Dogs in Occult Fiction by Dorothy Scarborough 1917
The dog is frequently the subject of occult fiction, more so than any other animal, perhaps because the dog seems more nearly human than any save possibly the horse. Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward shows us a dog very much at home in heaven, while she has a ghost-dog on earth coming back to march in a Decoration Day parade beside his master. Isabel Howe Fisk in a drama shows the Archangel Raphael accompanied by his dog, a cavortive canine, not apparently archangelic. Ambrose Bierce evokes one terrible revenge-ghost, a dog that kills the murderer of his master, while Eden Phillpotts represents a pack of spectral dogs that pursue the Evil One over the earth till the Judgment Day, each being a lost soul. A young girl's little unbaptized baby is thought to be one of the number. Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles is a terrifying canine of legendary power. Kerfol by Edith Wharton shows the ghosts of five dogs, each carefully individualized,—a Chinese sleeve-dog, a rough brindled bulldog, a long-haired white mongrel, a large white pointer with one brown ear, and a small black grayhound. These specters of animals that have been killed by a jealous husband — he had the cheerful habit of strangling every pet his wife cared for and laying it without a word on her pillow — appear once a year on the anniversary of the day on which the wife in desperation slew him. They preserve a most undoglike silence and follow the beholder with strange gaze. Kipling's dog Harvey is a supernatural beast, but what he represents I have never been able to determine. At the Gate is a recent story, showing a great concourse of dogs just outside the portals of heaven, unwilling to enter till their masters come to join them.
The dog is frequently the subject of occult fiction, more so than any other animal, perhaps because the dog seems more nearly human than any save possibly the horse. Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward shows us a dog very much at home in heaven, while she has a ghost-dog on earth coming back to march in a Decoration Day parade beside his master. Isabel Howe Fisk in a drama shows the Archangel Raphael accompanied by his dog, a cavortive canine, not apparently archangelic. Ambrose Bierce evokes one terrible revenge-ghost, a dog that kills the murderer of his master, while Eden Phillpotts represents a pack of spectral dogs that pursue the Evil One over the earth till the Judgment Day, each being a lost soul. A young girl's little unbaptized baby is thought to be one of the number. Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles is a terrifying canine of legendary power. Kerfol by Edith Wharton shows the ghosts of five dogs, each carefully individualized,—a Chinese sleeve-dog, a rough brindled bulldog, a long-haired white mongrel, a large white pointer with one brown ear, and a small black grayhound. These specters of animals that have been killed by a jealous husband — he had the cheerful habit of strangling every pet his wife cared for and laying it without a word on her pillow — appear once a year on the anniversary of the day on which the wife in desperation slew him. They preserve a most undoglike silence and follow the beholder with strange gaze. Kipling's dog Harvey is a supernatural beast, but what he represents I have never been able to determine. At the Gate is a recent story, showing a great concourse of dogs just outside the portals of heaven, unwilling to enter till their masters come to join them.
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