Jon Downes, of the monster-hunting Centre for Fortean Zoology, took a more skeptical approach and suspected that the animal was indeed a large dog, and that the seeming ability of the creature to shape-shift resulted from nothing stranger than the technical limitations of the camera that was used to capture the shots. The dog angle was also championed by the U.K.’s Daily Mail newspaper. Its staff spoke with a local woman, Lucinda Reid, who believed that what had been photographed was actually her pet Newfoundland dog, Troy! Certainly, Troy, like all Newfoundland’s, was a formidable and sizable animal. As evidence, he weighed in at just under 170 pounds.
Reid told the Daily Mail: “I was in stitches when I read that someone thought Troy was the Beast of Dartmoor. I spotted it was him right away—you can tell by the shape and the way he is walking. We go up to that spot on Dartmoor all the time. It is only ten minutes away from our home and Troy loves to run about there. A lot of people don’t have a clue what he is, because he’s so big. Troy frightens the life out of everyone because of his size and he doesn’t look like a dog from a distance. He sometimes disappears off round the rocks on his own, and that’s when he must have been photographed. But Troy is certainly nothing to be afraid of; he’s a big softie. So, if anyone else sees him on the more, there’s no need to panic.”
Not everyone was quite so sure that Troy was the cause of the sensational story. Aside from the fact that the animal in the photos does appear to change shape, there is the matter of the location where the picture was taken. It’s extremely close to a place known locally as Bowerman’s Nose. It’s a granite outcrop on the north slopes of Hayne down and only about a mile from a place called—wait for it—Hound Tor. And there is a very weird legend attached to the tor and how it got its name.
“I was in stitches when I read that someone thought Troy was the Beast of Dartmoor. I spotted it was him right away.…”
According to ancient, local folklore, roughly one thousand years ago there lived on the wilds of Dartmoor a man named Bowerman. He was a skilled hunter and someone who knew the old, mysterious landscape very well. On one particular day, while out hare hunting, his pack of hunting dogs stumbled upon something else: a secret coven of witches, hidden deep within a series of previously unknown caves on the moorland. Bowerman’s dogs raced around the caves in chaotic fashion, knocking over a huge cauldron that was a significant part of an ancient ritual the witches were about to perform. Bowerman managed to take control of his dogs and fled the area. The witches, however, were determined to have their cold, deadly revenge.
One of the crone-like coven shape-shifted into a hare and coldly lured Bowerman and his dogs into marshy ground that quickly swallowed up one and all. The witches were not done with Bowerman and his pack, however. They hauled their dead bodies out of the marsh and turned them to stone. So the old legend goes, a line of rocks at the peak of Hound Tor is comprised of the dogs-turned-to-stone, while an outcrop called Bowerman’s nose is all that remains of the dogs’ master. And still the story continues.
The very same area of landscape is the home of what are known as the Wisht Hounds—briefly referred to above by Merrily Harpur. Like the monster-dog in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of Baskervilles (which was actually based, in part, on the old legends), the Wisht Hounds were huge, black, deadly dogs of a paranormal kind that sported blazing red eyes. They preyed upon the bodies and souls of the unfortunate people who dared to intrude upon their territory. On top of that, not at all far away is Buckfastleigh, which, in the seventeenth century, was the home of Squire Richard Cabell—the inspiration for evil Sir Hugo Baskerville in Conan Doyle’s much-loved novel. Local lore tells of how, on the night Cabell died, a vicious pack of savage, black hounds was seen racing across the moonlit moor.
Wistman’s Woods in Dartmoor, the home of the bloodthirsty Wisht Hounds.
Taking into consideration the sheer number of strange and centuries-old stories of supernatural hounds in the very same area where Martin Whitley’s friends photographed, well, something, it’s no wonder that the idea it was Troy the Newfoundland is met with much skepticism by monster hunters. While the matter was never resolved to the satisfaction of everyone, it did provide Troy with brief, nationwide fame!
ORANGE, TEXAS, SHAPE-SHIFTER
Solomon was someone I interviewed back in 2003—when he was in his mid-80s—about a startling encounter he had with a shape-shifting creature no fewer than seven decades earlier, when he was just a young teenager. The location was a dense area of woodland in Orange, Texas. It was a normal Sunday morning when Solomon and several friends were exploring the woods and having a good time. After a couple of hours of scouting around, they found a place to sit and heartily tucked into the lunches they had brought with them.
All was good until one of the group experienced that eerie sensation we all get from time to time: namely, that of being watched. And watched very closely. Then, the rest of the group experienced it too. Almost in unison they looked across the small stream that was before them, only to see nothing less than a large, wolf-like head peering directly at them, and from within the dense foliage.
When the creature realized it had been seen, however, it suddenly broke through the undergrowth and paced along the water’s edge in a disturbing, prowling fashion. All four boys wondered if they were being sized up for lunch. As the beast made its presence fully known, the friends were shocked to see that although it resembled a wolf, the monster-thing was around ten feet in length and had a huge, muscular body—far beyond that of any normal wolf. On several occasions the monster stopped and stared at the boys, growling at them in a dark and deep, low and guttural fashion. Not surprisingly, the friends were too frightened to move. Then, suddenly, something very strange happened.
It was suddenly surrounded by an eerie, green fog, at which point the monster changed its stance: its hind legs noticeably morphed.…
The massive wolf-creature suddenly sat down and “started to shake,” as Solomon worded it. Even more amazing, it was suddenly surrounded by an eerie, green fog, at which point the monster changed its stance: its hind legs noticeably morphed, to the point where it was able to rear up onto those same hind legs and loom over the now near-hysterical boys at a height of around ten feet. As for its front limbs, they took on distinctly human-looking form, albeit covered in thick hair. For a few moments the man-beast snapped and snarled at the group, still from the other side of the stream, after which it suddenly turned and vanished into the woods—never to be seen again.
It was the one and only paranormal experience in Solomon’s life—and he was very happy to keep it that way, too.
PHANTOM BLACK DOG
In his absolutely definitive book Explore Phantom Black Dogs, the author and researcher Bob Trubshaw wrote the following: “The folklore of phantom black dogs is known throughout the British Isles. From the Black Shuck of East Anglia to the Mauthe Dhoog of the Isle of Man there are tales of huge spectral hounds ‘darker than the night sky’ with eyes ‘glowing red as burning coals.’” While a number of intriguing theories exist to explain the presence and nature of such spectral-like beasts, certainly the most ominous