In English folklore, Black Shuck, also known as Old Shuck, Old Shock or Shock Dog, is a phantom black dog said to haunt the coastline of East Anglia in England. It is typically described as a large, shaggy dog with glowing red eyes and a deafening bark. Black Shuck is said to bring misfortune and death to those who encounter it.
The earliest written account of Black Shuck appears in the 1577 antiquarian work Breviary of Suffolk by John Stow, who recounts a story from 1553 in which Black Shuck attacked two churches in Suffolk, Bungay and Blythburgh, killing several people.
Since then, there have been numerous reports of sightings of Black Shuck all along the East Anglian coast. In 1983, a group of schoolchildren claimed to have seen Black Shuck while camping on the beach at Walberswick. The children said that the dog was about the size of a small horse and had glowing red eyes that could be seen from a mile away.
In 2015, a man driving along the A12 near Felixstowe claimed to have seen Black Shuck emerge from the mist and run across the road in front of his car. The man said that the dog was so large that it filled his entire windscreen.
The sightings of Black Shuck are often attributed to pareidolia, a psychological phenomenon in which people see familiar shapes or patterns in random or ambiguous stimuli. In the case of Black Shuck, people may be seeing a large black dog in the mist or fog, and their minds are filling in the details based on folklore and local legends.
However, there are also some people who believe that Black Shuck is a real supernatural creature. They point to the many eyewitness accounts of the creature, as well as the fact that the sightings have been happening for centuries.
Whether or not Black Shuck is real, the creature is a popular figure in East Anglian folklore. It has been featured in films, television shows and books, and it continues to be a source of fascination and fear for people in the region.
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