Tangier Door Dogs are small canines which appear as premonitory omens of death in folklore collected from Tangiers, Morocco. The degree to which the concept of the 'Door Dog' is uniquely West African is highly disputable, as Burroughs infused the creature with strains of the long-standing European tradition of omen dogs and the creature has taken on a life of its own in a new form, as door dogs.
Appearance[]
They are described as small, silent dogs with pointed noses like a Schipperke, which are seen following individuals in the weeks before their death. They are seen specifically when the doomed person is passing a threshold, such as a doorway, and can only be seen by others - no one can see their own door dog before they die.
American author William S. Burroughs wrote extensively about Door Dogs in his late opus The Western Lands, drawing on both autobiographical; recollections from his time in Tangiers and a literary study which traced fascination with the phenomena through Western literature. The mysterious dog which appears in Saki's The Unbearable Bassington in a critical scene is identified by Burroughs as a Door Dog. [1]
The bizarre cryptid known as the Wall-Jumping Dog bears a strong resemblance to the incident in Saki's story.
The degree to which the concept of the 'Door Dog' is uniquely West African is highly disputable, as Burroughs infused the creature with strains of the long-standing European tradition of omen dogs and the creature has taken on a life of its own in a new form, as door dogs are now sighted throughout the world in the weeks leading up to when a person dies.[2] [3]