Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Dog Suicide Bridge

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

A bridge at the town of Dumbarton in Scotland has a terrible reputation as a site where dogs inexplicably leap to their death on the rocks 50 feet below. There is no shortage of theories why, but none fully explain it. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh Arth Clark and there's Charles Ruff Bryant

and Jerry, oh no, Roland is out there somewhere too. You put us all together. You have a really weird Scottish type mystery for the short stuff. That's right. The mystery of the Overton Bridge. That was great. You suddenly turned into like a character that the Scooby-Doo gang would meet toward the beginning of the episode who'd set everything up for him. You know, when we did our tour of Edinburgh. Embra. I met a dog there. I met a very kind lady on a walk through town and she was walking her

dog that looked sort of pit bullish and she was just so friendly and I love that accent, so I'll do anything to get them to talk to me. And so I engaged her and her dog and I went, oh, what's the breed? And she went, oh, just a wee staffy. Staffordshire cherry. That was great. I remember you telling that story because you were saying that you were missing your dogs because that was toward the end of that tour. Yeah, I had to get my fix. I remember hearing about that dog. But this dog did not leap to its death.

No, which is good. Probably because it was nowhere near Dumbarton, Scotland, or maybe Dumberton. Let's go with Dumberton. Probably Dumberton. Not Dumbarton. Dumb American is more like it. Exactly. Dumberton, Scotland. Yeah, that's way better. There is a bridge there, the Overton Bridge, like you were saying, and it's really beautiful. It's made of stone.

It's nice. Very ornate. It's not the longest bridge you'll ever see. It's pretty short, actually, and it's fairly low. But it does cross a substantial gap, something like 12 meters or about 50 feet, drop into a ravine, a little stream with rocks and all sorts of stuff below it. So there's a good reason for that bridge. And it's also not the oldest bridge in the world. I think in the mid-19th century, it was built to connect this estate that had just been built there, Overton House, to the rest of the town. So it was a pretty useful bridge, too.

But it is now considered, widely considered, a haunted supernatural death bridge by the locals in Dumbarton. Yeah. And, namely, because of the weird thing that has happened, dating back to the 1950s, at least as far as we know, there have been many cases, and we don't know how many, I've seen that was a terrible website that said 600. And I was going to read some of it, actually, but then I felt bad because it was in very broken English. It was either a bot writing it, or it was someone who doesn't speak good English. Well, we have a good 20 or 30 years before you need to empathize with bots.

Okay. It was pretty funny, though. But they reckoned about 600. Other people have said, in the 100, some people say fewer, but dogs leaping off of this bridge evidently unleashed. I mean, this is a very easy way to stop this. I mean, that's kind of the elephant in the room. But I guess, you know, it's a quaint bridge, and it looks like a pretty lovely small town. So maybe people can just walk around with their dogs off leash. But these dogs leaping at 50 feet, and many of them dying, many of them suffering bad injuries, supposedly one of them jumped from the bridge, survived, and ran up and jumped off again, man, which is just crazy. That's second times on the owner, if you ask me.

Yeah. You know, jump from bridge once, shame on you. Second time, shame on me, the dog owner. That's right. I saw in the New York Times article on this that they seem to think that there is at least 50 that have been definitely documented. So this isn't just like local legend. Like this is known to happen. This actually happens. These dogs are jumping to their deaths off of this bridge. And it's a really weird thing that no one has been able to explain, and we won't be able to explain it. But in 2010, the Dumberton Council, the city, the town council contacted a behaviorist, animal behaviorist named David Sands, and said, hey, can you come help figure this out? Because we're actually a fairly superstitious town. And right now,

the prevailing theory is that it's the white lady of Overton, the ghost of the widow of the son of the guy who built Overton house that's causing these dogs to jump. And it's giving the white lady of Overton a bad name because why would she want to do that? Yeah, why would she want to have all these dogs die by their own paw? I don't know. Maybe she just always thought dogs were just so stupid. So now in death, she's amusing herself by making them jump. All right, well, let's take a quick break here and we'll come back and talk about a terrible cliffhanger. Let's say something happy and positive instead. Rainbow bright rainbow bright. Okay, go right back and talk about David Sands right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance

Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses,

major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All righty. So they bring this animal expert over there, David Sands. Mm-hmm. He visits this bridge. I love how this article says he concluded first that the dogs weren't doing this on purpose. It's like, yeah, I think suicide is uniquely human from not mistaken.

He earned his money right out of the gate. Someone will probably prove me wrong. There's probably some animal that does this, but certainly not dogs. Well, don't even bother writing in with lemmings, everybody, because we debunked that years ago. That's right. So he had a couple of things to say, one of which was that the way the bridge is built and the part of it has to do the tapered edges of the bridge, part of it has to do apparently, I saw somewhere else, the foliage around it creates a little bit of an optical illusion that looks like you may be able to just run right off this bridge onto ground. I was surprised when I looked at the bridge, I thought they were slipping through a

a trestle or something on ground level, but it's a wall, like they have to jump up and over this thing, which is totally on the owner. No, totally. It is like you said, the dogs that are the victims of this are the same dogs that belong to people who like to show off how cool their dogs are that they don't need to be on a leash, that kind of thing. But the dogs inevitably go up and approach another dog or get too close to somebody who's scared of dogs. It never ends very well. But yeah, the dog does have to jump over this wall into a 50 foot drop below. Right. The second thing that he came up with was he said, I think that it could be possibly just some of these smells down there, driving these dogs crazy of these animals. He reckoned it was

mink urine. I did see where one local hunter said, you know, there's no mink around here. Oh, really? That's what one local hunter said. But then an official like an animal, I don't know who the official body for animal, I don't know if it was rescue or just preservation or something. SPCA. Oh, is it? The Scottish SPCA. All right. Well, I think it was an official from there did say that where these dogs are jumping specifically on the bridge, he said there are lots of mice, squirrel and mink nests. So they refuted this hunter at least. Yeah. So I guess the theory from Sands and Sands also points out that the dogs that are jumping are by and large dogs with long noses that are scent dogs, hunting dogs, that they would be more prone to pick up on a

bunch of scents or respond to a bunch of scents like mink, especially mink urine. And that that combined with this potential optical illusion that there is flat ground right on the other side of this wall is what's causing these dogs to jump. That's probably what it is. Apparently, they even did a little testing and mink urine just makes these dogs crazy. So here's the thing, like, yeah, that would seem like the most logical reasonable explanation. But then the next question you have is why is it just this one bridge? Why is that not a thing all over Scotland or all over the world, wherever there's mink or there's, you know, whatever kind of animal is going to set off a certain kind of dog? Like, what is it about this one bridge? That kind of, it doesn't fully

like dismiss sans theory. It just suggests that there's some weird combination of things here that we haven't quite put our finger on yet. Yeah, totally. You did mention the white lady of Overton haunting the place. There is also another kind of story slash theory that in 1994, there was a man, and this is just terrible, a 32 year old father through his baby off of this bridge because he thought his baby was the Antichrist. The baby died the next day, and the father was committed to an institution, obviously mentally ill. And some people say that they're jumping from the same spot that this man through his baby from. But this was in 1994, it's been happening since the 50s. Yeah, yeah, it's just kind of like an eerie addendum almost, you know? I think so.

You know, or some people I think think like, oh, it is supernatural. And this man was responding to the same thing the dogs are. And the Celts actually, who used to live in the area actually had a name for this kind of thing. They call it a thin place, which is where the spirit world and our world kind of overlapped where the fabric between the two was thinnest, which is pretty interesting. And then there's, in that supernatural camp, there's an author named Paul Owens, who wrote the Baron of Rainbow Bridge. And from what I can tell, Owens book basically says, and also you have to see the cover of this thing. It's adorable. But also like insane, like he Photoshopped dogs jumping like in midair and made it look like they're jumping off the bridge. And for some reason,

Vladimir Putin is dressed like a stage musician and the magician in the background. It's a very odd cover of a book. I'm looking now. That's weird. So didn't that guy look like Putin? He sort of does. But from what I can surmise, Paul Owens thing is he's kind of mashed up the rainbow bridge thing with, which is, I guess, what pets follow into the afterlife with like real life and somehow suicide. Like he, I guess he thinks like the dogs are actually purposely taking their lives. And like you said at the outset, that's just not, that's a human thing. That's exclusively human. Because from what we know, we're the only ones who can conceive of what a life is. And so therefore we're the only ones who can think of like ending that life. You know what I'm

saying? Like dogs, as far as we know, dogs and other animals are not capable of that. What do you think of the whole rainbow bridge thing? I don't know anything about it. You've mentioned it before. It ended up in the book, I think, was where I first ever saw it. And I haven't seen it. Is it a book, a kid's book? No, I actually don't know the origin. I just know that that's something that some people say like your pet has gone over the rainbow bridge or whatever. I don't subscribe. Obviously they don't, it's not supposed to be real, but I'm just don't, it's a little kind of goofy and hoo-hoo for me. But if that's your thing, and that makes you feel better and stuff, I'm certainly not making fun of it. It's just not for us. I got you. So,

yeah, I have no opinion about rainbow bridge, but don't get me started on rainbow bright. You got anything else? Yeah, nothing else. So the mystery remains, which is our kind of thing. We love that. Hopefully you do too, and that means everybody that short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.