Looking at the 109-pound mastiff lumber around Sean Casey's feet, "ghost" is decidedly not the first word that comes to mind.

For years, the dog has been a mainstay in Prospect Park lore, a mythical being that appears one minute and vanishes the next, developing over time a reputation of Sandlot-like proportions. And yet, here he is—the famed ghost dog of Prospect Park, which, after four years of roaming the park's fields and meadows, was captured by Casey last Wednesday. Now, sitting at Casey's feet, he doesn't look so mythical or mysterious. Brown and sedate, he looks a bit like a small cow.

"Part of me didn't want to catch him. Part of me felt he was happy where he was, and he was living a nicer life than we could have provided for him, . "But at the same time I knew that at some point that would come to an end, and he would need to be brought in." Virginia Cahill, a Windsor Terrace resident, said she first spotted Ghost Dog in 2010, when he was barreling down a hill near Center Drive. Assuming he had broken away from his owner only moments prior, Cahill alerted a park official, who told her simply: "Oh, that's ghost dog."

"Since I heard of him that day, he's just become such a part of the fabric of the park," Cahill said. "The lore just grew. Everybody had their own Ghost Dog story." While Casey said he's been tracking the dog for as long as he's been haunting Prospect Park, actually capturing the creature was not on the agenda.

Unlike the , Ghost Dog had never posed a threat to any park-goers, man or beast, according to Casey. In fact, the dog—a type of mastiff called a Cane Corso—was on friendly terms with many pets who regularly romped in the park, emerging from the woods to play in Nethermead meadow with any animal who would play back: small dogs, big dogs—anyone, really, except humans, of whom he has always been wary.

Bob Ipcar, who keeps track of the park's lost and found dogs for the advocacy group FIDO, recalled Ghost Dog's skittishness toward people.

"Anyone who tried to approach him, the minute they would try to get a little close, he would back away," he said. "It was a little like he was a tai chi master." But lately, Casey noticed that Ghost Dog had been acting strangely. He was lying out in the open, allowing the protective buffer he typically kept between himself and human foot traffic to shrink to only a few feet.