Hound from Mons: a mutant dog that hunted British soldiers (8 photos)

Either it's true or it's fiction. Or maybe this dog is an explosive mixture of real facts and the creations of a stress-clouded mind.





In 1914, German troops occupied Mons, Belgium, and the British, first in action during the First World War, marched to try to liberate the city. The soldiers were not embarrassed even by the significant numerical superiority of the enemy.



German occupation of Belgium during World War I

However, they soon suffered serious losses from the German onslaught, and the battle escalated into trench warfare. The stubborn British dug in and continued to fight. Both sides constantly fired at each other. Skirmishes regularly turned into fierce hand-to-hand combat in the blood-soaked mud of the trenches.





British troops at Mons, 1914

Between the trenches of the two enemy sides there was a so-called neutral zone. Both claimed the territory between the trenches of the two enemy sides, but they were afraid to openly advance further.

No man's lands were generally heavily defended and fortified on both sides. Any movement usually resulted in immediate exposure to enemy fire. Accordingly, these zones actually turned into a wasteland where no one dared to set foot.



It was in these dark conditions that the story of the Hound of Mons emerged. In 1919, Canadian veteran F. J. Newhouse published a chronicle in which he described the story of a giant ghost hound that tormented British soldiers in no man's land. The publication said that this beast was no ordinary hellhound or ghost. And it was the result of a carefully planned, terrible German experiment. According to Newhouse, Dr. Gottlieb Hochmuller conducted many experiments to create powerful biological weapons. It was supposed to change the course of the war in Germany's favor.



The doctor purposefully visited shelters and prisons. Until I found the ideal object - a man burning with hatred for England. With the consent of the authorities, he removed the brain of the madman killer and inserted it into the skull of the wolfhound. Presumably it was a puppy of the Khotosho breed - a Buryat-Mongolian wolfhound. Under close attention, the dog quickly recovered and gained strength, surrounded by care.



Khotosho

When the dog was ready, it was released to attack British soldiers on the battlefield of Mons. The nightmare days began on November 14, 1914, when Captain Yeskes and four comrades went to patrol no man's land. They never returned.

Many days later, their bodies were found - with their throats torn out and deep marks of sharp teeth on the corpses. A few nights later, a terrible howl was heard from the darkness. Since then, more and more soldiers have disappeared and died in no man's land. All of them were found with the same terrible injuries to their throats and bodies.



From time to time a monstrous howl was heard, and the watchmen noticed with horror a large black beast silently moving across neutral territory.

For two years, the hound scoured the fields of Mons, collecting its bloody harvest and instilling superstitious terror in the troops. And then, just as suddenly as she appeared, she disappeared. The attacks stopped.



At that time, civilians were suspicious of this story and mistook it for delusions and hallucinations of a war-drugged mind. After all, this story is very similar to the work of the master of psychological horror Edgar Allan Poe. There are similarities with Conan Doyle’s story “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and even with Bulgakov’s “Heart of a Dog”. Newhouse claimed that certain secret documents were seized from Hochmuller's house that could shed light on this mysterious story and confirm the facts stated by the author. But the papers did not surface anywhere. And they, like the Hound of Mons, were never heard from again.