In Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), the vampire Count travels from Transylvania to England to exploit richer hunting grounds. Shipwrecked at Whitby in North Yorkshire, he leaps ashore in the form of a black dog and is seen running up the steps to Whitby Abbey.
Many sources claim that Stoker was inspired by legends of the Barghest, a shape-shifting omen of death in northern English legends that most often appears at night as a monstrous black hound. The myths had earlier found their way in Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre, with the dog-phantom called a Gytrash.
The origins of the word ‘barghest’ are obscure: some sources suggest ‘ghest’ as a northern variation for the word ‘ghost’ and, in a few stories, the Barghest is a spectre that takes human or goblin form. Could ‘barghest’ be interchangeable with ‘boggart’, another malign Scottish or northern English spirit?
The Barghest as a hellish hound has parallels with myths of sinister black dogs across the UK. In East Anglia, for example, Black Shuck terrified local people, and on the Isle of Man the black dog known as Moddey Dhoo (pronounced ‘mawther doo’), haunted Peel Castle. Such tales inspired Arthur Conan Doyle in his famous 1901 Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Discover more myths, legends and folklore
- Eerie mythical beasts that are supposed to roam Britain, sometimes with deadly consequences for their chosen victim - dare you go out and find them...?
- Herne the Hunter: Why a glimpse of Windsor’s horned phantom could spell doom for the King
- The most infamous archaeological hoaxes exposed – from fake figurines to the Lost City of Z
- Just who Britain's eerie Green Man really is, is one of the country's biggest mysteries, but could this ancient spirit of mischief be the hidden guardian of nature?
