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The Black Dog of the Hanging Hills

Documented folklore from the Club 49 map, told straight and sourced.

The story

The saying on West Peak is old and precise: if you meet the black dog once it is for joy, twice for sorrow, and the third time for death. It makes no sound when it barks and leaves no tracks. What gives it teeth is that a geologist, W. H. C. Pynchon, published an account in 1898 of meeting it twice, then died on the traprock a few years later on a trip where a companion said he had seen it a third time. Several deaths on these cliffs since have been hung on the story. The Hanging Hills are real, steep basalt and genuinely dangerous ground in ice.

The ground it haunts

West Peak, Hubbard Park, Meriden (Connecticut). Source: A documented 1898 published account, on cliffs that really do kill people. The Club 49 map pins this legend at its documented country, beside the real mines, active claims, land status and modeled honey holes of the same ground. Open the free map and go stand in the story.

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