Phantom Felines And Other Ghostly Animals - Gerina Dunwich 2006

Ghost of the Angry Dog
Hounds and Hauntings

by Rosemarie V.

When I was only two years old my mother passed away and my father remarried and left us to live with my maternal grandparents, who lived with my uncle and his family in Mexico. I grew up very poor and was never given anything on birthdays or holidays. But on my twelfth birthday one of our relatives gave me a dog.

My grandfather was a very old-fashioned and strict man, so when I brought the dog home he refused to let me keep it. He said that we didn’t have the money to feed ourselves, let alone a dog. But, by this time I was already working, so I convinced him to let me keep it.

I only had my dog for about two months, but during that time we had become the best of friends. I had no other friends or siblings around. All my siblings were older and married.

My oldest cousin, Francisco, who was about ten at the time, hated me very much. I think I felt the same way about him because we were jealous of each other. One day when I came home from work he was standing at the doorway with an evil look on his face and laughing in a most sinister way. He bragged to me that I no longer had a dog. I asked him why he was saying this and he told me that my grandfather had killed it. He said the dog had gotten rabies and had foam coming from his mouth.

Very upset, I went directly to my grandfather. I asked him about this and he told me to go to my room because he didn’t want to talk about it. I locked myself in my room and I wouldn’t come out or eat for days. My grandmother tried to console me by telling me that my dog was in a better place.

On the fourth day after my dog’s death, about five o’clock in the morning, I was lying in bed with my eyes closed when I heard a noise coming from the exposed beams of the ceiling. I immediately felt something jump directly onto my stomach. I opened my eyes and saw my dog. I was so happy to see him. I thanked him for returning to me and told him that it had all been a misunderstanding. My grandfather must have thought he killed him, but my dog was only wounded.

But as I got closer to him to hug and kiss him, I saw that his eyes were very different. They were evil looking as if he had fire in them. He opened his mouth and he had big fangs. I started praying out loud and as soon as I said the word God, the dog snarled at me, showing his fangs once again, and then jumped back onto the ceiling beams and disappeared.

I ran to my grandmother’s room, but she had already left for church. When she returned I told her about what happened and she was surprised. She said that it had probably happened because I was mad at them and the devil had come to scare me. I didn’t believe this so I confronted my cousin. He laughed at me and told me that the dog had bit him, but only after he had pulled really hard on his tail and hurt him. He then had told my grandfather that the dog bit him, and my grandfather killed the dog by stabbing it.

Francisco took me to the hills about a quarter-mile away from my house to prove to me that the dog was dead. He started digging, and sure enough there was my dog as dead as could be. I was so heartbroken.

I never understood why my dog came back to me in such an evil way.