Scooby-Doo DORY...
My ghost-hunting pooch sniffs out spooks! By Rob Pyke, 50
Letting my beagle, Dory, off her lead, I watched her run round the haunted church, tail wagging furiously.
‘What can you sense?’ I asked, setting up my equipment as she sniffed every nook and cranny.
I’d rescued Dory five years earlier, when she was around six years old. Running my paranormal investigation team, Veritas Paranormal UK, meant I was often out on ghost hunts for hours at a time. But Dory hated being left alone, so I decided to take her with me!
Dory’s first investigation was at a haunted museum in Leeds. She hadn’t been fazed by the spirits and was far more interested in the doggie treats the guests fed her!
After that, she came on most investigations, even if she wasn’t all that much help. Now here we were, one night in April 2019, at Todmorden Unitarian Church in West Yorkshire.
Just then, three of the guests, who’d gone down into the cellar, rushed back up looking shocked.
‘We’ve all been scratched,’ one of them gasped.
Two of them had scratches on their arms. Another, Nick*, had three scratches on his neck.
‘I shouted at the spirits to do their worst,’ he admitted.
Later that night I was in the cellar under the bell tower when three loud thuds, like something heavy being dropped, echoed above me. The guests ran in saying they could smell sulphur. As usual, Dory didn’t seem scared. She barely pricked her ears!
At about 11pm, we sat down for a Ouija board session, Dory snoozing at our feet. A spirit came through, the planchette started violently spinning anti-clockwise and the guests began to panic.
‘W-what’s happening?’ one stammered. That’s when I noticed Dory. She was awake now, standing with her paws on the wall of the church staring up at something. Weird. At this time of the
night, Dory normally slept until home time. Now she was on high alert.
All of a sudden, it hit me. The scratches, the bangs, the smell of sulphur and Dory actually being scared for a change. Something really nasty was in the church with us.
Heart racing, I wrapped up the investigation.
Arriving home in Leeds, Nick rang. He told me he’d been chatting to another guest during the drive home when they’d heard a voice growl ‘shut up’ through his car radio.
Hanging up, I immediately performed a ritual to cleanse myself and Dory.
But over the weeks that followed, Nick fell into a depression. Finally, suspecting the entity had attached itself to him at the church, he got a medium to perform a cleansing. Thankfully, he was soon himself again.
And Dory has proved herself to be a useful member of the team. Goodness knows what would have happened that day if she hadn’t warned us. We’ll always be safe with our own real-life Scooby Doo!