Black Shuck - Appearance in Bungay and Blythburgh

Appearance in Bungay and Blythburgh

One of the most notable reports of Black Shuck is of his appearance at the churches of Bungay and Blythburgh in Suffolk. On 4 August 1577, at Blythburgh, Black Shuck is said to have burst in through the church doors to a clap of thunder. He ran up the nave, past a large congregation, killing a man and boy and causing the church steeple to collapse through the roof. As the dog left, he left scorch marks on the north door which can be seen at the church to this day.

The encounter on the same day at Bungay was described in A Straunge and Terrible Wunder by the Reverend Abraham Fleming in 1577:

This black dog, or the divel in such a linenesse (God hee knoweth al who worketh all,) running all along down the body of the church with great swiftnesse, and incredible haste, among the people, in a visible fourm and shape, passed between two persons, as they were kneeling uppon their knees, and occupied in prayer as it seemed, wrung the necks of them bothe at one instant clene backward, in somuch that even at a momet where they kneeled, they stragely dyed.

Adams was a clergyman from London, and therefore probably only published his account based on exaggerated aural accounts. Other local accounts attribute the event to the Devil (Abrahams calls the animal "the Divel in such a likeness". The scorch marks on the door are referred to by the locals as "the devil’s fingerprints", and the event is remembered in this verse:

All down the church in midst of fire, the hellish monster flew, and, passing onward to the quire, he many people slew.

Dr David Waldron and Christopher Reeve suggest that a fierce electrical storm recorded by contemporary accounts on that date, coupled with the trauma of the ongoing Reformation, may have led to the accounts entering folklore.

The Kettle Chronicles: The Black Dog of Bungay, I.S. Morgan (2006) is a historical novel recounting the events and aftermath of August 1577.