Except they fall out easy, because they're ghosts and just kinda float through things. Well, at least until we come up with a good treatment for sleep paralysis.įun fact: Hellhounds love car rides, just like regular dogs. Tales of ghost dogs have been floating around England for hundreds of years, and I’m willing to bet they’ll be around for hundreds more. But why would reports of the hellhound be largely consistent? Well, folklore is a powerful thing, even for a child, especially when it’s terrifying. Some people like Sherwood even hallucinate and see a giant black dog, for example. This would explain why Sherwood was unable to scream at first, then eventually recovered his voice. Should you wake up, though, and your muscles don’t immediately kick back into gear, you can feel paralyzed and probably quite a bit panicked. >Tales of ghost dogs have been floating around England for hundreds of years, and I’m willing to bet they’ll be around for hundreds more.ĭuring REM sleep, your muscles are so relaxed that they're essentially worthless (which, by the way, may be an evolutionary trick to keep you from acting out your dreams and injuring yourself). Not being able to speak or move while still seemingly conscious is a classic symptom of sleep paralysis, which happens when the brain and the body are out of sync during sleep. There’s a very important clue here, which Sherwood himself quite rightly recognizes (he goes on to uncritically report other more paranormal and impossible potential causes of the phenomenon, but whatever). (I'll be referring to it as the hellhound from here on out, because that best encompasses all of the versions out there.) But why is this myth so widespread? And how can we explain why so many people have claimed to have seen the hound? And it’s not just England that the hellhound stalks-similar tales can be found all over the world. Depending on the observer, it can also be white or yellow it rarely speaks but sometimes laughs every once in a while it’s missing its head completely and a few have been known to shapeshift. It was a hound that goes by many names: black shuck, the hellhound, black jack, gallytrot.

“It had very large, very red eyes, which glowed from inside as if lit up,” she later recounted, “and as it looked at me I was quite terrified, and very much aware of the creature’s breath, which was warm and strong as a gust of wind.” But before it had reached the door, it vanished. Then, out of the corner of her eye, a massive black dog appeared and trotted in front of her, turning its head to stare at her as it passed between the bed and the window. Sitting on edge of her bed, fiddling with its ornamental knobs and staring out the window, the girl heard a scratching noise. At the height of World War II, a four-year-old British girl was sent to bed but could not sleep.

Dogs see spirits