Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘werewolf’

scan_20160915

Before we start, I’d like to add a note to Part One of this story of a years-long dogman habituation in eastern Pennsylvania that continues to this day. The eyewitness I’ve nicknamed Jessie contacted me to say I had her permission to reveal the purpose of the family party she attended later in the day of her first sighting…it was her wedding! This fact has always seemed significant to her although she isn’t sure why. I had left that detail out as a possibly identifying factor–how many women have a dogman sighting on the day they get married? But I’m glad to be able to include it because if it’s important to her, it may also be important to the entire series of encounters. And I do consider this a case in progress.

It may seem odd that the bride-to-be would go hiking on her wedding day, but this bit of back story gives me a chance to add a few more of Jessie’s pertinent characteristics. She describes herself as an avid hiker and prefers sunrise and sunset, so this walk was part of her daily routine. She had worked for several years as a mechanic in the US military and was not afraid to be in the woods by herself. So that morning, she decided to begin her big day by de-stressing with a sunrise walk to a rock ledge where she could best see the colors of dawn. That was what led to the first encounter discussed in Part One.

It also sets the scene for another shock that occurred the next spring after her grandfather passed away, after Jessie’s second encounter in her own back yard. Jessie woke up one night to see her beloved grandfather, whom she described as a “a good Christian with his head on straight,” standing next to her bed. She rubbed her eyes, gulped down some water, and he was still there, watching her. And then he spoke. She wrote:

“‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t do it. Don’t go after them. You don’t know what they really are. Don’t,’ he said. And meant it. He disappeared after [that], but left me with a sense of horrible dread…To find answers [to what the creatures are] is to find something worse than death, is the sense he left me with.”

Needless to say, Jessie was very disturbed by the visitation and says she has had recurring nightmares ever since. She began awaking with the sense that something was just outside her window almost every night, and would often feel the hair rise on the back of her neck as her cat stared intently at the window for no reason she could see.

Mulch Ado About Something

On June 9, 2015, Jessie wrote me that she had found deeply indented prints in the mulch around her house, and scratches on her house siding. (See her photos, below. Note crushed flowers, too) She had also found a snow print that looked canine a few months earlier.

jessiepamulch

 

jessiepasiding

She wrote that the activity was all next to her bedroom window. The prints were about four inches wide. (They resembled a similar case I called The Hartland Hairy Thing in Wisconsin.) Jessie also asked whether I knew anyone local who might come out to her place and have a look. I did, and made the connections but unfortunately they have not as yet been able to find a mutually workable time to get together. In the meantime, I advised her to get motion lights, a strong flashlight, and a trail cam, if possible, and to spread playground sand in a few strategic spots around the yard to try for a better footprint.

On June 11, 2015, she awakened to the familiar sense that the creature was outside. This time she got up and peeked through the side of the blinds, only to see it standing there. “I saw ears, eyes and teeth,” she wrote. “The ears are upright dog ears. The eyes were a bright yellow/orange. Like an amber color, and they kind of seemed to glow! The teeth…I don’t want to think about any more. It didn’t see me peeking at first, but once we locked eyes it let out a tremendous deep-throated growl and bared its teeth, then turned and ran into the woods behind our house. It ran on two legs, and leapt our fence like it was nothing. I stayed up the rest of the night but it didn’t return. At least, not that I know of.”

She estimated that it would have had to have been at least six feet tall to see into the window, and noted that it seemed partially hunched over which meant it was probably taller than six feet.

Near the end of June, Jessie managed to capture a howl on her phone camera and she gave me permission to share it. She did not see the creature at the same time so it’s not definite as to what this was, but given all the other sightings I think it is worth listening to. And she did see yellow eyes at her back gate that evening. The howl reminded me of some howls thought to be Bigfoot vocalizations that I’ve heard on other sites:

July 14, 2015, Jessie wrote me again to say,”A little after 2 am, I was starting to doze off in my bedroom after staying up late with a good book, and I heard this massive SLAM against the back door, as if a 7 ft., 400 lb. linebacker just threw himself full-force into the back of our house! It even rattled the chain on the deadbolt on the inside of the door! I jumped up and ran out to the kitchen and in the window of the back door was two bright glowing yellow eyes!!  The wolf-beast was standing on two legs, hunched and snarling through the door window at me, it growled and let out a sort or ROAR!”

She continued, “I ran to my bedroom to grab my phone and video it, and tried to wake up my husband, but no matter how bad I shook and yelled, he wouldn’t wake. I ran back to the kitchen and the beast was gone, no where in sight. Also, on a side note, I do special effect makeup as both a hobby, and a job. I’ve done work in theater, in film, not just with makeup but also as an actress and editor, so I know when it’s someone in a suit or makeup. But what’s outside my house, is a real living, breathing, whole animal. It’s alive, there’s absolutely no doubt about that. And it’s not a regular wolf, or a wolf coyote hybrid, or a neighbors dog. This is something else entirely.”

In mid-August 2015 she wrote that something was tapping and pounding on the back wall of her home all night. “These aren’t normal noises and it doesn’t sound like raindrops or acorns/pinecones falling, I know what those sound like and where they usually hit,” she said. “I can’t bring myself to look outside, I don’t think I could handle what I’d see,” she added.

Similar incidents have continued without her husband ever having witnessed the creature. Jessie did feel vindicated in early August 2016 when a visiting friend caught a glimpse of it at mid-day. The woman spied it lurking in its favorite place, the tree line at the back of the yard. Jessie wrote, “She saw its shadow. She didn’t see its face because he was under the shadow of the trees but she could see the furry outline, the ears, and the eyes standing out.”

Was it a supernatural or otherworldly creature? The fact that two people saw it at the same time means it is not a hallucination on Jessie’s part.

There have been more incidents than I can describe here, but Jessie hopes that one final action will end the visits: she and her husband are planning to move away from that house and yard. In other cases I’ve known of, putting some distance between witness and cryptid often does indeed do the trick. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this does it for Jessie, too. Dogmen just don’t make ideal neighbors.

 

Read Full Post »

amy-jordansketch

Witness sketch provided with permission from “Jessie”

Pennsylvania certainly seems to be a hotspot lately for sightings of dogman, wolfman, upright canids–whatever you choose to call the wolf-like creatures that get around on two legs. Most of these encounters could be described as one-time, random incidents. But some reports tell of sightings that never truly end, as creatures return again and again to terrorize individuals or even whole families.

One woman from the eastern side of the state has endured such a situation for four years now. She wishes to retain complete anonymity for several good reasons, so I’ll refer to her as Jessie. The incident that began what she calls her living nightmare began with a sunrise walk in the woods near her house in October, 2013 as she sensed an eerie change in the atmosphere as is often reported by those who encounter mystery creatures. She wrote:

“The stillness and predawn glow of the forest around me seemed somehow off, but I couldn’t put my finger on how. I mean, the light was coming in like normal; it infiltrated the woods and made everything sort of glow for that moment before the sun peeked…so I got up and headed back to the car. I got close to where my car was parked, and got a whiff of something rotten. I thought it was just the deer carcass lying near the trunk of my  car that looked like it was hit the night before.

“I heard something shuffling around in the same spot as the deer. I started to hear something dragging, and I walked slowly toward my car in case it was a bear. The smell became almost unbearable, and I started to cough and gag. When I did that, the shuffling stopped. I turned to see a VERY large…thing…on two legs; it was kind of hunched over the deer carcass and was dragging it with its claws dug into the meat of the deer. It was mostly brown with a bit of grey in it. When it saw me, it stood all the way up and turned to face me. It had blazing yellow eyes that seemed to stand out more than any animal’s normally would. It had a snout somewhat like a husky or German shepherd. Its teeth were fully bared and it gave a very low and menacing growl.

“This thing was my worst nightmare come to life.

“I was frozen, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head. This thing towered over me! I’m five foot, one. My neck cramped looking up at this thing…it had to have been close to seven feet  if not more. My heart was hammering so fast I thought it would explode. I remember hearing it beat in my ears. My throat burned with a strangled scream that never came out,  and my eyes were locked with his (it was very much male). He growled a second time, licking his bared teeth, and took a step toward me. He had let go of the deer and his claws were free and curled, ready for action.

“That step was enough to break my paralysis. My eyes watered and I broke into a run to my driver’s side door. As I ran around the car, he lunged at it. Not very forcefully, just kind of a half lunge sort of like, ‘Get the f— out of here,’and his arm and claws came down on my car. He scratched down the back window making a horrible high-pitched squeaking noise, then got to the trunk and dug his claws into the paint. I was able to get into the car and turn it on and drive, but he was scratching while I was inside fumbling to get my keys in the ignition. It almost seemed as if he was taunting me with his scratching noises.

“I threw the car in drive and hit the gas. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw him grab the deer carcass and drag it back into the woods at the trail opening. I drove back, shaking still.”

Jessie had to attend an event with relatives later that day, and she said they kept telling her she looked “preoccupied.” That was one way of putting it!  She did not confide her experience to anyone, but began combing the Internet to learn what she might have seen. Almost as if the creature knew she was focusing on her sighting, it paid her a visit one night as she sat on her backyard deck listening to music .

“I felt a stare,” she wrote. “Suddenly I got a chill and my hair stood on end, and I turned to look and there he was. It felt almost like a warning to me. This time, he was standing in the woods of my backyard along the fence,” she said. “And he was staring at me and my home with those yellow eyes!” She went inside and the creature also retreated. Shortly after that, Jessie called me and asked if we could talk. The experiences have continued, despite some precautions and remedies I’ve advised that have helped others.

Altogether it’s a lengthy story but one worth telling, so I’m going to split it into parts in order to better communicate all that has occurred to the present time. Watch here for the rest of Jessie’s ordeal.

End of PART ONE of The Persistent Beast of Pennsylvania

 

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

dogmanblakehill

Although Hollywood loves to depict their classic werewolves in shredded shirts and jeans, the great majority of eyewitness reports describe fur as the only covering on the upright canines they have encountered.

Here’s an exception to the rule, from a former Texas pizza delivery man whose encounter occurred the night of July 20, 2012. I leave it in his own words with only a few minor edits for repetition, spelling and paragraph separations:

 

Hello Linda,
Thank you for getting back to me. I’m going to state right away that my sighting has terrorized me to say the least. When I was a small child I watched an American werewolf in London by myself and had been mortally afraid of werewolves since then.
My sighting was on the 20th of July in 2012. It was a Friday night. I was 19 at the time, and didn’t have many responsibilities other than delivering pizza part time, so naturally being a teenager I was out with friends at a house party in old Katy (a suburb west of Houston, Tx) .
My friends and I experimented with both marijuana and alcohol, but we were always “responsible” enough to make sure one of us stayed sober to be the designated driver. That particular night was my turn to be the sober one. My friend B. had gotten well past drunk and once he was starting to behave reckless I decided it was time to leave the party and take him home. He didn’t want me to take him home, so instead he asked me to drive him to one of his friends houses that I’m not familiar with. This friend, who I only remember as Joey, lived on the far west outskirts of Katy, close to a town called Brookshire.
I took  Morton Rd to get there, with the driver and passenger windows down so B. could get some fresh air. The street is one turn north of Morton, and while I don’t remember the name of the street I do remember how to get there (my sense of direction is fairly superior; I’ve delivered pizzas all throughout Katy, and have since become a local truck driver in Houston). The road had 3 or 4 house on the eastern side, and on the west side was a fairly large forest area (maybe 40 or so acres) and dead ends just past the last house.
I had noticed the moon was full before I even went out that night. I got to Joey’s house, the second house on the right and parked my car on the left side of the road, closest to the trees. I helped B. get out of my car and walked him to the porch, Joey came out and thanked me for dropping him off and we said goodbye.
I decided to smoke a cigarette before I left the road. At the time, I shared my car with my dad and his number one rule was to not smoke in his car. After lighting my cigarette it didn’t take long to notice that the road was eerily silent. I assume I didn’t notice before as I was helping my noisy drunk friend get inside the house. Maybe three drags of my cigarette I heard heavy footsteps going across the gravel maybe 100 feet in front of me. I was alarmed at the sound they made, similar to the sound of pulling something metal against concrete.
As I’ve stated, my fears have always been werewolves. Here I am, alone, standing on a dark road under a full moon and I hear something BIG walking too close for comfort in front of me, I didn’t hesitate to throw down my cigarette and get into my car. I told myself as I was getting in that I wouldn’t turn on my headlights so I wouldn’t have to see what was in front of me, and simply reverse my way back onto Morton Rd and get the hell out of there. Unfortunately for me, my car had automatic lights that turned on as soon as I started the car, a fact that I was aware of but in my panic seemed to ignore.
Immediately in front of me about a hundred feet as I had guessed was a 6 and a half to 7 foot beast, on two legs. It was covered in black fur, with the body of a gym addicted man and the head of what I guess could be similar to a German shepherd or a black wolf. It had human like feet covered in the dark fur as well with large claws sticking out about two inches, and it held its left hand out the same way a human would reaching for something in front him/her. I noticed that the fingers ended in large claws as well. While this was enough to cause my jaw to drop, what got me the most was that it was wearing torn blue jeans that seemed too tight and unnaturally torn, and an open flannel blue shirt that was ripped at its bulky shoulders.
It looked my way when the lights revealed it and glared at me with narrowed yellow eyes baring its large fangs. My windows were still down and I hadn’t touched my radio so I had no trouble hearing the loud growl it let out. It then turned its head to the forest and dropped on all fours and ran out of my sight into the trees.
All of this took place in about 20 seconds, but it felt like hours. At this point I literally had tears in my eyes but didn’t hesitate for one second longer to shove my car in reverse and put the gas pedal to the metal. I heard loud growling and grunting as I was leaving. I reversed onto Morton Rd and went 80-90 miles an hour down the streets leading back to Katy and didn’t slow down till I was on interstate 10. While still on Morton Rd I kept my eyes in front of me and sobbed the whole time because I had never been so scared in my life. I can swear that the look I got from this creature was communicating to me that I had no business seeing him and that he wanted me gone. The look reminded me of criminals on tv being caught in their wrongdoings and wanting to cause harm to those who witnessed it.
I got home, ran inside and called my Scottish terrier into my room and didn’t sleep till the sun was up.
To this day I’ve never had a desire, nor the nerve to go back to that part of Morton Rd. I obsessed over the idea that I had seen a werewolf and researched werewolf sightings on google and was intrigued by the Beast of Bray Rd sightings and everything else that came up. I was disappointed to see that nothing i found on the web was precisely what I saw…while the beasts others have encountered seemed similar, none were spotted wearing clothes.
The Reaction
I told my mother and father what I had seen, and while my mother could tell I was being genuine, my father was more interested in me driving that far from home without letting him know so I stopped talking about it. Of the 7 people outside of my family I’ve told, only my wife to be and my friend Mike seemed to believe me, most laughing and asking stupid questions such as “did you ask the werewolf if he got the vampires yet?” And similar things like that.
I’ve always wanted to write you, but it wasn’t hard to notice that my story sounds far fetched, especially considering the fact that I couldn’t find any other reported sightings near the Houston area, nor much in Texas recently either. I guess I was scared of being ridiculed, or to be honest scared that if I did say my story that somehow the creature would find out and hunt me down…I’m honestly positive I’ll never stop being haunted by the memory of this creature, it’s just too vivid and too frightening to put out of my mind.
I also never told the friend I dropped off there that night, what I saw. In fact, I didn’t see him again for two years until accidentally bumping into him at a gas station in south Katy.
Last week, my mom and fiancé went shopping at Barnes and Noble and noticed Real Wolfmen and thought I’d like it. I haven’t put it down since and after reading the chapter where the woman in Tennessee saw a clogged creature, I decided that after four years of hesitating it was time to write to you.
I’m not sure what happens next, but I want to say thank you again for getting back to me and taking the time to listen to my sighting. I know that some of these creatures have been spotted in daylight, but I just don’t know how what I saw couldn’t be a werewolf…the moon was full (the official full moon was July 19th but it still looked exactly the same from what I saw) and this creature was wearing clothes..I know some dogs wear sweaters when their owners force them to but even pretending that dogs walked on two legs standing 6.5-7 feet tall, how someone could dress a dog up that way is beyond me…and there’s no way in hell that it was a man dressed up as a werewolf/wolfman/dogman…it was just too real. 
I’m 23, a father of two daughters and I’ll be married next month.
The witness shared a few more things with me after I told him that in my experience, the upright canines with more humanoid features and especially those seen wearing a human garment tend to be seen near parks or Native American reservations. There are, in fact, several reservations near that area, he said, and since he is part Native American, he asked his grandmother about tribal lore that might explain the encounter. He said she told him that in their legend, the entities usually referred to as skinwalkers are more like the usual idea of werewolves. The witness drew a sketch at my request, then asked his mother to redraw it, using his drawing as a guide. I must say it looks very like a typical portrayal of a werewolf. The ruff or neck mane is something that many witnesses describe, however, clothing or no clothing.
To play the devil’s advocate, there is a big advantage to hoaxers in wearing clothing, because it’s eliminates the need for a full bodysuit of fur. In the drawing, the feet are shown as flat rather than digitigrade (supported on toepads) But this witness didn’t seem to think this could have been a human. The creature ran away on all fours. And there was that almost full moon…

Read Full Post »

Claredogman1_bak
Clare, Michigan, is known for several odd phenomena, and thanks to a recent eyewitness report, I’m about to add a third.
Set very near the center of Michigan’s lower peninsula, Clare became the site of a string of UFO sightings in the late 60s and early 70s when strange lights were seen along Herrick Road. There have been UFO sightings about 14 miles south in Mount Pleasant, as well.
It was in those same decades when area was also known as home of the Clare Deer Man. Most witnesses described that creature as fairly human from the torso up, including a human-like head, with eyes that were between animal and human. Its lower body, however, featured the legs and hooves of a deer or goat. It sounded like a satyr; something torn from the ancient legends of Pan.
In 2005, however, a young woman driving home at night from her job at a nearby golf course at about 11:45 pm on Sunday, August 28, saw something entirely different. The weather was clear and warm, although Tropical Storm Katrina was at that time pounding the nation’s southernmost states. As she tooled along in her 1996 Dodge Intrepid, she was sober and alert to her surroundings. She wrote:
I had just turned onto Eberhart Rd. which is a dirt road from Beaverton Rd.  I was traveling south on Eberhart, and going slow as I had just turned the corner,  when I spotted the creature on the right hand side of the road, under a yard light that someone had placed at the end of their driveway. 
 At first I was unable to tell what it was, only that it was large and seemed out of place.  In that area of the world we have many deer, and raccoons, rabbits, and the occasional coyote, wolf, mountain lion or bear.  But even from a distance and with it hunched over, I could tell this was out of the ordinary.
 I slowed my car to a stop as I approached the creature, at this point I still had not seen its face as it was hunched over eating the garbage that had been placed by the side of the road for pick up the following morning.  The visibility was good, as the home had installed a yard light, at the junction of the road and their driveway, and the garbage and the creature were directly under it. 
CLareDMbentover_bak
The first thing I noticed about the creature was that the fur was very short, like a horse’s or a greyhound’s, and shiny.  The second thing I noticed was that it was in an odd position as it appeared to be hunched down with its arms and face low to the ground, as it was eating garbage, and it had shoulders like a man.  It was jet black, and very and I cannot stress this enough, very heavily muscled, as it ate I could see the muscles in its shoulders and arms moving under the skin.  It was larger than a man, perhaps the size of a bear when hunched over.  If I had to guess, when fully standing, I would assume it to be over seven feet tall.
At this point my mind was going a million miles an hour trying to identify this creature, the fur and shape was like nothing I had ever seen.  Then it looked up, and I still get goose bumps to this day when I remember that face.  Its face was horrible, I mean really horrible.  The eyes were red, like a sort of red that appeared to give off its own luminescence, this could be incorrect and it could have been that they were just incredibly reflective from the yard light, but he was looking at me, not up, so it was very odd to me that they should glow like that.
The teeth were the most predominate feature, they looked so unreal that I stared until it moved trying to convince myself that I was seeing it wrong and there was a logical explanation.   The face was shorter than most werewolf or dog man images, and the teeth were so large that it seemed impossible that such a thing could exist.  It was hideous, and so terrifying.  It had ears like a doberman but they curled in slightly, and it was sitting back on its heals, and it was built like a man from the chest up, shoulders and all.  Then it made a lunge of sorts towards the car, the last thing I saw before flooring it out of there, was the face twisting into a snarl and that it was coming towards me.  
I have spent years trying to fathom how anything with teeth like that could possibly be a living thing, they just seem like they would get in the way, if that makes any sense. I have also spent years trying to convince myself that his teeth appeared metal due to the reflection of the lights, but Linda, and I could be wrong, but it looked like his teeth shone like metal.
 
I literally floored my car, and it fish tailed on the gravel and I nearly lost control.  I was so frightened, all I could think of was to get out of there and get out of there fast.  I was living a couple of country blocks down the road at that time, and was so scared that I pulled my car up to the door and ran inside and locked the doors.  I haven’t seen it since, and  outside of seeing a pair of ghostly legs crawl behind a chair while living in a haunted house, several years after seeing the dogman, I have never seen anything else that couldn’t be logically explained.
When I told her about the UFO and deer man reports, she said she had never heard about them although she grew up only a block from Herrick Road. But they made a sort of strange sense to her. She replied,
I grew up with an intense fear of UFOs so intense that even as an adult I never felt safe in the area, yet oddly enough as soon as I moved, it was simply gone.  Even as an adult, I could not sleep in the dark, and I would have these awful nightmares about getting sucked out my window, or being lined up in the back yard at night with the neighbors, no one being able to move or speak.  *shudder*  I left and moved to central NY in 2011 and have had no fear since.
Clare is also located about 20 miles east of Evart, known for glowing cemetery lights, and about 32 miles from Reed City, where several dogman sightings have taken place. The Manistee National Forest lies just westward of that town.
As I told the witness, what she saw didn’t resemble the majority of dogman reports I receive in regard to its huge, muscular shoulders–canines don’t have shoulders–its sleek, shiny black fur, and of course the horrific face and giant, metallic teeth. I believe dogmen with this description usually have some association with other unknown phenomena such as lights, UFOs and other strange creatures, and Clare certainly fills that bill.
These, black-furred, super-muscled monsters are not unique to Michigan but are reported from all over the world. In fact, I have another new report of a similar creature seen near Houston Texas. Watch for it here soon!

Read Full Post »

Scan_20160606

Every once in a while I’ll be going through my files and will  discover items that have never been resolved for various reasons, just crumbling away in the staid limbo of manila folders. Here are a couple of headscratchers that turned up recently.  While I also have a bunch of newer reports to share soon, I feel I should mention these oldies first, just in case anyone knows more:

Nashotah Bigfoot? July, 2006, Nashotah, Wisconsin report from three men driving on County C south of town described “something huge and brownish that turned to gray toward the back end” crossing the road in front of them as close as only six feet from the car. It was on all fours, had bigger legs than arms (or forelimbs) and its rear end was higher than its front end, giving it a posture “like a souped-up car” as it ran. They were sure it wasn’t a bear or a deer, and indeed, I’ve heard reports of Bigfoots running on all fours in just this manner.

The man who wrote me about it (second hand) in October, 2006, said he was investigating the incident for the BFRO (Bigfoot Field Research Organization) but it doesn’t appear on their site as far as I could discover. I sent him a recent email for an update and am hoping for a reply. I also have the name of the witness, but his contact info has changed.

I would say this sounded more like a Bigfoot than dogman, except the witnesses also said it had a 4-6 inch long tail.  They did not get a good look at its head. The driver said he’d also seen a large upright creature running through his back yard, and it was seven to eight feet tall. That by itself is not conclusive. I remain especially interested in this incident because of the “Hartland Hairy Thing” seen only two years ago in Hartland, Wisconsin, just five miles away. Both towns are about thirty miles north of Bray Road, Elkhorn.

Water Walker and Giant Swimming Animal: August, 2006, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was the date of an old Yahoo conversation I printed and saved from another group because of a question from John Scherf asking if anyone had seen the “Lake Michigan Water Walker.” He said that a strange figure was sometimes sighted sitting on the beach in the very early morning hours. It would then rise up and walk out onto the lake waters until it disappeared. (A person wading out to swim, perhaps?”

The page also included a note from friend and long time cryptid quester Kimberly Poeppey: “I saw a big animal swimming in Lake Michigan! It was as big as a car. It was swimming in the bay by the Art Museum.” She added it was winter and the animal was swimming around blocks of floating ice, leaving a large wake behind. All she could see was its “big, dark, back.” Lake monster?

Anyway, I feel better having given these three mysteries a fighting chance. I penned out a rough map, above, just to give some idea of their relative locations–all in S.E. Wisconsin. I’m no cartographer, but I added a few representative bipeds and quadrupeds in appropriate places for interest. And I’m far from done going through my files. I’ll post again if anything else shakes out.

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Scan_20160420 (2)Two men young were cruising around the towns and villages of northeast England on a later summer’s night in 1989 for lack of anything better to do, when they found an unexpected cure to their boredom in the form of an upright, unidentifiable creature that ran in front of their car. The driver, who wishes to remain anonymous, wrote me about it after having found one of my dogman sketches based on other eyewitness reports. He said he had searched for years afterward trying to figure out what he and his friend had seen that night, but my sketch came the closest.

The drawing you see here is my new rendering made to accommodate his exact description. I’ll quote his own telling of that night’s events, sent to me in two emails that I’ve combined here. He gave me permission to post his sighting but asked that I withhold his name:

***

The night of our encounter was not long after I bought the car. My friend Sean and I were out driving around the local towns and villages, playing some tunes on the cassette and generally just cruising about … It must have been late because it was dark by the time we passed through the small coastal village of Cresswell [Northumberland], so I’m assuming it was around 23.00hrs.
I remember we were heading SW from Cresswell to Ellington on Cresswell Rd., having just passed the entrance to the caravan site on our left. I had not yet had the opportunity to test the extra fog lights on the front of the vehicle and I wanted to see how bright they were in the dark. Sean was looking in the glove compartment for a different cassette and I told him I was going to switch the fogs on.
We were coming up to a slight right hand bend, there was a six-foot wall with dense foliage on our left and a normal hedgerow bordering a field to our right, that was when I saw something run out in the middle of the road. I wasn’t going very fast, probably 30mph maximum and had ample time to slow down so as not to hit it – even to stop but I’m not sure I did. I think I just crawled the car towards it as I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
It had ran out onto the road from my right and had stopped in the middle of the road looking directly at the car. It was covered in thick, mousey grey/brown fur about 2-3 inches long and stood on its rear legs which were jointed with the knee at the rear like a horse or dogs. Its upper arms were down by its side and It held its forearms out in front of it with its hands and long fingers hung down at the wrist. (They may have been long hands or long fingers but I remember the hands from the wrist to the fingers as being very long).
It had one foot in front of the other as if in mid-step as it seemed I had caught it by surprise, and while its body was still facing in the direction it was travelling, the head was facing the car.
I remember the eyes which reflected the light back at me as being perfectly round and a green/yellow colour much like that of a cat’s eyes when caught in the light.
It stood about 5-6 foot tall but was hunched over, even then I’d say it wouldn’t have been over 6 foot tall stood erect. It had what seemed to have a very muscular body, not big or bulky, more wiry with powerful limbs, thick chest and small waist. It also had a short tail. maybe 4-5 inches long, definitely not as long as most dogs; personally I’d describe it as more like a goats tail. (After seeing this I mainly searched for sightings of satyrs in the region as this was the closest thing I could relate it to)
Its head and face were like that of a dog or goat, as in not flat like a humans face, but with a muzzle and quite large ears. I do not remember seeing any teeth and it did not have horns. The whole encounter could not have lasted more than a few seconds. I assume it regained its composure after being caught off guard as it took off over the 6 foot wall and through the foliage atop that in a single bound. Although I often drive by the same area, I have never seen it again.
As for how I felt, I was in shock at first, like when someone gives you a fright. I shouted, Sean!, Sean! to make sure he was looking as he was fishing around in the glove box for a tape. I just couldn’t take it all in. After it had gone we were still going slow. We were looking back to where it had disappeared and I felt terrified. I’ve always considered myself a fairly macho type and not easily scared, but there was NO chance of me getting out of that car to follow it.
In fact, as we drove on a ways, there was a guy walking his dog farther up the road, maybe half a mile and for a moment I considered telling him not to go down that way. We slowed down but we honestly didn’t know what the hell to say, and we decided he was far enough away from it, so we just kept going. We were still also really shook up at this point.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that neither myself nor Sean was under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
It’s very hard to talk about it, as quite frankly most people don’t believe it. I wasn’t sure if you would, or even do, as I imagine you must get a few folks who try and pull your leg.
But, hand on heart, all I have said is true to the very best of my knowledge. I want you to know that. I can’t tell you how excited I was when I found out someone else had seen it and I could actually put a name to the creature.

 

Read Full Post »

Scan_20160302From my scrap pile comes this 1920s newspaper portrait of Katherine Malm, Chicago’s infamous Wolf Woman, a.k.a. Tiger Girl, who established an early reputation as the “consort of crooks.” according to a Feb. 27, 1924 Times Daily article on her court case. When I first came across this picture, I was naturally hoping she had something to do with humanoid creatures. But as best I can tell from various write-ups, she was given the animal appellations for attacking and killing a night watchman when she was twenty. The Cook County judicial system found her guilty and sentenced her to life . That sentence ended when she died while incarcerated in Joliet Prison at age twenty-eight. She was mentioned in a 2010 book by Douglas Perry called The Girls of Murder City for her kindness in bringing a currant bun to a new inmate, with an admonition to pretend it was chicken. At least Katherine must have been a carnivore.

Read Full Post »

americanmonsterscoverThe Monsters have been uncaged! The whole furry, scaly, red-eyed, bat-winged, fanged, dripping-clawed, oversized pack of slavering unknown creatures that I spent two years cramming into a 376-page paperback are now free to romp and roam where ever anyone may care to read about them. And in this book, it’s not just all about upright, wolf-like creatures. I wanted to create a work that shows something of the breadth and depth of the unknown kingdom that eyewitnesses continue to glimpse day and night in sky, land and water. I think it’s amazing that people see giant primates, huge flying things thought to have died out with the dinosaurs, and weird beasties like the Chupacabras that looks like nothing ever seen before, and yet we know next to nothing about most of them.

Not that this is anything really new. People like Ivan Sanderson, John Keel and many other investigators were slogging through marshes and tromping far off lands long before I began to collect the experiences of otherwise ordinary people. Nor is my occupation all that unique; I have plenty of contemporary colleagues, friends and investigators from all sorts of backgrounds and abilities–too many to name here but see the acknowledgments page in Monsters for mere starters–to whom I and the whole field of cryptozoology owe an enormous debt for their own research and studies. 

I hope this book, if nothing else, will help make the case that although modern science insists these creatures are not here, they sure look like they are to those who see them. And that there is something more to these anomalous events than mass hallucination, the occasional hoaxer, or misidentifications of known animals. 

“Beast” in New E-book Edition and limited time “God” Johnson for 99 Cents 

New Kindle Edition The Beast of Bray Road; Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf

New Kindle Edition The Beast of Bray Road; Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf

To help celebrate the launch of American Monsters, the original beast is back! The Beast of Bray Road, Tailing the American Werewolf has been unavailable in print or electronic version, but is now again offered as a Kindle book  I’m working on print availability, too.

The book is nearly the same as the original 2003 edition except for the clean-up of a few typos and new cover art created by my artist son, Nathan Godfrey. Most of the interior art is still there.

And in a purely celebratory move, my fantasy novel God Johnson, the Unforgiven Diary, will be available from all venues for 99 cents from August 28 through September 30. It’s the story of Liberty Abbott, the disciple of a has-been demigod who’s taken the trust-inspiring form of Abraham Lincoln the better to attract energy-rich followers. There are no werewolves, but there are pet sphinxes, sentient plants, a snake goddess, Cyclops and a bartender named Cthulhu. The alternate universe Liberty must contend with is secreted in select spots of downtown Madison, Wisconsin. See godjohnsonnewHRthe link above for download venues and more about God Johnson. (Which has nothing to do with the coincidentally-named TV show The Almighty Johnsons about a whole family of demigods with that name! There really is a human hive consciousness 🙂 )

Read Full Post »

Sketch of Alberta canid creature by witness

Sketch of Alberta canid creature by witness

One particular drum I keep beating as I compose my cryptid chronicles  is the fact that unknown, upright canine-like creatures are seen all over the Americas, and indeed, the world. There is not just one “beast.” More and more, in fact, seem to come from Canada. This makes sense, considering the sheer amount of natural forest and abundant wildlife enjoyed by our neighbors to the north. Alberta is an area I’ve heard from in the past, and I received one not recently that falls into the scary sightings category of huge canines that run with cars. Creatures with this seeming attraction to vehicles often remain on all fours, but this one showed off  its bipedal ability, as well. The woman who wrote wished to remain anonymous, but her letter began:
“My sighting happened as my husband and I were driving around at night in the late autumn of the year about 2010 or 2011.  I was on the passenger side just idly looking out my window when I seen something crouched down beside a white car. It started running alongside my truck the opposite side of some parallel parked cars on the road. The way it ran was akin to a cheetah in fast motion, the hind legs were lunging all the way forward past the front ones. I seen that it was very skinny, I could see the vertebrae of the back, ribs and shoulder blades. After about 50 meters there were some houses so it stood up on its hind legs and turned its head, which swiveled on its shoulders like a human, and looked dead at us long enough for me to get a really good look. It took a quick glance into the woods and in a single bound leapt the whole length of the cut line, about 15 feet.
“It had shoulders like a man and the head and face of a dog, yellow eyes and no discernible genitals. I could see that its hair was very short and almost iridescent against grey skin.  Its arms hung like a man’s but, its hands were also like a man’s but with a long dew claw-style thumb. After it jumped into the woods I looked at my husband and he was just looking at it and turned to me saying ‘Did you just see that too?’ “
The sighting occurred near Fort McMurray, a growing community with a brisk oil sands industry. I asked for further details about the creature, especially since the woman first estimated its height at about nine feet! She wrote back to say may have been shorter than that. Her first guess was based on a quick comparison to a six-foot fence in the vicinity. The creature’s head stuck above the fence,  she said, but  thinking about it later she thought she might have over-estimated just how far above the fence it was. Guessing the height of any large, moving creature from a moving vehicle is always a tricky business, but it seems this beast had to at least have been well over six feet tall  on two legs.
I had a few other questions, too, such as the exact fur color and the features of its head.She went on to add:
“The hair must have been grey too, it reflected a lot of light. I remember seeing the face had an elongated snout, it was kind of snarled. Its ears were similar to a dogs pointed ear near the top of its head. The tail was kind of bushy compared to the rest of it. Its legs had hips like a humans and thighs also like a human but had the inverted ankles of a dog, its feet were long but only the front pads appeared to be touching the ground. It was a fairly lit area, the other side of the road was a residential area. It did notice me, I think I may have interrupted it because it was kind of hidden behind a car when I first spotted it and it immediately looked up and started running.  It seemed more annoyed than anything. By the time it stopped running it was 30m in front of my truck on the other side of the cars parked on the road so it sprinted really fast.”
It’s interesting to me that, given the amazing amount of wilderness area Canada possesses, that the creature would have shown up on a busy road in a residential area. But Ft. McMurray is located at the confluence of the Athabasca and Clearwater Rivers, surrounded by forest — typical shelter areas for these cryptids.
As for its appearance, I do get reports of dogmen with short, gray fur — the typical color of many Eastern Timber wolves. This creature is also definitely canine, judging by the long snout, pointed ears and tail. Its behavior seems more motivated by a desire  to disappear from view rather than intending to taunt the witness, and the witness only suggested it was annoyed at being seen. The great speed and leaping ability it displayed are  characteristics I’ve heard often.
The hand-like paws are a bit more rare among the reports I receive, but as I’ve often noted, many witnesses have said the paws were elongated but were still not true, human-like hands. The dew-claw- like “thumbs” argues a little to that point, I think. And the creature was running on its toe pads rather than flat-footed.
As always, many thanks to the eyewitness for sharing her experience. I can’t help but wonder if any of those other drivers on that busy street also saw the creature.

Read Full Post »

WakelyBF 001
While waiting along with everyone else to see whether Dr. Melba Ketchum’s DNA study and/or the allegedly captured Bigfoot code-named Daisy hold any water worth wading into, I have been looking back at some of the better ‘Squatch reports I’ve received and collected from SE Wisconsin over the years. One of my favorites is the so-called “Bad Hair Day Bigfoot” observed by Matt Wakely in September 2005 SE of Lake Geneva, near the WI-IL border.

The incident is described in full in my book Hunting the American Werewolf, and Wakely passed a polygraph exam of his story on the Monsterquest “American Werewolf ” episode. (The show didn’t mention he saw a Bigfoot rather than a dog man). This was a daylight sighting where the witness had a good long look at the creature. He called his mother and told her he had just seen a caveman, naked and covered with fur. The creature seemed totally unafraid of Matt, and its most unusual feature may have been its rather wild hairdo. My best guess is that it was perhaps an adolescent that had just risen from a midday nap in the cemetery, where it stood with 1 foot on a head stone.

It also had less facial hair, according to Matt’s description, than any other Bigfoot ever reported to me. This also suggests an adolescent age group, but more importantly, it gave Matt an unusually clear look at facial features.

Matt drew his own sketches ( below) and then worked with me to achieve what he agreed looked a pretty fair facsimile of what he saw. At that time, I privately thought the face seemed a bit too human, but my job is to draw and report what the witness saw without projecting my own biases.

Over the past year, as I had my own encounter and gathered more local evidence, it’s occurred to me that if Ketchum’s study proves valid and Sasquatch is indeed genetically part human , then this drawing may be a closer stab at a real portrait than I previously believed. And Matt’s tag of “caveman” may have been very accurate!WakelyBF 002

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »