This is by far the craziest story I’ve ever heard.
Not by its content, no. It’s not that crazy if you compare it to your modern-day “credible” thriller.
It’s so crazy because of the source it came from.
Grandpa was one of the most sane, calm, logical and down-to-earth people I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. I feel a little sad now writing these phrases, as it’s been days without me even thinking about him. He’s been gone for over 15 years now yet his memory is one that I’m trying to keep alive for as much as I can.
So here’s a story that I’ll surely reread one too many times.
Grandpa was just so easy to talk to, so warm, kind and had that native intelligence people just don’t have the chance to cultivate nowadays, thanks to having a phone thrown at them since age 1.
Grandpa was trustworthy.
He never lied, so people knew they could trust him with everything. And when he told me the story of his encounter with the devil shaped like an evergrowing dog, I believed him as did our entire street.
Grandpa never talked unless he was spoken to. And when he did, every single soul listened with their eyes and ears wide open.
He talked more with his eyes rather than with his mouth or hands.
This story is at least 20 years old. And frankly, unfortunately, I haven’t got the same memory I had just five years ago. I can feel that my mind is changing every day, and not necessarily for the better at this point. Yet I do remember how it unfolded, or how Grandpa said it did.
Back in the early 2000s, he used to work at a factory dealing with ceramics and mainly bathroom stuff. Grandpa was a hard worker, literally making bathtubs and sinks to feed his two daughters, my mom and my aunt, for 40 years. Yet he never once said life was too hard for him, or overwhelming, or whatever we say now when we hit a traffic jam.
His favourite mode of transportation was the bus. Getting to work would’ve been a quick 15-minute ride to and from the factory every day, with very few stops along the way. When the bus won’t come, he would take the train and ride it to the end of the village, and then get home by foot after a 20-minute walk.
One night, after a very long shift, Grandpa missed the bus and then took the train back to the village. After a 10-minute ride, he got to the station and left the train to continue his journey on foot towards the house. Although it was a bit after midnight, a dense fog was overshadowing the pitch-black road connecting the village to the station. Grandpa feared nothing so he kept walking just like he did so many times before.
A few minutes into his walk, he saw a large dog standing in the middle of the road.
A big animal lover, Grandpa knew how to deal with stray dogs so he started talking to the beast.
To his surprise, the dog seemed to not mind him at all. He was just staring towards him, and not revealing any sign of a gesture or attack. This threw Grandpa off for a bit but in his mind, the dog was probably asleep and just waking up from his slumber by the steps he’d heard. Or the train stopping and then leaving the station.
Grandpa went around the dog and continued his walk. Yet this is where things began to take an uncommon turn.
The dog got up and started following Grandpa.
And with every step, the dog grew in size.
Inch by inch, the dog started to expand, more and more until he reached the height of Grandpa’s chest, then went as high as his head, and then grew even more, to the point it went over Grandpa’s hair.
By this time Grandpa was not walking anymore.
He was straight up galloping towards the village, the dense fog behind him, as well as the oversized bloodhound slowly disappearing into it. The dog never ran, even though Grandpa did, as the creature kept walking at a normal pace until he stopped seeing him through the fog, leaving him behind as large as a two-story house.
What makes a great story?
Stories are at the core of all of our decisions. Everything we believe in started as a story. And everything we don’t. Everything we love, hate, and every person we’ve ever met, in our minds, turn into stories that we either like to keep or try to forget.
The story of the big bad dog might be just a fable.
Grandpa swore by it, and even though I will never know what happened on that foggy night, I do know it makes for the craziest story I’ve ever heard.
Why?
Credibility – Even though it’s about a dog that kept growing in size, which is VERY unlikely, on a dirty and foggy road and after midnight, the familiarity of it makes it credible. Why? It’s not just about me knowing the places in the story by hand. It’s about the storyteller, my grandfather, who’s never lied to me once in his life. I’d trusted him with my life more than once and here I am.
Style – I had to recount the story and tell it in this post the best that I could. Yet Grandpa used his style to tell it to us. To put it bluntly, he was precise and direct when talking about his encounter. He used simple words, yet exactly this style of direct, straightforward storytelling made it as crazy and scary as it could’ve been.
Emotion – Great stories are followed by powerful emotions. I was 10 at the time, so for me, hearing this story made me feel all sorts of emotions. From fear, obviously, to a sense of courageousness that I’d felt for my grandpa, who somehow managed to escape the devil dog and got home to his family in one piece.
Curiously, 10 years later, Grandpa would get bitten by a neighbour’s dog and, after some complications and another 3 or so years of disease, would die because of that initial bite.
Life is crazy, and mostly disastrous and unfair.
In conclusion, if you want to write a great story, make sure it is credible to the best of your ability. Use a simple set of words to describe what happened, as more is less when it comes to style. And pack it up with emotion. Emotion matters the most.
People crave emotion.
They don’t buy the can of soda.
They buy how it makes them feel drinking it on a hot day.
People don’t buy the car.
They buy the dream of taking it around the continent.
And they don’t buy the story.
They buy into the emotion it carries.
Scary but gracious, and unforgettable.
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Hi! If you’d like to hire me as a writer, marketer or content creator, please be advised that I’ve been doing this for nearly 15 years. So it won’t be cheap! But if you’ve made it this far reading my tale… I might be worth it?!
Shoot me an email about your project and we’ll take it from there.
