Black Shuck

Black Shuck — his name thought to derive from the Old English 'scucca', meaning demon — has prowled the lonely lanes, marshes and shingle of Norfolk and Suffolk for centuries. He is most often met on dark, storm-wracked nights: a dog the size of a calf, shaggy and black, with a single fiery eye or a pair of them glowing like coals. To meet his gaze, tradition holds, is to be marked for death within the twelvemonth.

His most infamous appearance came on 4 August 1577, when a great black dog is said to have burst into the church at Bungay during a thunderstorm, running down the nave and killing two parishioners at prayer before bolting for Blythburgh, where he left scorch marks said to be visible on the north door to this day. The Reverend Abraham Fleming recorded the terror in a breathless pamphlet, and the beast has haunted the East Anglian imagination ever since.