Читать книгу Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside - Brad Steiger - Страница 49

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.