The Skriker — its name from the dialect word for a shriek — is a spectral death-omen of Lancashire and the West Riding, a creature that haunts the night woods and lonely roads of the Pennine country. Often it gives its warning not by being seen but by its dreadful cry, a piercing screech in the dark; to hear it was to know that a death would soon come to one's family or close friends.
The story
When it does take shape it appears as a huge black dog with broad, drooping ears, shaggy hair and great glowing eyes, padding along on enormous feet that make a wet splashing sound — 'like old shoes in soft mud' — from which it earns its other name, Trash. It can also show itself as a white cow or horse, and walks backwards before the traveller, or vanishes into the ground when challenged. The Skriker belongs to the great northern family of barguests and padfoots, the phantom hounds that patrol the threshold between the living and the dead across the hills of northern England.