What Is The Difference Between Crossroad Demon And Hellhounds

Demons and Hell are all very common in today's society and religion. With these monsters their are many hidden fears and they can tell a lot about society. Hellhounds and Demons show that some fears are death and losing oneself. First one must understand the crossroad demon and hellhounds of the Supernatural Universe.

Hellhounds are also known as the Black Dogs, Devil Dogs, and Phantom Black Dogs. In Supernatural hellhounds were created right after God said, “Let there be light” to be man’s best friend. They were too violent and were planned to be put down. Then along came Lucifer, the fallen angel, who rescued one and kept her and the puppies. The hounds have been known to serve demons; they also commonly appear to collect the souls from
the people they killed who made a crossroads deal. According to the show people will hallucinate and dream that the hounds are after them when they are close to their death otherwise they are invisible. A person who is near the end of their 10 year deal will see the true faces of demons. Along with collecting souls, they are used to hunt down rogue demons and drag them back to Hell. The black dogs are very fast and strong, invisible to humans, unless the human is near death or wearing glasses soaking in holy fire, and have the ability to keep a person’s sent until they kill them. Some weakness of the hound are that they can be harmed by salt, iron, and explosions, they can be kept at bay with Goofer Dust and devil’s shoestring, an herb, and the can be killed with the Colt, an angel blade or demon knife. Unless the Hellhound is rogue, controlled or one has been offended it they don’t go after humans unless they have sold their soul at a crossroads. One can summon a deal at a cross road with the right summoning tools. They will make a deal getting what they want but in return they will die in 10 years and have their soul dragged to Hell: the last part is usually left off in the terms and conditions (Kripke).

The tale of crossroad demons and hell hounds has been around a long time one can understand it deeper with the uses of Chapter 3 and 11 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster.
Chapter 3, Nice to Eat You: Act of Vampires explains how one can literally and figuratively act like a vampire because they can use people to get what they want(Foster Ch. 3). The crossroad demon being the more figurative one as in he uses the human's happiness to make a deal and get their soul bringing him more power. Because they use people to get more power that can be seen as act of vampirism. On the more literal not the hellhounds actually eat and drag the human soul to hell after killing them. Another chapter that relates is 11, More Than It’s Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence; with the black dogs comes so much violence ripping their victims apart but it means so much more. Which type of violence do hellhounds poetry well it is both: the character sold their soul in the first place without knowing the consequence but yet they still did it, and the also suffer which can classify as the other being ripped apart isn’t exactly quiet or torture free. As foster state,” [violence] can be symbolic, thematic, biblical, Shakespearean, Romantic, allegorical, transcendent,”(Foster Ch. 11). This death and violence being so awful is almost more of an irony because they got 10 years of their wish and deal to only have is ripped away and taken somewhere worse. I think the violence the
hellhounds represent that nothing last forever and that if one cheats to get what they want it will end poorly.

After looking at the hellhound from Fosters point of view one can now look at them through Schmid’s and Browning’s lenses. One of the main points from Schmid’s article is that “Monster tales tell us the truth about things,”(Schmid par 2). With the hellhounds they are similar to the saying, “if it is too good to be true it probably is.” When a person sells their soul they get an amazing opportunity but come ten years later they get an awful death and drug to Hell. This shows how in our culture if one “magically” gets something that it is not good; it is frowned upon, and it shows that nothing ever comes without a price. It could be used as a story to encourage kids to work hard and not make deals and sell yourself. In Browning’s article he explains what we are told to dislike and what we fear. He writes, “it is [what] we subconsciously fear and what it is we’re told to hate or love,” (Browning par 2). As kids most are told not to take anything from a stranger and this could be seen as the crossroads demon. The demon is like the “friendly” person offering “free” candy to the kids then capturing them. The hellhounds can represent how the kids can be kidnapped and taken to an awful place. This shows how our culture does fear gifts from stranger when we don’t know all that will happen if we take that “gift”.

After looking at the hellhounds from the monster culture view; one can look at it from America's culture.
With the crossroads demon deals it shows that the people of American culture don’t trust strangers if they don’t know all the details. In the show, Supernatural, demon deals are a big part and the hellhounds killing people are shown as awful and gruesome. This could be seen as to scare away people from taking offers from unknown people and it will be an awful thing to trade something as valuable as your soul. In many movies involving kidnappings it shows an innocent girl who gets swooned by the guy and then he suddenly turns on the girl potentially harming or killing her. This can be related to the hellhounds and the crossroad demon. In the show it also portrays the demons as handsome or beautiful people to show that having desires can end up very poorly for oneself. Looking at other perspective of the shows and other shows demons are made by tortured souls in hell so anyone could become the very thing that killed them. WIth this idea one also sees it in Teen Wolf and Hunger Games where people actually turn into the hellhound or mutts. This shows that society fears what they can become and how easy it is to become that monster especially if they look like a normal human. The black dogs and demons of the cross roads show that we as a society fear seling something valuable like our souls and that they don’t like un-known variables when making a deal with a
stranger.

After all of this one can understand that these soul-dragging-invisible-black dogs represent the fear of the unknown and that fear of turning into a monster. On Supernatural hellhounds are portrayed as big black dogs who attack those that have sold their soul to a crossroad demon. By looking at these monsters under different lenses one can figure out how they shape our culture.