Phantom Felines And Other Ghostly Animals - Gerina Dunwich 2006

The Bloodstained Basement
Hounds and Hauntings

by E. G. Gruebner

The house on Essex Street seemed perfect. It was close to the school where I worked, and it had a large fenced-in yard for my miniature collie, Ruby. But best of all, the monthly rent was considerably lower than other places in the area.

Immediately after moving into the house I noticed a change in Ruby’s behavior. She acted nervous and would often hide under my bed, trembling and refusing to come to me when I’d call her name. I figured she just needed some time to adjust to the new surroundings, even though we had moved several times in the past and she never reacted in such a strange way.

One night, around ten o’clock, I awoke to whimpering and scratching sounds coming from the kitchen. I went to investigate and found Ruby clawing at the door leading to the basement.

“What’s the matter, girl?” I asked. “Is there something down in the basement?”

Ruby let out a couple small yelps and then put her nose to the bottom of the door as if she were picking up a scent.

I decided to open the door and let the dog go down and explore the basement. As I unlocked the door and started turning the knob, Ruby started whining loudly and pacing back and forth. I had never seen her act so disturbed about anything before and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of her peculiar behavior.

I opened the door and, before I even had a chance to switch on the basement light, Ruby bolted down the stairs as if chasing after something. Within a matter of seconds she had disappeared into the dank and musty darkness below. Almost immediately she began growling.

I switched on the light and from the top of the stairs I could see Ruby. Her attention was clearly focused on something on the floor. I went downstairs and upon closer inspection it turned out to be a faded brown stain resembling half a butterfly.

The only other time I had been in the basement was when the landlady showed me around the house, but I didn’t recall seeing any stain on the floor then. Perhaps I was just too excited about the house to notice.

A few days later I went down to the basement to do some laundry and Ruby followed me. I saw her stop dead in her tracks as soon as she got near the stain. She let out a low growl and began to slowly back up. She then started barking wildly and darting back and forth. I took her upstairs and she finally calmed down.

That weekend I went downstairs with a scrub brush and some scouring powder and attempted to remove the stain from the floor. I scrubbed and scrubbed, and even tried different cleansers, but nothing would take the stain out. I gave up and started up the stairs when all of a sudden something shadowy darted past me. Startled and a bit spooked, I looked around but there was nothing there. I hurried upstairs and quickly locked the basement door behind me.

The following day when I arrived home from school I was startled to find the basement door wide open. It had been locked when I left the house that morning. I called to Ruby but she did not answer. The house felt icy cold and the eerie silence became overwhelming. Fearing that someone had broken in to the house while I was at work, I quietly tiptoed out through the backdoor and then ran to a neighbor’s house where I phoned the police.

Within a few minutes they arrived on the scene and, with their guns drawn, checked out my house from top to bottom. They found no signs of a forced entry and nothing seemed to be missing. I asked one of the officers if they had seen my dog and he told me they had. She was down in the basement hiding behind the oil tank.

After the police left, I phoned my landlady about having the locks changed. I also asked her about the stain on the basement floor. What she told me made the hairs on my arms stand up.

Her grandfather lived in the house in the 1930s and kept a Doberman as a watchdog and a family pet. One day his dog went into a rage and attacked one of his children while they were playing in the yard. He took the dog down to the basement, chained it to a pipe, and then gave it a severe beating with a wooden leg from an old chair. The following day when he went back down into the basement he found the dog was dead. It was curled up and in a pool of blood, which left a stain on the floor.

After hearing that, I told my landlady about Ruby’s strange behavior and said, “This is probably going to sound crazy to you, but I’m starting to think the ghost of that Doberman is haunting the basement.”

She surprised me by saying she didn’t think it was crazy at all. In fact, she said her grandfather eventually became convinced that the dead dog’s spirit wanted revenge, and he avoided the basement at all costs! She also told me that when she and her brother and sister were growing up in the house, they, too, had seen the fleeting shadow of a dog in the basement and would sometimes even hear a dog panting or growling.

One day her brother’s friend from school was over playing hide-and-seek with them and claimed to have been chased up the basement stairs by a black dog that disappeared when it reached the top step. However, she wasn’t sure if the story was true or if the boy had just made it up in order to scare her and her sister.

After our enlightening conversation, I returned to the basement and drew a small circle around the bloodstain with a piece of white chalk. I sprinkled some salt and sage inside the circle, covered it with a small braided rug, and prayed for the dog’s restless spirit to find peace.

I had never done anything ritualistic like that before but it just felt like the correct thing to do at the time and under the circumstances. It seemed to have a positive effect because during the remaining three years that Ruby and I lived in that house, her behavior was normal and there were no further incidents in the bloodstained basement.