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Posts Tagged ‘dogmen’

Michigan Dogman goes for children on roof

Posted in cryptozoology, cryptozoology art, dogman, Michigan dogmen, strange creatures, unexplained phenomena, Weird Michigan, wolfmen, tagged , , , , , on May 11, 2018|

 

In my previous blog post, I shared the encounter of a Michigan man who was confronted by a wolf-like creature sitting on the roof of his house, watching him. In the following report, we will see that it may not be any comfort to an eyewitness to be the one sitting on the roof, as dogmen don’t appear to see that amount of height as any barrier. Tina Cole gave permission to use her name and a sketch that she drew. In her own words, only slightly edited:

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Sketch submitted by Tina Cole

“Bear with me here, because i’m trying to paint a mental picture for you:

I guess I should start by saying that the only people who know about this is my immediate family, my fiance (who’s encouraged me to contact you) and the person who witnessed this with me. This happened back in 2001. I was only 8 yrs. old at the time, my friend who was with me at the time was 7.

We were both very small.

I remember it was early August, and I lived/ live in a semi-inner city in Michigan, next to a very large park. At the time, my friend and I had decided it was a great idea to play in my very big back yard at night, because the neighbors had a bonfire going. It just barely lit that portion of my yard through a bunch of trees.

We had climbed onto the shed via the neighbor’s fence and a propped board. I mention this because it’s nearly impossible to climb to this day, being an adult. (I can send size comparison photos if you’d like. or a drawing if it would be easier.)

Anyway, we had our feet dangling off of the shed, with our backs facing toward the park. And without a word, my friend had jumped off of the highest part of our shed (which we were never able to do, I mean he practically flew) and headed straight for the house. After a long few seconds I turned around to see why he ran, and there was this thing.  It looked half dog and half human, there’s really no other way to describe it.

It had to have been over 8 ft. high (the height of the shed) and its reaching length was over 4 ft. Its ears alone had to have been a foot long, at least, and its eyes did that thing a cat’s eyes do when light reflects on them in the dark. Its hand was inches away from my ankle. Very, very hairy body. It was basically a dog. I don’t exactly remember the color of it, if it even had a color, but I do remember that whatever this was, was standing from the ground because we didn’t have a chain link fence, it was all parallel wood that you couldn’t stand on,) and it was MASSIVE. So tall that I could see [it] from its middle torso and up.  That was literally the fastest I’ve ever rolled away, I don’t even remember how I got down. Ran inside and told our parents. We had no idea what it was at the time so I vaguely remember telling my mom that there was a tall man outside with a very hairy arm and big ears.

All of the adults went outside really quick to check, but I guess they never found anything. To this day I’m still afraid of the fact that even if what I saw was a man in a VERY elaborate, A-movie horror costume, I was still almost abducted. Since then my mom has become a bit of a fanatic about it. Its caused me a lot of anxiety problems. My friend and I never mentioned it after that night, and we’ve since grown apart.

I’ve tried to get in contact with him so I could have some outside perspective and opinion, so I know I’m not crazy, but to no avail.

(Second letter, in answer to my questions)

I’m so incredibly sorry it has taken me so long to respond, I know you’re probably very busy and I don’t mean to waste your time. I can give you a pretty detailed sketch.

There are many woods where I’m from, I’m surrounded by a very large, heavily wooded park, along with woods directly in front of the house. However, it’s an urban area, so I think that’s one of the reasons I’m afraid to tell anyone, because it seems like the most unlikeliest of places for this to happen. Everything is pretty dilapidated. Buildings, railroads, actual roads, you name it. But no matter where you go, there a deer everywhere around my neighborhoods. It’s a huge problem.

You can absolutely share my encounter. I need people to know. No anonymity necessary.
As far as other details go I can tell you the color of the fur must have been some shade of brown, because it wasn’t immediately noticeable, but it wasn’t too dark to see the figure at night. And quiet. Everything was so quiet and it didn’t make any noise. The next I can do is send you this drawing, which I will do, and a photo of the shed for size comparison, if it helps. I mean, because describing it just isn’t enough.”

I’m not sure why Tina didn’t offer the name of the urban area where she was located (and evidently still lives).  She may not wish to have her home’s location made public, as is her right. I have two other quick comments about the creature reported. First, regarding its height of 8 1/2 feet, that is quite high compared to most estimates of dogman size, but not unheard of. It may have been that everything seems larger to a small child, but she still lives at the place and so is able to make her estimation of its height as a grown person, too.

I also thought about the fact that she said it was very quiet, and that does make sense if it was sneaking up quietly on possible prey. And that adds another layer of fright to the story, which, as an example of a large, unknown predator stalking semi-urban areas just as bears and packs of coyotes often do these days, is already quite scary enough.

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Michigan Dogman Roof-Stalker

Posted in animals, Bray Road, dogman, Michigan dogmen, monsters, strange creatures, Uncategorized, Weird Michigan, werewolves, wolfmen, tagged , , , , , , , on April 20, 2018|

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Original artist conception by Linda S. Godfrey, copyright 2018 all rights reserved.

Do dogmen, Bigfoots and other cryptids select and follow certain humans…sometimes for years? One Michigan man wrote me about several dogman encounters that began when he was a child. The biggest question in this case may be: will the sightings someday end? The incidents occurred near Alto and Lowell in Kent County, starting when the man was just 11. These communities are just east of Grand Rapids, but both are near rivers and some small lakes, with numerous wooded areas and a rural feel.
Here is the main story as he wrote it (includes the first one and the latest), edited for length and punctuation:
The First Encounter: 1986
“It was summertime, my childhood had a great group of very normal everyday kids and we played war a lot with each other. Normally about six of us played together through the day with kids rotating back home for chores etc. This particular Saturday we decided to play War behind the Alto Elementary School in the woods and creek area. Anyways I was trying to get in the woods ahead of the other kids before they showed up, to have the advantage. We were using squirt guns and water balloons.
It was like 10 am. As soon as I ran into the woods which I knew very well–this was my stomping grounds literally–I felt uneasy, like I was being watched… not by a friend, either. This feeling lingered and got stronger and stronger like whatever was watching me was moving closer.In this small stretch of woods there was a creek behind me that ran the stretch of the woods. There is a train trestle/ rail road tracks as well.
I was crouched in the tall grass facing the play ground and the road when I heard a splash and very fast movement going behind me. I jumped because I was startled at the height and suddenness of the shadow flashing behind me. When I whipped around I saw a large black/grey, wolflike creature that was running down the creek bed bank alongside the creek behind me. It was shifting from four to two legs and jumped after about three seconds into the brush away from me into the trees. It seemed to have disappeared and I didn’t hear it [any more]. I was a country/woodsy kid. I had no comprehension other than fear for what I saw at that moment.
I ran home which wasn’t far, about 1/4 mile. I didn’t tell anybody what I saw. I was afraid of being teased, or made fun of about it by other people.
When I ran in my house and got to my bedroom, it had only been like a few minutes but I remember thinking it resembled the werewolves in The Howling movie I had seen few years before that. It was, I’d guess, 7-8 ft. tall, and a very muscular  300 lbs? Its head resembled a timber wolf with long canines, long clawed hands, its legs bent backwards like a canine. It glanced back at me. It didn’t want me to see it. It didn’t SMELL AT ALL. It’s face was not feral or ferocious, its eyes were blue. Its presence was powerful, overwhelming.
I didn’t go outta my own yard for several days, which my neighborhood friends thought was odd. I had childhood asthma though, so they assumed that was my issue when they didn’t see me much. I used that excuse when my family wondered why I was so home-bound. I never told a soul what I saw for fear of not being believed. I stayed close to my friends when we played, but I didn’t go close to that creek stretch of woods for 3-4 years. And never alone….
Being an eleven year old kid then, I remember thinking about it quite a bit over the summer but fear of not being believed kept me from telling my friends and family what happened behind the school I attended.  I was glad that middle school was coming for me that fall. I remember my concern that I was going to see this creature elsewhere that we played in the Alto area but I didn’t. Over next few years I rationalized to myself that I didn’t know really what I saw and the wolf-like creature image in my memory was better left there.
The Roof Wolf
“Flash up to 2008. I’m 33 years old. My profession at this time was personal fitness trainer and recreational bodybuilding was my lifestyle. We resided in a quaint house about a mile north of Lowell, MI. It had a very pretty welcoming woodsy area behind our home and we all enjoyed walking the trails in the woods as well.”

“It’s wintertime 2009. It’s a blizzard of snow outside.

All of my family was sound asleep. About 1 am, we wake up to a large thud sound on the roof of our home,  like the weight of a person moving around on the roof of our one story home. There is a lot of scraping noises and a slow, deliberate walking sound.
This goes on for about a minute. My girlfriend, our children and myself are genuinely spooked by this phenomenon happening on the roof. I recall vividly that all of us were utterly silent huddled in the hallway looking intently at each other and up at the ceiling from all of the loud creaking scraping sounds.
I don’t own guns, but I certainly felt it was a good idea to grab my machete that was in the closet. That was when I realized the dread feeling in my gut was the exact same feeling I had years ago with the wolflike creature from my youth. As I struggled with this realization I quietly as possible crept up to the back slider door, machete in hand. I had genuine fear for my girlfriend and children but kept it to myself. They were still huddled and scared, watching me sneak outside. Please know that I’m rather a fearless man for most part.
I ever so quietly sneak outside. It’s snowing hard big flakes outside, and it’s eerily quiet. I’m crouched in my pajamas alongside backside of the house. I’m holding my breath…looking up at the roof, listening. Slowly the clawed hands and timber wolf face with piercing blue eyes peers over roof down at me. It’s the exact same  creature I saw in my youth!
We stare at each other blankly for few seconds. There definitely was a weird sense of recognition between the creature and me ein those moments. I was physically frozen and shocked because the creature was only a good 8 feet or so from me on the roof of my home.
It suddenly leaps off the roof about 30 ft into our backyard. It lands on all four then runs on two legs back into the treeline in what seems like a blur. It’s standing there at treeline looking at me. The  contrast of the snow and it’s size and fur make it easy to spot.I hold still while the wolflike creature and myself stare each other down.
We stare at each other for I’m guessing a minute. In that minute my adrenaline dumped. My fear of this creature turned to anger for it disturbing my life, my family. I made a decision as my anger grew, a reckless one….
The Voice
I yelled a loud angry noise and charged, machete in hand directly at it. Pathetically, it took me like fifteen seconds to run the distance the creature had in like 2 moments. The wolflike creature didn’t budge, move or anything. It just stood there watching me run at it. It appeared mildly amused, its facial expression almost a smirk.
As I got within about 30 feet, in my head loudly I hear audibly… “DON’T!!!”. It’s a deep loud voice. I swear the sheer volume of the voice stopped me dead in my run at the creature. I was instantly physically calm, confused, still afraid of the creature, my fear of it was different for me. It’s presence was still overwhelming to me…
At this moment I realized this creature is intelligent?
I dropped the machete in a physical plea, a gesture to not be harmed. I backed away in slow deliberate steps backwards still facing it.  If it chose to be violent, it could easily kill/ harm me from physical appearance of it.
After few seconds it turned and walked calm about 30 feet into the woods. Its presence faded and it felt like it wasn’t ever there…
I went back to my residence looking over my shoulder whole time. I was so bewildered. It was a very vivid, surreal feeling. My reality had been spun like a top. I go back inside, but I keep looking out the slider towards the woods. I announce “It’s gone, girls!”
My girlfriend (Age 31), her daughter (10), my daughter (11)  walk into the dining room area from the hallway, asking questions in quiet voices. I hug our daughters, telling them it’s late. it was just an animal that ran off. They reluctantly buy it..My girlfriend and I  whisper about what happened earlier.  It comes out that she saw it a month or so before which then clicked to me…She had called me while I was running errands early evening. She sounded upset and scared. I was at [a store] only a mile from our residence. I was home in like 3 minutes. When I got in the house, she said she lied and chalked it off to the neighbor’s big Rottweiler. That was when I admitted my knowledge of the creature… Our daughters slept but we really didn’t.  It was simply crazy, Linda.”
This man had an unusual experience, I’ll say that! But not crazy. I have had other reports of upright canines crawling on roofs and staring at people from the tree lines of their back yards. I’ve also had many, many eyewitnesses report the feeling of receiving a message in their heads that indicates a warning of some type, although the message delivery seems extra vivid in this case. I hope to stay in touch with this witness in case anything else happens, and will update if I hear anything new. I have one more case to present from my recent Michigan batch so keep an eye out here for that.

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The Alleged Sewer Werewolves of Minot

Posted in animals, cryptozoology, cryptozoology art, dogman, Minot, North Dakota, strange creatures, Uncategorized, werewolves, wolfmen, tagged , , , , , , , on January 30, 2017|

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Image by Linda Godfrey copyright 2017 all rights reserved

About eight years ago I did something I always try very hard not to do: I lost a file on a possible upright canine case alleging there were werewolves roaming the sewers of Minot, North Dakota. I remember having been intrigued by the story and setting my printout of the report aside  to investigate further. Much to my chagrin, it then disappeared. It had somehow slipped between two file folders, but I only just discovered that the other day while arranging my office after a recent move. I was delighted to find it, and decided it was about time I posted the short account  in case someone else might know more.

I’d received the email February 24, 2008, from a man who claimed to be a law enforcement agent in North Dakota, and who wanted to stay anonymous for fear of affecting his employment. The man I’ll call Pete said he’d been talking to an associate who told him about a recent interview he’d had with a burglary suspect. The associate said the suspect asked him if he had heard about the “werewolves” in Minot.

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Credit: City of Minot, by Bobak Ha’Eri, photo via Wikimedia Commons

“The guy [burglar] went on to explain,” said Pete, “that he and a friend of his were fooling around by a large culvert down by the river. (This particular culvert is about six feet across, easy for a man to walk in. It is inside the city of Minot and leads right out to the bank of the river.) The suspect said that he and his friend had seen something in the shadows that was about seven feet tall. He told my friend that they had also stepped on what they thought was a body while they were walking in the culvert. He stated that he and his friend had run out of there.

“The suspect had said that werewolves were living in the sewer system. While this sounds, of course, crazy…I have been noticing a few things since hearing the story: The city police department has had a couple of calls within the past couple of months concerning manhole covers being displaced, or off of manholes around town. Normally I wouldn’t think twice about those types of calls, but it now strikes me as odd.”

Pete said he put the information in the back of his mind until he heard me on the Coast to Coast AM radio show and suddenly wondered if there might be more to it. I’ve been trying to reach him, in return, but to no avail. I did confirm that he was indeed a law enforcement officer at the time and place he stated. But I like to have a bit more info when I post a case, especially when it’s a third-hand report and the original source is an alleged burglar. Since I’ve mentioned the report briefly in a book and on some radio shows, however, I decided to offer the information I have. I’ll be sure to update here if I do finally reach the original writer or find other sources.

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Manhole Steps, by Silenzio76, photo via Wikimedia Commons

Personally, I’ve never been able to shake that mental image of two criminals stumbling over a dead body as they flee the culvert after spotting a seven-plus-feet-tall “something” watching them from the shadows. And Minot may not be the only place where people should take extra care around city water and drainage systems. In “Monsters Among Us” I shared the story of a brother and sister who claim to have seen something similar in a Los Angeles suburb. And Minot does boast a river and lies near several wildlife refuges so the habitat is certainly there.

As I said, I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime I wouldn’t blame anyone for deciding to give manhole covers a wider berth–just to be on the safe side.

 

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The Other Mystery Object in Roy Smith’s Field, and Smith on Camera!

Posted in animals, bigfoot, Books, cryptozoology, dogman, haunted roads, monsters, strange creatures, Uncategorized, unexplained phenomena, werewolves, wolfmen, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 26, 2016|

A certain weird hayfield in SE Wisconsin threads its way throughout the pages of my latest book, Monsters Among Us; an Exploration of Otherwordly Bigfoots, Wolfmen, Portals, Phantoms, and Odd Phenomena. Today I spent a few hours threading my own way through the weedy tree lines of that field with its owner, “Roy Smith,” who decided he would like to reveal his actual name and say a bit on camera. I’ll refer to him as Smith here, however, since that is the name used in the book. My video of his introduction may be found below, but first here’s an important postscript on one strange phenomenon in Monsters Among Us.

(All rights reserved on photos and video; may not be posted or printed elsewhere without written permission.)

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On April 29, 2015, one of Smith’s trail cameras caught a black figure silhouetted against the growing green field. At first we thought it was a blackbird or crow, but when we zoomed in (zoom view shown above), it looked more like the head, back and arm of some large animal presumably crouched in the hay. There were two other partial shots of it taken within one second that showed very fast progression across the screen from left to right.

I trudged out to what we judged to be the spot where this happened one dewy morning not long after, wearing a coat with hood, and Smith took photos from where the trail cam had been set up. We ended up concluding, based on comparison to trees in the background and to the original photo, that it was at least as big as me (five foot one) and much larger than a bird would have been from that distance.

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The creature’s shape also seemed to match the stance I took in my photo: crouched over, one arm reaching forward. I wasn’t able to crouch as well, but my lower legs were also hidden by the grass. It would have been heading straight for the treeline area where Smith had been noticing various wildlife carcasses, mostly deer, that displayed oddly munched and crunched areas or were carried off entirely by unknown predators.

Return of the Creature

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Skip ahead one year or so to early May, 2016, and a similar type of creature showed up on another trail cam in the same field, heading in exactly the same direction. It looked black, furry, and seemed to be in a kneeling position. There was an evident shadow around it in the grass.Unfortunately, book production was already well underway so there was no way to add it. But we still set up a comparison shot with Smith trudging out to the field this time.

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The 6-foot 3-inch tall Smith (left, in baseball cap) appeared almost the same height as the creature as he knelt in the hay, but only half as wide! Compare the sizes of Smith and the creature compared to the round-shaped tree at the right. Whatever this black thing is, it’s roughly human-sized or larger. Just one more mystery at this field of bad dreams.

Meet “Roy Smith,” otherwise known as Lee Hampel, a retired math and physics teacher from Illinois, and owner of the mysterious field featured in Monsters Among Us. Hampel had chosen that pseudonym himself, but has since decided to go public. I always feel the witnesses should be the ones to choose in this matter, and honor Hampel’s choice by posting this video taken Oct. 25, 2016 on site in the field.

 

 

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It Came From the UFO? The Creature-Lights Connection

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 6, 2014| 8 Comments »

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Illustration by Nathan D. Godfrey, all rights reserved

One question I hear a lot from radio callers, blog readers and conference attendees is whether I think that unknown, upright canine creatures are related to UFOs. It’s actually a concept that’s been around for some time and is also asked in regard to Bigfoot and other cryptids. My usual answer is that while I don’t have any reports from witnesses who’ve seen a dogman hopping directly off a UFO (although I know there are a few cases where people have claimed this about Bigfoot), it just so happens that places where mystery creatures abound are also often UFO hotspots.

A  perfect example of this type of area is the northern unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest which stretches through Sheboygan, Fond du Lac and Washington Counties in Wisconsin. This wooded, well-watered and hilly terrain encompasses the Holy Hill region which has had numerous sightings of upright, wolf-like creatures — probably the most famous of which was the 2006 incident where the DNR’s carcass removal contractor saw one such beast drag a fresh deer from the back of his pickup truck. It’s also an area where many Bigfoot have been spotted, and includes old legends of a Goatman and ancient sacred places to boot.

It’s just as well known for its UFO activity. The city of Hartford, in fact, was named the site of one of the Top 10 UFO Cases of 2012 by the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON. The incident occurred July 13 when a woman in her 50s and her daughter both saw a silent, lampshade-shaped object equipped with lights and measuring about two hundred feet long zip over the trees in their yard before shooting away in classic UFO style. The sighting lasted about half a minute, which is actually longer than most sightings of unknown phenomena.

The little town of Dundee, one of Wisconsin’s three self-proclaimed UFO capitals (the others are Elmwood and Belleville), has a long history of unidentified flying objects in its skies. A woman I met at a library signing told me of one that she’d had just off Hwy. 67, about ten miles south of Plymouth, on her family farm at the age of ten in November, 1967. She had been sent to fetch some chickens, whose wings hadn’t been sufficiently clipped, from a tree. She was busy pulling them out when she saw a large, silent, cigar-shaped craft hovering just above a nearby tree only forty feet away. It had small portholes or windows, and on one end were two curved, pipe-like appendages that emitted yellow and blue, laser-like lights that appeared to float off on their own. It eventually zoomed off but the girl had quite a long look at it. She didn’t know if the craft’s occupants were aware of her. She also had an aunt who saw a round, disk-like craft over her fishing boat in the same general area.

Cheeseheads aren’t the only ones to see such things. The late Fortean investigator John Keel, best known for his in-depth investigation of, West Virginia’s Mothman of Point Pleasant, said in an interview for the Sept., 2007 issue of FATE Magazine that there were “countless” sightings of UFOs in that vicinity in the mid-1960s, and described seeing many unidentifiable lights himself when he inspected animal mutilations that were also associated with the strange goings-on. The part of the interview that grabbed my attention, however, was his statement that, “Mothman left tracks that looked like giant dog prints.”

That has pretty interesting implications, if true. I’ve never received a report of a dogman with wings, although plenty of people have claimed to have seen flying things with hairy, un-bird-like bodies. But it hints at some sort of Protean, multi-formed entity able to look like several different animals or a blend of them, with some connection to weirdly behaving lights. And yet, most dogman and Bigfoot witnesses believe they have encountered solid, flesh-and-blood creatures. Keel also thought the lights he saw in Pt. Pleasant were “mischievous masses of energy,” but the two witnesses mentioned above who saw UFOs in or near the weird-creature-infested Kettle Moraine both described craft-like forms with defined shapes. Perhaps they were entirely different phenomena – who can really say?

I have to confess that I’ve been working on a case for several months that involves large, bipedal canine prints that do such inexplicable things as appear suddenly in the middle of a secluded field, then track into nearby woods. They seem to belong to some large animal that is somehow able to obscure its image from multiple trail cams as it drags or carries off deer carcasses. The trail cams have caught weird, anomalous lights overhead when these things occur – all of it so far unexplainable. The investigation is still in active progress but I’ll admit it has me questioning some of my own biases at this point.

Still, even that case isn’t solid proof of a relationship between the unknown creatures and mysterious lights or sky vessels, to my mind. But I do believe that the fact that they often appear in the same areas and sometimes the same time frames, too, means that any open-minded investigator ought to take a serious look. Our universe is seldom simple or predictable, and perhaps there’s an unimagined answer out there that no one’s thought of. Yet. I think we’d best keep looking for it.

 

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