The Urban Legend, Myths and Rumours Thread

I come from a very strange place.

I really honestly thought that by the time that I was an adult, I would stop finding people who don’t know where Newfoundland is. But I run into people that don’t know that there’s fairly large island floating next to Canada with an alarming frequency.

Oddly, this isn’t all that uncommon historically speaking-at least part of Newfoundland was once called the Isle of Demons on maps. Like I said, I come from a very strange place.

The Old Hag is one of the cultural exports, for lack of a better term, that appears to be gaining interest outside of the island. Effectively, the old hag is believed-at least by some-to be part of the root imagery that we use for nightmares. It’s further believed by some researchers that the hag image is both related to and influences modern beliefs about alien abduction. The two experiences are exceptionally similar, and may be describing the same experience for some people.

So who or what is she? The Old Hag is effectively an old woman that comes into a person’s room, wakes them up, prevents them from moving, and starts to smother them. There are variations to the legend; what is described is sometimes dependent on where you are in the world, as the hag is one of the most visible images but the story exists outside of Newfoundland. What is being described is essentially sleep paralysis-when your brain becomes awake prior to your body fully waking up.

Your body is designed to keep yourself from flailing in your sleep and hurting yourself and it’s possible to regain consciousness without coming out of that paralysis first. The two experiences are very similar-the sensation of waking up, finding someone in your room, and finding yourself unable to move or with a heavy weight on your chest. The presence of an entity in the room, or rather, the perception of such, may explain a number of folkloric or urban legend style reports ranging from interactions with faerie, ghosts, aliens, and shadow people.

There is a strong cultural aspect to the experience, even when the experience is kept within the realm of the supernatural. Even if we remove a physical explanation, the experience is dependent on where you are in the world. The hag exists on the Eastern Seaboard of the US in effectively the same form as in Newfoundland but she’s seen as a harbinger. In other areas the hag is the soul of the deceased, the angry dead, an animal sometimes described almost like a hell hound, demons, or witches.

During the summer of 2003, events in the northeastern United States involving a strange, humanlike creature sparked brief local media interest before an apparent blackout was enacted. Little or no information was left intact, as most online and written accounts of the creature were mysteriously destroyed.

Primarily focused in rural New York state and once found in Idaho, self proclaimed witnesses told stories of their encounters with a creature of unknown origin. Emotions ranged from extremely traumatic levels of fright and discomfort, to an almost childlike sense of playfulness and curiosity. While their published versions are no longer on record, the memories remained powerful. Several of the involved parties began looking for answers that year.

In early 2006, the collaboration had accumulated nearly two dozen documents dating between the 12th century and present day, spanning 4 continents. In almost all cases, the stories were identical. I’ve been in contact with a member of this group and was able to get some excerpts from their upcoming book.

A Suicide Note: 1964

“As I prepare to take my life, I feel it necessary to assuage any guilt or pain I have introduced through this act. It is not the fault of anyone other than him. For once I awoke and felt his presence. And once I awoke and saw his form. Once again I awoke and heard his voice, and looked into his eyes. I cannot sleep without fear of what I might next awake to experience. I cannot ever wake. Goodbye.”

Found in the same wooden box were two empty envelopes addressed to William and Rose, and one loose personal letter with no envelope:

“Dearest Linnie,

I have prayed for you. He spoke your name.”

A Journal Entry (translated from Spanish): 1880

“I have experience the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I see his eyes when I close mine. They are hollow. Black. They saw me and pierced me. His wet hand. I will not sleep. His voice (unintelligible text).”

A Mariner’s Log: 1691

“He came to me in my sleep. From the foot of my bed I felt a sensation. He took everything. We must return to England. We shall not return here again at the request of the Rake.”

From a Witness: 2006

“Three years ago, I had just returned from a trip from Niagara Falls with my family for the 4th of July. We were all very exhausted after a long day of driving, so my husband and I put the kids right to bed and called it a night.

At about 4am, I woke up thinking my husband had gotten up to use the restroom. I used the moment to steal back the sheets, only to wake him in the process. I apologized and told him I though he got out of bed. When he turned to face me, he gasped and pulled his feet up from the end of the bed so quickly his knee almost knocked me out of the bed. He then grabbed me and said nothing.

After adjusting to the dark for a half second, I was able to see what caused the strange reaction. At the foot of the bed, sitting and facing away from us, there was what appeared to be a naked man, or a large hairless dog of some sort. Its body position was disturbing and unnatural, as if it had been hit by a car or something. For some reason, I was not instantly frightened by it, but more concerned as to its condition. At this point I was somewhat under the assumption that we were supposed to help him.

My husband was peering over his arm and knee, tucked into the fetal position, occasionally glancing at me before returning to the creature.

In a flurry of motion, the creature scrambled around the side of the bed, and then crawled quickly in a flailing sort of motion right along the bed until it was less than a foot from my husband’s face. The creature was completely silent for about 30 seconds (or probably closer to 5, it just seemed like a while) just looking at my husband. The creature then placed its hand on his knee and ran into the hallway, leading to the kids’ rooms.I screamed and ran for the lightswitch, planning to stop him before he hurt my children. When I got to the hallway, the light from the bedroom was enough to see it crouching and hunched over about 20 feet away. He turned around and looked directly at me, covered in blood. I flipped the switch on the wall and saw my daughter Clara.

The creature ran down the stairs while my husband and I rushed to help our daughter. She was very badly injured and spoke only once more in her short life. She said “he is the Rake”.

My husband drove his car into a lake that night, while rushing our daughter to the hospital. They did not survive.

Being a small town, news got around pretty quickly. The police were helpful at first, and the local newspaper took a lot of interest as well. However, the story was never published and the local television news never followed up either.

For several months, my son Justin and I stayed in a hotel near my parent’s house. After we decided to return home, I began looking for answers myself. I eventually located a man in the next town over who had a similar story. We got in contact and began talking about our experiences. He knew of two other people in New York who had seen the creature we now referred to as the Rake.

It took the four of us about two solid years of hunting on the internet and writing letters to come up with a small collection of what we believe to be accounts of the Rake. None of them gave any details, history or follow up. One journal had an entry involving the creature in its first 3 pages, and never mentioned it again. A ship’s log explained nothing of the encounter, saying only that they were told to leave by the Rake. That was the last entry in the log.

There were, however, many instances where the creature’s visit was one of a series of visits with the same person. Multiple people also mentioned being spoken to, my daughter included. This led us to wonder if the Rake had visited any of us before our last encounter.

I set up a digital recorder near my bed and left it running all night, every night, for two weeks. I would tediously scan through the sounds of me rolling around in my bed each day when I woke up. By the end of the second week, I was quite used to the occasional sound of sleep while blurring through the recording at 8 times the normal speed. (This still took almost an hour every day)

On the first day of the third week, I thought I heard something different. What I found was a shrill voice. It was the Rake. I can’t listen to it long enough to even begin to transcribe it. I haven’t let anyone listen to it yet. All I know is that I’ve heard it before, and I now believe that it spoke when it was sitting in front of my husband. I don’t remember hearing anything at the time, but for some reason, the voice on the recorder immediately brings me back to that moment.

The thoughts that must have gone through my daughter’s head make me very upset.

I have not seen the Rake since he ruined my life, but I know that he has been in my room while I slept. I know and fear that one night I’ll wake up to see him staring at me.”

This is an experience of my own:
Look pictures on google, searching for the keywords “The Rake” and look for both a drawn picture of a pale humanoid figure and a picture of a news report with the word “BERWICK” on the bottom of it. One morning, I woke up early for school. We live a city over away from my bus stop because I like the schools in the other city. Anyways, it was dark, and as we were driving on Highway 90 and we are baffled by the sight of seven police state troopers and four military trucks filled with marines, who were currently climbing out of the trucks and were filing into the woods. There were also big, portable spotlights shining on the woods, as if they were trying to find something. Each marine was equipped with what appeared to be an assault rifle of some sort, and they were in a rush. The police stopped us, asked us what our buisness in the area was, and told us to leave. We did as we were told, and a few days later, the “Monster of Berwick” appeared on the news. There was apparently a news “Blackout” the day it was discovered. Nobody knows the whereabouts of the rake, and I’m sure I don’t want to know. Some people even believe that the rake and slenderman, or Der Großmann, are somehow related.

Sometime past 12 midnight on Monday, June 10, 1912, a person or persons entered a modest house in Villisca, Iowa, and bludgeoned to death eight people sleeping there, including two adults and six children aged 5 through 12. The killings became known as the “Villisca Axe Murders,” and are easily the most notorious murders in Iowa history.

The murders spawned nearly ten years of investigations, repeated grand jury hearings, a spectacular slander suit and murder trial, and numerous minor litigations and trials. The horrific crime made and broke political careers.

Legislation was written in response to the murder, including the establishment of the current State Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s predecessor.

The Night Before the Murders

On Sunday evening, June 9, 1912, Josiah (Joe) Moore and his wife Sarah took their four children, Herman, 11, Katherine, 10, Boyd, 7, and 5-year-old Paul to the Children’s Day service at the Presbyterian Church. Accompanying them were Lena (12) and Ina Stillinger (8), neighbors who had asked their parents’ permission to stay overnight with the Moore children.

The Children’s Day service was an end-of-the-year Sunday school program. Sarah Moore was a co-director and her children performed their little speeches and recitations along with the other Sunday school members.

The service ended with a social mingling that lasted until at least 9:30 p.m. When parishioners left on that cloudy, damp and cool night, no one suspected that neither the Moores nor their overnight guests would be seen alive again.

They walked the three blocks to their home. Cookies and milk ended the festive evening, and all went to bed.

Sometime after midnight, the killer or killers picked up Joe’s axe from the back yard, entered the house, and bludgeoned to death all eight of its occupants.

By 7:30 a.m. on June 10th, Mary Peckham, an elderly neighbor to the west, became concerned that the Moore house seemed quiet and deserted. She called Joe’s brother Ross, a local druggist, who arrived at about 8:00 a.m. to look around. His cautious inspection of the downstairs revealed two figures covered with a sheet in the back bedroom, and he also saw blood on the bedstead.

Ross stepped back and away from the crime scene and called Joe’s hardware store, telling employee Ed Selley to fetch Marshall Henry “Hank” Horton, because something “terrible had happened.”

Hank arrived about 8:30 a.m., went through the house, and found — as he told Ross when he came out — “somebody murdered in every bed.” The partially cleaned murder weapon was left leaning against the south wall of the downstairs bedroom where the visiting Stillinger girls were found.

“Bizarre” Murder Scene

The killer had added two bizarre touches to the murder scene. The first was a four-pound piece of slab bacon leaning against the wall next to the axe. The murderer also had searched dresser drawers for pieces of clothing to cover the mirrors in the house and the glass in the entry doors. On the kitchen table was a plate of uneaten food and a bowl of bloody water.

All the victims were found in their beds, their heads covered with bedclothes, and all had their skulls battered 20 to 30 times with the blunt end of an axe.

The ceiling in the parents’ bedroom and the children’s room upstairs showed gouge marks, apparently made by the upswing of the axe.

Though Lena Stillinger’s nightgown had been pushed up and she’d been left exposed, doctors concluded she had not been sexually abused. Lena also had a bloodstain on her knee and an alleged defensive wound on her arm.

The Moore-Stillinger funeral services were held in Villisca’s town square on June 12, 1912, with thousands in attendance. National Guardsmen blocked the street as a hearse moved toward the firehouse, where the eight victims lay. Their caskets, not on display during the funeral, were later carried on several wagons to the Villisca Cemetery for burial.

The funeral cortege was 50 carriages long.

At 5:19 a.m. the morning following the murders, the Reverend Lyn George Jacklin Kelly left Villisca on board the westbound number 5 train and allegedly told fellow travelers there were eight dead souls back in Villisca, Iowa — butchered in their beds while they slept, he said — even though the bodies had not yet been discovered.

Kelly had arrived in Villisca for the first time the Sunday morning of the murders and attended a Sunday school performance by the Stillinger girls before departing early Monday. He returned two weeks later, and, posing as a detective, joined a tour of the murder house with a group of investigators.

Authorities first became interested in Rev. Kelly a few weeks after the murders after being alerted by recipients of his rambling letters.


Kelly — the son and grandson of English ministers — had suffered a mental breakdown as an adolescent. Since immigrating to America with his wife in 1904, Kelly had preached at Methodist churches across North Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas and Iowa. He’d been assigned as a visiting minister to several small communities north of Villisca, where he developed a reputation for odd behavior. He’d also been convicted of sending obscene material through the mail and had spent time in a mental hospital.

A Grand Jury indicted Kelly for Lena Stillinger’s murder, and he was interrogated throughout the summer of 1917 while in jail awaiting trial.

On August 31 at 7 a.m., Kelly signed a confession to the murder, saying God had whispered to him to “suffer the children to come unto me.”

Kelly recanted his confession at trial, and his case went to the jury on September 26. The jury deadlocked eleven to one for acquittal. A second jury was immediately empanelled, but acquitted Rev. Kelly in November.

No one else has ever been tried for the murders, and the crime remains one of the most horrific, unsolved mass murders in American history.

Villisca: Living with a Mystery

On June 10, 2004, Fourth Wall Films released a documentary feature film, “Villisca: Living with a Mystery,” which first premiered in Des Moines. Filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle combined period photographs, computer animation, original art, limited re-enactments, and interviews with historians, eyewitnesses, town residents, and forensic experts to shed light on the then-92-year-old mystery and to reveal the face of a new suspect.

The documentary, now available on DVD, features Dr. Edgar Epperly, the historian considered the foremost authority on the Villisca murders.

Ten years in the making, the documentary explores the possibility that the Villisca crime and similar murders in Monmouth, Illinois, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Ellsworth, Kansas, may have been the work of one of America’s first serial killers.

A paranormal investigator stabbed himself in the chest while spending the night at a “haunted” Iowa house made infamous for an unsolved ax murder 100 years ago that left eight people, including six children, dead.

Robert Laursen Jr. ended his visit to the Villisca Ax Murder house in southwest Iowa early Friday with critical stabbing injuries that the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office say were self-inflicted.

The wood-framed home at 508 East 2nd St. in Villisca remains much the same as it did on June 10, 1912, the evening someone bludgeoned to death the family of Josiah and Sarah Moore, their four children and two children visiting for the night. The creepy crime scene is the town’s biggest draw, attracting “paranormal investigators” from around the world who take either a guided tour or shell out $428 to spend the night at the home, which has no electricity or running water, according to its website.

It’s unclear how the 37-year-old man visiting from Rhinelander, Wisconsin managed to stab himself, but authorities said he was there “for a recreational paranormal investigation” when cops got the call around 12:45 a.m.
Towels cover the mirrors in the home, which has no electricity and no running water.

Laursen was eventually flown for treatment to an Omaha hospital, some 80 miles northwest of the small Iowa town.

“It’s kind of shocking to wake up and hear that someone has nearly died at your tourist attraction,’’ owner Martha Linn told the Omaha World-Herald. "I’m absolutely sick about this. I’m practically in tears. I can’t imagine why somebody would do something like this to himself.’’

The haunted home, replete with the furnishings and trappings of the time, has held a certain fascination for years because of the grisly crime committed there and the fact it’s remained unsolved.

Linn and her late husband Darwin purchased the home in 1994 and have hosted paranormal investigators “all the time,” Martha Linn told the newspaper.

"They all hope something will come to them. ... Sometimes they like to tempt fate,” she said.

Testimonials written by people after a night’s stay attest the home’s creepy factor.

This house has a mystique all of its own and will rival any other allegedly haunted location,” one person wrote on the website. “An overnight visit to this house will make most skeptics believers come sunrise the next morning!”

Ordinarily I work Halloween every year. It just seems to happen that way. It¹s never been a biggy for me as I don¹t get spooked by modern-day monsters. But man, sometimesŠ when I¹m driving deep in the dark woods, on a full-mooned nightŠ I fret a little about things changing, eh. November is American Indian Heritage Month. It doesn¹t get a lot of play like Black History or Hispanic Months do but I figure that¹s okay. Squeaky wheels get the grease and heck, we¹re not alone. Folks with Polish, French, Hungarian and other ancestry don¹t have rusty axles, either. Still, since I am Shawnee, I thought I¹d delve a tad deeper into Indian outdoor stuff.

So, there¹s the Legend of the Dogmen here in the Michigan north woods, eh. There¹s even a nifty song about them, eh. It seems like a shape shifting deal to me so, here we go. But first, if you want to learn more about this Mitten State mystery, go to Google and punch-in ³Michigan Dog Man². Now, as a rule, Indians are pretty generic. Like Americans, British or Lithuanians, their cultures and languages will vary a bit from region to region. But overall, everybody follows similar modes. That goes for Indian Warrior societies, too. Now these groups are made up of braves whose primary job is protecting their nation. And they often take the names of animals that they feel most symbolize their warrior prowess.

Back in the 1860s, there was a warrior group of Cheyenne called the Dog Soldiers or Dog Men. For many poor US Army troopers, they were the ³Special Forces² of their times. Like wolves or wild dogs, they were tenacious in their pursuit of their prey and would come back againŠ and againŠ and again until they won victory. Similar warrior societies using the dog or wolf can be found in almost every American Indian nation. The process for a warrior in this society is in learning how to become just as your totem, or symbol. And that lends its way into Indian shape shifting. Now I¹m speaking figuratively ­ not literally, eh.

But depending on your point of view, shape shifting canŠ ³change². For Indians, shape shifting is applied in hunting, song and dance, healing and warfare. A brave will study his spirit animal for many years to learn all of its uniqueness and mannerisms, trying to become one with it or ­ just like it. Ordinarily, Indian shape shifting couldn¹t be more different than the modern horror crud. But there can be exceptions where this homily plays out close to modern day Dracs, and Frankysteins, eh. And maybe, the Northern Michigan ³Legend of the Dogmen² is one such instance, hmm?

The Cheyenne Dog Men supposedly were wiped out by the US Army. But there are stories, carried over from the elders, that tell of some of the Dog Men actually shape shifting into the 'real dogs' that they mimicked in battle. Thus, these few escaped the US Army¹s planned killing of them all back in the ³Battle of Summit Springs² in Colorado. Now, be you a believer of this or not, it¹s worthwhile to note that unlike the horror junk you see in movies and on TV, the Dog Men are not going to rip you apart and devour you, eh. They couldn¹t even if they wanted to. That¹s because even if they were bad spirits, most Indians know that you cannot be harmed by evilŠ of any kind unlessŠ you invite it into yourself. Christianity and every other religion on the Earth Mother teach the same thing, eh.

Equally though, the Good Book and all of those other beliefs also speak of spirits that have manifestations here among us two-leggeds, too. Angels are one such example of good spirits and demons are the opposite in that they¹re evil. Well, Shapshifters are usually considered as good, a tad mischievous maybe, but not evil. The same can¹t be said for their opposite ­ skinwalkers, eh. If the Michigan Dog Men are shapeshifters, then they¹d be spooky, alright, as they¹re other-worldly. But not evil, though. So it could be that the ³Dog Men of Michigan² are just old Michigan Indian warriors, going through their seven-year routine of shape shifting. Who can say? But speaking of routineŠ I do personally fret a bit when I¹m driving deep in the dark woods, on a full-mooned night and thingsŠ changeŠ know what I mean? - David Walks as Bear

(Note from Linda: bold prints are my emphasis. I sure wish I'd had this letter to add to the sections on shapeshifting in Hunting the American Werewolf. Many thanks to David for allowing me to print this here. Lots of food for thought! And all could apply to Bigfoot as well, I might add. More on this later.- LG)



June 13, 2006

NEW MICHIGAN DOGMAN SIGHTING; BY 4 PEOPLE,

This sighting by four Michigan college students and continues under serious investigation.. The student who wrote me about it says that one of his sightings buddies had seen the beast previously and brought the other three out to the sightings vicinity. The young man who e-mailed me (name withheld for now) said that he came home so freaked out that he googled Dog Man, since that was what his buddy had called it, and came up with my Weird Michigan site.

He also asked that I keep the exact location confidential since it was on private land and the four were not exactly invited to be there, but I can say it was in the vicinity of Reed City, which is in the northwestern part of the lower Peninsula, exactly where most of the other Dog Man sightings have taken place. I've left the report in his own words as much as possible, taken from his email and a subsequent phone interview. Hopefully this will develop further:

Sighting 6-7-06, Interview 6-8-06 by phone, Location: near Reed City, Michigan

"I¹m a college kid and I live in Big Rapids, and I heard people saying there is this (building) around Reed City where this thing hangs out.

We arrived there at 2 30 in the morning and there we sat. After about half an hour something caught our eye. About 50 yards to the right of us we saw something moving. We didnt think anything of it until we heard big twigs start to snap. I got out my maglight and shined in the area...I saw somthing that was not human. There were crickets all around and all of a sudden they all stopped. I kept on seeing something move over in the woods, kind of a silhouette.. I thought it was deer until we shined the light on it. Must have been 6 foot nine, it was huge tall! It was a humanoid, I could see below the midsection, could see thighs but not feet. I¹m believing it¹s bipedal. The hair was either dark brown or black, probably dark brown. must have covered most of the body, maybe an inch long. We did see one arm, one of my friends saw it. It was behind a tree, in a little wooded area, and it stood half behind the tree and half exposed, didn¹t move at all when we had the light on it. His arm was longer than a human's. When we saw it in the light when it was standing still it looked a little hunched.

I only got a small view of its face. I could tell that it was very hairy but it didnt remind me of a dogs face. The way the eyes set made me think of a human face, I could not see the ears, I remeber the mouth to be narrow but I dont recall seeing a nose on the end of the "snout". All I could really tell about the eye color was yellow, and the eyes were a little slanted. I think it may have been some light reflection off its eyes. It has a very big forehead. When I saw the picture on your website of the sketched dogman, It didnt really look like that.

This freaked us out so bad that we had to leave in the car. We left and then said we have to figure out what this thing is ...stupid college kid idealism. After abput half a mile we decided we had to go back and see what it really was. We pulled back up to the church and sat for about 5 min. before strange things started to happen. First of all we head noises all around us, I cant explain these noises but they put shivers down my spine. Then as soon as the noises stopped, a motion light on the building turned on and we heard somthing run away very...very fast. I was so scared I couldnt even move. (We are in in the car this whole time mind you). All of the sudden my friend spots somthing behind us. I push my clutch in and slowly roll back to get a closer view. My friend shined the light on him and two yellow eyes stared at us. I thought it was a regular road reflector until I saw it blink. Then a feeling came over me, I felt that this thing wanted to harm us. I could tell that this thing was on two legs at the time we saw the eyes. I fired up the car and floored it, we must have of been going 40 mph and I could see in my brakelights that something was chasing us on 4 legs. Eventually I lost the thing and had to pull over down the road to calm myself and my friends down. I dont know if this is a dogman or not but this thing is NOT human, is NOT natural, and is NOT friendly. I dont think that this is a figure of my imagination for two reasons. 1, I didn't belive in the supernatural and 2, three other people saw the exact same thing as I did. I really belive this thing could be a dogman.

We were sitting in the car after we saw it comparing it to our own bodies. We didn¹t really see the face until we came backŠwe were in the car the whole time, we could all see from the car. There was a motion light on the side of the (building), which was abandoned but someone was trying to remodel it. Motion light came on and that freaked us all out quite a bit and we listened and we heard something moving very very fast behind the church but we couldn¹t see it clearly, it moved ungodly fast. I looked in my rearview mirror and I thought I saw something go by a lighted tree, then we lost it for a little bit. After we were shining the light on it, I was holding the mag light and I was shaking so bad dI actually dropped it

My buddy who was sitting in back of my hatchback car said what¹s that, and in tall weeds on the side of the road were two yellow eyes, kind of slanted in a way. It didn¹t have a long snout like a dog, but the snout was narrow. It wasn¹t human and wasn¹t dog. It wasn¹t flatfaced like human, all I saw was hair underneath what I presumed to be a jaw. Like a cape or mane. From what I saw, it was kind of slender in stature, not beefy, I would guess 210-220 pounds. The head reminded me of a canine shape, the kind of triangle-looking head. It was looking completely straight on at us. It could have had ears but was too dark to see them. So whether they sat farther back or not I¹m not sure. I¹ve seen pictures of Bigfoot but I don¹t think this was Bigfoot.

That night I got home and I was so intrigued and freaked out I sat down and Googled "Dogman" and got your website. I had the distinct feeling that this thing wanted to hurt us. Maybe it might be the fear of the unknown.Might have been the fact that it was slightly hunched. . I was a skeptic before last night. Four guys saw the exact same thing. Another rthing the second time when we left the eyes were behind the car, the guy looking back thought he saw something come and go from two to four legs.

This is not the first time a friend of mine has seen it. He¹s been there two times, he showed us where it was. He was very very quiet. It was not a human in a suit or a bear. I¹ll put a Bible on what I just said. Two reasons it wasn¹t a human. It could maneuver well on four legs, and just moved so fast. (The building) didn¹t have graffiti on its exterior. Never saw the back of the building so didn¹t notice if any was there.

I believe there is a swamp somewhere around there. I heard there was more than one of these things. Some person said there were four or five of them. One of my friends that went with us said him and a couple of buddies were driving by in a Firebird very slowly and they saw the eyes and it chased after them and put scratches in the trunk of his car. But I didn¹t see that. This is really, really goofy. I¹d like to go back with a video camera. I am majoring in radiology, so I know enough about the body systems and anatomy to tell about the features. I didn¹t notice any reproductive organs, there was a lot of hair in that area. This thing didn¹t get any closer than 40 feet, but when I fired the car up the guy in back said it went down on all fours and went really fast. I didn¹t see the eyes until we flashed the light on it. I don¹t think this was paranormal, it was biological. Not ghostly.

I was not aware that others things like this were going on at the time I saw this thing. The only reason I refer it to a dogman is the fact that I have heard through local legend that it was a dogman. So, I really had no idea that there were other sightings of dogmen or the body style it had." - John



Unknown Biped...Michigan Dogman?...near Manistee, Michigan, 1986, Received February 2006

This happened in the fall of 1986, when I was stationed in Manistee. I left the Manistee Army recruiting station late and was driving home, to Ludington. I always took the back road, as US 31 takes too long. It was early fall and was dark. The deer was out, so I had to be careful while I was driving. This was farm country and the deer graze in the fields. I saw a reflection of my headlights off to the left of me in a darkened field. They appeared to be eyes. But, they stood too high to be deer and too far apart, also. I saw it run across and the leap was incredible. It leaped only three times. Far greater a leap then any animal could. And leaped across the two lane road easily. It was too dark to see a shape, but from the position from the eyes, there is no animal that it could be. I know that this was not a deer. And from what I could tell, it was a lot taller then me. I am 6¹2². I do not know if anybody has or had any experience like this.

As for the color of its eyes, somehow, the color yellow comes to mind. Remember that it was almost 20 years ago when I saw that. I am an outdoorsman (although in recent years, I have not been out) and know animals. So, when I saw that, it surprised me of the leaping ability. And the eyes, I do remember that they were not like any animals that I have seen before. And the height of the creature was a lot higher then any animal. I do remember that I saw both eyes, as if it was looking at me, the whole time. That, along with the leaping ability, is what I will never forget.- Ray Greenway