Rational Explanations Collide With Local Legend

"I was sure she was dead. Something overcame Bonnie as soon as we approached the bridge. At first she froze, but then she became possessed by a strange energy and ran and jumped right off the parapet."
"It was a miracle that she survived."
"Other bridges don't have troubled spirits lurking about."
Lottie Mackinnon, Dumbarton, Scotland

"The lady [White Lady of Overtoun, widow of John White] lived alone in grief for more than 30 years after her husband died in 1908."
"Her ghost has been lurking around here ever since."
Marion Murray, resident, Dumbarton, Scotland

"I've walked the bridge. The first time I reached a point, and it was as if the air got thinner and my stomach jumped, a bit like when you miss a step going down a flight of stairs. The second time, I just couldn't stop feeling like something bad was going to happen."
"There was a woman with a dog at the edge of the bridge, and the dog would not take a step forward. Later, I found out that a couple of dogs had jumped to their death from the bridge that weekend."
Jenna, 20, from Glasgow

Overtoun Bridge  Dog photo: Ray Larabie

A legend and a mystery. Ms. Mackinnon's Bonnie is a Border collie whom Lottie Mackinnon was walking in Dumbarton, over the Overtoun Bridge. She describes her dog's strange behaviour ending in the dog leaping off the bridge into the wooded ravine below. Suddenly, uncharacteristically, frighteningly. The woman felt certain her dog would not survive. She was fortunate it did.

Evidently an estimated 300 dogs are said to have done the very same thing; arrested in motion at a certain place on the bridge, then some peculiar force compelling them to leap over the rampart into the forest far below. Since the 1950s when this strange, unaccountable phenomenon began occurring with local dogs, fifty have died. The valley bed, littered with rocks that they dashed themselves upon killed them.

Northwest of Glasgow, Dumbarton residents started to regard Overtoun, a hundred-year-old bridge stretching across a 15-meter gorge, the "dog suicide bridge". The bridge leads to grounds surrounding a 19th-Century manor, Overtoun, built by a wealthy industrialist, James White. The bridge is actually an extension of a long drive leading to the manor. And the grounds are a popular walking destination for nearby residents.

Overtoun house Author :dave souza

The bridge was built in 1894, in the manner of the Gothic era, as was the manor house. "After 11 years of research, I'm convinced it's a ghost that is behind all of this", stated Paul Owens, author of a recently published book featuring the mystery of the bridge. He had grown up in a nearby town, and had obviously been familiar with the area and the legend around Overtoun as locals are wont to discuss such things.

Local residents believe the paranormal is the answer to the mystery, that the restive ghost of the widow of the manor's builder's son, called irresistibly to dogs to end their lives there, at the bridge. An animal behaviorist -- David Sands -- looked into the phenomenon of the bridge and its deathly attraction to dogs, in 2010. He conducted a number of experiments that led him to believe that the dogs were attracted at the site to the scent of animals living below in the ravine.

He held that the limited perspective of the dogs, along with their lack of knowledge that the path changes from level ground to a bridge spanning a deep gorge, linked to the challenging odours wafting upward from the ravine enticed the dogs to try to track the animal scents as dogs are wont to do, often giving chase to other animals when on walks through forested areas.

While his theory makes sense, the mystery remains for local residents over the fact that it is this bridge and this one alone, not other bridges over ravines where mammals roam below that appears to have this irresistible draw to dogs, leading to their sudden, explosive action where they leap from the bridge into the vast empty space, to land in the densely treed ravine below, some to survive and others not.

Overtoun Bridge in Dumbarton, Scotland, has played host to a bizarre trend of canines leaping off it.  Credit: gerard ferry

"I was up there one summer’s day and I felt a very strong jab — like a phantom finger — twice in my back. It was the sensation you get when you fear someone might push you over the edge of a train platform."                                                                                                            "It’s a very strange place. One of the things peculiar to the location is that it can seem very peaceful and tranquil, but it can turn at a moment’s notice."                                                                                                          Paul Owens, Author