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I stopped and looked up, panting. No, it wasn't my imagination: the dog had definitely disappeared into the other side.

I stopped and looked up, panting: No, it hadn't been my imagination. the dog had definitely disappeared into the other side.

What's the correct form?

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    You seem to require that there be exactly one “correct” answer. This isn’t a good expectation: there may be two, and there may be zero. In this case, there are two, and therefore your false dichotomy cannot be correctly answered within the parameters that you have set for it.
    – tchrist
    Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 12:27

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Both versions imply that the speaker had been uncertain about what he saw, or thought he saw.

wasn't my imagination conveys the idea that the speaker has just become aware that his perceptions were accurate after all, and it has slightly more "immediacy" than the past perfect hadn't been my imagination which conveys the idea that the speaker is reflecting upon his former state of uncertainty.

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  • +1 exactly -- these sentences are both fine and are different.
    – hunter
    Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 16:04
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No, you should not use Past Perfect. Past Tense is correct here as this is a "story" with past events following one another. So using Past Tense is perfectly OK here. You see how "the dog..." uses Past Perfect?! It's because they want to emphasize that he left before the "...stopped and looked up".

Use Past Perfect only when you want to emphasize that some action happened before another past action.

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