Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Blythburgh

To most Americans, history goes back hundreds of years. What occurred before the founding of the United States? Who knows? And does it really matter?

Residents of England take a longer view. Histories extend not just hundreds of years into the past, but thousands. Take Blythburgh in the county of Suffolk for example. The local church, Holy Trinity, has stood for over a thousand years. It has survived the ravages of war, the weather, and changes of religious beliefs that have stripped many East Anglian churches of great portions of their history.

Once, it even survived an attack by a savage, ghostly animal.

The first documented sighting of the Black Shuck occurred in the twelfth century, perhaps around the time Holy Trinity was built. Four centuries later, in 1577, locals reported that the satanic dog broke through the front door during a worship service. Within sight of the entire congregation, the Black Shuck killed a man and a boy. So ferocious was its attack that the church steeple collapsed. 

Naturally, today's more scientific minds, who seek to discredit the supernatural, claim a storm hit the area, and lightning struck the steeple. Who are you going to believe? An entire congregation who witnessed the tragedy, or modern revisionists? 

Countless stories have been lost to time. Yet the exploits of Sherlock Holmes endure forever. Foremost of those is The Hound of the Baskervilles. Could some of its timeless allure be due to the legendary Black Shuck, a spectral creature that haunted the Norfolk and Suffolk counties of East Anglia, as well as Dartmoor and more distant reaches of the British Isles?

Two things we know for certain. Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, became an ardent spiritualist in his later years. And Holy Trinity Church in Blythburgh, England, no longer has a steeple.

Dragon Dave