The very large dog which seemed to be vibrating is most interesting, as is what it did. No canine uses foot-stamping as part of its common behaviour, and canines do not as a rule like to walk backwards; they usually turn on the spot if they have to retreat.

The vibration is also telling; this seems to indicate that the “dog” was an image, being reprojected several times per second from some source or other; this wasn’t a solid object.

Finally, look at the overall behaviour of the things. A man sees an unusual phenomenon and goes to investigate; classical monkey reflex. As he gets close in (NOT a long distance away, but close), an image of a large dog is projected to make him stop, and at that point some signal gets passed to something else to tell it to cease whatever it was doing and return forthwith.

Back comes the blue ball (the bit we should be most interested in), and the dog, mist and ball all disappear as one.

So, what can we learn from this?

Firstly, the mist is interesting in that it is a gate, or some form of transport.

Secondly, the mist/gate isn’t particularly intelligent and only reacts to close human presence, and even then doesn’t seem to be immediately harmful or hostile; it gives adequate warnings.

Thirdly, the blue ball is up to something interesting, and this is some distance from the mist.

Fourthly, the location may be important, but possibly only as a landmark. The hillfort is the only open area in quite a lot of woodland; maybe whoever’s operating this thing likes to have a nicely visible spot to land in, without lots of trees about. That again takes the thing back into the realm of technology; pilots of aircraft do not like landing near trees.

Finally, the mist is there for camoflage. There’s something in that mist that the occupants or operators don’t want us to see, though they seem unconcerned about people photographing the mist, or the scary dog-thing.

Not familiar with the Brentford Griffin, but it sounds like a good story. Similar-sounding to Colin Perks’s gargoyle, perhaps.

Funny that…about Night of the Demon.I think that is one of the coolest movies ever of that genre. Intelligent, well written, excellently acted , directed, edited, and paced. In the supernatural chills type of flick (as opposed to just “monster” or “horror” movies) it is “up there” for me along with the original Robert Wise version of “The Haunting”, “The Changeling”, “The Legend of Hell House”,
Kubrick’s “The Shining”, and 1944’s “The Uninvited”, with Ray Milland, Gail Russell, and Cornelia Otis Skinner (the film the hauntingly gorgeous song “Stella by Starlight” comes from…a film that is very like a
ghostly vengeance version of Hitchcock’s “Rebecca”).

I agree that the atmospherics in “Night of the Demon” are superb, and are one of the things that have instilled in me the driving urge to do a ghost-and-goblins tour of “Jolly Olde” here one day..that and some late night tv showings years ago of Basil Rathbone & Nigel Bruce in “The Hound of the Baskervilles”…though I’d be inclined to do a six-MONTHS version of booger-hunting rather than six weeks “seeking”.
I can remember to this day having my early-teenaged hair stand up when I heard : “Footprints? What footprints?”, answered by “Mister ‘Olmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound”.

Ahoooooooo! That’s the ticket! We aren’t THERE yet??????

The sulpherous stench mentioned in some of the posted cross-talk is quite indicative of manifestations and has been theorized as an odor generated when a tulpaform crossover “arrives” on our side of “reality”. It is also more than likely the origin of the “fire and brimstone” notions incorporated into the folklore regarding the denizens of Hell.

Mists, and cloud formations play largely into weird “window” events, also as noted here in crosstalk. Between the mysterious cloud/fog/mist concentrations and the stench of sulpher, one might well be warned that anything emerging from such a formation is probably up to no good at all and very likely it is time to send for Steed and Mrs. Peel.

Bill

P.S. And Nick, while you’re over there in the U.K., you might well want to make arrangements to get hold of that Nigel Kerner “Song of the Greys” book and start reading it when you can work it in.

This tale is lent some authenticity by the phenomenon of the ‘misty cloud’, which is certainly a commonality in a number of ‘entity contact’ experiences (eg. ‘BVM’ apparitions) and also the noxious smell. Considering the description of “static and electrified”, does this suit the Persinger model of induction of an altered state through stimulation of the temporal lobe?

Kind regards,
Greg

Rather synchronistically and spookily, Night of the Demon is one of my all-time films. It has a great atmosphere to it, and really does generate a genuine image of what certain parts of the UK are still like when it comes to issues such as witchcraft.

Indeed, Devonshire was made for Casting the Runes and the film spin-off, and there has been weird occult-style activity over at the Cannock Chase for years.

Growing up only 4 miles from the Chase, I have dug into this for years. As some of you know, I’m in the UK right now, and as I write this (spooky, again!), I’m even closer - about three quarters of a mile from the German Cemetery on the Chase, which has been the site of countless strange activity for years (a place that any British readers in the vicinity of the Chase will know all about).

Andy Collins’s books have been etched into my psyche for years. Have you ever read his “The Brentford Griffin”? It’s a hard to find booklet rather than a book and dates from 1985 and tells the weird story of a strange beast seen in the Brentford area of the UK back in the 80s. There are Tulpa like elements to the story.

This is one of those weird kinds of High Strangeness things that you encounter in these “window areas”. Some of the experiences in your post bring to mind many of those recorded by Andrew Collins in his searches for data on “The Black Alchemist” and the “Friends of Hecate” back in the 1980s/90s. That group was bent (HELL-bent?) on opening “doorways” and posting conjurations as guardians. As I understand it, questions about this group (and the identity of its leader) persist in the UK to this day (Anybody up for a trip to see Mother Sarah again?). And this doesn’t include the fact that the “Friends of Hecate” surely have not been the only game in town.
Similar groupes also seem to exist not only in the UK, but, of course, in France, Germany,and Italy as well. The Italian “Satanic/Demonic” conjurors are very active and seem to include human sacrifice in their own repertoire for calling up “Aides and Assistance” from “Elsewhere”. Almost like a grim new “game” out there, where “Dungeons and Dragons” have been replaced by “Gateways and Guardians”…and maybe not so much guardians as ENFORCERS.
All of this actually smacks very strongly of Dennis Wheatly’s writings (such as “The Devil Rides Out”) and those of M.R. James. “Casting the Runes” as a story foreshadows such things, as does, particularly, the film version of these (”Night of the Demon”, in the US “Curse of the Demon”) starring Dana Andrews. This film is superb in that Andrews’ early characterization of the protagonist is a spot-on depiction of the prototypical skeptical, “rationalist-materialist” scientist (a real CSI-Cop type)who doesn’t want to hear any supernaturalist bunk…even when it goes on all around him. He gets a rude awakening in the film as it progresses, and finds out by the conclusion how wrong-headed his dismissiveness was.

The idea of gateways and guardians hits here in the states with the research of Linda Godfrey re: dogmen, manbats, and manwolves…where these apparitional manifestations (neither Linda nor myself belief these are zoological life-forms) seem tied to water (lakes, ponds, streams) and to closely-proximate Native American burial mounds…where shamanic invocations can have been conducted.

Whether these manifesting area represent “thin spots” in the “veil” between worlds or places where conjurations have been done in the past is…to me…a reciprocal combination of both. I think there are ways of discerning “places of power” and that conjurors of magicks…including “guardians”….utilize those places for the maximizing of power in invocation.
**************

As to Alan’s incident, this is a truly creepy one, yet is right in line with such things as Springheeled Jack. The being Alan saw seems to be “ghostly”, but the stabbing effect is clearly not.
This would seem to be a “transient” manifestation of “something” that is at least partially in the physical world, at least for a period of time. A ghost can’t jab you in the butt, but a “step-over” hypothetically could. By description and activity, this thing Alan encountered seems more like a manifestation than a spook.

Yeah I remember well the case that Randles referred to. A few years back, the Staffordshire UFO Group did a renewed study of the case and, I believe, uncovered some new data/witnesses.

Alan:

That is a seriously strange account!

Mick:

Thanks, yeah I definitely think that there is a link between what many see as wholly separate “things.”

Nick

——-
Gloria Hall describes it as ‘a big cloud on the floor — all red — and it lit up’. She later added that it was fluorescent and slowly pulsated (or rather the central glow was being ‘eclipsed’ by vapour). It seemed denser in the middle, with vaporous mist on the edges. They could not determine if there was any solid shape behind.

Reg Morgan confirmed: ‘It was like a gas cloud … like a semi-saucer shape — a red glow — like if you look through a fluorescent tube When he first saw it the cloud was airborne and spanning the road. It moved away from them to the north, faded out, crossed the River Trent by the bridge and then briefly reappeared on the far side, before vanishing. The glow was certainly self-luminous.

…

There were no smells detected or apparent after effects. But during the sighting a clear indication of the Oz factor mentioned.

Gloria spontaneously remarked: ‘It was dead quiet. . . very: very quiet.’ Roger later confirmed: ‘It was unbelievably quiet and Gloria emphasized: There was silence about everywhere.

…

Furthermore, Gloria was clearly the more affected of the two. She saw it first, remember, something Reg seemed slightly puzzled by, saying at one point: ‘I don’t know why it was blanked out to me’ Possibly important in that regard, Gloria noted: ‘I felt weird’ and tried to describe a vague unease or alteration in her state of consciousness.
——–

From the concluding section:

—-
David Reynolds, a local meteorologist, visited the site with investigators for a more detailed analysis. He found some evidence of tree damage which suggested a rotating vortex could have passed by. The general opinion of the weathermen involved seemed to be that the mechanical damage noted afterwards (if it was directly linked with the glowing cloud) was created by a vortex associated with the blob. The glow itself was probably ionization. Certainly there was no physical evidence on the ground that any heavy, dense or metallic object had landed and taken off again.

We may notice another point from Persinger’s work. The red colour, just as theory predicts, probably occurred because of the saturation of water vapour in the atmosphere at the site. If it had been completely dry, or further from the river, the colour would have probably been blue or white.

Geologically, the area is on a boundary between sandstone and shale rocks. Quartz is certainly present. Three fault lines lie within less than a mile of the precise location.
—-

Black Dogs are also, famously, assoicated with water.

Nick, based on my own experiences of such things, I have no particular difficulty with the ‘theory’ you and ‘your’ unidentified historian propose: it’s just I personally favour the - not necessarily incompatible - ‘theory’, it wasn’t so much the ‘archaic ritual dabblers’ who conjured up the ‘netherworld denizens’, as ‘weaknesses’ in the ‘walls’ between the different worlds occur in places like Castle Ring permitting such mutual interactions.

Even the apparently contradictory behaviour of the Shucks - BEWARE OF THE DOG! type hostility or Saint Bernard/guide-dog like benevolence - end up having the same affect of ensuring worlds aren’t accidentally strayed out of or into or, in the event the unwitting straying’s already occurred, is rectified before it becomes permanent.

[Incidentally, as an ardent student of etymology, I take 'Shuck' to be derived from an extremely ancient word root that had the compound sense, 'husk', 'barrier', 'protective wall', 'to remove', 'separate', 'break off', 'bite into', making it ultimately related to words like gnosis, science, gnaw, and even Scouser and Wacker!]

The thing is, if many of my own experiences are anything to go by, such interdimensional turnstyles don’t only exist in prehistoric places like Castle Ring.

To give just one personal example: as a five year old starting at Vine Street (Mixed) Infants in ‘Sixties Liverpool it perplexed me why all the second year boys clearly preferred continuously crossing and uncrossing their legs to entering the boys’ toilets in the lower yard, especially since, with the exception of the toilets’ strange old rear wall - a mysterious leftover from some unknown much earlier building - they were brand spanking new.

Anyway, finally accepting the overwhelming need to take a leak took precedence over any wish to fit in by observing local ‘customs’, I started to enter the toilets only to be immediately dragged back by a older boy who warned me, if I went in there on my own while they were still empty SOMETHING would get me.

Deciding he was joking, or maybe warning me of a set-up, I defied his warning and strode boldly in, all the time making sure to check all the cubicles in case someone lay in wait for me.

Even while unzipping my kecks I kept glancing over one or the other shoulder to ensure no one could sneak in by one or other of the entrances at each end.

But then, just as I started to experience relief, I glanced over my right shoulder for the umpteenth time only to stare in horror as a sort of Eighteenth Century - or earlier - Mad Scientist figure began emerging from the old wall behind me, dressed in what I can only describe as a sort of antique equivalent of a quarantine suit, (stitched together from thick armour-like ‘plates’ of leather, a variety of straps and metal buckles, a sort of almost Ist World War style gas mask covering his face, and a cloak of ostentatiously trailing in his wake).

Then, before I could react, I noticed how the huge, battered and crumpled looking, old fashioned tin or pewter cannister/’syringe’ his gloved hand tightly gripped had mounted on it a very long, very broad, painfully blunt looking, dull metal ‘needle’, which he proceeded to swiftly stab with eye-watering violence straight into my right buttock, before recoiling and vanishing straight back into the strange old wall.

Having long been used to people either freaking out, completely misunderstanding or simply ignoring my strange experiences, I didn’t bother saying anything until me eagle-eyed Mum, spotting a peculiar little hole which’d mysteriously appeared in the back of my shorts, subjected me to a closer inspection which revealed someone had “deliberately” stabbed me through the buttock with considerable force, using, as she put it, “a stiletto”.

Demanding I tell her who’d done this to me, she’d started dragging on her coat, shrilly demanding me Dad accompany her to the nearest police station, proclaiming how they should both march on the school to read the teachers the riot act, “allowing such things to happen!”, and even get on to the papers.

In the end, though, she was forced to give up these ideas when she finally realised, no matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t going to shake my latest strange story about it not being the other boys who’d stabbed me, but the man with the mask and the needle who’d stepped out of the strange old wall.