The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles names a family legend, a feared presence on the moor, and the apparent supernatural threat at the center of the Baskerville affair. The legend gives generations of misfortune a single monstrous shape; in the present-day investigation, Stapleton exploits that shape by disguising a real hound. The expression thus moves between inherited story and apparent evidence, making fear itself part of the machinery of the crime.

The Family Legend

The legend reaches the modern characters through a family manuscript read aloud by Dr. Mortimer. Its writer identifies himself as a direct descendant of Hugo Baskerville and says the account was passed down through his father and grandfather. Addressed to his sons, the manuscript presents the tale not merely as a frightening family anecdote but as a warning: descendants should beware the destructive passions associated with their history and avoid crossing the moor at night. It also offers a religious consolation, suggesting that inherited punishment need not fall indefinitely on the innocent.

The manuscript locates the origin of the story in the time of the Great Rebellion. Hugo Baskerville is portrayed as a notorious and cruel man who takes a young woman from a nearby farm while her family is away. She escapes from an upper room by climbing down the ivy on Baskerville Hall and makes for home across the moor. Hugo and his companions pursue her on horseback. The chase becomes a supernatural account when a shepherd reports seeing a hound-like creature following Hugo, and the riders later find the young woman dead of fear and exhaustion. Near her lies Hugo, with the great black beast standing over him. The manuscript says that the creature attacks him as the three riders watch; one later dies from the shock, while the others are left deeply affected.

The manuscript’s author says that making the story known should reduce the terror of what would otherwise remain hinted at and guessed. Yet the account also strengthens the legend: it links the family’s later sudden and mysterious deaths to Hugo’s story and closes with a warning against night travel over the moor. The Hound is therefore transmitted both as an explanation for misfortune and as a caution about what the family believes may still inhabit its landscape.

From Inherited Tale to Local Fear

The legend does not remain confined to the manuscript. After the death of Sir Charles Baskerville, Dr. Mortimer reports that several people had described a huge, luminous, spectral creature on the moor, and that their accounts resembled the family’s demon hound. He has questioned a countryman, a farrier, and a moorland farmer, whose reports appear consistent to him. The stories have made the district fearful of crossing the moor at night. Though Dr. Mortimer is trained in science, he admits that he does not know what to believe. The legend has acquired the force of apparent testimony without yet settling what the witnesses actually saw.

Other characters repeat the story in more casual settings, showing how thoroughly it has entered local speech. A man on the moor explains an eerie cry as the Hound calling for its prey, and says he has heard it before. Stapleton also refers to the family’s fiend-dog legend when speaking with Sir Henry, noting that local people claim to have seen such a creature. His smile suggests distance from their credulity, but his serious attention to the subject makes the tale seem more consequential than a joke.

The sound becomes particularly powerful because it connects rumor to immediate experience. When a strange howl rises across the dark moor, Sir Henry is frightened and asks Watson whether it might be the Hound. He recalls that his uncle’s body had been found with a hound’s footprint nearby, and the combination of the old story, the sound, and that trace makes the danger seem coherent to him. Watson reports that the cry is associated with the Hound, while Sir Henry concludes that it sounded like a real dog. The scene preserves the tension between what people call the sound and what it might be.

A Name Used to Conceal a Crime

The Hound’s significance changes when the investigation reveals that the supernatural appearance has a human maker. Stapleton has learned that Sir Charles’s heart is weak and that the baronet takes the family legend seriously. He uses those facts to devise a plan in which the legend can provoke terror while making it difficult to identify the person responsible. The family story is not simply an obstacle to rational investigation: it is a resource deliberately turned against Sir Charles.

Stapleton obtains a powerful, savage dog in London and brings it to the moor without drawing attention. He hides it in the dangerous ground of Grimpen Mire, a place he knows how to cross from his insect-collecting expeditions. To make the animal resemble the legendary apparition, he applies a luminous preparation containing phosphorus. Holmes later identifies the substance on the dead animal and explains that the preparation was made so as not to interfere with its sense of smell. In this way, familiar reports of a glowing, terrifying beast have a physical cause, even though witnesses do not know what they are seeing.

The legend also helps account for the hound’s recurring cries. After the investigation, Holmes explains that Stapleton could hide the animal, but could not silence it; on occasion, he could keep it in an outbuilding at Merripit. The creature’s voice was therefore another real feature that local people could interpret through the story. The name of the Hound gathers together separate signs—the cries, sightings, and luminous appearance—and gives them a single apparent source.

Exposure and the End of the Apparition

When the hound attacks Sir Henry, Holmes and his companions kill it and find Sir Henry alive, though insensible. Holmes calls the threat the family ghost laid at last. Examination of the animal confirms that it is a large, powerful dog rather than a supernatural being. Its unusual appearance has been produced by the phosphorus preparation, which still glows on its muzzle and on Watson’s fingers after he touches it. The rescue supplies a concrete explanation for the apparition without diminishing the real danger Sir Henry faced.

The explanation extends to earlier victims as well. Holmes connects Stapleton’s scheme to Sir Charles’s death, reasoning that the old man’s weak heart, his belief in the legend, and his fear of the creature made the hound an effective instrument. The convict Selden also fled when he encountered it, and the investigators understand that a person who saw the glowing animal might be too terrified to question closely what it was. The legend’s power lies partly in this gap: the apparition appears to confirm the inherited tale, while the tale discourages scrutiny of the apparition.

After Stapleton disappears into Grimpen Mire, Holmes and the others find traces of the animal’s hiding place on an island in the bog. A staple and chain, gnawed bones, and the remains of a curly-haired spaniel help establish that the site served as a kennel. Holmes identifies a tin of paste as the luminous mixture used on the hound. The discovery connects the manufactured monster to a sequence of practical arrangements—concealment, confinement, and a means of making it glow—rather than to the supernatural origin claimed by the legend.

The Hound of the Baskervilles therefore survives in two distinct senses. As a family and local story, it gives fear an inherited language and influences how people interpret deaths, sounds, and sightings. As Stapleton’s disguised animal, it is a material danger created to make that language seem true. Holmes’s explanation resolves the mystery in natural terms, but the legend’s role in shaping belief and enabling the crime remains essential to the story.