Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Unexplained with me your host, Richard
Speaker 1: McLean Smith, where each week we explore another true tale
Speaker 1: of high strangeness. If you're new here and you're a
Speaker 1: fan of expertly told atmospheric stories about the strange and unexplained,
Speaker 1: then you've come to the right place, and please subscribe
Speaker 1: to the show if you haven't already done so. I'm
Speaker 1: very excited to be taking Unexplained to the Edinburgh Fringe
Speaker 1: Festival this year. I'll be performing at the Space's Surgeons
Speaker 1: Hall venue at ten oh five pm every night from
Speaker 1: August seventh to the twenty ninth, except for the sixteenth
Speaker 1: and twenty third. You can get tickets at THESPACEUK dot com.
Speaker 1: Forard Slash shows Ford Slash twenty twenty six, Ford Slash
Speaker 1: Unexplained hyphen Live. For those watching on YouTube, you can
Speaker 1: find the link below. With all that out of the way,
Speaker 1: this is Unexplained, Season nine, Episode twenty nine, The Howling Woods.
Speaker 1: When Marco Polo published his travelog in the year thirteen hundred,
Speaker 1: it amazed the reading world, a rare popular success in
Speaker 1: an era before printing and widespread literacy. The book chronicled
Speaker 1: Polo's exploration of Asia and his time in the court
Speaker 1: of the Mongol emperor Kubla Khan. The adventurous Venetian claimed
Speaker 1: to have encountered all manner of strange sights, from unicorns
Speaker 1: on the Indonesian island of Java to gigantic birds that
Speaker 1: soared above the Indian Ocean, each large enough to grasp
Speaker 1: elephants in their talents. But he wrote with particular horror
Speaker 1: of the Andaman Islands, where he observed a very particular
Speaker 1: native population. I assure you, Polo writes, the men of
Speaker 1: that island have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise.
Speaker 1: In fact, in the phase they are like big mastiff dogs.
Speaker 1: They are a most cruel generation and eat everybody that
Speaker 1: they can catch. Of course, it would be naive to
Speaker 1: assume this is a literal description of actual dog headed humanoids.
Speaker 1: Marco Polo wouldn't be the first person, and certainly not
Speaker 1: the last, to depict others in racist and crude ways
Speaker 1: in order to emphasize a perceived lack of civility. But
Speaker 1: Marco Polo was far from the only writer in antiquity
Speaker 1: to mention dog headed people. Back in the fifth century BCE,
Speaker 1: the ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote of dog faced creatures
Speaker 1: who haunted the lands to the west of Libya. Again,
Speaker 1: it sounds like fantasy at best, xenophobia at worst. Yet
Speaker 1: on a plateau in the western Libyan desert there is
Speaker 1: a dried river bed called Woddy, Matt and Douche, where
Speaker 1: the dusty banks and boulders are covered in graceful, dexterous
Speaker 1: etchings of animals both known and unknown. Among the camels, giraffes,
Speaker 1: and buffalo. There are depictions of humans sporting distinctly canine heads,
Speaker 1: and the carvings are four thousand years old. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: fullest description of dog headed men was recorded by the
Speaker 1: Greek physician Tisius in four hundred BCE. He referred to
Speaker 1: the race as Caino cephally, from Caino and cephale, the
Speaker 1: Greek words for dog and head, respectively. Tesius describes them
Speaker 1: as a cave dwelling tribe who lived in the mountains
Speaker 1: of India and North Africa. Their teeth were larger than dogs,
Speaker 1: their nails longer, and they spoke only in a range
Speaker 1: of guttural barks, he said. In the same era, Alexander
Speaker 1: the Great wrote to his tutor Aristotle, claiming that he
Speaker 1: had battled and captured a horde of dog faced men
Speaker 1: in India who were little more than snarling beasts, as
Speaker 1: he had it. Likewise, in the Welsh folklore, King Arthur
Speaker 1: is fated for his battle with the vicious Cumben or
Speaker 1: dogheads in what is now Edinburgh. As romanticized in the
Speaker 1: Black Book of Carmarthen, Arthur and his knight Bedevere slew
Speaker 1: hundreds of the Canid enemy in a supposed effort to
Speaker 1: protect the realm from their encroaching savagery. This beastlike framing
Speaker 1: of the chinocephaly recurs in cultural histories across the globe,
Speaker 1: from European legend to Chinese Buddhist texts to the tribal
Speaker 1: memories of the Ural Mountains. Dog headed men, it seems,
Speaker 1: haunted the fringes of the entire ancient world. With time,
Speaker 1: these stories have steadily dissolved into folklore, or have been
Speaker 1: interpreted as fearful depictions of the other, or simply rationalized
Speaker 1: away as misinterpretations of baboons and lemurs among other animals,
Speaker 1: and the world moved on from such tall tales. However,
Speaker 1: there does remain one corner of the modern world, in
Speaker 1: which the so called dog man has not yet been
Speaker 1: explained into extinction, where rumors persist of strange shapes seen
Speaker 1: prowling between the trees, eyeshine glimpsed at the edge of
Speaker 1: the campfire glow, and where dog is anything but man's
Speaker 1: best friend. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith,
Speaker 1: but most people. The story begins in nineteen eighty seven
Speaker 1: as an April Fool's prank in Traverse City, Michigan, a
Speaker 1: young DJ named Steve Cook hustled into the WTCM radio
Speaker 1: studio with a grin. The station always ran an April
Speaker 1: Fool's joke, but that year they'd been short on ideas.
Speaker 1: That morning, post Jack O'Malley had played things straight, and
Speaker 1: he'd been relieved when Steve finally arrived. Steve was a
Speaker 1: lover of the weird and the absurd. He, more than
Speaker 1: anyone at the station, had the right kind of mind
Speaker 1: for the occasion, and he hadn't let them down.
Speaker 2: This year.
Speaker 1: He'd written a song. Jack read through the lyrics and
Speaker 1: felt it seemed a little more Halloween than April Fall's.
Speaker 1: But without anything else to hand, it would have to do.
Speaker 1: A few minutes into his show, Steve played the song
Speaker 1: to his unsuspecting audience for the first time. It was
Speaker 1: called The Legend, a rather grandiose title for such a
Speaker 1: crude effort, but one that would prove far more fitting
Speaker 1: than Steve could ever anticipate. The Legend is a rhythmic
Speaker 1: poem set to a backing track of timpany drum and
Speaker 1: allulating since it opens with the story of eleven lumberjacks
Speaker 1: working in Wexford County close to the Manestee River. The
Speaker 1: men chase and torment a strange doglike creep until it's
Speaker 1: finally provoked into standing upright on its hind legs, at
Speaker 1: which point the men flee in terror, never saying much
Speaker 1: about what happened to them that night. Each verse of
Speaker 1: the song takes us through history, decade by decade, with
Speaker 1: the reemergence of the creature in every spring and summer
Speaker 1: of every year that ends with a seven. In nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: a sheriff finds his band of horses dead from fright.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty seven, a pastor is alarmed by claw
Speaker 1: marks carved deep in his church door. The song tells
Speaker 1: us that though the newspapers said they'd been made by
Speaker 1: a dog, he'd have to have stood seven foot four. Finally,
Speaker 1: Steve reaches the current spring of nineteen eighty seven and
Speaker 1: confesses that no stories or sightings have yet appeared that year.
Speaker 1: Have the dog men gone away? He asks? It was
Speaker 1: supposed to be a bit of fun, but no. Sooner
Speaker 1: had the final beat the song faded to static, then
Speaker 1: the calls began. Incredibly, after Steve Cook's song went out
Speaker 1: on air, local listeners of WTCM Radio began ringing in
Speaker 1: with their own sightings of the very creature it described.
Speaker 1: One woman reported that she'd grown up hearing similar tales
Speaker 1: from her uncle. But first Steve just laughed it off.
Speaker 1: He put it down to the success of his storytelling
Speaker 1: and his lucky amalgam of all the things that frighten
Speaker 1: you in the night, as he put it, just coming
Speaker 1: together at the right time. But Steve's song, unwittingly had
Speaker 1: done much more than that. It appeared to have opened
Speaker 1: a sluice gate in the pool of local law and memory.
Speaker 1: Over the next week, the DJs at WTCM Radio heard
Speaker 1: from many more people claiming first hand experience of the monster,
Speaker 1: and then they were weirdly specific. Callers told Steve and
Speaker 1: his colleagues over and over that the canine thing was
Speaker 1: an upright hairy bipedal creature, but crucially, it was not
Speaker 1: a werewolf. Of that they were clear. Its body was
Speaker 1: specifically defined as being part human and part dog. Over
Speaker 1: the years, Steve Kirk estimates that he's been told well
Speaker 1: over one hundred distinct accounts of what has come to
Speaker 1: be known as the Michigan dog Man. They span a
Speaker 1: century or more and came in from all across the state.
Speaker 1: There is a locust, though, and it matches Steve's song.
Speaker 1: Mapped out the supposed dog man encounters reveal a clear epicenter.
Speaker 1: The majority of sightings occur in or around the Manistee
Speaker 1: National Forest. This sprawling mosaic of hardwood trees and hardy
Speaker 1: townships covers nearly a million square acres and is popular
Speaker 1: for high king hunting, fishing, and cross country skiing. Of
Speaker 1: the thousands of adventurous souls who venture into the red
Speaker 1: pines of the Manisty, most return with memories of a
Speaker 1: fine day out, but there are some who bring back
Speaker 1: stories of meetings They are never quite able to explain
Speaker 1: of being pursued by something that walks like a human
Speaker 1: and looks like a dog, but is in fact neither.
Speaker 1: It was the summer of nineteen thirty eight. Down on
Speaker 1: the banks of the Muskegon River, on the edge of
Speaker 1: the Manistee Forest in Paris, Michigan, Seventeen year old Robert
Speaker 1: Forney was enjoying a rare day of peaceful fishing from
Speaker 1: a quiet spot behind the local fish hatchery. Robert had
Speaker 1: watched the day glide past at the end of his
Speaker 1: fishing rot. By the afternoon, the breeze was moving briskly
Speaker 1: through the foliage along the banks. As the sun danced
Speaker 1: on the shallow, slow moving water. As it had on
Speaker 1: and off throughout the day, Robert's attention slipped from the
Speaker 1: lure on the end of his rod to whatever a
Speaker 1: young man had to daydream about in nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 1: when something suddenly punctured his reverie, a disturbing clamor of
Speaker 1: growls and barks, accompanied by the crackle of undergrowth that
Speaker 1: seemed to be drawing nearer. It sounded like a ravenous
Speaker 1: pack of wild dogs or coyotes. Even Robert glanced at
Speaker 1: the rifle lying by his feet, and then quickly snatched
Speaker 1: it up. But as he well knew as he angled
Speaker 1: the barrel toward where the sound seemed to be coming from,
Speaker 1: there were limits to how well even a crack marksman
Speaker 1: can wheeld one weapon against a pack of feral animals.
Speaker 1: Robert was far from that, and the dogs sounded full
Speaker 1: of fury. The terror of rabies was just slipping across
Speaker 1: Robert's mind when the first of the dogs breached the
Speaker 1: tree line on the opposite bank. Dark furred and of
Speaker 1: no determinate breed, it bounded straight into the river toward
Speaker 1: him without hesitation. Robert's heart caught in his mouth when
Speaker 1: the rest of the pack burst through moments later. There
Speaker 1: were five of them in total, all running and snarling
Speaker 1: into the water. Robert hurriedly raised his rifle and pointed
Speaker 1: it vaguely in their direction, not entirely sure how he
Speaker 1: was going to handle this, But as he peered down
Speaker 1: the scope, it couldn't help but be distracted by one
Speaker 1: of the dogs. In particular, For a start, it was
Speaker 1: larger than the others, much larger, with a broad black
Speaker 1: back and longer limbs, and in the treacle slow down
Speaker 1: of time, Robert noticed there was something very strange about
Speaker 1: this animal, but sheer size didn't account for. It was
Speaker 1: something about its proportions and the way it moved. Then
Speaker 1: suddenly he snapped back to the present because the lead
Speaker 1: dog was already halfway to his side of the river.
Speaker 1: With trembling hands, Robert raised his rifle and fired a
Speaker 1: single shot into the sky. A flurry of birds blasted
Speaker 1: from the trees, and the dogs snapped to a halt,
Speaker 1: then turned to flee. Robert exhaled in relief as the
Speaker 1: dogs quickly turned and scurried back into the trees, but
Speaker 1: his relief was short lived because one of the dogs
Speaker 1: didn't flee. Robert stood deathly still, keeping his eyes fixed
Speaker 1: on the strange creature before him. The dog, if that
Speaker 1: was what it was, stood its ground two dozen feet
Speaker 1: from the stricken boy. Robert slowly took up the rifle
Speaker 1: again and pointed it toward the panting animal, his finger
Speaker 1: poised on the trigger. Get gone, Robert said, But the
Speaker 1: dog didn't flinch. It simply stared Robert down with eyes
Speaker 1: that Robert only then noticed were an almost preternatural icy
Speaker 1: blue in color. And then the dog stood up as
Speaker 1: Robert would later recall it didn't stand like a dog
Speaker 1: trained to do so for treats or tricks. It stood
Speaker 1: up like a human, as Robert had it. It had
Speaker 1: shoulders and arms that dangled to its waist, ending in
Speaker 1: a clawed appendage that was somewhere between hand and poor.
Speaker 1: Its feet were submerged in the river, but its legs,
Speaker 1: which he could see, were apparently bent backwards at the knee,
Speaker 1: not at all like a human or a bear, as
Speaker 1: some have theorized it might have been. And once those
Speaker 1: legs were fully extended, the figure is said to have
Speaker 1: stood roughly seven feet tall, a vicious looking giant covered
Speaker 1: in dense black fur. The head was said to have
Speaker 1: been almost entirely canine in nature, with a long muzzle,
Speaker 1: erect ears, and hideously sharp teeth. Only those deep blue
Speaker 1: eyes struck him as being close to human, and it
Speaker 1: took all the will that Robert had to pull his
Speaker 1: own gaze away. Robert fired another shot, wildly and without
Speaker 1: proper aim, but again the strange doglike creature didn't flinch. Instead,
Speaker 1: it bared its teeth in a distinctly uncanine manner. Decades later,
Speaker 1: after DJ. Steve Cook's song had renewed interest in earlier
Speaker 1: accounts of the creature. Robert said that he thought the
Speaker 1: dog Man, as he came to call it, may have
Speaker 1: been smiling at him, but he wasn't sure. So much
Speaker 1: time had passed, but he remembered the distinct way in
Speaker 1: which its lips had curled up, in a way that
Speaker 1: was unlike any dog he'd ever seen. Finally, the dog
Speaker 1: like creature turned on its hind legs and followed the
Speaker 1: pack back into the trees, still apparently striding upright as
Speaker 1: it passed from Robert's sight. After Robert Forney told select
Speaker 1: friends and family about his frightening encounter, it wasn't long
Speaker 1: before word got around, as it does in small rural towns.
Speaker 1: For years more, anecdotes circulated of strange figures seen in
Speaker 1: the woods around the town of Paris and in surrounding
Speaker 1: counties bordering the Manistee Forest. One day, some time after
Speaker 1: his song had aired, Steve Cook received a handwritten letter.
Speaker 1: He was from a young man named Brian, who remembered
Speaker 1: how his father had forbidden him and his sister to
Speaker 1: venture out of the house after nightfall. Brian, who was
Speaker 1: from the town of Big Rapids, six miles south of Paris,
Speaker 1: claimed to have grown up hearing his dad cursing the
Speaker 1: coyotes and wolves that he sometimes heard at night. He
Speaker 1: used to assume day were the reason why his dad
Speaker 1: had been so uncompromising with him and his sister. Only
Speaker 1: later did Brian discover that it was something else entirely
Speaker 1: that his dad was afraid of. Bryan's family lived across
Speaker 1: the road from a manufacturing plant where his dad worked
Speaker 1: as a night watchman. Both the house and the factory
Speaker 1: abutted a stretch of wilderness known as the Haymarsh State
Speaker 1: Game Reserve. Back in the summer of nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: Brian's dad was working another of his night shifts. Sometime
Speaker 1: around three am. During a quick break, Brian's father headed
Speaker 1: home to make a pot of coffee, one of the
Speaker 1: perks of living so close to the job. With coffee
Speaker 1: in hand, he took a seat in the rocking chair
Speaker 1: on the porch and gazed out toward the plant, faintly
Speaker 1: visible under the soft, cool whip glow of the moon.
Speaker 1: As he traced his gaze along the chain link fence,
Speaker 1: he caught a flash of movement, causing him to sit
Speaker 1: up Suddenly, someone appeared to be moving along the road
Speaker 1: that ran between the house and the factory. Brian's dad
Speaker 1: knew instinctively that anyone moving about at that hour of
Speaker 1: the morning most likely had nefarious intentions. Brian's dad put
Speaker 1: down the coffee and quietly rose from his seat. Then,
Speaker 1: with one hand on his gun, he tentatively made his
Speaker 1: way back to the plant. Halfway there, he froze suddenly
Speaker 1: in utter horror. The figure was neither a vandal nor
Speaker 1: a thief. It wasn't even human. Brian's dad would later
Speaker 1: tell his son that the thing he saw was taller
Speaker 1: than any man, with a muscular body in dense fur,
Speaker 1: maybe gray or black, he couldn't quite tell in the
Speaker 1: dim light, but it was walking on two legs. As
Speaker 1: Brian's dad apparently continued to stare at the strange creature
Speaker 1: in utter amusement, it dropped momentarily from a bipedal stance
Speaker 1: to scurry about on all fours like a dog, before
Speaker 1: rising back onto two legs like a human again. It
Speaker 1: seemed to be searching for something gently. Desperate not to
Speaker 1: attract attention, Brian's father rushed to retrieve a camera from
Speaker 1: the house an old Kodak that he had some skill with.
Speaker 1: Brian's dad knew how to handle the lighting, how to
Speaker 1: account for the soft light of the moon and the
Speaker 1: street lights that created deep pools of shadows between them.
Speaker 1: So he waited until the creature stepped into an island
Speaker 1: of light, and then a rusted the lens for a
Speaker 1: long exposure. With trembling fingers, the man snapped what is
Speaker 1: thought to be the first and most compelling photo of
Speaker 1: the so called dog man ever taken. It shows an
Speaker 1: empty street topped by an arching canopy of trees, with
Speaker 1: the chain link fence in the background. In the foreground,
Speaker 1: a street light casts its harsh glow, and beneath it,
Speaker 1: half obscured by the light phole itself, is a figure
Speaker 1: that looks for all the world like an upright dog
Speaker 1: or wolf court on the cusp of movement. Its shoulders
Speaker 1: are thick and heavy, surrounding a distinctly canine head, while
Speaker 1: its torso narrows to a pair of legs angled like
Speaker 1: those of a dog. A heartbeat after the photo was taken,
Speaker 1: the creature is said to have dropped once more to
Speaker 1: all forts and sloped off through the trees and into
Speaker 1: the Haymarsh Beyond, Brian included a print of the photograph
Speaker 1: in his letter to Steve Cook and offered to provide
Speaker 1: the original negatives. As the so called dog Man has
Speaker 1: grown in notoriety over the last forty years, naturally, Brian's
Speaker 1: photograph has been at the center of the debate. Although
Speaker 1: the film Stark has been authentically dated to the early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, to the modern eye, in an era of
Speaker 1: digital manipulation, the image at the center of it may
Speaker 1: seem a complete farce. However, as many experts have argued,
Speaker 1: if indeed it were a hoax, any tricks that would
Speaker 1: need to have been employed to achieve it were much
Speaker 1: harder to pull off, if not practically impossible in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one. Of course, there are many who consider the
Speaker 1: all too convenient synchronicity between Steve Cook's dog Man Song
Speaker 1: and the sudden emergence of apparently historical dog Man encounters
Speaker 1: to be proof of a hoax. To skeptics, at least,
Speaker 1: it's clear that it was simply the fraw around the
Speaker 1: song that birthed all the outlandish backstories. Yet it's hard
Speaker 1: to dismiss the earnestness and speed with which Steve's first
Speaker 1: callers responded to the legend For a start, several called
Speaker 1: the station within minutes of hearing the song for the
Speaker 1: very first time, eager to share their own encounters, with
Speaker 1: little to no time to have manufactured their stories. And
Speaker 1: what then, of the encounters that came after Steve's song
Speaker 1: ends in nineteen eighty seven with an acknowledgment that the
Speaker 1: creature had not yet been cited that year. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, on the tenure anniversary, Steve Cook re released
Speaker 1: the legend, but this time there was an extra verse.
Speaker 2: Then in the summer of eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Then in the summer of eighty seven near Luth it
Speaker 1: happened again at a cabin in the woods. It looked
Speaker 1: like someone had tried to break in. There were cuts
Speaker 1: around the doors that could only be made by very
Speaker 1: sharp teeth and claws. He didn't wear shoes because he
Speaker 1: didn't have feet. He walked on just two ports. Startlingly,
Speaker 1: this was no make believe edition that Steve had grasped
Speaker 1: out of thin air, but was in fact taken from
Speaker 1: an apparently very real sighting that was documented in the
Speaker 1: local paper on July twenty second, nineteen eighty seven, in Luther,
Speaker 1: a small town close to the northern arc of the
Speaker 1: Manistee River, a pair of summer tourists were woken in
Speaker 1: the night by a commotion near their cabin. When they
Speaker 1: peered nervously through the window, they apparently saw a large
Speaker 1: shape moving about their property. Two Intimidated to investigate further,
Speaker 1: they simply hunkered inside until whatever was prowling outside left
Speaker 1: them alone. In the morning, they ventured out to find
Speaker 1: the walls scarred with claw marks. Suspecting a bear attack,
Speaker 1: they called the Department of Natural Resources and a pair
Speaker 1: of agents were dispatched from the nearby Baldwin office.
Speaker 2: So the officer and I went out there to take
Speaker 2: a look at it. You know, it was obviously it
Speaker 2: wasn't a bear, because you know, he just tried to
Speaker 2: chew in around the doors, and you could see a
Speaker 2: dog print alongside the windows still there, and so it
Speaker 2: was obviously a dog.
Speaker 1: It looked as though something had been trying to claw
Speaker 1: its way inside the cabin. The Department of Natural Resources
Speaker 1: agents discovered paw prints on the windowsills and on the
Speaker 1: ground all around the cabin, but they were huge, bigger
Speaker 1: prints than either agent had ever seen before. When word
Speaker 1: of the assault on the homestead got out, locals quick
Speaker 1: to link it to the song that they'd so recently
Speaker 1: heard on the radio, and what had been a bit
Speaker 1: of local color took on a darker hue. But that
Speaker 1: was far from the last sighting of the so called
Speaker 1: Michigan dog Man. Since nineteen eighty seven, there have been dozens,
Speaker 1: maybe hundreds, of sightings of a hair suit towering figure
Speaker 1: prowling the edges of the Maynaeste. Often it's no more
Speaker 1: than a glimpse between the trees that line Michigan's county roads,
Speaker 1: a fleeting Did you see that moment from a car window?
Speaker 1: There have been more up close and personal encounters, though,
Speaker 1: like the ones a deer hunter named Sam was said
Speaker 1: to have had in November of two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: That year saw a particularly high number of dog man sightings,
Speaker 1: but few, if any, were as telling or fry as his.
Speaker 1: At the time, Sam was on a week long hunting
Speaker 1: trip with two friends in the woods outside Reed City,
Speaker 1: to the immediate east of the Maynastee. Over the course
Speaker 1: of a long chilly day, all three young men had
Speaker 1: separated to take up positions in their respective tree stands,
Speaker 1: essentially extended high chairs that hunters can sit on for
Speaker 1: better cover. As four o'clock came and went, the sun
Speaker 1: began to descend fast on the snow covered forest. Sam
Speaker 1: thought it was time to regroup and go home. He
Speaker 1: had one foot on the ladder to get down from
Speaker 1: the tree stand when he became suddenly aware that all
Speaker 1: sound in the forest had ceased. Even at just twenty
Speaker 1: years old, Sam was experienced enough to know that that
Speaker 1: meant something predatory other than himself was in the area.
Speaker 1: Trying to stay calm, he stepped back up to the
Speaker 1: chair to wait and see what might happen next. Within minutes,
Speaker 1: the spell was broken as the sound of soft crunching
Speaker 1: snow was followed by the appearance of two fair sized
Speaker 1: bucks in the clearing below. But the deer were not alone.
Speaker 1: Sam watched in disbelief as a very different animal slinked
Speaker 1: out of the trees behind them, tall, powerfully built, covered
Speaker 1: in hair, and standing on two feet. At first, he
Speaker 1: thought it was a bear, which were known to rear
Speaker 1: up on their hind legs, but the way it walked,
Speaker 1: hunched back and hurried bears didn't move like that. Sam
Speaker 1: felt a rush of excitement shoot through his body as
Speaker 1: he wondered for a brief moment if this was in
Speaker 1: fact a bigfoot encounter. But then the creature dropped to
Speaker 1: all thoughts, and Sam saw how its ears stuck up
Speaker 1: straight from its crown and its muzzle protruded. Then he
Speaker 1: caught the ice blue of its eyes in the dust light.
Speaker 1: He realized then that what it most resembled was a dog,
Speaker 1: some kind of husky maybe, but with black fur and
Speaker 1: much much larger than any dog that he'd ever seen.
Speaker 1: From below, Sam got the whiff of a hellish odour,
Speaker 1: sulfurous and sour. Was that the stink of the creature itself?
Speaker 1: He wondered whether it was the noxious scent or the
Speaker 1: sound of movement. Something alerted the deer to the strange
Speaker 1: creature's proximity, and together they dashed from the clearing. Then
Speaker 1: the creature rose back up onto two legs and rapidly
Speaker 1: gave chase. All three animals were gone in seconds, leaving
Speaker 1: a terrified Sam alone in his tree, just trying to
Speaker 1: process what on earth he'd just seen. When his friends arrived,
Speaker 1: wondering why Sam hadn't met them at the truck, he
Speaker 1: haltingly told them about strange creature, assuming he was playing
Speaker 1: a prank. The others just laughed until they saw the
Speaker 1: look on Sam's face. A short time later, or three
Speaker 1: of them were back beneath Sam's tree stand. As Sam
Speaker 1: pointed out the strange tracks in the snow, his friends
Speaker 1: could only stare at them with wide eyed disbelief. They
Speaker 1: were dog shaped, for sure, but huge. When the young
Speaker 1: men measured them, they found the front paws to be
Speaker 1: over five inches long, with an extra two inch claws.
Speaker 1: The back legs left prints closer to eight inches in length.
Speaker 1: Sam began to wonder if it was the so called
Speaker 1: dog man that they'd heard so much about growing up.
Speaker 1: Though his friends weren't quite sold on the theory, they
Speaker 1: had to admit at least that the tracks would have
Speaker 1: been large for even the biggest black bear. The following day,
Speaker 1: Sam was far from eager to head back into the forest,
Speaker 1: so his friends left him at the cabin with a
Speaker 1: walky talkie in case he changed his mind. As the
Speaker 1: morning lengthened, oredom and self doubt began to creep in,
Speaker 1: and Sam decided to go back to his tree stand
Speaker 1: after all, but this time he armed himself with a
Speaker 1: knife and a pistol, as well as his hunting rifle.
Speaker 1: Once back in his stand, the hours passed without incident
Speaker 1: until night began to fall. It was some time around
Speaker 1: five PM when Sam heard a single gunshot bring out
Speaker 1: from the direction of his friend's tree stand, roughly one
Speaker 1: hundred yards away. At least someone's had some success, he thought.
Speaker 1: Then the walky talkie sprung into life, and a tiny
Speaker 1: scream ripped through its speaker. Within seconds, Sam heard someone
Speaker 1: coming fast through the trees. Then his friend burst into
Speaker 1: the clear wide eyed and yelling about having seen the
Speaker 1: same creature that Sam described from the day before. In
Speaker 1: utter terror, he sprinted up the ladder to join Sam,
Speaker 1: his feet barely touching the rungs. Moments later, the dark,
Speaker 1: furred figure apparently ran into the clearing. This time Sam
Speaker 1: had time to take in its details, the disproportionate length
Speaker 1: of the arms that dangled to the waist like a
Speaker 1: human's and ended in those same strange and poor like things,
Speaker 1: just like Robert Fortney had described in nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 1: Then slowly horrifyingly, it turned its piercing blue eyes up
Speaker 1: to where Sam and his friend huddled in the tree
Speaker 1: and bared its teeth, almost as though it were grinning,
Speaker 1: is how Sam would later describe it. Then it took
Speaker 1: another step closer. Scared that it was about to climb
Speaker 1: their ladder, Sam drew his pistol, but just as he
Speaker 1: was about to shoot, the creature apparently jerked away, then
Speaker 1: ran on two legs from the clearing. The two young
Speaker 1: hunters tried desperately to raise their other friend on the
Speaker 1: walkie talkie. When their friend finally picked up, the voice
Speaker 1: on the other end asked, is this your idea of
Speaker 1: a joke? What said Sam, perplexed, is this you in
Speaker 1: a werewolf costume at my tree? Because it's not funny.
Speaker 1: Before they could respond, another screech of feedback shot out
Speaker 1: of the walky talkie, followed by five sharp gunshots. Sam
Speaker 1: and his friend are said to have leapt down immediately
Speaker 1: and raised to their other friend's location. When they got there,
Speaker 1: they apparently found him shaking at the foot of his
Speaker 1: tree stand with his rifle gripped tightly in his hands.
Speaker 1: When he finally calmed down, he filled them in on
Speaker 1: what happened. Having decided to call it a day, Sam's
Speaker 1: friend had just climbed down from the tree when he
Speaker 1: saw what he assumed was one of the other two
Speaker 1: dressed in a werewolf suit. He was just about to
Speaker 1: call out to them when the creature suddenly charged him.
Speaker 1: With nowhere to run, the man held the gun out
Speaker 1: between them and braced for impact. As the story goes,
Speaker 1: the creature knocked him off his feet and swiped ferociously
Speaker 1: at his face, but the young man managed to hold
Speaker 1: him off with his gun. Then somehow he'd got a
Speaker 1: shot off and the creature pulled back. Another shot had
Speaker 1: it scurrying all the way back into the trees. The
Speaker 1: man claimed to have fired another three times, right into
Speaker 1: the creature's back as it went, but it showed no
Speaker 1: sign of being hit. The young man offered up the
Speaker 1: stock of his gun for Sam and the other friend
Speaker 1: to examine. Deep grooves had been scratched to the wood,
Speaker 1: supposedly caused by the creature's claws. There was nothing left
Speaker 1: but for the three young men to nervously make their
Speaker 1: way back to the truck and back to the cabin.
Speaker 1: When they got there, they are said to have been
Speaker 1: unsettled to find that the snow around the property was
Speaker 1: littered with large paw prints as if something had expressly
Speaker 1: been looking for them. Deciding that they didn't want to
Speaker 1: wait around to find out what it was, they quickly
Speaker 1: packed up their belongings and brought the trip to a
Speaker 1: swift end. A short time later, with nighttime having well
Speaker 1: and truly fallen, it was with some relief that Sam
Speaker 1: started up the engine and eased his truck away from
Speaker 1: the cabin for the last time. Then a few hundred
Speaker 1: yards down the narrow track, Sam felt the entire truck jolt,
Speaker 1: as though something heavy had just collided into his rear
Speaker 1: passenger door. It would have been impossible to see what
Speaker 1: it was in the moonless dark of the forest, but
Speaker 1: Sam knew, and though he would never forget the whole
Speaker 1: terrifying ordeal, he never reported the incident to officials for
Speaker 1: fear of ridicule. He'd heard the legends himself, had never
Speaker 1: taken them seriously until then, he hardly expected anyone else to. Today,
Speaker 1: Steve Cook has moved on from his radio DJ days,
Speaker 1: and that song of his that some say started it
Speaker 1: all could be said to be a relic of a
Speaker 1: less hyper era when the media had time to dwell
Speaker 1: awhile on the oddities of small Town Americana before hoaxes
Speaker 1: and disinformation became just another cynical tool with which to
Speaker 1: flood the zone. Yet hoax or not, that novelty folk
Speaker 1: song still resonates among the town and villages in the
Speaker 1: shadow of the Maynesty and Plenty would say there's a
Speaker 1: real warning to be found in its closing lines that
Speaker 1: somewhere in the Northwoods darkness, a creature walks upright, and
Speaker 1: the best advice you'll ever get is don't go out
Speaker 1: at night. This episode was written by Neil McRobert and
Speaker 1: produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Please remember to like
Speaker 1: and subscribe if you've enjoyed the show. Unexplained is an
Speaker 1: Avy Club Productions podcast created by me Richard McLain Smith.
Speaker 1: All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
Speaker 1: also produced by me. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is
Speaker 1: now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. The shorter followers
Speaker 1: on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at Unexplained Podcast and on
Speaker 1: X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod. Until next time,
Speaker 1: Stay strange and dissonant.