The story of apparitional animals is much more than just ghost riders in the sky and ghoulish horsemen riding their horse and coaches to Wycoller! The most prevalent animal boggart has always tended to be the Black Dog, with Grimm-bros saucers or dinner plates for eyes, snarling on a country byroad at innocent (sheeyah!) PASSERSBY. My home county of Lancashire tends to be much more famous for White Ladies and Headless Monks, as a reminder of Lancashire’s illicit Roman Catholic activities in Ye Days Ov Olde where depending on your gullibility you’d believe every ginnel used to house outlawed catholic priests and each corner shop contained at LEAST fifty priest holes. But the most famous ghost that belonged to my own small village, by my time changed out of all recognition from it’s most haunted time due to wartime development, was Warton’s BLACK DOG!!11, who may have come from Boggart House, a HAUNTED HOUSE in the 1930s rumoured to have been inhabited by shipwreckers. The Black Dog haunted the night, growling at passers by, and I have it on good authority that the Hound of the Baskerville’s was said to be “shitting himself” at the mere THORT.
Unfortunately, since the coming of sodding gert big aircraft factories and airforce bases in the 40s bringing new open roads and traffic through the village, Warton’s Black Dog has been in retirement. Locals are now free to wander the streets after night with their cans of Luny Super with the fear of the ghastly howling spectre far from their minds. However, if they would take note of events in Manchester, they might rest a little less secure; the White Dog of that area was later made out to be a lion escaped from Belle Vue, although what the fvck a Lion was doing there, no-one knows…
However, one thing that Warton’s Black Dog never managed to achieve was it’s own POME. My supplementary text for this report however includes a local poet’s tribute to Baum Rabbit, Rochdale’s ghostly white bunny rabbit said to be ‘immune to Gun Shot and Pellet’. The poem in full is below, for easily spooked bunnyphobes.
Confound that rabbit
I wish some chap would grab it,
And stop it’s nightly habit, confound that rabbit!
Confound it’s head and eyes,
Confound it’s leg and thighs,
Confound it otherwise, confound that rabbit!
Dogs, rush out and squeeze him!
Worry, toss and tase him
That is, if you can seize him, confound that rabbit!
The name of the poet in question is sadly missing from my source, but if it were up to me, I’d be post-humously awarding a Turner Prize as I type.
SPOOKY EH???