Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Dogmen of Michigan




Pic from a Google image search. If it's yours and you want it removed, let me know.


Chad, a friend and former colleague of mine, has now moved into cryptid central.

The faculty of my former college have been scattered to the four winds for reasons you know by now. Chad was fortunate enough to land a professor's position at a college in Michigan. Exciting news and a relief for his family for sure...until he learned his new home was right smackdab in the middle of the Dogman's lair. He jokingly referred to it on Facebook and I commented that I had indeed heard of the alleged creature.

Of course I have. The Weird is kinda my thing. And I've been tempted to research Dogmen for a while now, mostly due to their purported appearance.

Why? Because the most efficient way I have to describe these supposed creatures is "a werewolf." Witnesses report a hairy, bipedal creature as high as seven feet tall with the head of a canine but the torso of a human. Their legs are even said to be bent in the manner of a dog's hind legs.  A Dogman is also said to utter a terrifying, inhuman howl. The following size comparison chart comes from the North American Dogman Project:




In Michigan, stories of Dogmen are said to go back to the time of the Odawa tribes, the narratives later propagated among lumberjacks and farmers. Dogmen really didn't seem to enter the public consciousness of Michigan until a man named Steve Cook came along.

Cook was a radio DJ at WTCM in Traverse City. He recorded a song called "The Legend of the Dogman."





But...


"I made it up completely from my own imagination as an April Fools' prank for the radio and stumbled my way to a legend that goes back all the way to Native American times." he said.

Nonetheless, he received hundreds of reports from people once the song aired, all claiming to have seen Dogmen. It is important to note that Cook is "tremendously skeptical" about the nature of these reports. 

Dogmen are not confined to Michigan but rather appear to roam the whole of the Upper Midwest. In fact I first learned of the creatures via what came to be known as the "Beast of Bray Road." Bray Road is a rural road near Elkhorn, Wisconsin, just over the Illinois border. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, the area became host to numerous Dogman sightings. Local newspaper reporter Linda Godfrey was assigned to investigate. While initially skeptical, Godfrey became a convert and eventually wrote a book about the sightings, The Beast of Bray Road. I really must read it one day.






If you're looking for a central depository of sightings, look no further than DogmanEncounters.com


From that site:


"Have you seen a creature that looked like a Werewolf? If you have, you’re not crazy and you’re not alone. What you saw wasn’t a Werewolf. It’s what’s called a “Dogman.”  More people than you’ll ever know have had Dogman encounters. Unfortunately, most of them don’t know who they can talk to about their encounters. That’s where I come in. My name is Vic Cundiff and I help Dogman eyewitnesses deal with the trauma of their Dogman encounters. If you’re a Dogman eyewitness, you now have someone you can turn to for help. Me!"


Good to know he's out there for us. You got that link bookmarked, Chad? Good.


Are there really Dogmen? Is there a species of humanoid, bipedal canines hidden and lurking in arboreal and paludal regions the Great Lakes? Offhand, I'd have to say I doubt it. There would have to be substantial physical evidence for me to begin to accept such a notion. Then again, I have not studiously read each of the witness accounts.


In a way, I don't want to. While I'm not prepared to become a flag-carrying cryptid believer, I also don't want to know that they're not real. You see, this kid grew up loving monster movies and stories. Werewolves were among my most favorite variety of monsters. The idea that there could a species of werewolf-like creatures out there somewhere in the wooded confines of my geographical backyard, well...my inner ten year-old is agog. 


I think that may be the key to much of this. We are all writers. In one way or another we are constantly composing and constantly telling stories to one another. After all, what is a job interview but a moment where you must tell stories? Trust me, I'm acutely aware of this by now. The notion of the werewolf itself arises in part from our need to tell stories. I don't immediately doubt that Native Americans of the region told Dogmen tales as it would seem natural.


Also, humans are animals. Another colleague of mine wrote a book about how we are biologically "born expecting the Pleistocene," or an epoch far less civilized than what we currently have. Are Dogmen and werewolf stories just compositions expressing our "wild side"? I think that may be. I also think, as is also echoed on Skeptoid, there are deep connections between the accounts and the standard narratives of urban legends. See at that link the report of a young couple that went "parking" at Bray Road. At any rate, Dogmen could be a big potted stew of all of the above. It might also be that the Dogmen are beings somewhere on John Keel's "superspectrum," passing between our dimension and others.


Me? I'm going to just play pretend that there are werewolves on the prowl. Might not be good for livestock keepers, chihuahua owners, and my friend Chad, but as I said, this once-young monster/sci-fi kid chooses to revel in the idea. 


Seriously Chad, best of luck to you and your wife. I wish the best to both of you in your new home. Keep your eyes open around town for something that looks like this: 





(An alleged security camera still posted at North American Dogman Project.)






Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets

1 comment:

  1. On FB, Chad said: "This is awesome! I'm going to keep my eyes posted!"

    On FB, Frank said: "Thank you for not pointing out, "Looks like 'Troll' just got out of the shower." I got that a lot at Aquinas."

    ReplyDelete

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