Large Fierce Mammal

The infamous Black Dog rides atop a lightning bolt in the Bungay weathervane.

On Sunday (Julian calendar) the 4th day of August in 1577, a thunder storm of wrath of God proportions unleashed its fury between the morning hours of 9 and 10 o’clock over Suffolk, England. Within four weeks of that event, a slim volume titled Straunge and Terrible Wunder wrought very late in the parish church of Bongay was in circulation, penned by the Reverend Abraham Fleming

The cover page of the ripping yarn.

While the good Reverend Fleming described the terrible and deadly spectacle associated with the storm to have played out solely in St. Mary’s Church at Bungay, the affliction was shared with another edifice nearby; Holy Trinity Church at Blythburgh which, one might say, was left indelibly marked by the ordeal. What he describes is a composite of separate events in two locations that transpired during the same storm.

As chronicled, and subsequently compiled in Abraham Fleming: writer, cleric and preacher in Elizabethan and Jacobean London by Clare Elizabeth Painting Stubbs, M. A. (2011):

On Sunday 4 August 1577 during morning service, “… there fell from heaven an exceeding great and terrible tempest sodein violent […] which fell with a wonderful force […] not simply raine but also of lightning and thunder”. The roaring of the thunder and the “rare and vehement” lightening flashes robbed the congregation of their wits while “things void of life […] shook and trembled”. Bungay had been struck by a severe summer storm during which the “whole church was so darkened Yea with such palpable darknesse, that one persone could not perceive another”.

Fleming continued in the pamphlet, “Immediately hereupon appeared in a most horrible similitude and likenesse [a dog] of a black colour”. This apparition struck such fear into the congregation that “they thought doomes day was already come”. Having manifested itself, Fleming’s dog or “the devil in such a likenesse” ran through the church. Then it “passed between two persons, as they were kneeling in prayer, or so it seemed, wrung the necks of them bothe at one instance” and “where they kneeled they straungely died”. The same dog then “passing by another man […] gave him such a gripe on the back that therewith all he was presently drawen together and shrunk up, as it were a peece of leather scorched in a hot fire: or as the mouth of a purse or bag drawen together with a string”. Happily this man “dyed not” which Fleming thought “amasing” and “mervelous in the eyes of men”.

The clerk of the church, who was up a ladder clearing the gutter, was “smitten down” by a thunderclap but sustained no further injury. Possibly the inclusion of this detail is an oblique reference to an act of divine displeasure because the clerk was clearing the gutter during a Sunday service and not inside the church worshipping God. The storm raged on. “The Rector, or Curate of the church being partaker of the peoples perplexitie, seeing what was seen and done comforted the people, and exhorted them to prayer”. Lightning struck the steeple, “all the wires, the wheeles and other things belonging to the Clock, were wrung in sunder and broken in peces”. Surely this was a terrifying ordeal for those trapped in the darkness of the church but then the dog vanished as quickly as it had appeared. For those who doubted the dog’s existence Fleming insisted that it had left the stones of the church and the church door “mervelously rented and torne as it were the marks of his clawes or talans”.

The ordeal was over for those in St Mary’s parish Bungay, but the dog’s work was not done. Almost simultaneously a second incident took place in Holy Trinity church, Blythburgh, seven miles from Bungay. Fleming recorded this second attack with vigorous brevity in the Wunder pamphlet:

The like thing entered, in the same shape and similitude where placing himself on a maine balke or beam whereon sometime the rood did stand, sodainly he gave a swing downe though the Church, and there also, as before, slew two men and a lad, and burned the hand of another person that was among the rest of the company, of whom divers were blasted. This mischief thus wrought he flew with wonderful force to not little feare of the assembly, out of the church in a hideous and hellish likenes.

Fleming attempted to give credibility to his account, closing the narration with “These things are reported to be true yea by the mouthes of them that were eye witnesses of the same”.

To this day, the church door, “… mervelously rented and torne as it were the marks of his clawes or talans,” can still be seen and touched at Holy Trinity Church. Touch it if you want. It was probably the lightning hitting the place that caused it. The two images that flank this passage are courtesy of this site, which further states, “The famous north door, which has scorch marks upon it that were allegedly caused by the Black Dog that appeared before the congregation in 1577, is directly opposite if you enter the church via the main porch. The church was struck by lightning on this day in 1577 and the spire toppled, damaging the font below. As the north door is below the spire, it’s possible that the scorch marks may have been caused by the lightning or the falling spire.”

I only bring all this up because I recently received communication from my Esteemed Friend Martin, of Crime Scene Man fame, and who never emerges unscathed from any iteration of Dark Sentiments, that he, his Goode Wife, and Dog were recently on an evening walk that ended abruptly with a dignified retreat when they found themselves hunted by some things that never allowed themselves to be seen, but that he thought to be Coyotes.

Well now, my Esteemed Friend earns his keep rolling about, as it were, in the evil that men do, and so he has naturally (or unnaturally) acquired the kind of scent that can’t be washed off, but that will, by their nature, be attractive to certain … things. I haven’t yet mentioned my reservations to him, but have enlisted the aid of a mutual acquaintance with the purpose of gathering up Martin and taking that walk again. You know – just to be sure.

While you await our report on the outcome of that expedition, I invite you to listen to this audio recording of the aforementioned Straunge and Terrible Wunder wrought very late in the parish church of Bongay, justifiably described by Ms. Stubbs as “A cross between tabloid front-page news and a zealous sermon ….”