Bridge of Death

The Mystery the Dogs Can Unfurl! Overtoun Bridge- Scotland

Hamilton is a small Scottish city that is located to the south of the state of Lanarkshire, practically to the borders of the Clyde River. This small urbanization is inhabited by no more than 49 thousand inhabitants and was initially called “Cadzow,” which in Spanish means beautiful castle, a name that changed years later to Hamilton, in honor of James Hamilton, who was the driving force behind the development of the place,   indicates scotland.com. Despite being a small place and little talked about, Hamilton offers several attractions for the tourist. Such as the Hamilton Mausoleum, an area that is characterized by registering the highest echo off a building in the world. The Hamilton Palace was the home of the dukes of the region until the end of the last century.  Stratclyde Country Park is an excellent theme park for children, as well as the parish church of the city. The Overtoun Bridge is also known as the Bridge of Death.

Overtoun bridge

Image Source wikipedia.org

History of the Bridge of Death

In 1859, a bourgeois named James White bought some land on the outskirts of town to build a mansion of spiritual retreat. As a rich and influential personality, he hired one of the best architects of his time to conceive what would be the best town in the city. To access the site, one would have to cross a small local stream, so the bridge’s design was made according to the mansion to anticipate its Victorian elegance; so was born the Overtoun Bridge. The construction of the bridge is very sober, flanked by three towers in the classic Victorian style and with a wide parapet of imported stones over one meter in height that prevents the animals from seeing the river and also annul their perception of the height.

But since a few years ago, there has been a bridge in the city, the “Overtoun Bridge”, which has attracted the attention of numerous locals and foreigners, even from the scientific community, since a little more than 60 years ago there has been a very particular phenomenon: the bridge of death which has been attributed with much mystery dog story.

bridge of death

Image source cbci.co.kr

It is an arch-shaped bridge located near Milton in Dumbarton in Scotland which was built in 1859. It became famous for the number of unexplained cases of dogs that committed suicide by jumping off of it. The incidents were recorded around the 1950s or 1960s when it was found that hundreds of dogs – usually of the long-nosed breed, such as Collies – suddenly and unexpectedly jumped off the bridge and dropped fifty meters to their death. In some cases though, the dogs could survive to recover and then jump off the bridge again.

Theories

The number of dog suicides on this bridge which can also be called the dog face bridge has been on the increase in the last 50 years, with critical periods of more than five dogs per quarter and hundreds of jumps with a happy ending. Some of the dogs would climb the parapet before jumping into the void, drunk with the mystery, and to the astonishment of their owners. But why did they jump?

Several theories fueled the mystery to fatten the suicide legend. Supernatural forces and strange magnetism or energy fields emanating from imported stones confused the dogs’ hypersensitivity and orientation mechanism, forcing them to resolve the extrasensory ordeal.

hundreds of dogs

Photo: via YouTube

Psychic Research at the Overtoun Bridge Vertoun House

The origin of the first canine suicide was in the early 1960s when several witnesses reported on the sudden and mysterious reaction of some dogs when they arrived in the center of the bridge. Without any provocation or apparent motive, the dogs ran and jumped right over the parapet and sprawled on the stones beside the little stream.

the overtoun bridge overtoun house

Image Source wikimedia.org

In an attempt to unravel this myth,  a Scottish psychic, Maria Armor, visited the Overtoun bridge (dog face bridge)  to verify the mystery dog story and also explain anything that might be plaguing the dogs.  While walking on the Overtoun Bridge, she claimed to have felt a pure, calm, and serene atmosphere. Her dog went through quite happily, though it did not walk around and she certainly did not feel the negative energy at all.

Legends and Strange Events on the Site

The various dog ghosts facts and circumstances surrounding the Overton Bridge have led many people to believe that some evil spirit haunts the place.

In 1994 Kevin Moy, 32, threw his few-week-old son off the bridge as he believed the child would show anti-Christ activities in later life. Shortly afterward he tried to end his own life with a frustrated suicide attempt from the same span. Moy was detained at Carstairs State Hospital, a maximum security psychiatric facility.

There was also the widespread claim that the bridge would be situated where the Celts believed to be a place where the veil separating our world from the spiritual world is very thin. All this was used to explain the continuous canine suicide on the spot.

One fact that contributed a lot to making this bridge of death a recurring subject between the blogs of Terror and Mysteries with the code name “The Bridge of Suicide Dogs” is that the dogs just jumped from the bridge on one side of the building, the right side precisely. Another interesting fact was all the dogs affected by the strange suicidal impulse had long muzzles.

Science Issues its Opinion

Veterinarian David Sands was responsible for solving the mystery. A specialist at the Lancashire Animal Behaviour Clinic, Sands noticed first and foremost repeated behavior: all dogs that “killed themselves” were of the Labrador, Collie, or Golden Retriever breeds. Because of this information, he concluded that there was some scent in the area that made the dogs crazy.

After some studies with plants in the places, Sands realized that the cause of the “killer odor” was not a vegetable, but an animal called the mink. The mink is an animal that has glands that exude a substance with an extremely unpleasant odor to mark its territory. The scent of this substance is so strong that it makes the dogs mad, especially those with a keen sense of smell.

From a position on the bridge, all that the dog will see are the stone walls, and becomes lively with the smell of the mink, as it is their natural curiosity that compels them to investigate.

The olfactory sense of the dog tells him that the smell is over the wall, so he becomes more excited, he will then jump over the wall to find the source, indifferent to the fact that there is a fall of fifty meters on the other side.

The bridge in question is also in a region with no chains or blocked beds, and this ensures that the odor does not spread. Because of this, the dogs are amazed and do not measure the consequences of playing without caution. The veterinarian has also continued to conduct a series of tests and experiments so that the scientific community would accept his theory.

Dr. David Sands, who has investigated the story also stated that it is impossible for a dog to premeditate its death. Upon conclusion of the experiment, it was discovered that the dogs remained calm throughout the period its owner was on the bridge; thus putting off any form of spiritual myths attributed to the bridge.

Conclusion

In a small town in the west of Scotland called Milton, embraced by the green lands of Dumbarton County, there is a mysterious Victorian bridge that has attracted the interest of opportunistic scientists, charlatans, and parapsychologists. Since the 60s, dozens of dogs have been seduced by an inexplicable and willful suicidal attitude that led them to jump into the void from the top. After years of theories ascribed to ignorance, several scientists have tried to unravel the cause of such mysterious leaps. The statistic by itself would be somewhat astonishing, after all, what would take so many animals to throw themselves to their death on a bridge of 15 meters in height? Furthermore, several theories have been promulgated by scientists to demystify this mystery as highlighted above.

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