By C.A. Sarsfield
According to legend, older African elephants instinctively direct themselves to a place called the elephants’ graveyard, when they reach a certain age, they then die there alone. If this myth is true, could there also be a place where dogs find that they have no choice but to end their lives?
This is a question that the people who live in the small village of Milton, in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, have been asking themselves for the past fifty years.
It is not known just where the elephants’ graveyard is, but it is known where the dogs die, in a quite corner of Scotland stands a 19th century building that was once the home of a rich Scottish family, a place where generations have lived and died, a place that might be considered haunted.
But the Hammer House of Horror fog, and the mist of fear and mystery don’t hang over the ruins of the old house, they hang over a bridge that crosses a narrow gorge, known in Celtic mythology as ‘the thin place’, a place where Heaven and Earth are close together, a place where the living and the dead collide.
Known as Overtoun Bridge, a Gothic arched bridge, that is built of grim, forbidding stone, the path it is on leads through the dense woodland towards Overtoun House. The gorge that the bridge crosses runs downhill to the River Clyde, and it is this bridge that seems to hold special meaning for man’s best friend.
