March 3, 2021 • 12 mins
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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh arf Clark,
and there's Charles rough 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 this
short stuff. That's right, the mystery of the Overton Bridge.
(00:28):
That was great. You suddenly turned into like a character
that the Scooby Doo gang would meet towards the beginning
of the episode. Who set everything up for him? You know,
when we did our tour of Edinburgh, I met a
I met a dog there. I met a very kind
lady on a walk through town and she was walking
(00:48):
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 breeze? And oh, just a wee stuffy. It's great.
I remember you telling that story because you're saying that
you were missing your dogs, because that was towards the
(01:11):
end of that tour. 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 Dumbarton. Let's go with Dumberley, Dumbarton, not Dumbarton. Um,
dumb American is more like it dumb Dumbarton, Scotland. That's
(01:35):
way better. Um. There is a bridge there, the Overton Bridge,
like you were saying, and it's really beautiful. It's made
of stone, very ornate. It's not the longest bridge you'll
ever see. It's pretty short actually, and it's fairly low um.
But it does cross a substantial um gap, something like
twelve meters or about fifty ft drop into a ravine,
(01:58):
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 nineteenth century. It was built
to connect this estate that had just been built, their
Overton House UM, to the rest of the town. So
it was a pretty useful bridge too. But it is
(02:18):
now considered widely considered a haunted supernatural death bridge um
by the locals in Dumbarton. Yeah, and namely because of
the weird thing that has happened dating back to the
nineteen fifties, at least as far as we know. There
have been many cases, and we don't know how many.
(02:40):
I've seen. There was a terrible website that said six hundred.
But um, 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 twenty or thirty years before you
need to empathize with bots. Okay, it was pretty funny though,
(03:03):
but um, they reckoned about six hundred. Other people have
said in the hundreds. 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 um,
I guess you know, it's it's a quaint bridge, and
(03:23):
it looks like a pretty lovely small town, so maybe
people can just walk around with their dogs off leash.
But these dogs leaping that fifty ft and many of
them dying, many of them suffering bad injuries. Uh. Supposedly
one of them jumped from the bridge, survived and ran
up and jumped off again. Man, which is just crazy.
(03:44):
That's second times on the owner. If you ask me, yeah,
you know from bridge. Once shame on you, second time,
shame on me the dog go owner. That's right. UM.
I saw in the New York Times article on this that, UM,
they seem to think that there is at least fifty
that have been definitely documented. So this isn't just like
local legend like this is this is known to happen.
(04:07):
This actually happens. These dogs are jumping to their deaths
off of this bridge. Um. And it's a really weird
thing that no one has been able to explain, and
we're we won't be able to explain it. But um.
In two thousand and ten, the Dumbarton Council, the city,
the town council UM contacted a behaviorist to animal behaviorist
(04:27):
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 jump, and it's giving the White Lady
(04:47):
of Overton a bad name, because why would she want
to do that. Yeah, why don't you want to have
all these dogs die by their own Paul? I don't know.
Maybe she 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
terrible cliffhanger. Let's say something happy and positive instead. Rainbow bright,
(05:10):
rainbow bright. Okay, go ahead, right back and talk about
David Sands right after this. Alrighty, so they bring this
animal expert over there, David Sands, he visits this bridge.
(05:35):
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. He 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.
(05:58):
Uh 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. Um part of it has to do.
Apparently I saw somewhere else that the foliage around it
creates a little bit of an optical illusion that looks
like you may be able to just run right off
(06:19):
this bridge on the ground. Um. I was surprised when
I looked at the bridge. I thought they were slipping
through a trestle or something on ground level. But it's,
you know, it's a wall, like they have to jump
up and over, which is totally on the owner. No, totally.
It is like you said, like the dogs that are um,
that are the victims of this are the same dogs
(06:41):
that belong to people who like to show off how
cool their dogs are that they don't need to be
on the leash, that kind of thing. But the dogs
like inevitably go up and like approach another dog or
get too close to somebody who's scared dogs. It never
ends very well. But yeah, the the dog does have
to jump over this wall into a fifty ft drop below. Right.
The second thing that he came up with was he said,
(07:02):
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. Um. I did
see where one local hunter said, you know, there's there's
no mink around here. That's what one local hunter said.
But then an official like an animal I don't know
(07:25):
who the official body for animal. I don't know if
it was rescue or just preservation or something that's oh
is it? Uhuh? The Scottish 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. Um, so the
(07:49):
the I guess. The theory from Sands and Sands also
points out that the dogs um that are jumping are
buying log buying large jugs with a long nose, that
are um scent dogs, scenting dogs, hunting dogs, that they
would be more prone to pick up on a bunch
of sents or respond to a bunch of sense like mink,
(08:10):
especially mink urine, and that that combined with this potential
optical illusion, uh 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
(08:32):
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 um, you know, whatever kind of animals going
to set off a certain kind of dog, Like, what
is it about this one bridge that that that kind
(08:55):
of It doesn't fully like dismiss sands 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. Um.
There is also another kind of story slash theory that
(09:17):
there was a man, and this is just terrible, thirty
two year old father threw his baby off of this
bridge because he thought his baby was the anti Christ. Um.
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
(09:38):
man threw his baby from. But this was It's been
happening since the fifties. Yeah, yeah, it's 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 um and that the Celts actually,
who used to live in the area, actually had a
name for this kind of thing. They called it a
(09:59):
thin ace, which is where the spirit world in our
world kind of overlapped, where the fabric between the two
was thinnest, which is pretty interesting. And then there's um
in that supernatural camp. There's an author named Paul Owens
who wrote The Baron of Rainbow Bridge, And from what
I can tell, Owen's book basically says and also you
(10:21):
have to see the cover of this thing. It's adorable
but also like insane. Like he photoshop dogs jumping like
in mid air 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,
(10:42):
that's weird. So doesn't that guy look like Putin? He's
sort of, But from what I can surmise, Paul Owens
thing is he's kind of mashed up the Rainbow Bridge thing.
Yeah with um, which is, I guess what what pets
follow into the afterlife with like real life and um
(11:03):
somehow suicide Like he, I guess he thinks like the
dogs are actually purposely taking their lives, and like you said,
at the outside, 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, and saying like dogs,
as far as we know, dogs and other animals are
(11:25):
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. Um 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? Now? I actually don't know the origin. I
just know that that's something that some people say, like
(11:46):
your pet has gone over the rainbow bridge or whatever.
I I don't subscribe. Um, 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 who who for me? But
if if that's your thing and that makes you feel
better and stuff, I'm certainly not making fun of it.
It's just it's not for us. I got you, so, yeah,
I have no opinion about Rainbow Bridge, but don't get
(12:09):
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 I Heart Radio for
more podcasts for my heart Radio because at the iHeart
(12:31):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh arf Clark,
and there's Charles rough 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 this
short stuff. That's right, the mystery of the Overton Bridge.
(00:28):
That was great. You suddenly turned into like a character
that the Scooby Doo gang would meet towards the beginning
of the episode. Who set everything up for him? You know,
when we did our tour of Edinburgh, I met a
I met a dog there. I met a very kind
lady on a walk through town and she was walking
(00:48):
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 breeze? And oh, just a wee stuffy. It's great.
I remember you telling that story because you're saying that
you were missing your dogs, because that was towards the
(01:11):
end of that tour. 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 Dumbarton. Let's go with Dumberley, Dumbarton, not Dumbarton. Um,
dumb American is more like it dumb Dumbarton, Scotland. That's
(01:35):
way better. Um. There is a bridge there, the Overton Bridge,
like you were saying, and it's really beautiful. It's made
of stone, very ornate. It's not the longest bridge you'll
ever see. It's pretty short actually, and it's fairly low um.
But it does cross a substantial um gap, something like
twelve meters or about fifty ft drop into a ravine,
(01:58):
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 nineteenth century. It was built
to connect this estate that had just been built, their
Overton House UM, to the rest of the town. So
it was a pretty useful bridge too. But it is
(02:18):
now considered widely considered a haunted supernatural death bridge um
by the locals in Dumbarton. Yeah, and namely because of
the weird thing that has happened dating back to the
nineteen fifties, at least as far as we know. There
have been many cases, and we don't know how many.
(02:40):
I've seen. There was a terrible website that said six hundred.
But um, 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 twenty or thirty years before you
need to empathize with bots. Okay, it was pretty funny though,
(03:03):
but um, they reckoned about six hundred. Other people have
said in the hundreds. 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 um,
I guess you know, it's it's a quaint bridge, and
(03:23):
it looks like a pretty lovely small town, so maybe
people can just walk around with their dogs off leash.
But these dogs leaping that fifty ft and many of
them dying, many of them suffering bad injuries. Uh. Supposedly
one of them jumped from the bridge, survived and ran
up and jumped off again. Man, which is just crazy.
(03:44):
That's second times on the owner. If you ask me, yeah,
you know from bridge. Once shame on you, second time,
shame on me the dog go owner. That's right. UM.
I saw in the New York Times article on this that, UM,
they seem to think that there is at least fifty
that have been definitely documented. So this isn't just like
local legend like this is this is known to happen.
(04:07):
This actually happens. These dogs are jumping to their deaths
off of this bridge. Um. And it's a really weird
thing that no one has been able to explain, and
we're we won't be able to explain it. But um.
In two thousand and ten, the Dumbarton Council, the city,
the town council UM contacted a behaviorist to animal behaviorist
(04:27):
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 jump, and it's giving the White Lady
(04:47):
of Overton a bad name, because why would she want
to do that. Yeah, why don't you want to have
all these dogs die by their own Paul? I don't know.
Maybe she 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
terrible cliffhanger. Let's say something happy and positive instead. Rainbow bright,
(05:10):
rainbow bright. Okay, go ahead, right back and talk about
David Sands right after this. Alrighty, so they bring this
animal expert over there, David Sands, he visits this bridge.
(05:35):
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. He 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.
(05:58):
Uh 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. Um part of it has to do.
Apparently I saw somewhere else that the foliage around it
creates a little bit of an optical illusion that looks
like you may be able to just run right off
(06:19):
this bridge on the ground. Um. I was surprised when
I looked at the bridge. I thought they were slipping
through a trestle or something on ground level. But it's,
you know, it's a wall, like they have to jump
up and over, which is totally on the owner. No, totally.
It is like you said, like the dogs that are um,
that are the victims of this are the same dogs
(06:41):
that belong to people who like to show off how
cool their dogs are that they don't need to be
on the leash, that kind of thing. But the dogs
like inevitably go up and like approach another dog or
get too close to somebody who's scared dogs. It never
ends very well. But yeah, the the dog does have
to jump over this wall into a fifty ft drop below. Right.
The second thing that he came up with was he said,
(07:02):
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. Um. I did
see where one local hunter said, you know, there's there's
no mink around here. That's what one local hunter said.
But then an official like an animal I don't know
(07:25):
who the official body for animal. I don't know if
it was rescue or just preservation or something that's oh
is it? Uhuh? The Scottish 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. Um, so the
(07:49):
the I guess. The theory from Sands and Sands also
points out that the dogs um that are jumping are
buying log buying large jugs with a long nose, that
are um scent dogs, scenting dogs, hunting dogs, that they
would be more prone to pick up on a bunch
of sents or respond to a bunch of sense like mink,
(08:10):
especially mink urine, and that that combined with this potential
optical illusion, uh 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
(08:32):
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 um, you know, whatever kind of animals going
to set off a certain kind of dog, Like, what
is it about this one bridge that that that kind
(08:55):
of It doesn't fully like dismiss sands 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. Um.
There is also another kind of story slash theory that
(09:17):
there was a man, and this is just terrible, thirty
two year old father threw his baby off of this
bridge because he thought his baby was the anti Christ. Um.
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
(09:38):
man threw his baby from. But this was It's been
happening since the fifties. Yeah, yeah, it's 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 um and that the Celts actually,
who used to live in the area, actually had a
name for this kind of thing. They called it a
(09:59):
thin ace, which is where the spirit world in our
world kind of overlapped, where the fabric between the two
was thinnest, which is pretty interesting. And then there's um
in that supernatural camp. There's an author named Paul Owens
who wrote The Baron of Rainbow Bridge, And from what
I can tell, Owen's book basically says and also you
(10:21):
have to see the cover of this thing. It's adorable
but also like insane. Like he photoshop dogs jumping like
in mid air 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,
(10:42):
that's weird. So doesn't that guy look like Putin? He's
sort of, But from what I can surmise, Paul Owens
thing is he's kind of mashed up the Rainbow Bridge thing.
Yeah with um, which is, I guess what what pets
follow into the afterlife with like real life and um
(11:03):
somehow suicide Like he, I guess he thinks like the
dogs are actually purposely taking their lives, and like you said,
at the outside, 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, and saying like dogs,
as far as we know, dogs and other animals are
(11:25):
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. Um 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? Now? I actually don't know the origin. I
just know that that's something that some people say, like
(11:46):
your pet has gone over the rainbow bridge or whatever.
I I don't subscribe. Um, 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 who who for me? But
if if that's your thing and that makes you feel
better and stuff, I'm certainly not making fun of it.
It's just it's not for us. I got you, so, yeah,
I have no opinion about Rainbow Bridge, but don't get
(12:09):
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 I Heart Radio for
more podcasts for my heart Radio because at the iHeart
(12:31):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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