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blackjaguar

Black jaguar; could they be mating with pumas to create a hybrid big cat?

Strangely, in some parts of North America, black-furred big cats make up over half the eyewitness reports of mountain lions, but zoologists say black pumas don’t exist. If that’s true, then exactly what are these ebony felines? Some say they are mutations or hybrids, others point to ancient beliefs of area Native Americans that the black big cats are guardian spirit animals. Might one small central Wisconsin town hold a clue to this growing mystery?

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This puzzling and eerie phenomenon is the basis (as written in my book, “I Know What I Saw” ) for my debut film documentary as director/producer of Return to Wildcat Mountain; Wisconsin’s Black Panther Nexus.The film has been unanimously selected in one of the premiere release positions March 7th at the Midwest Weirdfest Film Festival in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

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I provided original art and served as writer and director, with my husband, Steve Godfrey, as co-producer. Our son Nate Godfrey, a film maker with a degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, also lent his directorial skills, and created the camera, audio, animation, and editing. ..pretty much everything that required hands on film know-how. Former newspaper editor/journalist Steven Stanek, Hillsboro WI, shared the decades of amazing eyewitness reports he has collected for his news column and became our field producer.

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We will announce streaming availability very soon and will also have hard cover DVDs for sale at the Midwest Weirdfest.

 

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White Lhasa Studios LLC,

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It has a cover! And can be preordered, and is totally written. It even has pages up such as  the publisher’s at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/565784/i-know-what-i-saw-by-linda-s-godfrey/9780143132806/   Alas, the final production will take a few more months incubation at Penguin/Random House, but I’m hoping the results will be worth it. Also, there will be a documentary film launched at the same time of the book, with a trailer reveal to be announced. And it isn’t about dogman. Not that there’s anything wrong with dogman. Watch here for links to the trailer, hoping in a month or so. Happy New Year!!!

 

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Hoping your holidays are merrier than theirs! Many blessings and a happy New Year!

This sightings report arrived last week via e-mail, and is yet another example of eyewitnesses around the globe claiming to have seen werewolf-like creatures. I haven’t received any from Finland before this, so it was a welcome surprise. Both the witness and the person who wrote the story out for her desire anonymity, so the writer refers to her friend by the pseudonym, “Aino.” She also included a map of the general area. In her own words:

I wanted to tell you a werewolf sighting my very good friend had when she was a kid. This happened in Finland. I will tell the story in as much in detail as possible, but I don’t want to reveal my friend’s identity. What I can tell about my friend, she doesn’t like to share her encounter with others. I’m one of the few – if not honestly the only one – to whom she has told her story. I have known my friend “Aino” for almost 20 years. She has told me this story a few times and it never changes.

This incident happened when Aino was 8-9, so around 1995-1996 in North-East Finland. I have added here a map of the sighting’s location.

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Her family has lived in the same place for 300 years. The house is big wooden house with two entrances on both ends of the house. There’s an old barn and a shed in the front yard, and a traditional old Finnish sauna next to a lake. The house resides next to a lake, surrounded by hay and rye fields. In a small distance, there’s a thick spruce forest. The area is very, very rural with only a few tens of people living in it. Most of the forest and the nature overall around the area is untouched. If it matters, my friend’s family back then had a horse, cats and also apparently chickens. She’s told me that when she was young, they had many animals like cats, chickens and goats. I can assure that they had horses and cats back in 95-96, but I assume they also had chickens when this incident happened.

As the house and the area is old, there’s lots of unexplained activity in there. She also saw a leprechaun inside her house when she was 6 years old, and that sighting lasted for many minutes. As the bodies of dead ones were stored in the shed over the winter for a burial in spring, there are ghosts and other entities there for sure. Her grandfather passed away in front of the stairs leading to the second floor, and my friend says she always felt uneasy around that spot – a way before she was told how her grandfather had died on that spot.

Because my friend has seen and experienced things in the house and around it, she kind of brushed the encounter off as one of these odd phenomena, even though it really scared her (as did the leprechaun). Even today, she’s sensitive to unseen things and has a keen sense of people, being able to tell their true nature and past with one glance only.

It was daytime during summer, if I recall the season correctly. My friend and her mother were at the lake shore next to a sauna, her mother doing some housework there and Aino playing and helping her out. Aino’s mother asked her to fetch a bucket from the house, and Aino ran through the short hay field, where they used to cut hay for their horse. It’s about 50-60m (59-65yd) long naturally formed pathway from the sauna to the house. She ran to the house’s right side, where the pathway to sauna through the field begins, but stopped at the corner of the house abruptly. She said there was a grey werewolf standing in the front yard, in a broad day light. It looked exactly like a classic werewolf, with a hunched posture, grey fur, wolf’s head, standing on its hind legs. It didn’t see my friend or make any sound. Just stood there. If I recall right, my friend said that he was lighter grey in color.

Naturally Aino got really scared! She slipped hastily inside the house from the right side’s door (they have another door on the left side of the house). She sought the bucket while hunching down, scared the werewolf would see her. She found the bucket and stayed in the living room, squatting under a window, too scared to go out. She waited for a few minutes, because she couldn’t let her mother wait for the bucket for a long. She peeked out from the window to the front yard, but didn’t see the wolf anymore. She carefully looked out from the door, too, scanning the whole yard carefully, because she was scared the werewolf was still hiding somewhere. When she couldn’t see or hear anything unusual, she took off and ran as fast as she could back to her mother. She didn’t tell her mother about this, as she thought mother wouldn’t believe her.

I have been interested in the paranormal and cryptozoology for 27 years. I have read about many experiences taking place in Finland, but this is the one and the only werewolf experience I have encountered here. I’m interested in to find out if there are other encounters like this in this country. I know werewolves were a big thing in Estonia during The Witch Craze.

I love the fact that this family had lived in their house for 300 years, and also that this was the first upright canine story I’ve heard that happened near a sauna. Finland does have some history with werewolf beliefs, as the writer says. Here is one brief site https://www.werewolves.com/vironsusi-the-werewolves-of-finland/  for starters.

Finland also has a long history of sharing their great outdoors with natural wolves that–like any wild animal– can be frightening at times. Although most wolves avoid human contact, in 1976 some packs were daring enough to threaten children walking to school in one eastern location, and vehicles had to be provided to keep the students safe. The surrounding  regions of Scandinavian and Russia are similarly associated with both mythic and modern day representations of wolves. Thanks to our Finnish friends for sharing their own story here.

Received report Oct 23, 2018, 1:12 AM

A man who wishes to remain anonymous said he had a sighting he could not explain, and wasn’t going to tell anyone about it, but recently changed his mind hoping someone could identify it. The sighting took place in summer, 2018, in Love’s Park, Illinois, only about 20 miles south of the Wisconsin border, and included his daughter. They are habitual sky gazers, he said, and enjoy watching planes on their flight paths to and from O’Hare Airport. But what they saw that day just before dusk was no aircraft.

What he described as “the thing we saw” appeared to be about 100 feet in the air, flying due east over their heads and then circling once before continuing its eastbound path. It was close enough, he said, that they felt they had a good view.

He wrote, “This very large bird was gliding in the air above us. I cannot say for sure the exact size of this bird, because it was in the sky and there wasn’t anything to reference it with.

“This large bird was about 6 feet long, and 15-20 feet wide!  This thing was huge!!!  One thing really stuck out when we watched it, the wings did NOT flap like a normal bird. It just glided.”

The man said the closest photo he found was at Atlas Obscura’s Web site:

The man added they have seen cranes, eagles and other large birds in the area, but this one was much larger than any of those. He described it as dark in color, white ring around its neck. “The wings had a white stripe along the edge of its wings,” he said, “and the wings had feathers.”

He said he researched birds of all types for weeks but found nothing that resembled what he saw. He said, “But that is how I came across your site. I bought your book (American Monsters) and began reading it, and saw others have seen something similar to me! That is when I realized that we were not alone, and I have now chosen to speak to you about the sighting.”

He added, “But the large bird we saw was almost black in color, white ring around its neck, white stripe along its wings edge, and VERY LARGE! It did not move its wings either, it just glided. I have saw turkey vultures before.  In a way is does resemble it. But the size and colors did not! This thing put a turkey vulture to shame, in size!”

I’m not sure what this could be, either. The closest I could come is a Steller’s sea eagle, see this National Geographic photo with its dark feathers and white trim. Its wingspan is eight feet, smaller than this reported big bird but still really impressive, I’m sure. Illinois has a history of large bird sightings dating back many decades; perhaps this one will be added to the list. I hope sky gazers of that area will all spend some time looking up in case the dark-feathered one makes another fly-by.

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Witness sketch, submitted by Nick Gluchman

“I never heard of the Bray Road Beast until 2007 or 2008,” wrote a northern Wisconsin man named Nick Gluchman who lived in southern Walworth County until 1994. “I thought I was the only person to see it until I heard about it on TV. The minute I heard Elkhorn mentioned I felt exonerated. I’ve only told maybe four people what happened and you can imagine the responses I got. I was 34 when it happened, I’m now 65. I figured I better tell my story while I’m still above ground.

“It all starts the end of November 1987. I lost my temper and punched a door. By December 2nd my arm was swollen and turning colors, time to go to a doctor. I woke my wife up and headed toward Lakeland Hospital [outside Elkhorn, Wisconsin]. It was a clear night and and a large moon. My wife was asleep next to me as we headed north on Hwy. 12. I was in the right hand lane, well north of Lake Geneva, at 60 mph, no traffic at all, when I saw something running along the right-of-way fence which was ten to fifteen feet off the shoulder, four or five hundred feet ahead.

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Diagram contributed by witness Nicholas Gluchman

“As I got closer, I thought it must be a bear, then I was confused. My bright lights were on, and I could see it was large and running on two feet so I punched it and zoomed in on it. When I was within about 100 feet it abruptly stopped and froze in its tracks. Immediately I pulled onto the shoulder and slowly moved towards it, maybe five mph. I was within twenty to thirty feet and stopped. I still couldn’t make out what it was, it was completely lit by my lights. It looked like a pile of fur coats.”

“All of a sudden it started rising. I could see massive legs, gigantic calves and thighs, hairy butt cheeks, no  tail. It was still facing north, torso bent forward at the waist, about eighteen inches. I couldn’t see its head yet, now I’m really scared, must be a Squatch. I flashed my lights at it. It rose up further and without moving its feet, turned slowly at its waist to its left to look at me…

“Its legs were still bent at the knees, still leaning forward and already over six feet tall. I was mesmerized. It turned around to face me, it was no Squatch! Let me say at this point it never stood totally erect or stopped leaning forward throughout the experience. It had no facial hair although the head was covered in hair, all around face was clean. No wolf head. Wolf ears with a tuft like a lynx, large eyeballs, slightly jaundiced with what looked like red spider veins surrounding pupils. They were bulging out of sockets slightly glowing from within, like it had a light bulb in its head.

“It had a short muzzle, maybe an inch and a half, not like a dog all skin, not covered in hair. Bright pink, human-type mouth, two or three times wider than a person’s, outlined in red like lipstick. No hair on chest, two nipples visible, sparse hair on stomach, all pink. Super six-pack abs, no visible reproduction organs. Very long arms, with very long fingers that tapered to points, arm in begging position like a dog but out to side. Fingers pointing down and could see some pink on palms. I wasn’t able to see feet.

“The torso was short…this animal was a lot more legs than torso. The muscles in arms and chest did not match the awesome-looking legs. The thighs were about twenty inches front to back, calfs were cantaloupe size. Enormous!

“This animal looked at me with extreme hatred and malice. As its face contorted, its mouth opened in a sardonic sort of smile. The corners of its mouth went almost from ear to ear. Its mouth opened about four inches. It didn’t have canine  teeth, more like large shark teeth . These teeth were for removing large chunks of flesh, not puncturing, in my opinion.

Instead of standing erect to look at me, it had to tilt its head way back to see me. I don’t think it was capable of standing totally erect. Its chest was heaving up and down with large blasts of vapor from its nose and mouth. It was tired of flight and ready to stand its ground and fight. It was moving its head back and forth to the right shoulder, then left. I’m sure it was making some kind of sound or howl. The windows were up and I couldn’t hear. I’ve never been that scared or more fascinated. I didn’t want to blink for fear of missing something. My heart was beating hard. We just looked at each other, I figure about thirty seconds or more. I was in a trance-like state.

“My foot unintentionally relaxed off the brake pedal and the truck eased forward a few inches. Instantly it jumped straight up and landed on the other side of the right-of-way fence. The fence was fifty inches off the ground. I know this because erecting fences is what I did for a living. It cleared it with a couple feet to spare. It took a final look at me. I started yelling for my wife to look and shook her, as it ran in a zig-zag pattern for the tree line, which was about 100-125 yards away. Linda, it ran at a speed no biped will ever achieve. It was cartoon-like; it was a blur. No animal on earth runs a zigzag pattern, they run straight for the woods. [His wife did not wake up in time to see it.]

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Diagram submitted by Nicholas Gluchman

“That animal, in my opinion, had human intelligence, like it thought I had a gun. If I thought someone was going to shoot me that’s what I’d do. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about this, for the last thirty years. My description of the animal is spot on. Everything I’ve told you is the truth. I feel great getting this off my mind. I’ve learned one thing from this: There are things that go bump in the night.”

It thought it was better than me…

I talked to Nick later and he added a few more details about the creature’s facial expression. He said,
“It thought it was better than me; it had a human aspect in its face.” He also added that he felt the creature weight was about 400 pounds and that it stood six and one half to seven feet tall and would be taller if it it had been standing straight up. The eyes with red veins glowed yellow, he said, and the hair was dark to light brown and stiff, and the ears were upright like a German shepherd’s.

Regarding its movements, he said, “When it was running and came to a stop, it tucked its arms in, bent its head down and made itself small. “It didn’t know I saw it,” he said. And he emphasized that the evasive running pattern was made with sharp turns, not circles (see his drawing of this.)

Nick also said that he was uncertain that the month of the incident was November, so he asked Lakeland Hospital to check their records for the night his arm was treated and it was December 2, 1987, just as he had said.  That was four years before my original article on The Beast of Bray Road was first published.

Nick added his own drawing of the creature which does look much more like a canine than a Bigfoot. The exact location must have been about four miles from where Hwy. 12 crosses the southwest end of Bray Road in Elkhorn. It may have been heading from the Lake Como area just north of Lake Geneva.

There are a few things such as the shorter muzzle and heavier weight that are a bit out of the norm for dogman descriptions, but nothing that hasn’t occasionally been mentioned elsewhere. His report is one of the most detailed I’ve ever received, and I think the location is close enough to the other Elkhorn area sightings to count this one as an official “Beast of Bray Road.”

I’m glad he decided to share it after 30 years, and I can’t help but wonder how many other untold sightings are still out there waiting to be heard.

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1994 artwork by Linda S. Godfrey created for The Week newspaper in So. Wisconsin

From the Cryptid Art Department Files:

I was pretty excited back in 1994 when comedian Bobcat Goldthwaite came to Walworth County, especially since I got to write a story on his visit and also make an illustration. It was only about two years after the initial Beast of Bray Road story and I wasn’t implying any connection between Bobcat and the Beast. But I think he got a kick out of it.

Here is another drawing made a year earlier, in 1993, as an editorial cartoon for a local issue. I believe the problem at the time was that property tax rates had been frozen and school districts were trying to get them unfrozen to increase school funding. Two sides with good arguments! One of the county school districts is the Bigfoot School District in Walworth, which was named for a local Potawatomi chieftain, NOT Sasquatch.

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Drawing by Linda S. Godfrey, 1993, created for The Week Newspaper, So. Wisconsin

I post them here for fun and also because some recent documentaries have shown interest in my illustrations of other cryptid artwork figures than upright canines. I have 10 years worth created for The Week alone but don’t worry: I won’t post them all. I just wanted to show I don’t play favorites when it comes to unknown creatures!

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Illustration Update: On July 2, this witness sent me a sketch by her artist son, Marc, and I’ve added it below. He did a great job, and her only notes on it were that it needed the “mane” around the neck and shoulders and also more varying lengths of fur. She said both his drawing and mine looked much like what she and her friend had seen. Here is what she described:

Time and time again, Michigan dogman sightings seem to center around the mid-Eastern area of the state, near the huge Manistee National Forest. Some of the best known sightings in that area include those near Reed City and Big Rapids featured in the TV show Monsterquest, and in nearby Luther, where owners of a family home returned from vacation to find canine claw marks in the house’s siding seven feet off the ground, and large canine prints on the ground.

Shelby, a small town in Oceana County that lies halfway between Ludington and Muskegon, is only a couple of miles from the western edge of the forest, and six or seven miles from the Lake Michigan shore. In February, 2009, at about 11:30 pm, recently retired law enforcement officer Laura Love was a passenger in a car headed north on Highway US-31 near the West Webster Road overpass. Her friend,“C,” was driving. In Laura’s own words:

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“We were just talking about general things…there was a small truck in front of us, no other traffic on the road, in either direction. The road itself was mostly clear, but did have areas of snow/ice spots. The weather was cold but there was no snow falling, and it was a cloudless night.

We saw a large, tall, dark, and oddly shaped creature run out from the left side of the overpass and hit the rear quarter panel of the small truck in front of us, causing the truck to fish-tail. Luckily the small pickup did regain control, but it didn’t stop to see what collided with it. If anything, it seemed to speed up as if it got a view of what hit it, and wanted to get the heck out of Dodge.

It looked like a giant dog or wolf. It was bipedal, not on all fours. It was at least 7-7.5 feet tall. It had a kind of mane around its head ( much like a lion’s mane) the hind legs looked like dog legs when they are up on two legs…like the knees are backwards, which seemed more pronounced as it was running across the two-lane highway left to right. The front legs were swinging freely as it ran.

The face was definitely canine, much like a collie face….elongated with a snout and nose protruding from the face. The mouth was slightly opened as it ran…and the creature was covered by longish dark hair, but in varying lengths. It had pointy ears that seemed to be more on the top portion of its head rather than on the sides. We watched as it ran off to the right side of the highway and disappear into the small trees and weeds along the road. It seemed to pay us no heed whatsoever, as if it was unconcerned that we were fast approaching it.

‘C’ kept driving, but was silent.

I asked her “Did you just see….?”

She replied, “Yes, I did.”

I said, ‘OK.’

We drove the next ten minutes in silence until we got to my driveway.

We went into my house and I made us some tea. We sat and discussed what we had seen. I am not sure if it was a relief to have the other confirm what was seen, but we agreed on all aspects that I have described.

I was concerned about her trip back to her house, as she naturally was… so we decided she would call me from her cellphone and we would talk as she drove so if anything happened I would know as it happened, and she gave me frequent location updates as she drove. Thankfully she made it home without incident.

Our encounter was brief, but it was fully illuminated, affording us a good profile view of the creature. We have always heard the stories, but normally from someone who knew someone who knew someone that saw something. Now, I can honestly say, WE saw something, and it wasn’t a man in a costume, nor a large dog nor wolf… it was a dogman. I can still see it clearly in my mind’s eye like it happened just last week.

Thank you for replying back, it was nice to see an actual email from someone…

I am fine with you sharing my encounter. I am also fine if you want to share my name…  I retired from law enforcement 2 years ago, so I am not worried about the backlash anymore.”

 

There are a couple of aspects to this sighting that make it quite remarkable. There is the “mane” or thick hedge of fur around its neck and back. This feature is not found on all upright canines but does get mentioned from time to time and is something that shows up in wolf populations as well.

The real shock factor of this sighting, however, is that the creature actually bashed into the truck just ahead of the two women, nearly sending it veering off the road. It seems odd that something with such obvious power and control of movement would hit the truck accidentally. From listening to Laura’s description of its trajectory, the move seems purposeful to me. My mind then goes toward what might happen if such a vehicle left the pavement, which Laura described as icy in patches, and rolled or was otherwise damaged. Would the creature have stayed on site to check out the truck’s occupants?

 

We will never know, of course, but since we truly don’t know yet how these creatures view humans and what their true intent may be, it’s not unreasonable to ask these questions. In the meantime, I’m thankful that both Laura and her friend made it home safely.

A recent podcast to air June 15 https://freedomufos.com/the-english-page/dtv-dimensions-tv

Pour accompagner cette super Lune, j’accueillerai demain soir Linda Godfrey sur DTV Dimensions TV, qui nous parlera de cryptozoologie, de Dogmen / loups-garous et autres créatures réellement rencontrées et répertoriées, et des portes interdimensionnelles qu’ils empruntent! 😉 Je vous réponds tout de suite à l’avance pour celles et ceux qui vont demander comme à chaque annonce, et qui ne connaissent pas ma chaîne DTV, ce sera en Anglais, en VO, et il n’y aura pas de traduction ni de sous-titres en Français sauf si une/un volontaire s’y colle 😉
https://freedomufos.com/the-english-page/dtv-dimensions-tv/

Linda Godfrey is my guest, from Wisconsin, USA
in this 6th Show on DTV Dimensions TV
Real dogmen / wolfmen sightings & other cryptid creature encounters, secret portals & interdimensional doorways
Linda will speak about the dogmen / werewolves / wolfmen sightings and encounters, we’ll also discuss mystical, legendary, cryptid creatures, and their secret portals and doorways to travel through dimensions

Friday June 15 2018
At 12:30PM Pacific / 3:30PM Eastern US / 8:30PM GMT UK / 9:30PM Paris on DTV

Linda Godfrey

Linda S. Godfrey is an Author, investigator and artist, one of America’s foremost authorities on modern-day monsters. She wrote 17 books on strange creatures, phenomena and people, on werewolves, hauntings, and the paranormal, including

Real Wolfmen: True Encounters in Modern America, American Monsters: A History of Monster Lore, Legends, and Sightings in America, and Weird Michigan.

She has appeared on many national TV shows such as The History Channel’s Monster Quest, Inside Edition, and Sean Hannity, and has been a guest on radio shows such as Coast to Coast AM.

Her latest book:

Monsters Among Us ; An Exploration of Otherworldly Bigfoots, Wolfmen, Portals, Phantoms, and Odd Phenomena

She is especially well known as an authority on the upright canine known in Wisconsin as the Beast of Bray Road, in Michigan as the Dog Man, in other places as Skinwalker, werewolf or a dozen other names. She appeared in, co-wrote and co-produced the History Channel’s Monsterquest episode, « American Werewolf, » based on her book « Hunting the American Werewolf » and also appeared in the show’s season 4 finale.

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Illustration by 2017 witness of upright, wolf-like creature in SW Montana, all rights reserved by witness

 

There’s been a lot of excitement in the past week over a wolf-like animal shot by a rancher near Denton in north Central Montana. It’s some kind of canid, most experts agree, and possibly some type of wolf-dog hybrid. A few have gone so far as to call it a dogman or even werewolf, although it was only seen running on all fours. This week I  received a Montana sighting report describing something much more like a typical dogman report in terms of size, appearance, and behavior. The witness had seen the news photos and felt that he should reveal what he had personally seen. At my request, he also drew the attached sketch of what he observed standing at the treeline of his own back yard less than a year ago.

It occurred only 150 miles southwest of Denton, near the northern edge of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and Wise River. Just a glance at a map will confirm what a great habitat it would be for any wild canid.

The witness has since moved from that area. He said I could call him Zach here, but I do have his full name for contact info. He is in his mid-twenties, and at the time of the event worked in the environmental science department of the state’s Conservation Corps. Here is his own account of the 2017 incident:

I lived alone and in this remote location we don’t have cable so the only option is satellite TV. It was a humid summer night in July and the TV was acting up so I needed to go out and readjust the satellite like usual. I took a flash light and when I went outside it was usually quiet. Like so silent it was unnerving. I brushed the thought off and went to the dish which is in the corner of my yard. I went to work, making sure all the wires were alright and pointing it to a different angle. Suddenly I heard I small snap of a stick to my left and turned the flashlight to the direction and I saw a creature standing there. I got a good look at it for what seemed like an eternity but was for only about ten seconds. I slowly backed off and ran back to the house and locked all the doors and windows.

The creature was unlike anything I have ever seen before. When I shined the light at it, the first thing I saw was the head. It has cropped ears that pointed upwards. Its snout was narrower than a bears and longer and I could make out large teeth protruding from the jaw. Its eyes were a deep yellow, amber shade that seemed to reflect off the light I was pointing at it. The body was muscular and huge. It had long arms that appeared to be longer than its legs. Broad shoulders that tapered into a skinnier waist. It was slightly crouched over when I saw it, with one hand wrapped around a small tree. I could make out the legs which looked similar to a dog’s legs, it had obvious hocks. Even with the crouched position, it was about my height which is 6 foot. Standing up to full height this creature could easily be 7.5 feet tall. The fur was black and thicker around the neck and chest and the bottom half significantly less so.

I don’t know if it was aggressive or not. Was it observing me or stalking me? For a creature this large is was deceivingly silent. It got within 15 yards of me without me noticing. All I knew was I needed to get out of there and not find out. I don’t live on the property anymore but after the event I never had another face-to-face encounter. But I would hear sounds in the woods I cannot explain. They would start off relatively quiet, and work their way up to furious howls/screams then back down to quiet again. I don’t know if this was the same thing because it could be local wildlife.

Once I got back to the house, I opened a window closest to where I saw it and shined the light exactly where it was but it was gone. It was still dead silent outside when I had the window open. Some nights it would just be very quiet outside and others it would be like normal.

Zach said what he saw was nothing like those new photos now making Internet rounds. His description and sketch show a creature that is larger and more muscular than the Denton canid, and also had black fur rather than brown. Its behavior was also different, as it was observing the yard of the witness from a spot next to good cover rather than boldly stalking farm animals, and then quietly removed itself from view as the witness retreated into his house. He would have had no idea whether it was truly gone or just behind some foliage, still watching.

My final remark wold be the caveat that neither incident proves nor disproves the other. It is interesting, however, that this sighting occurred so close to the time of the Denton sighting, and shows there may be more of a background of unknown canine encounters in Montana than we may have guessed. Many thanks to Zach for contributing!