The Dog-Suicide Bridge: Why are so many animals jumping from a ravine in Scotland?

DUMBARTON, Scotland – "I was sure she was dead," Lottie Mackinnon said softly.

Sitting at the corner of a cafeteria with her two children, Mackinnon He drank hot chocolate by telling the story three years ago, when he went out for a walk with Bonnie, his Border Collie dog, on the Overtoun bridge to Dumbarton, Scotland.

"Something happened to Bonnie as soon as we approached the bridge," Mackinnon said. "She was at first puzzled, then a strange energy possessed her, ran and jumped across the parapet."

A bewitched dog convinced to jump from a bridge by a malicious force? It sounds like an absurd scene from an old episode of The Unknown Dimension.

However, as noted by the Scots, Mackinnon's dog is one of hundreds of people who, since the early 1950s, are suddenly preparing to jump from the Gothic stone structure. Many died, lying on steep rocks at the bottom of the valley.

The inhabitants of Dumbarton, northwest of Glasgow, have begun to refer to Overtoun, a century-old bridge that stretches along a 15-meter ravine, similar to the Bridge of Suicidal Dogs.

Mackinnon, who grew up in the nearby town of Milton, shuddered down the ravine among trees and shrubs in search of Bonnie. However, when he approached the dog's body, Bonnie began to moan and then tried to get up.

"It's a miracle he survived," he said.

In a place filled with superstitions, myths and monsters, the bridge has been the protagonist of an unresolved mystery. Why do so many dogs jump from there?

Local researchers estimate that more than three hundred have jumped off the bridge. The tabloid reporters say that it takes about six hundred. It is said that at least fifty dogs are dead.

Some say that rational explanations are related to the terrain and the smell of mammals in the ravine that can make dogs crazy.

Other explanations adopt a more paranormal tone.

The place where the bridge is, silent, exuberant and sometimes immobile, corresponds to the description of what the pagan Celts called a "narrow place", a hypnotic site where the sky and the Earth coincide.

"The inhabitants of Dumbarton are very superstitious"he said Alastair Dutton, local taxi driver. "We grew up in the Overtoun area and we believe in ghosts because we have all seen or felt the spirits there."

These incidents inspired an episode of the American television series The Unxplained Files. A book is devoted to the exploration of this phenomenon.

However, despite all this attention, the mystery is not solved.

In the distance, it seems that the ornate Victorian-style bridge, built in 1895, is only an extension of the entrance to an adjacent 19th-century mansion built in Dumbarton by industrial magnate James White.

Closer are the three arches of the bridge that extend over a stream, the Overtoun Burn. In the middle of the blackened granite parapets of the bridge, it is easy to forget that the space below reaches the bottom of the deep ravine.

In the next house, the current owner, Bob Hill, said he and his wife had seen several dogs suddenly jump off the bridge since moving to the property, now called Overtoun House, more than seventeen years ago.

However, Hill, a Texas-born pastor who runs a local center for women in crisis, had a more earthly explanation: the smell of small animals that pbad through the ravine, along the bridge, makes dogs crazy, and that That's why they slip their straps – if they have them – and jump.

"The dogs detect the aroma of mink, marten or other mammal, and then jump on the deck slab," Hill said. "Because it's a narrow stretch, they just fall from there."

Nevertheless, he conceded, the region of Overtoun is "more spiritual than the other parts".

"Scotland is a place where there are a lot of supernatural things, and it's very common in people's lives," he added.

Paul Owens, professor of Religion and philosophy in GlasgowHe grew up in a town near the bridge and recently published a book on the mystery. With regard to the explanation of dog-suicides, it relies entirely on supernatural phenomena.

"After eleven years of investigation, I am convinced that the responsible for all this is a ghost," he said while he was sitting in front of a pub on a rainy day in Glasgow.

Owens' theory is popular with some local residents, who grew up hearing stories about Blanche Blanche of Overtoun, also known as the widow in mourning of John White, son of James.

"The lady lived alone and mourned for more than 30 years after her husband's death in 1908," said Marion Murray, a resident of Dumbarton. "His ghost has been harbading the place since then, they saw him at the windows and wander about in the place."

In 2010, the animal behaviorist David Sands He investigated the phenomenon and ruled out the possibility of animals committing suicide.

Their experiments on the bridge revealed that dogs – especially long-snouted breeds – were attracted to the mammalian odor below. Sands proposed that the limited perspective of dogs, their ignorance that the road is pbading from ground level to a bridge that stretches over the deep ravine and smells that aerial fumes might have caused them to jump.

However, even he acknowledged that the bridge has a "strange energy".

Some residents believe that their theory is likely, but many here still consider that the jumps are inexplicable. They wonder why the phenomenon does not occur in the same way on other bridges in the United Kingdom where mammals are found.

"The other bridges do not have afflicted spirits hiding in their place," Mackinnon said sadly.

Despite its gruesome reputation, the Overtoun area is still a walking place for dogs and many of them are off leash.

"Many people do not believe in this story until they see what is happening, and even then, they do not believe it will happen to them," Hill said.

One day, Emma Dunlop, who said he heard "horror stories," took his farmer, Ginger, to get to Overtoun.

He did not let her out of his car until she had the strap.

"He has never tried to jump, but sometimes he stops or hesitates when he gets on deck, so I'm always careful," he said.

Ginger jumped out of the car, ran to his mistress and went straight to the Overtoun Bridge, crossing without more.

But after Ginger stopped, she looked back to see something on the bridge, which seemed empty.

"Yes, that's … the White Lady," Dunlop said, laughing, implying that Ginger had seen the ghost of the bridge.

Then both continued the walk.

* Copyright: c.2019 New York Times News Service