https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/y49k8s/i_live_on_a_farm_that_is_still_very_much_in_touch/

I said I would talk about the Shuck, and the time has come. Honestly, I have been putting it off. Most of the stuff I have already described could be put down to vivid imagination or natural explanations. Even Uncle Pete. People go missing all the time, and the only witnesses to his original disappearance were small children.

The sightings of the Black Shuck, which have occurred many times, have been debated a lot. English folklore maintains it is native to Norfolk, Suffolk, the Cambridgeshire Fens and Essex, but I don't know what else to call the large, black dog that my family has been seeing for generations.

There could be a natural explanation, of course. It could be a generation of overly large dogs roaming the countryside. But the Shuck is like no dog we have ever seen in real life.

Descriptions of the Shuck vary in history, with only certain aspects being constant: Red eyes; bared teeth; shaggy black fur. It has been described as companionable, and fiendish. A devil dog, or a guardian.

The version we see is particular to our farm. He is huge - the size of a wolfhound. He has one large red eye, set directly between where a normal dog's eyes would be, and this is the reason we know he is not a normal dog. And we know he is a He. There is no way to be delicate about it: Our Shuck has a huge, pendulous set of balls that swing between his legs so vigorously they cannot be ignored. It may seem excessive to mention them, but every sighting of him has included them in the description. They are that notable.

Tales of our Shuck have been passed down, of course, and every generation has its tale. My mother hoarded these sightings and wrote them down whenever she heard them, and my grandparents told her all they knew before they died.

My great great grandfather told of his own grandfather sighting the Shuck at the copse. Knowing the copse as I do, I often wonder if my fanciful sightings of wolves in there were actually from my imagination, or whether I had actually seen the Shuck.

My great, great, great, great grandfather had been returning from the byre after a late calving. It had been a difficult one, by all accounts, and he had been bloodied up to his elbows. He had stopped at a rain barrel to rinse the blood and mucus off before entering the house and had seen a huge, four legged creature lurking by the edge of the copse.

It carried itself in an awkward, sideways gait, he said, its back arched like a startled cat, and he thought it might have been attracted by the scent of blood and new life. He had been bone tired, but seeing the gigantic beast sidling towards the farmhouse, its red eye clearly visible even in the evening gloom, made him turn around and go back to the byre. I am sure it was all too easy to imagine the massive dog making off with a newborn calf, and he kept watch all night, fighting off sleep, whilst the large silhouette paced up and down on the hillside.

This was the first time the Shuck had been acknowledged, even through oral tradition, and after my ancestor had told of it, the sightings seemed to snowball. It's possible the Shuck had always been there, and nobody had ever spoken of it, so the fact that it was seen more often after that may have just been due to the family being more comfortable sharing their experiences.

Most of the accounts over the years have been unremarkable - although seeing a giant, possibly spectral hellhound can hardly be considered unremarkable by most standards. But as far as the Shuck is concerned, there is a difference between a Sighting and an Encounter. My mother recorded each sighting she heard about, and most of them sang the same tune. They saw the Shuck. He dawdled around for a while. Then he left.

I can understand how these accounts can be commonplace and yet exciting. I have, for example, seen many foxes over the years. They are pests to most. Confident little thieves getting as close as they can to humans, to take advantage of what they can steal from us. But once I walked out of the back door of the house and found one mere feet away from me. It was a young fox, just outgrown its cub phase, and its fur was fluffy and clean. It was sat in a patch of grass, its brushy tail curled neatly around its paws, nose held high to catch the farm scents. It acknowledged me as I came out, a casual glance that took me in and didn't deem me a threat.

At that moment, it was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, even though I had seen many of them: Scruffy and scrawny ones for the most part - hard bitten adults that had already fought many times over just to continue to exist. But this one was different. Sleek and perfect and, although my father would laugh at the sentiment, very cute.

I stood still, for fear of scaring it off, and we communed for a while, just the two of us sharing a quiet spell, until a door slammed somewhere in the house and it took off. It didn't rush, just set off at a leisurely jog without a backward glance, until I could no longer see it in the gathered dusk. It had been… magical while it lasted. I felt like I had witnessed something special yet mundane.

And that's how most Shuck sightings were described. Except for a select few.

My grandfather's tale could be easily explained. My father's father was a drunkard - what we would call a piss head where I come from. Not an alcoholic, that distinction is always made clear to outsiders, but someone who likes his booze in a socially acceptable yet slightly excessive fashion.

Here in the West Country we brew a type of cider that is called scrumpy. It's an alcoholic beverage made from fermented apples, and is notable for its cloudy appearance. It is usually orange/yellow in colour, and flat, with no fizz. And it is very strong. Its strength lies in its deceptiveness: One would never believe that murky apple juice could make you drunk. But my grandfather proved its effectiveness time and again.

One night he'd been at the local pub, and had been making his way home through the muddy lanes that crisscrossed the countryside. He'd been unsteady on his feet, that much he admitted, and had fallen whilst trying to climb over a gate. He'd fallen face first into a slurry of cowshit and mud and twisted his knee in the process. The night had been cloudy, and he'd become disorientated by the time he'd managed to get to his feet. He swore that the landscape had changed. A feeling familiar to any drunk person, of course, but he had always remained adamant that the stars overhead had been skewed and unfamiliar, that the fields he saw now had no hedgerows, and that the lanes he'd been walking were mere ghosts, narrow tracks made as if by one person going back and forth across the land by themself.

He'd been lost, he said, lost in his own land with no idea of where to go. He always maintained he'd been cast back in time, and everyone had always chuckled hearing the tale, of course, but he never wavered despite the laughter. He said he had stood in the vast expanse of endless trees and grass and wondered how he would ever find his way home.

But then the Shuck had appeared.

It never got close enough for him to touch, but close enough for him to hear its rasping breaths, and see the clouds that breath made on that cold night. It had circled him at first, and he had been terrified, but it made no threatening move towards him. Rather, it had made tight circles towards him, then wider ones away, and he got the feeling it was trying to lead him.

So he had followed it. Followed the dark, hunched shape and the glow of its one red eye. When the wind blew in the right direction he said he could smell it. A familiar smell for anyone who has ever owned a dog: The smell of damp fur and musty dogfarts and meaty breath. He mentioned its balls, of course. Told us how they swung and slapped against its legs with every step. He'd been very particular about that detail.

And eventually he had found himself at home, had seen the welcoming glow of lighted windows up ahead, and once he had seen that the big black dog had slunk away.

"It got me home," he had reported. "Guided me through that old land into my own one."

My father, by all accounts, had always remained silent during this telling of his father's story. He saw the Shuck in quite a different light, but that was because the Shuck had killed his own dog.

Rowan, the dog I had grown up with, I had killed unknowingly through my interaction with the stones, tracing his fate with my childish finger on an ancient carving, but Conan had been killed right before my father's eyes.

Conan had been a Good Dog. My father had loved him. As I mentioned before, my father had raised him, and he had been a loyal and fearless companion. A true mutt of indiscriminate breed, stout and hardy and faithful. He had been my father's shadow, accompanying him everywhere he went, and willing to take on any foe to protect my father.

Conan had been the one to find Uncle Pete in the Old Paddock, and Conan was the one who had taken on the Shuck at the cost of his own life.

My father used to smoke. My mother hated it. If he wanted to smoke, she would make him go far away from the house, and it became a little ritual for him. He'd take Conan for a last bathroom break, and lean on a fence to smoke his bedtime cigarette. He'd watch the sun go down, or the clouds drift across the sky, or the long grass bow against the wind. It was a peaceful time for him. And Conan enjoyed it too. He got to be a dog: He would chase his tail, and bite at the grass, and bark at scattering bunnies to his heart's content. My father liked to see it. Working dogs have been trained for a purpose, and when that purpose is relaxed they can be puppies again for a while. Like most pet dogs.

My father said that it had been on just such an occasion that the Shuck had come.

My father had been halfway through his cigarette, ruminating on the curve of the land and its juxtaposition against the fading blue of the twilight sky. It had been translucent, the setting sun casting its illumination just enough that my father felt like he could see through it, and maybe that's why the Shuck had appeared. Dusk is a time of transition, a gateway between the worlds of night and day, and the Shuck had slunk from the copse as if the in between time had called it.

Conan had stopped playing, going from a chaotic spin into an attack stance. My father had cast down his half smoked cigarette immediately upon seeing the looming silhouette on the hillside. He told me that everything had seemed slow then, that every movement was turned down to a crawl.

The Shuck had displayed no aggressive behaviour, but Conan had reacted anyway, and the Shuck had responded in kind.

My father said they had come together in an almighty clash of teeth that he heard even from far away. The butt of his flung cigarette was still smouldering even as he scaled the fence to intervene, never caring that he himself might be ripped asunder between the two beasts. But of course he was too late. Two legs against four was a poor gamble, and by the time he had run up the hill to where the dogs fought Conan was already wounded, the grass beneath him slick from blood and the gasps from his torn throat were as ragged as the wound he had sustained.

My father had cried. "Wept" was the word he used. He had cradled his good dog in his arms and been soaked in Conan's blood even as the Shuck retreated back to the copse.

"I always knew it wunt personal," my father told me. "Dint matter to the Shuck, he wunt bothered at all, but I still hated that hell dog anyway. Killed my boy. Don't care if it did guide my dad home. Don't care about anything else. I hated that bastard."

I can understand my father's sentiment. I hated myself for killing Rowan, albeit inadvertently. And the bond between my father and Conan had been strong. But when I myself saw the Shuck, I was torn.

I'd been 16 years of age. There was a boy from a neighbouring farm who liked me. He had been a typical country ass hole, too big for his boots and a mouth to match, but the gene pool was narrow in my part of the world and I didn't have enough experience to be picky.

He'd courted me, as my mother would say, for a while, before finally making his move, and his move had been a crude seduction by the ruins of the old barn.

His name was Seth, and he'd come from a long line of biblically named sons with Caleb being the oldest and Joshua his baby brother. They were all attractive boys, and Jonah, the second oldest, had been a crush of mine, but Seth was close enough to be of interest to me.

Seth had called on me whilst my father was out, which was probably why I'd been allowed to go out walking with him. Had my father been home, I have no doubt we would have spent the evening in the parlour under his watchful glare, making awkward conversation until Seth had to go home.

My mother had been in an absent state, worrying over some kind of ritual she felt she had to attend to, and she'd waved us off whilst poring over her bones.

I've never blamed her. Had she forbidden us, I would have probably stolen out without her permission anyway.

I walked with Seth, and we talked, and all the while he was steering us toward the darker part of the land. The quietest part. I was a fool, I know, but the blame can't be put on me either. I wanted the attention. I felt special. There weren't many boys who would court me on my own land and I thought that made Seth special too.

We found ourselves by the old barn. No animals had been kept there since the fire, and we mostly used it for storage, but I always felt a spiritual sadness in that area. I hadn't witnessed the fire, but many cows and a few horses had died that night, and it hurt me to think of those terrified, helpless animals dying in pain.

There was a dark singe mark around the old barn that had stained the ground, an aura of soot and misery that extended outwards, and ordinarily I would not have gone near it. But Seth was persuasive. In his way.

I don't remember too much about what happened. It's possible I've blocked it out. But I remember being on my back on that burned out ground, smelling decades old cow shit and the memory of flames, looking over Seth's shoulder at the stars overhead and trying to identify the constellations that would give me the most comfort. The Plough was there, steadfast and familiar, an arc and angle I could draw in my sleep. I remember trying to push Seth away, but feeling his hand around my wrist. Then nothing, until he started to scream.

He didn't die. He went on to marry, though not to have children. The Shuck had seen to that. And he didn't succeed in what he had set out to do. I know it might seem strange but sometimes when I can't sleep I think about Seth's terror and his pleading and begging and it sends me right off to a peaceful place.

The Shuck was my guardian that night, and Seth's parents may have called round at least once to demand justice for their son's injuries, but I had no doubt that my father had answered the door with his shotgun broken over the crook of his arm in response to their inquiries.

Good or bad, Angel dog or hellhound, my father has come to terms with its existence. He lost a beloved pet, but will still nod at the Shuck when he sees it.

As for me, I think I'd like to pet the Shuck at least once. Just scratch it behind its ears and call it a good boy. It must be lonely.

Next time I post, I will tell you about the stuff that has happened inside the house. The doppelgangers and mimics we deal with all the time. And after that, I have some theories of my own about the land. Especially the Devil's Footprint.