The Theo Brown Collection, The University of Exeter

As part of a research project, funded by the Society for Psychical Research, I travelled down to Devon recently to consult a unique archive containing information on apparitions of Black Dogs. The archive material was collected by the late folklorist, Theo Brown, who spent much of her life working on this topic area (Brown, 1958, 1978). When she died in 1993, her collection of materials was donated to the University of Exeter Library and is now held in their Special Collections. 

The archive is kept in the Special Collections section of the Old Library	The entrance to the Old Library
The Theo Brown collection contains 38 boxes of material on Black Dogs and dog ghosts (EUL MS105). I was able to obtain a rough written guide to the boxes and their contents from the Special Collections archivist. An information sheet on the Theo Brown archive is available. The Theo Brown collection stimulated and informed Mark Norman's excellent book Black Dog Folklore.	Inside the Special Collections section