PanningForGold

My wife and I are very lucky living on the side of a mountain in Central Pennsylvania. Clary, our 100 pound Great Pyrenees loves the woods. We have made a habit of going on daily walks down one of the three trails that run through our 11 Acres. Every now and again when walking the trail furthest from our house Clary decides she doesn’t want to walk anymore she will stop and sit. Getting her to move forward is akin to moving a mule that doesn’t want to be moved. The only direction she will go is home dragging me the entire time.
I was telling one of my co-workers about Clary’s refusal to go into the woods, he told me she probably hears the barking dog.

 At the furthest point on the trail, mainly in the fall when the leaves have fallen off the trees you can just make out a little hunting shack on the next ridge, sometimes there is a little smoke from a fire and one can hear a dog barking and if you squint just right you can just see it running back and forth barking it’s fool head off. 

“Well, there  is that dog in that hunting shack off the back of our property” 

“You have seen and heard this dog?” He asked?

“Not often, but yes”

“Have you met the owners?”

“No, I can’t even figure out how to get to that house, there doesn’t seem to be a road or path that leads to the house.”

My co-worker looked at me strangely and said, “I guess it’s time somebody told you about the barking dog.”

Seventy five years ago a young family built and lived in that house lived off the land in true homesteader fashion. Nobody is sure exactly what made the young man snap but one evening he shot and killed his wife, both his children and the dog, set the home on fire sat down on the front porch where he perished in the flames. To this day nobody goes near the place, some still claim to hear the dog barking. Hunters who try and hunt the land say it is barren of all wildlife and in the wee hours of the morning some see wisps of smoke coming from where the house used to stand.