During the course of WW2, strange reports began to emerge of Italian and German patrols disappearing without a trace across France, Poland, and other German-occupied territories.
Captured German and Italian soldiers told their interrogators morbid and disturbing accounts of “inhuman howls” at night, and how they were forced to listen to the screams of their comrades as they were mauled to death at night.
At first, the accounts were dismissed as Fascist propaganda and fearmongering attempts by the enemy. However, that changed in early 1944.
British soldier John Davis relayed in his journal a harrowing account about how his entire unit encountered and did battle with a pack of what he described as “Hellhounds” during a patrol on the outskirts of Caen, France.
According to Davis, the patrol encountered a pack of feral dogs that were hideously malformed and unusually aggressive. The dogs seemed to have developed some sort of strange bloodlust for human flesh, and actively ignored other animals while exclusively preying on humans. They also seemed to emit a foul odor, with Davis’ description of the odor corresponding to that of sulfur.
Curiously, the dogs were also far larger than any known dog breed. For comparison, the Great Dane, English Mastiff, and Saint Bernard would weigh more than 100 pounds.
These dogs, by contrast, weighed approximately 250-300 pounds. They were also described as having “blood red eyes.”
In his journal, Davis comments that they seemed “unholy”, as if their very existence was, in his own words, a “perversion of God and His creation!” He even commented that these creatures looked like “They could only have come from the pit of Hell,” a sentiment that his fellow soldiers shared.
The journal related how the team managed to eliminate four of the Hellhounds, but the pack had managed to fatally maul nine of his comrades before retreating. By some reports, their skin seemed “incredibly resistant to bullets,” with most dogs dying only after being shot eight times. Upon death, the Hellhounds seemed to either spontaneously combust or spit fire while in the throes of death.
Davis claims that he took a picture of one of the dogs that had been slain and even sketched one in his journal. However, the sketch and photo were lost sometime after the war ended, leaving his claims dubious.
An artist’s rendition of the digs based on Davis’ journal circulated on social media in 2016, and it went viral. Davis himself never spoke of the incident again for years. But before he passed away in 2017, his last words were, “May God forgive us for not doing enough to eradicate those perversions of Nature from the face of the Earth,” seemingly expressing regret at having failed to save his comrades back in 1944.
It is believed that Davis’ encounter was the first documented encounter with Hellhounds in the 20th century.
It certainly wouldn’t be the last…
Image credit:
- Call of Duty wiki