The Black Dog

The Black Dog is a scary story about a man who constantly hears a black dog running around his home. It appears in Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill your Bones.

According to Schwartz, the story is based on an experience reported in the French village of Bourg-en-Forêt in the 1920s. A spectral black dog like the one in the story is said to be the ghost of a wicked human or a foreteller of death.



The Story
It was eleven o'clock at night. Peter Rothberg was in bed on the second floor of the old house where he lived alone. It had gotten so chilly, he went downstairs to turn up the heat. On his way back to bed, a black dog ran down the stairs. It passed him and disappeared into the darkness. "Where did you come from?" Peter said. He had never seen the dog before. He turned on all the lights and looked in every room. He couldn't find the dog anywhere. He went outside and brought in the two watchdogs he kept in the backyard. But they acted as if they were the only dogs in the house.

The next night, again at eleven o'clock, Peter was in his bedroom. He heard what sounded like a dog walking around in the room above him. He dashed upstairs and threw open the door. The room was empty. He looked under the bed. He looked in the closet. Nothing. But when he got back to his bedroom, he heard a dog running down the stairs. It was the black dog. He tried to follow it, but again he couldn't find where it had gone.

From then on, every night at eleven, Peter heard the dog walking in the room above him. The room was always empty. But after he left, the dog would come out of hiding, run down the stairs, and disappear. One night Peter's neighbor waited with him for the dog. At the usual time, they heard it above them. Then they heard it on the stairs. When they went out into the hall, it was standing at the foot of the stairs, looking up at them. The neighbor whistled, and the dog wagged its tail. Then it was gone.

Things went on this way. Until the night Peter decided to bring his watchdogs into the house again. Maybe this time they would find the black dog and drive it away. Just before eleven, he took them up to his bedroom, and left the door open. Then he heard the black dog moving around above him. The dogs pricked up their ears and ran to the door. Suddenly they bared their teeth and snarled, and backed away. Peter could not see the black dog or hear it, but he was sure that it had entered his room. His dogs barked and snapped. They darted forward nervously, and then backed away again. Suddenly one of them yelped. It began bleeding, then dropped to the floor, its neck torn open. A minute later, it was dead. Peter's other dog backed into a corner, whimpering. Then, everything was still.

The next night, Peter's neighbor came back with a pistol. Again they waited in his bedroom. At eleven o'clock, the black dog came down the stairs. As before, it looked up at them and wagged its tail. As they started toward it with a pistol, it growled and disappeared. That was the last Peter saw of the black dog. But it didn't mean that the dog was gone. Now and then, always at eleven, he heard it moving around above him. Once he heard it running down the stairs, he'd never manage to see it again. But he knew that it was there.