Encyclopedia of Horror Lore

Date of Discovery

First witnessed in 1887, but there is no real knowledge of how long the Dogman has been around. It’s said that the hieroglyphs of the Egyptian god of the underworld, Anubis could possibly be an ancient explanation of the Dogman. Whether or not the Dogman existed thousands of years ago in Ancient Egypt, or if it was truly their depiction of the entity of the underworld, it will never be known.

Name

The Dogman, also known as the Wisconsin Werewolf and the Beast of Bray Road.

Physical Description

The basic description of these creatures shows them as being seven feet tall, with blue or amber eyes, a half-man and half-dog humanoid, that is said to be bipedal. Dogman, however, describes a group of more than one type of cryptozoological beings that are large and described as looking like upright canids. There are reportedly two types of Dogman, one which is called a K9-Type and the other which is a Type-3.

Its howl is said to sound like a human scream.

K9-Type

The basic K9-Tupe is described simply as looking like an upright canine. They are characterized specifically by their canine legs, with hocks and stifle joints. Some of them have disproportionately large heads, while others have more hyena-like appearances. The most visual appearance is when they are described as looking like the black Werewolf from the Van Helsing movie, but by far the most comical are when they are described as a large timber wolf that ambulates bipedally. This version of the Dogman accounts for over 90% of the sightings that have occurred and are more prone to aggression than Type-3.

Type-3

The basic Type-3 is described as looking like a sasquatch, or bigfoot, with a muzzle–instead of having the flat face of a bigfoot. Eyewitness accounts report that these particular creatures have claws on the tips of their fingers and toes, instead of fingernails and toenails. Like the K-9 Type Dogman, the Type-3 Dogman does not always look the same. They are characterized by their hominid-style legs, with ankles and knees that are the same as humans or sasquatch.

Origin

Originating from the folklore of Michigan–Wexford County, Michigan to be exact. This creature was unknown to most of the modern world until very late in the twentieth century but was said to have been stalking the area around the Manistee River since the days of the Odawa tribes.

First allegedly encountered in 1887 by two lumberjacks who reported having seen a creature that had the head of a dog and the body of a man.

Authentic sources aside from the song made by Steve Cook have not been documented due to the claim of the whole thing being a hoax.

Mythology and Lore

According to most legends, the Michigan Dogman appears every ten years. Sightings have occurred in several locations throughout Michigan, but primarily within the northwestern quadrant of the Lower Peninsula.

1938 Paris, Michigan, Robert Fortney was attacked by five wild dogs one of which he said walked on two legs and reports of similar creatures also came from Allegan County in the 1950s, then again in 1967 in the Manistee and Cross Village.

One night in 1961, a night watchman was patrolling a manufacturing plant in Big Rapids, Michigan when he saw a peculiar creature–he believed this creature to be a person until it got close enough to see that it had doglike features. He was just about to pull his gun to shoot the creature when he remembered that he had his camera with him. Any photographic evidence remains an unsolved mystery, however, as the photos were never analyzed.

Modern Pop-Culture References

The Cook song

In 1987, disc jockey Steve Cook recorded a song about the creature as well as alleged sightings, which is when the creature gained much of its popularity. He recorded and aired a song called, “The Legend,” on the station he jockeyed for at WTCM-FM in Traverse City, Michigan, which he introduced as an April Fool’s Day joke. He said he based the songs on mythology and legends from all over North America and had never heard of a dogman in Michigan before recording.

I made it up completely from my own imagination as an April Fools’ prank for the radio and stumbled my way to a legend that goes back all the way to Native American times.

Steve Cook, Skeptoid.com, Wag the Dogman

Apparently, Cook maintains his skepticism about whether or not the dogman really exists though.

I’m tremendously skeptical because I’ve sort of seen the way folklore becomes built from the creation of this song to what it’s turned into … but I do believe people who think they saw something really did see something. I also think the Dogman provides them with an avenue to explain what they couldn’t explain for themselves.

Steve Cook, Skeptoid.com, Wag the Dogman

Oddly enough after airing the song as a fun April Fool’s prank, he received numerous calls from listeners who claimed they had encountered a similar creature, and in the weeks following it became the most-requested song on the station. In the years since, Cook has received more than one hundred reports of the creature’s existence and in March of 2010, it was featured in an episode of MonsterQuest.

Linda S. Godfrey, in her book The Beast of Bray Road, compares the Manistee sightings to a similar creature sighted in Wisconsin known as the Beast of Bray Road.

Books & Literature

• The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf (2015)

Movies

• Dogman (2011)
• The Beast of Bray Road (2005)

Is there anything we missed about the Dogman? Let us know in the comments section below!