Spirit Dogs
Most of the time when a person mentions dogs and ghosts in the same breath they are usually refering to "hell hounds" or some other scary beast. It is no wonder since the legends I have listed below are not of your freindly spirit dog.
In spite of a general folkloric association between ghosts and cemeteries, it is not very common for ghost sightings to originate from inside cemeteries. Happily, very few people actually die within cemeteries, and it seems to be more common or ghosts to cling to the places or circumstances of their death rather than linger alongside their mortal remains.
There are of course some exceptions, and a significant one is the ghostly black dog, sometimes known as the ‘Grim’. Strangely enough, stories of these creatures appearing in and guarding cemeteries and graveyards stretch from the UK to as far afield as the USA, where there is a particular link with slave cemeteries and black dogs in the South. Living visitors that remain in these cemeteries after sundown are chased away by the resident angry black ghost dog. Why a phantom dog should appear inside a human burial ground is uncertain. Evidently these hounds act as a sort of spiritual guardian, protecting the dead from disturbance by the living.
The American ghost hounds share some characteristics with the barghest, in that some of them are not only guardians of the dead but also portents of doom and even bringers of death in their own right. In some cemeteries, local folklore has it that any visitors should vacate the burial grounds before nightfall. If visitors are foolish to remain for as long as it takes the ghostly hound to circle the perimeter a mystical three times, they are sure to die before sunup.
There is another branch of tales about ghostly dogs that in life were not dogs at all, but humans. These stories, many of them originating from Devon, Cornwall and the southwest of England, tell of people who in life were so nasty that in death their souls are forced to remain earthbound in the guise of phantom hounds.
The well-known story of the evil Lady Howard, which originates from Dartmoor, is an excellent example of this legend. Lady Howard was wicked in life, the story goes, and in death her tormented soul appears in the form of a large black dog. Every night this dog must run beside a coach made of bones (driven by the obligatory headless coachman) to Okehampton Castle, where she plucks one single blade of grass in her mouth and bears it back to her old home at Tavistock. According to legend, when every blade of grass has been removed from the castle grounds this way, her spirit will finally find peace. Unsurprisingly, poor Lady Howard has not yet managed to complete this task.
Black Dogs are not the only type of animal that evil souls assume the shape of. There are similar stories involving pigs and horses, among others. But the concept of the black dog as the embodiment of a dead sinner certainly adds an extra chill to the thought of walking the moors at night…
Along with the moors, cemeteries and graveyards, a particular favourite hunting ground of the ghostly black dog is the road. Haunted roads and paths are surprisingly common throughout the world, as evidenced by the wide distribution of the famous phantom hitchhiker urban legend. In addition to hitchhikers, roads seem to attract an astonishing number of spooks, devils, phantom vehicles, fairies, elementals and other denizens of the supernatural world. Given this, it is hardly surprising that black dogs so often prefer roads and pathways as their haunts.
References
J A Brooks (Ed) (1981) Cornish Ghosts and Legends Jarrold and Sons Ltd, Norwich England
Rupert Matthews (1992) Haunted York Pitkin Pictorials Limited Hants Great Britain
Betty Puttick (1997) Ghosts of Essex Countryside Books, Newbury Berkshire
Katherine Ramsland (2001) Ghost: Investigating the Other Side St Martin’s Press
Ruth St Leger-Gordon (1982) The Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd, Gloucester