of parents
everywhere. Because my girlfriend of the time had been sent to stay with her nan in a small market town almost twenty miles away from where we lived, her mom and dad diligently limited our time together. We were young teenagers, full of eagerness to act on our own natural drives, and they had good reason. When I received a written message from my girlfriend cell phones were not a thing yet, letting me know that she was not under the watchful of
her parents. A twenty mile bike ride didn't seem like much of a barrier to some alone time children had more freedom back then, I had more than most. Being the fifth of six children, my parents had most likely had enough of parenting by the time it came to me and my little sister. My independent nature and my ability to stay out of trouble meant the arrangement was agreeable for everyone concerned. So with a backpack containing a sleeping bag and a
change of clothes, I headed off to visit my girlfriend. England is a relatively small place, lined with narrow lanes and dotted over with farmhouses and small villages. There's always a place to stop and have a bite to eat. There isn't much there to depose a danger to a bicyclist or a hiker, except perhaps stinging nettle that'll give you an itchy rash for an hour or so. But otherwise I didn't feel as though I had anything to worry about.
As I made my way cross country to the village of Bungye. The twenty miles seemed to pass quickly as I rode through the landscape that had changed very little since the days when the Romans ruled to Britain, and soon I found myself on a country road too narrow for two cars to pass, and it was separated from a farmer's fence by an overgrown grass verge enveloped in cow parsley,
blunt leaf dock and the chalky stems of yellow fennel. Norfolk is exceptionally flat, and so I was given an unhindered view of the sunset from the moment it touched the horizon until it slipped quietly behind it. And to my right the world was all shadows and silhouettes outlined against the sun, and to my left the fields were reflecting the amber rays and casting a sinister paul over
the countryside. While I was wishing I had a camera, I slowed down to enjoy the sight, and that's when I became aware of a metallic sound. I think I had been hearing it for a while but had subconsciously put it down to something caught in the spokes of my bike. Now, as I slowed, the soft, metallic clanking had not changed. I looked back over the flat landscape, but I couldn't find anything natural or otherwise that could
have been making that sound. Unfortunately, I had recently read Algernon in Blackwood's The wind Togo, and though it held very little resemblance to what we are told today that what a Windigo looks like, it is one of the few books I've read that truly scared me. That, combined with my natural fear of dark and time of day, and my location far from any man made
light sent fear sweeping over me in the form of panic. With a mental image of the wind to go, rising up from behind the overgrown fence line and sprinting at me with ungodly speed, I pushed off with steely determination to reach the well lit safety of my girlfriend's NaN's brick home. As I raced along in the fading light, the metallic sound stayed with me, and at a very short period it changed from clanking to that of a dog's claws on
the pavement. I was hoping that was the case, and I looked back, half expecting to see a dog like my German shepherd at home, ambling down the road behind me, but again there was nothing in sight. I'm deaf in one ear, and as such I'm used to being misled by sound, identifying it or placing its distance and direction, or much more difficult with only one good ear. But still this was a familiar noise. Whether I
was able to identify the source or not. The absence of sunlight was doing nothing to counteract the chill that had swept over me, but the knowledge that it was a sound I knew helped to provide some calm, as if to punish me for relaxing, the sound of something big came from the long grass and tall plants on the verge. The dry sound of moving grass and folding stems softened the clank of a short chain being dragged over the hidden fence.
I whipped my head around, expecting to see an animal that I thought had come out of the field and should have been standing on the verge behind me, But nothing was there. An electric prickle slid up my back and raised the hair off my neck. The road was empty, but I saw the silhouette of a pair of long, narrow dogears keeping pace with me in the
field. The animal's head wasn't bobbing, so I knew it didn't have to try to keep up with me. I could see the top of its head and the brakes of the tall grass, and it seemed to know I was looking at it, because it folded its ears and ducked its head lower. That chilled prickle made a home in the center of my chest, and it tightened my lungs and made the air hit cold in the back of my throat.
My heart started thumping against my rib cage as if it wanted to break out of its organic prison, and it pushed icy blood around my body, and instinctively I knew the situation was unnatural. My legs were already pumping as hard as my heart while my head swiveled between the narrow road ahead and the animal moving along the fence. If I had seen the thing's head level with
the tops of the grass, it had to be five feet tall. Now that I knew what I was looking at and where it was, I could see its thick, heavy muzzle and long black body between the thinner patches of the grass. Somehow I found more speed, but that didn't help. It increased its gait to trot and keep pace with me. I was pelting along faster than I'd ever bike before or since, and all this dog had to
do to keep up was trot. Fear was pushing me beyond my limits, and the voice of reason was a distant whisper in my mind between telling me it was just a horse or a deer. But I knew in reality it was an unnatural creature and I had no chance of escaping. An animal that size could leap over the fence and catch me if it wanted to, and there was nothing I could do to stop that. I could hear the animal's pause, padding through the dirt, and the rhythmic jangling of a chain as
it lazily started to close the gap between us. On the very few occasions when I had been forced to seek control of my body to the fight or flight response, I had been amazed at the number of tiny details that autopilot
is able to pick up on and factor into a snap decision. And even now I can clearly picture the vista ahead of me as I approached the small humpback bridge spanning a narrow stream with three foot deep banks flanking it, And although I couldn't see the road immediately beyond the hump of the bridge, I could see the hedge rows bordering the generous gardens of scatterings of cottages built along
the winding road. There was a slight downward gradient that probably passes as a hill around here, and it allowed me to see the roof of a car weaving its way toward the bridge at a speed. The holmes in site were all on the right side, with open fields on the left, and that meant the dog wouldn't have any overgrown grass to stay behind after it crossed the stream, and thinking that the dog would choose to pounce on me. After clearing the end of the bridge, I dug deep and pushed out enough effort
to increase my speed or fraction As I crested the humpbacked bridge. As my tires left the tarmac where it was gouged by unwary drivers who had bottomed out, I saw that the road took a sharp turn to the left a little beyond the foot of the bridge. I cleared most of it and landed already leaning hard to the right to make the turn and happy that it would take me further away from the dog. But as I rounded the corner, I saw a large, unreasonably spiky piece of farm equipment sitting by a large gate
that opened out onto the fields. Still in mid turn, I remembered there was also a car coming fast that in all probability hadn't seen me coming over the hump of the bridge, and if I stayed on the road, I would be hit by the car, And if I kept pulling left to get off the road, I'd be secured on the blue crescent shape still spikes belonging to the tractor trailer, and to the right I saw a well kept privet
hedge belonging to the first cottage along this road. Although I hadn't glanced back since I had noticed the deep gouges in the tarmac at the crest of the bridge, I imagined the large dog running alongside me, just on the other side of the manicured hedge. I had nothing to do with the choice made. It was all instinct, and I jerked the handlebars to the left and tensed my arms and shoulders as a wall of green hiding the field's boundary hurtled
toward me. Before I hit anything, the front wheel snapped around beyond ninety degrees and I was catapulted off the saddle. In the air, I made contact with something hard enough to bounce off and tumble along the verge before coming
to rest uncomfortably on my overstuffed pack. I sat up just in time to see the car going by and breaking hard for the bridge, And given all the details I can recall from that moment, it vexes me to and that I cannot recall the color of that car, the big dark face opposite me that had pushed itself through the hedge across the narrow road, however, will stay with me forever. With my legs blade out in front of me, I felt the stiff stems of the tall grass between my fingers as I propped
myself upright. I could have reached out and grabbed the painted blue spikes of the trailer beside me if I wanted to use it to haul myself off the ground, But I was locked in place by the gaze of an unnaturally large dog. Yellow eyes glimmered at me with their own luminescence in the half light, and a heavy muzzle that wouldn't look out of place on a mastiff barely concealed the bulge of hidden fangs atop its large, square head. Two long,
narrow ears were trained on me along with its unblinking gaze. I could one leg planted firmly under its massive body, and I'm glad its paws were lost in the slightly overgrown edges of the cottage's lawn, because I think even a hint of tooth or claws would have pushed me to the breaking point. A heavy coal black chain hung beside the one leg that I could see, but I couldn't honestly say I saw much more of the animal. Hot tears welled up in my eyes as the bumps and bruises I got from the tumble
began to ache, and I thought it was the end of me. At that moment, the giant dog, not ten meters away from me started to shrink. As if my encounter didn't sound unbelievable already, I promise you, the dog stood statue still and began to shrink. I know it doesn't make much sense to say this, but the shrinking didn't look real. It looked like a bad special effect from a cheap TV show. As it got smaller, well, I didn't move at all. It wasn't getting further away.
It shrank, and somehow it became wrong. I know that it isn't incredibly poor descriptive, but the comparison to low budget TV show effects is the best I can muster for what I saw that evening. In a scant few seconds,
I couldn't see the dog anymore. An instinct relinquished control of my body, and I sat there for a while trying to normalize my breathing and stopped trembling, And all too soon the growing darkness encouraged me to make haste to where my girlfriend was staying, I chose not to tell her what had happened. I told her that I had fallen off my bike and there was no need to worry. She was used to seeing me looking weather worn and road
weary. After a mug of tea and a generous slice of k I all but forgot about the dog and concentrated on enjoying my girlfriend's company, and all too soon my girl our friend's nand politely reminded me that it was getting too late for a young lady to have a male visitor. Unfortunately, my return trip was mundane. Not much time passed before I put my encountered down to my fear of the dark. Feeding my imagination, I decided it was a
deer that had startled me. Maybe something did stick its head through the hedge and stare at me. But a lot of people keep goats. They're great at slipping out of their pens or off their chains. But it wasn't until the Internet took off many years later that I came across the story of the Black Shuck, and I began to entertain the idea that I could have seen
a supernatural hound. The United Kingdom has plenty of mythological creatures to call upon a wealth of homegrown legends mixed with those brought to our tiny island by raiders and conquerors over the millennia. We are small, but we're not densely populated, and even so what we refer to as a vast open space might only constitute a large backyard in other countries. That's why I raise an eyebrow whenever
someone insists the UK has its own large, cryptid running about. What I can start to believe is the many black dog stories that have been around since time immemorial and the big cat sightings that have been common since the nineteen seventies. Black dog stories have been a mainstay of legends and myths from Scotland to
Wales and across the Irish Seat to Ireland. The town of Burnby has its own tale of a black dog called the Black Shuck, and it stretches back to the fourth of August fifteen seventy seven, when darkness, rain, hail and lightning as was never seen. The light sent the townspeople to the church to pray for a reprieve from the tempest. Lightning struck church and a black dog broke down the door with a bestial hatred and a disregard for God.
All down the church in the midst of fire, the hellish monster flew, and passing onward to the choir he many people slew. After killing two people, the dog of death, burning with the wrathful head of hell fire, vanished. It then apparently traveled twelve miles to the Holy Trinity Church in Blibrah, where it killed more of the faithful. Saint Mary's Church has a tower damaged by lightning that now sports and iron weather vane with a black dog running
on a lightning boat. The Holy Trinity Church at Blibrah has burned marks on its ancient doors that were apparently left behind by the baleful heat of the black Shuck's claws. Thanks to a little research, I have discovered many people all over Suffolk and Norfolk and the black Shucks stories to tell. A good handful of them account hearing a dog padding along the road close by and dragging a
chain, but there is no dog to be seen. Those that do see something report sizes from a normal dog to something like a small pony, and a couple of people even say they watch the dogs shrink and then vanish. The legend of the Black Shuck claims that if you see the dog, you will die within a year. Well, I'm fine, and so is everyone else that reported seeing the black Shuck. But just like me, many of
those people had a brush with death. If I hadn't been peddling hard to get away from the dog following me, I would have come over the humpbacked bridge without seeing that car coming, and I would have been hit by it or veered off the road straight into the spiky tractor trailer. Perhaps then the black Shuck is there to protect the lonely wanderer on East Anglias back roads and in its woods. If not, then it is a sister harbinger of pending
disaster, waiting for our soul's release from its mortal vessel. Still an escort, but a shepherd of a very different kind. It has a chain around its neck, so that makes me think this dog is domesticated. The dogs are called a man's best friends for countless very good reasons, and I can't help but wonder about that chain. Though. If the black shut is a domesticated animal, what sort of creature does a giant black dog call master