He was beloved by all, and most of all by the children;
For he told them tales of the Loup-garou in the forest,
And of the goblin that came in the night to water the horses,
And of the white Létiche, the ghost of a child who unchristened Died,
and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of children;
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline
French
settlers came to Michigan with tales of the
Loup garou (pronounced loo ga roo), which is French for werewolf. These tales
can be traced back to the 1700s in Michigan, especially around large settlements like Detroit. But werewolves transform from man
to beast and back to man.
The Dogman
is different. “It’s
fully canine, walks on its hind legs, uses its forelimbs to carry chunks of ...
roadkill or deer carcasess,” says author Linda S. Godfrey. “They have pointed ears on top of their
heads. They have big fangs. They have bushy tails. They walk — most tellingly —
digitgrade, or on their toe pads, as all canines do, and that’s something that
a human in a fur suit really can’t duplicate,” Linda said in an article
published on the Huffington
Post in 2012.
Godfrey is
an author who has been researching dogmen since 1991. She told The Huffington
Post that the area around Kalamazoo and the Manistee National Forest are
hotspots for Michigan creature sightings.
The dogman
tale really gained strength in the twentieth century when disc jockey Steve
Cook at WTCM-FM in Traverse City, Michigan recorded a song titled "The
Legend", which he initially played as an April Fool’s Day joke in 1987. Soon
after the song aired reports of sightings started coming into the station.
Since then
people from all over Michigan have reported seeing dogmen.
I remember
hearing tales of dogmen as a child growing up in Flint. Most were just stories
told around campfires or during the Halloween season but there were nights I
was terrified to go near a window for fear of seeing a monster with a canine
head staring at me.
In November 1935
Earl Eastman, a deer hunter from
Flint, shot a wolf that was going after a deer near the Rhody Creek Trail which
is between Seney and Grand Marais. The wolf was huge. It weighed 182 pounds after being gutted. Earl brought the
wolf back to Flint where it ended up on display in a barber shop for two years.
It was later taken to the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh and put on display. The
wolf was officially measured at 7 feet 11 inches long, 39 inches at the shoulders
and 12-3/4 inches across the skull. This story was published in The Great Lakes
Pilot.
According to
a blog, Life at Random, upon contacting the Carnegie Institute
about the wolf, they claim that it is lost. In fact they cannot find any
records of it and have no idea where it went.
Was this
just an abnormally large wolf or something else? Loup garou? Dogman?
A man on
that message board Unexplained Mysteries claims to have encountered The
Dogman in Flint in 1973.
“I was a
teenager; I was staying with my Uncle Jay and Aunt Shell in the summer of 1973.
I was between my sophomore and junior years in high school. My Uncle drove a
local grocery delivery truck…in the Flint Michigan area.
Well, late
on a Thursday night (about 11:30), we were headed up the winding road that
snaked around the hill up to the truck park, and we both saw what we thought
was a big dog on the side of the road, pawing at something. As we got closer, I
saw the thing was rooting and licking something with tongue and snout. Then the
SOB stood up. This was no dog!
My Uncle
slowed to a crawl (not quite stopping) and hit the high beams, and what I saw
scared me so bad that I couldn't even get a scream out! It was a MAN, covered
in short, black fur, clearly well-muscled with the head of a German Shepherd or
wolf. I could hardly breathe. Its eyes were yellow-orange colored…we didn't
make a sound but started to roll by, when it lunged across the access road in a
single leap.”
In 2006 Linda S Godfrey received a letter from David Walks As Bear-former Michigan game warden, author,
and member of the Shawnee Nation (sadly he passed away in 2014):
“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 they’re other-worldly. But not evil, though. So it could
be that the Dog Men of Michigan are just old Michigan Indian warriors, going
through their seven-year routine of shape shifting. Who can say? But speaking
of routine I do personally fret a bit when I’m driving deep in the dark woods,
on a full-mooned night and things change know what I mean?”
Have you ever heard of The Dogman?
Have you seen any weird canine creatures walking upright in the woods?
“somewhere in the north-woods darkness,
a creature walks upright. And the best advice you may ever get is never to go
out….at night”. ~The Legend by Steve Cook
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