Otherworld - Episode 113: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 1

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

Speaking to Emerson about his horrifying experience of being chased through the woods by a large, bipedal wolf leads Jack down the rabbit hole of the legend of the Michigan Dogman to explore the origins, myths, and ongoing mysteries of Michigan's eerie folklore. Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This story comes in from a guy named Emerson, and it takes place in a small town called Bloomingdale, Michigan. Something that I think is noteworthy about Emerson and maybe a little funny is that not only did he tell me that he has always been a hardcore skeptic, he also told me that he was once a very active member in the online skeptic community. Despite this, he ended up having a very strange experience while walking in the woods one day with an ex-girlfriend, an experience that he couldn't quite rationalize no matter how many times he tried, and he still struggles with it to this day despite many attempts at explaining it. Emerson's story is actually quite a simple one, but it ended up sending me down quite a rabbit hole.

This is episode 113. The title is The Michigan Dogman Part 1, and you're listening to Otherworld. Is this Bobby? Yeah, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue. I'm worried about all the science. Up in the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening.

I'm going to die. It's limbs were just like wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them of it. My name is Emerson. I'm the oldest of four siblings. I'm about to be a dad. My wife is due any day now with our first. Actually, by the time this comes out, I might be a dad. So I'm excited about that. And I grew up in Michigan, spent most of my life in Michigan, just recently moved to Northern California. But yeah, this took place in Michigan. I grew up in like a Christian environment and sort of reacted against that. Like my family's in ministry. A lot of it's in ministry. Like my uncle's a pastor, my grandpa's a pastor. my parents have both been in and out of part or full-time Christian ministry. And when I was like in my later teens, I started reacting against that a little bit.

If you remember, like, the new atheist movement, I was like pretty into that sort of thing and like pretty skeptical. And I guess it's kind of ironic because what happened to me that we're talking about today, that happened like right at the beginning of me becoming like a pretty hardcore skeptic for like, I don't know, five or six years or something like that. And this did not square well with the rest of it. And I honestly tried not to think about it. Told a couple people did not exactly get a warm reception. And then just kind of kept it to myself.

But yeah, I was pretty active in the online skeptic community for a few years after this happened. I was surprised you haven't bumped into them a couple times. But it's just like a group of dorks on the internet who try to like, well, I mean, like their purported goals, it's like, oh, we want to promote science and rationality and we want to, you know, we want people to have beliefs that are based on the evidence, you know, stuff that sounds really unobjectionable, but I just don't think they live up to their professed values. But anyway, it's just, they have like a list of things that they don't like

that they think is, you know, oh, no one should believe in, you know, cryptids or ghosts or anything religious or aliens. They just have this list of things they don't like and then they attack constantly. And it's going to be hard for me not to go into ranting about them just because I was like a part of that group for several years and then just came to see how superficial their understanding of some of these things are. Like they don't seem to understand what people really believe or like why they believe it. But I ended up getting kind of pulled into their orbit for a few years and then, yeah, only recently kind of left that. So when this happened, I was 17, I was living in Michigan and still in high school. So my girlfriend and I, we were, we'd been dating for

about a year and a half. We were hanging out. We were trying to get away from people a little bit, so we were at my house. This is like a house that's like set back in the woods a little bit, has like a really long driveway, it's just like surrounded by farmland. And, yeah, and forest in pretty much every direction. And there's literally only like a few hundred people who live in this town. It's like super rural. So we're kind of on the outskirts of Bloomingdale. And yeah, we're just in the middle of nowhere. This was in the middle of the day. So this is like broad daylight, like just right in the middle of the day, early afternoon. Yeah, and we just decided to go on a walk to get away from people. Like I said, I'm the oldest of four siblings. So I have these,

you know, two younger brothers and younger sister that are around the house probably, and both my parents are there, so we probably just wanted to get away and get some privacy. So we were going on a walk through the woods. So we left the house and then just started heading off into the woods in the, you know, right after, like in the early afternoon. So we took like a trail, you know, into the woods. It's like summertime. So, you know, like the leaves are green and everything. It's not like fall or winter. We started out. on the trail and then we kind of went off the trail like halfway through so we're kind of in the middle of the woods like just surrounded by trees you know there's not like a clear straight path

anywhere you know we're still heading deeper into the woods and then out of nowhere there's just this wolf standing there maybe like 30 or 40 feet away like it's pretty close and that's not like a common occurrence in Michigan like there are wolves in the upper peninsula of michigan but not so much in the lower peninsula we're in like southwest Michigan so this is not like a normal thing that you run into in Michigan all the time. It's never happened to me before since. So all of a sudden there's just a wolf there, you know, like a kind of grayish-looking wolf. It's obviously not a dog. It's like much bigger. And we were like far enough in the woods that that's like, it's pretty alarming to be like that far away. You can't just like dart back into the house or something. Like we were,

you know, at least a few hundred yards into the woods, like thick, dense woods. So it was just immediately pretty frightening because, I mean, apparently wolves don't really attack humans that often, but I didn't know that because it's just not a common occurrence. So all of a sudden, this thing is just right in front of us, you know, maybe 40 feet away. And we were alarmed, so we turned around and started walking back, like trying to stay calm, but, you know, moving kind of briskly. Like we were trying to get back as soon as we could. Because we were, you know, you know, you know, pretty far out. Like, we were both kind of panicking, and we just said, okay, let's go back to the house. We're kind of, like, walking briskly back towards the house in the general direction. And the wolf kind of, like, kept pace with us. Like, it obviously saw us, and it was walking parallel to us.

I was, this is so stupid, but I was thinking, like, okay, don't act afraid, like, don't start running, because then he'll respond to us and, like, charge at us or something. So she was like walking in front of me and I was kind of to her right in between her and the wolf, but like slightly behind her. Because there was no clear path that we were on at this point. So we're kind of having to like weave between trees and stuff. So she's kind of leading the way and I'm kind of in between her and the wolf. And she kept trying to go faster than I wanted her to go.

I'm like, no, no, no, stay calm. like just walk slowly, like don't make any sudden movements. But she was just too afraid. So she keeps like picking up the pace little by little. And I'm like trying to tell her to slow down. So she's freaking out, you know, obviously we're both very afraid because it just feels like we're cornered in a way. Like you're, it's like a, it's a scary feeling, you know, to be out there kind of exposed.

Like there's no cover. You know, there's like nowhere you can dart off to. And this thing could just easily kill you if it wants to. It's faster than you. it's stronger than you, and you're just completely at its mercy. So, like, you know, the adrenaline was really pumping. I'm trying to stay calm at least, but she just keeps moving faster and faster, you know. I'm keeping an eye on the wolf, and he's like off to my right.

So I'm kind of like, you know, looking over at her and like kind of following her, like dodging and weaving through the trees, and I'm looking back over at him. And then, you know, we keep moving progressively faster and faster. And finally, the fear just got the, the better of us and we're just like running at this point. So she's like a couple yards ahead of me and I'm looking every other second like alternating between kind of weaving between trees and making sure that he's not coming towards us. Then something unusual happened. The wolf just stood up on its hind legs and kept running and I was already afraid at that point. You know, we were thinking

in the back of our minds like we might get mauled by a wolf or something. But that just like that just morphed into something greater at that point, and I just couldn't look away. I was just transfixed on this, what looked like an upright wolf. It looks like it could easily be six feet tall or seven feet tall. It's standing really comfortably. I mean, it wasn't standing still. It was moving the whole time. It was moving along really quickly. It wasn't like unsure, you know, it moved really ably on two legs. I mean, like, it was trotting on four legs, and then at some point it just kind of backed up, it, like, reared up on its hind legs, and it just didn't slow down at all. It just kept propelling forward on two legs. It just kept running. In my memory, it was holding its arms out

in front of it, like an animal would, or like a canine wood. It wasn't, like, pumping its arms, like a man would. You know, it always looked like a wolf, but that, detail about the arms has me questioning because I didn't notice anything in particular about the way the arms were moving, but I do remember that when it was running, it was running very naturally. And any other video I've seen of like a dog kind of moving around shakily on two legs, you notice what its front legs are doing. And I don't remember what the wolf's front legs were doing, which kind of makes me question what exactly I saw at that point, because I just don't remember that detail.

It was too far away for me to notice its eyes or its smell or anything like that, but it always looked like a wolf. At the time, it was just like such an adrenaline rush. It was the most terrifying thing I'd seen at that point in my life. So, I mean, I was like transfixed looking at it for probably four or five seconds. I couldn't stop looking at it. You know, I'm like running, I'm in danger of running into a tree, but I can't stop looking at it. Finally, I have to like turn my head to make sure I'm not going to crash into a tree because we're still off the trail.

We're just taking like the shortest path back to the house. So we're just kind of like cutting through, you know, like the thick of the woods. So we're getting closer and closer to the house. And we're both just like full on sprinting at this point. I keep looking over my shoulder. it's still on two legs. I look in front of me, you know, make sure I'm not going to crash into anything. My girlfriend's still right in front of me.

And I look back over. And eventually, as we got closer to the yard, like to the backyard, I kind of lost sight of it, but it didn't come closer to us. It looked like it kind of slowed down. And then when I looked back, it was gone. But it didn't seem like it was coming closer to us. It felt like it maybe peeled off in the other direction, or it just kind of stopped running with us.

By the time we burst into the yard, it seemed like it wasn't with us anymore. I feel like I need to acknowledge that it can sound kind of stupid. Like, it's hard not to laugh sometimes, and I'm like, yeah, I saw a wolf running around on two legs. But it's just in that context when you're already so afraid, you know, like you're already feeling kind of trapped and fearful for your life.

And then something starts moving, in like a very unnatural way. It just starts moving in a way. It's like, it's just not supposed to move that way. I don't know. That was just absolutely terrifying. There was just like a whole, there's a whole higher threshold of fear

that things got kicked into when it stood up. Like, I was already afraid, already, like, terrified. And then it stands up and starts moving like that. And I'm just like, what the fuck? Like, it just seemed like, like in the moment, it feels like supernatural or something. doesn't it seems like you're just entering some deeper circle of hell or something because at first

I was just afraid of a you know of getting mauled by a wild animal or something and then it starts doing something it just should not be doing so you know I was kind of um in shock like I could just it's a I don't know how to convey it but like just the feeling in your arms and your legs they're like kind of shaky um but yeah I was I was just very very afraid and still kind of coming down from that But as soon as we came into the yard, I was like, did you see that? And she was, you know, she's like, yeah, what do you mean? Like, what were we just running for? I mean, if I remember, right, she was shaking too.

I mean, we were both, we were both pretty terrified for obvious reasons. But, you know, I could tell she didn't know what I meant. Like I said, did you see that? And she was, you know, kind of confused. Like, yeah, I saw that. We were just running from it. And I was like, no, no, did you see it stand up? and she just looked at me kind of confused and then kind of smiled like maybe I'm kidding and I was like

that thing and she's like yeah I'm like the wolf you saw that and she's like yes and I was like it it stood up and kept running and then she laughed at me and then it was like it was just crushing because I realized she'd been just ahead of me the entire time leading the way like she was the one kind of like dodging and weaving through the brush and then I was following her I was the one kind of keeping an eye on the wolf. She only saw it for the first, like, you know, 30 seconds that we were around it when it was just kind of standing there. So I just, I mean, I didn't know what to say. Like, there was this kind of self-consciousness that settled on me that, I don't know, like, it felt, I felt like inhibited.

Just as soon as I told her and I got that reaction from someone who'd been there with me, you know, but just hadn't been looking for the, you know. I mean, I guess this whole thing. It must have taken, like, as I'm watching it run, that must have been like 20 seconds total. You know, like it actually was a really short window. And she just wasn't looking back when that happened, you know, she was looking ahead. And just, you know, getting that reaction, like just seeing the look on her face and just, yeah, it just really kind of closed me up. It was like, I just had that feeling for a long time afterwards, you know. And especially if you're like 17, any kind of.

social pressure is that can make you shut your mouth, you know, pretty easily. Like I said, at first she thought maybe I was messing with her or something. But I was clearly, like, afraid and I was dead serious and she just didn't know what to make of it. Like, yeah, she just didn't know. I mean, because she didn't have a category for this either. It wasn't like this was an established cryptid or like, I mean, she didn't know any more than I did that, like, other people had claimed to see something like this. So it just came totally out of left field as far as she was concerned. And yeah, I don't know, she just didn't know how to react.

So, you know, we burst into the house and I'm like immediately telling my family who's there. Like I tell my parents, I tell my younger siblings. And everyone is just kind of looking at me sideways. Like they can tell that I'm serious, you know, and I don't lie about this kind of thing. I'm not prone to this type of thing. Like, I don't know what to call it, but like, this sort of thing does not happen to me frequently. Like, I don't even really have an interest in this, right? I didn't at this time.

So they don't really know what to do because, like, how would you react if someone says they saw a bipedal wolf? Like, what are you supposed to say? So, you know, I know how it sounds, and it's not like, um, It's not like most people are going to be like, oh, cool. You know, like, yeah, definitely. But I guess that my younger brother Elijah did believe me. I didn't tell anyone about this story for a few years after this first day. Like, I just tried not to think about it.

And then when I eventually had the confidence to be honest about it, my younger brother Elijah was like, oh, yeah, I remember this. And I was like, okay, tell me what you remember. And then I just, you know, zipped my lip because I wanted to make sure I hadn't, like, confabulated anything or, like, warped any details. And he, you know, to my relief, he conveyed everything back to me as I remembered it. So I'm like, okay, I'm not, like, changing any details here. So that was, like, seven or eight years later. But apparently my younger brother, Elijah, believes me.

But, you know, people react kind of, like, I don't know. what you're telling them is so abnormal, even if they trust you, and even if you're not prone to saying things like this or whatever, you're not like, you know, you don't have any kind of reputation that would make people not believe you or something. They just didn't know how to react. I mean, I wouldn't know how to react if someone said all this to me. She went home, like my girlfriend went back home. And, you know, we all just kind of went about our day. and I did not go out into the woods for a long time. And I was always like kind of urging people to go out in the woods.

Like if they must go out in the woods and like, you know, bring other people with you and like bring a gun or something. Because at first, I mean, once I realized people were not, like it just made people feel uncomfortable when I told them what I saw. I at least just said, you know, I saw a wolf back there, you know, and like you should just be careful. I didn't set out looking for a cryptid, and I hadn't heard any of these stories. I didn't have any interest in cryptids or anything. I didn't know anyone had even claimed to see anything resembling what I'd seen, but I was in a public library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I was looking at a certain section that started with P as a philosophy major.

So I was looking at the philosophy section, And it was, you know, it was very sad, small section. And right next to it was the paranormal section. So there were these two books that looked interesting. One was called Midwestern Strange by BJ Hollers. And the other one was called I Know What I Saw by Linda Godfrey. So I, you know, I didn't know what they were, but it looked kind of interesting. So I opened them up.

And literally, chapter one of the Holler's book is about the Beast of Bray Road, or the Michigan Dog, man. I don't know. I can't even convey how, like, my jaw was like literally on the floor. Like, I'm just blown away. Because like I said, I didn't know that anyone else had ever claimed to have seen anything like what I'd seen. And this is like years later. So I just opened up this book. And then, you know, chapter one is about upright wolves. Like, people have seen in Michigan and in Wisconsin. Like, apparently sightings are concentrated in Michigan. And in Wisconsin, which is where I lived at the time. So that was like incredibly vindicating, not just that other people had claimed to have seen something like what I'd seen, but like

in the same area, like in the same part of the country. And that made me feel a lot more confident. Like, okay, there's like a rhyme and reason to the sightings. Like other people have seen the same thing. That lends credibility that like, okay, this was not, you know, some weird dream or something like, no, this actually happened. So Linda Godfrey, who's a wonderful lady, but she just recently passed away, but she was a reporter in Wisconsin. She sort of stumbled on this where there were lots of people in her area in Wisconsin who had seen like upright wolves. She ended up compiling a bunch of these stories and she became convinced pretty quickly that like these people were sincere. It was just such a weird like array of people who had all claimed

to see something very similar. And it was even like on a, on the same stretch of road. for a little while. That's why it's called the Beast of Bray Road in Wisconsin. But the lore is a little complicated because what people have definitely seen, like I said, is some kind of upright, wolf-like thing. You know, people have seen it chasing down deer and like attacking them. They've seen it like eating roadkill. They've seen it just running through a field. That's like basically the core of it. But then there's all this other stuff that gets added that I don't really take that seriously where it does sound a little more explicitly like supernatural like there's this one detail that really annoys me i don't even know where it comes from but it's like oh he the dogman

only appears on years that end in seven and that just sounds like i don't know very goofy to me um i have no clue how that would even work and what year did this happen to you uh 2012 okay How old were you? I was 17. Seven, yeah. But they also say like it smells a certain way and like it has like glowing eyes or something. So I don't know. Like I'm not really doubting what people are reporting, but it just seems like the more details you add like that, the more it seems like you're crossing some kind of line that goes beyond what everyone is.

saying they saw it. Like I said, the essential core of it is just some kind of upright, wolf-like thing that runs around and, you know, sometimes you see it attacking things like deer. Cightings do date back in Michigan like quite a ways, like back to the 1800s, but there is this one detail with regard to the connection to Michigan that I find really annoying because a lot of people misunderstand where this comes from. So there was a guy who wrote a song, like kind of a parody song that included something about the dogman. Like, it was like a Halloween song. He was like a radio DJ or something. It was like 50 years ago. So he wrote like a funny song that said something about the dog man. And it was like, like I said, some kind of like

Halloween themed song. And a lot of people think that that's where it all comes from for some reason. Like, oh, well, there was this song and then people started saying, you know, oh, I, you know, like I saw the dog man. So like all the lore just comes back to this song. This guy made a funny song and like now all these idiots think it's real. And like what actually happened is that first of all, there are sightings that go back before that song. And second of all,

when that song came out, there were people calling in and this guy was kind of flabbergasted because he was just like he didn't think he was doing anything serious. But then there were all these people who called in like, you know, I actually did see that thing that you're talking about. And that's a phenomenon you see sometimes with these shows. like Art Bell's show.

I've just heard this randomly. He did like an episode about shadow people or something. And then all of a sudden he was just like overwhelmed with calls with people who had like seen the thing that he was talking about. And like he was partly responsible for popularizing the phenomenon or at least raising awareness about it. But it's just kind of annoying because some people get the arrow of causation backwards there where they think, oh, you know, a lot of people found out about the dog. through this song. I guess that's where all the lore comes from. And it's like, no, absolutely not. Like, the song came out and then a lot more people had heard of it. And a lot of people who had seen it said, oh, that's what I saw, which is exactly what happened to me. But sightings go back

before that song came out. All right. We'll be right back after this quick break. So after speaking to Emerson, I wanted to speak to a biologist or wolf researcher in the area to ask some simple questions about whether or not an animal like that might be in the area and whether wolves are known to get up on their hind legs. If so, how often do they do that and how long do they stay up on their hind legs? After all, Emerson's story is very strange, but it's really just the story of a wolf doing something really unusual. It's not like this is something that defies the laws of nature or physics or anything like that. It's essentially just a wolf being really weird. So we began reaching out to many different experts in Michigan and the surrounding states.

I honestly figure that this would not be hard. It typically isn't hard. Our show has a very good reputation, if you don't mind me complimenting myself. I always say that we're the most normal paranormal show, but to my surprise, people were really not interested in talking about anything related to the Michigan Dogman. And some of the emails telling us that they weren't interested were not exactly friendly. What I did find out from some people that we spoke to off the record and from DNR studies is that there are no known wolves at all anywhere near where Emerson was in Bloomingdale, Michigan, which I find really interesting. Like I said, though, nobody wanted to talk to me about the dogman or anything remotely similar,

and I began to suspect that the reason for that had a lot to do with what Emerson told me about the radio DJ who made the dogman famous. By the way, the song itself is wild. I'm going to play a little sample of it right now. Cool summer morning in early June is when the legend began. At a nameless logging camp in Wexford County where the Manistee River ran. Eleven lumberjacks near the Garland swamp found an animal they thought was a dog. In a playful mood, they chased it around until it ran inside a hollow log.

A longer named Johnson grabbed him a stick, poked around. inside. Then the thing let out and unearthly scream and came out and stood upright. It seems to me that because of this song, many people out there believe that everything relating to the dogman is completely made up by those DJs, including the sightings that people have had. You know, I think the hardest part about engaging with the paranormal, no matter what side of it you're on, is the instinct to engage with it in black and white terms. Everything must be either real or completely fake. My position since the very beginning of other world is that it's entirely possible that 95% of all paranormal experiences could have a rational explanation. but even if 5% of those are real, that's a huge number, a number that should not be ignored.

Of course, on the other side of things, you don't want to be one of those people that instantly believes everything, but for me, I'm fascinated by the gray area of the paranormal, and for that reason, the Michigan Dogman situation really interests me. So at this point, there was really only one person that I wanted to talk to, and that was the man who apparently started it all nearly 30 years ago in 1987, Steve Cook. I wanted to learn the real story behind this song. How much of it was a hoax and what exactly Steve believes himself after all these years? My name is Steve Cook. I am the former production director at WTCM Radio in Trevor City, Michigan. And I am the author and performer and performer.

of the song the legend of the Michigan Dog Man. How many calls from people like me do you get? It waxes and wanes. I would say this is probably the third or fourth call this year. Okay. It is January. Yeah, it is January. Oh, well, okay, in the last 12 months.

It's just one of those things where people are finding it harder to track me down, I guess. So I want to hear the story. of this whole April Fool's joke. Can you tell me a little bit about that and like how all of this came to be? Well, in the radio business, particularly at the station where I worked, we had a group of people that were all right around the same age. And the morning man and I were born just a couple of months apart back in the late 50s. And so we came up through the 1980s the same time that the guys like Howard Stern and Opie and Anthony and those terrestrial radio characters were coming out with their morning zoo shows. And it became quite a tradition on April Fool's to just pull something, just do something and try to put on a nice April Fool's prank.

And we always tried to do something that was not going to obviously put anybody in jeopardy or anything like that. But we often did some pretty crazy stunts on April Fool's. And this particular year, which was 1987, Jack O'Malley, the Morning Man, came to me and said, you know, we haven't planned anything yet. Do you have anything in mind? And I said, you know, I've kind of had this weird song or poem rolling around in my head for a long time. Let me see what I can do with that. So I put this basically a poem together in 4-4-meter, and then I laid it down, late at the down a drum track using an old, like a $100 cassio keyboard and came up with a little instrumental

riff, a little melody riff for it. And I told the story of this creature in the counties that were within our radio station listening area that appeared every 10 years. And he was a half man, half dog creature. It took me about literally about 20 minutes to write the whole song and maybe another hour to put it together with the intent that it was just going to be a one day, April Fools, the morning man was going to just slip it into the music rotation and just let it play, and we would just gauge how successful it was by the reaction that it got. What was the inspiration for this song? Why did you decide to do something about a dogman?

I've always had sort of a fascination with, I didn't even know what a crypto creature was at the time, but I've always had a fascination with that genre, the Bigfoot's and the Lachnus monsters and things like that. And so I just thought it was maybe a good time to develop some sort of a mythical, mystical creature for Northern Michigan because we didn't really have one. Obviously, we had Bigfoot and the Native Americans had a number of legends and so forth. But there was nothing really that was ever concrete. based in northern Michigan.

So I was just looking, trying to find something that could potentially represent an odd creature that people could spot in the woods. So there wasn't really any basis or model for it other than imagination, I guess. So you guys put this out on the radio. Was there any explanation or context that you guys gave before playing this song? No, it just slipped into the music rotation in the 7 to 8 a.m. hour and then again in the 8 to 9 a.m. hour. And we just dropped it in. Or the morning man just dropped it in. And honestly, as I recall that day, I had forgotten that he was even going to do it until I was on my way to work. And the song had already played once. So, yeah, it was just, there was no introduction. This was a new song from so-and-so. or this is a song about Northern Michigan,

it just fell into the music rotation. The first hour that it played in was the 7 to 8 a.m. hour, and nothing happened. No one called. There was no reaction whatsoever. And then it played in the 8 to 9 a.m. hour. And again, nothing happened well. The morning show was going on.

But just a few minutes after Jack got off the air, the receptionist took a call from a man. and I still remember his name. His name was Robert Fortney. He's since passed on, but he was 68 when he called in in 1987. But he told us that when he was a teenager, he had been fishing along the banks of the Muskegon River near a little town called Paris, Michigan,

when he had been approached by a pack of what he thought were either feral dogs or coyotes or even perhaps wolves. And he had never seen anything like that. And he was quite an outdoorsman, a fisherman and hunter. He'd never seen anything of that nature. So he just thought it might have just been a pack of dogs. And so he didn't pay much attention to them until they started to circle him. And when they started becoming really close, he got nervous.

And he had his 22 that he had been out hunting rabbits with. earlier in the day. So he fired a shot in the air and the rest of the pack of dogs scattered all except one, which he described as a black dog about the size of a German shepherd that stood up on its hind legs and just glared at him and did not appear to be intimidated or fearful of the gun at all. And he was so frightened by that episode. He said, the dog just went back down on all the fours and ran into the woods, but he was so terrified by that episode that he never spoke of that incident to anyone, not even his wife and children, until he heard the song on the radio that morning. So that was the first of what would become

sort of a parade of people who called, and the first thing they said was, we heard that April Fool's joke that you guys were playing this morning, but you know there's nothing funny about that. That's a real thing. That was very startling to me, particularly, because I thought I had just invented this creature out of thin air. But as it turns out, there were a lot of people who believed that it was real. Well, again, this was just one of those situations where we were trying to play a prank that we thought would amuse people, but we were getting calls from people who, I don't want to say they were angry, but they weren't amused. they were telling us stories that we had zero expectation

that we were going to be hearing anything like this. And so we've revealed the joke, obviously, during the midday section of the broadcast day, and the calls just kept on coming. And it just kind of waned a little bit into the summer, and then things just went crazy again. So it kind of went quiet, and the song kind of faded away,

and we didn't really think about it much anymore, until a morning in July when we got a call from a DNR officer, if you're not from Michigan, that's called the Department of Natural Resources. Oh, I tried to talk to them. They were not interested. Well, we got a call from a DNR officer in Lake County, which is to the south of our area, just on the fringe of our listening area. And he and a deputy sheriff in Lake County had been,

been called out to a hunting cabin on a road just outside of the town of Baldwin, where a guy had reported that some sort of an animal had tried to essentially break into his cabin. He at first, the caller initially thought it was a bear because there was some food inside the cabin. But when the officers went out there and investigated, all they were able to find were scratches and tooth marks, teeth marks, around the doors and the windows of this house. And some of the teeth marks were over seven feet off the ground.

And they were trying to figure out what kind of an animal would do that. So they started looking around for bare prints in the soil around this house. And it turned out all they could find were dog tracks. And the dog tracks, the deputy sheriff later told me the dog tracks were about the size of a pie plate. he had never seen anything like it. And he since has become a big believer in the dog man. The DNR officer has since said, and he thinks it was just a big dog or a wolf,

but he won't talk about it anymore. But the deputy sheriff, who since retired now, is a big believer in what he saw that day. Well, when that happened, and our news department at the radio station put that on the air, all of a sudden the song just jumped back into, into the public eye and in popularity. And the local TV stations picked up on the story and the local newspapers picked up on the story.

And they put the story out on the Associated Press, which went all over the United States. And it appeared in newspapers all around the country. And from that, the song just exploded in popularity. And we thought, okay, well, we've got to do something with this. And we thought, okay, we're making all this money. This was never intended to be a money-making venture. So my charity is Animal Rescue, and so I decided that I would donate all of the profits that the song made to Animal Rescue charities. And that's been the theme of it ever since in the last 30 plus years.

I have seen mentions online of a siting that took place in 1887 100 years before your song was recorded. Do you know anything about that? Probably what you're reading is something that was based off from the song because I created that citing in 1887. Okay, okay, okay, that's crazy. People are reporting that. Yeah, it's been a really fun transition to see how folklore gets formed based on this song. And you start to realize that it doesn't take a lot to trigger people to develop an idea in their head. then suddenly what was really just purely fiction becomes history.

And it's strange to watch it happen. What was your opinion on this as like people were reaching out to you, where people come up to you in person and things like that? Like what was that experience like for you, this is something that started as a joke, but then is suddenly very real, at least of these people? It prompted me to do a little bit of digging to find out more about the actual the actual history of this.

And it goes back to the Native American tribes, the Ojibwe and Chippewa Indians in northwest Michigan and also across the lake in Wisconsin. The Indian tribes there had a very similar a very similar tradition or folklore, if you will. Yeah, even though you made up that one, the history of sightings like this is very real,

especially with Native folklore. Yes, absolutely. So I imagine, as you started researching this and meeting more people, your opinions probably started to change, am I right? Is that kind of what happened? Right. There were a lot of people who I spoke with who said they never talked about it before other than maybe with their closest family members who knew they weren't crazy because they were afraid of being labeled as some kind of a loon for talking about this seven-foot-tall dog that walks on its hind legs. I mean, when you just think about it,

you can imagine if you saw something and you couldn't explain it and you couldn't describe it to anyone without sounding crazy, you almost, it makes you want to back off and say, well, maybe I didn't actually see that. And you're right. I think that maybe the song sort of

opened a door to people to be able to express themselves and things that they had seen that they didn't have an explanation for. You know, all of this stuff kind of came together, and I, And I started to think maybe there's really something to this because it's been talked about for so long. In fact, I've got somewhere in my archives, I have a 911 call from a girl who is absolutely convinced there's a dog man outside her window. And I have another 911 call from a car that had rolled over.

And the people inside said that a dog had run into the road and stood on its hind legs. and that's what caused him to run off the road and roll over. Was there a pattern with the physical descriptions people are giving of this thing? Like what is the actual dog man according to what you've heard? Quite often they would see what appeared to be a dog on all fours that would stand up on its hind legs, or it would be on its hind legs running and fall back down to all fours. fur kind of mangy looking fur around the upper part of the body and the lower part of the body was less so

and the legs as opposed to having the multiple joints of a dog's legs had the joints of a human leg and that allowed it the ambulatory ability to stand up on those legs and run like a human being quite a few of the descriptions were of the sound that it made was not like a dog it didn't growl or pant or anything like that. It made more of a screeching noise like a, I don't know if you ever heard the sound of a bobcat out at night, but that was kind of the way it was described to me by a number of people. What about its face?

It always has the face of a dog with a long pronounced snout. That's interesting. I've seen some stories where people would have sightings of something with like a human-like face with a dog body. I've seen those two, but none of those. were described to me in any of the citing reports that I had. I mean, you just named it the dogman when you wrote the song, but do you think of this as more of like a dog-like creature or a wolf? Honestly, I don't know.

The song continues to play every year on our radio station, Armed Forces Radio's and multiple stations around the country. And we would continue to sell, we went from cassettes to CDs and the profits continued to go toward animal rescue charity. In 1997, I did an updated version with a little bit better music bed on it.

When 2007 came along and we were coming up on the 20th anniversary of the release of the first song, I was encouraged to, let's have a big celebration about it. And I did an entire album made up of the different versions of the song song, an instrumental version of people wanted to do a karaoke thing on their own.

We had a DVD with a music video and a bunch of other small pieces, small video pieces. And that's when the craziness started again. I was contacted by a guy who said, hey, I have what I think is a video of the dog man. And I said, oh, cool, send it to me. So he did. And at first, he wanted to sell it to me. And I said, no, I'm not interested in buying it, but I would be interested in looking at it. Well, he sent it to me, and it was really, really compelling.

It was a piece of what appeared to be old 8mm film. He had transferred it over to video, to a digital video. And I looked at it and I thought, wow, this is amazing. Well, I pinned the guy down and he finally said, no, I created the whole thing myself. I shot it on an 8mm camera. So I belonged at that time to a group back when Yahoo was a thing. I belonged to a Yahoo group of people who researched and crypto creatures. And I just dropped it on them and said, this came to me, what do you think?

And that thing hit the Internet with explosive. force. And the creator and I sort of got to put our heads together and created this whole wacky backstory to where the film was found at a, it was like a found footage story. And it was mysterious and we didn't know where it came from. And this crypto creature world online just went nuts over it. Again, it took on a life of its own. Pretty soon it got to the point where I was talking to the creator of it. I said, you know, at some point, we got to make this thing go away because this is getting out of hand. And I had a website at the time, Michigan Dogman.com, which is now since gone away. But I was getting in the neighborhood of 15,000 hits a day

on the website. And it was to the point where my server company was saying, you got to knock it off, whatever you're doing, because you're tying up our server. The creator and I, finally decided we would just make this thing go away. Well, right at that time, the History Channel called, and they had a so-called Monster Quest, and they had heard about this film, and they wanted to do a study on it. And when I talked to the History Quest people,

I told them, right off the bat, I said, look, this is not real. This dude created this out of thin air. And they were like, that's okay, we still want to do a show on it. And I said, okay. And so they kind of created this whole scenario where another crypto researcher supposedly pinned me down and made me admit that the thing was a hoax and all that. And I just went along with it because I just wanted to be done with the whole thing. But even after the History Channel episode aired, that revealed that the whole thing was a hoax, there were people who denied that it was a hoax.

There were forums, entire forums, devoted to this where people were picking this film apart frame by frame and saying, no, there's no way this is hoax. They're telling you it's a hoax because they don't want you to believe it's real. And so it became almost like a JFK conspiracy after a while. Who paid you off, Steve? Not a soul, not a soul. Release the rest of the footage. Yeah, yeah. Well, as a matter of fact, the creator then later on came out with a second piece.

of another found film. And it was even more creative. It didn't get quite the traction of the first one, but we had a lot of fun with it and took a lot of flack online for it. A lot of people wanted me to be prosecuted for fraud and all kinds of crazy things. But being a radio guy and this thing started as a hoax

and all that, I just thought, let's just have some fun with it. And we did. So even though you, are certainly responsible for the Michigan Dogman craze in many ways. It seems like you do believe that there are something very real going on in a way. At least you believe these people. Are there any other individuals that you met whose story still sticks with you and makes your skepticism waver a bit? Oh yeah. There is a filmmaker, a local filmmaker here in town, has made three

movies about the dog man. In the doing the background, the DVD of the first movie, we interviewed a number of people. And one of the people who sat for an interview was the set photographer from the film,

who I had known for a good 30 years at the time. He and his wife, they had a little paddle boat, and they were out on a small lake that they live adjacent to. And they peddled the boat out and they were just sitting there

enjoying a glass of wine on the lake, watching the sunset. And they both attest that a creature, a dog came down to the shoreline and looked like it was like drinking from the lake to start with. And they thought it was just one of the neighborhood dogs. But the photographer, the man, said it was very, very large, this dog. And so they just kind of watched it and didn't really say anything to each other. And it got into the water and swam across the lake and swam right in front of them within 15 feet of them. He said it was definitely a dog, but it was as big as a large man.

And when it got to the other side of the lake, it walked out, shook like a dog. stood up on its hind legs and walked into the woods. And he said he had never seen anything like it in his life. It terrified him. They looked at each other and said, what the hell did we just witness? And when the dogman films came out, he was hired as the set photographer. And as the stories were told around the set, he called his wife and said, we've got to tell this story. No one's going to believe us, but we've got to tell them.

And he's very serious. I still associate with Don to this day. And that story to me was probably one of the most compelling because of the longtime personal relationship that I had with this guy. Yeah, you know the guy. It's different. Like, why would he? Right.

Yeah. Yeah, he's not the kind of guy that seeks attention or fame or anything like that. He just wanted to unload that off his shoulders that he had witnessed this. So to me, this is interesting because I'm one. hand, you created this hoax, but on the other hand, you certainly didn't create people seeing strange wolf slash dog-like things that they can't explain. Like, that's not new. That's really old, and it's been going on all over the world. So I've encountered a lot of people chalk up this entire thing to you. And I, as a result, had a very difficult time speaking to any wolf experts in Michigan,

thanks to you. Sorry. So on one hand, the myth you created, this hoax got out of control and ran wild, had a life on its own. But I also think there's a secondary meta myth sort of that you completely created this and that every sighting happened after the fact and that it was all these people who just imagined there seeing something that they heard on the radio, when in reality, it sounds like most of these things happened before and were happening long ago.

I think, as you pointed out earlier, I think that when the song hit the airwaves, it turned on a light bulb that illuminated something that was kind of in the shadows for a long, long time. Whether that is an actual real thing or whether people are just seeing odd animal behavior in the woods, but I can't take credit for inventing it because the artwork and the stories predate my song by thousands of years.

So I just maintain a healthy skepticism, but I believe that people are experiencing things that they can't explain. And if this gives them some comfort, then I feel good about that. Well, Steve, thank you so much for speaking to me. This has been really interesting. If you have any other hoaxes planned, please give me a heads up. It might be helpful. Oh, I can tell some great stories of the things we've done.

I'm sure. Any other paranormal ones I need to know about? No, not paranormal ones. Just ones that either drove people crazy or made them really mad at us. Steve, thank you once again for speaking with me. If I make any major discoveries, I'll be sure to let you know. All right. You bet.

It was fun. All right, Steve, have a good one. It was nice to meet you. You too. Talk to you soon. So, yeah. definitely did quite a bit of hoaxing when it comes to the Michigan Dogman. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that all of these people who experienced something strange out there

are just imagining it because Steve made a song on the radio, especially not the people who experienced it long before. And in the case of Emerson, he didn't know about the Michigan Dogman until he went online to look up what in the world happened to him when he was out in the woods. on that day. I think the dogman situation is a great example of why you should be extremely vigilant and critical about what you choose to believe, but I also think it's unwise to disregard everything related to a topic just because some of it is fake. I think it's natural to want to put a binary label on things like this, but unfortunately, when it comes to the paranormal, I just don't

think that's how this works. This is really not a binary subject. It's very very very. It's very Very messy. In the next episode, we will be hearing from another person from Michigan who had an encounter with a weird wolf-slash-dog-like creature. But this one is quite different than what Emerson experienced, and it's quite different than Steve's description of the dog man. Thank you once again to Emerson and Steve Cook for speaking to me. Also, congratulations to Emerson.

He actually became a father during the time we are working on this episode. Congratulations. This has been episode 113. Stay tuned for part two of this series. This has been the Michigan Dogman Part 1, and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by Juice Jackal and North Americans.

This episode was edited and engineered by Theo Schaefer. Our artwork is by Coltysak Studios. Nikki Kate Delgado is our associate producer, production help by Haley Pearson. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a five-star review, and telling your friends about Otherworld. If you want to hear bonus episodes, you can become a patron at patreon.com slash Otherworld. Our social media is at Otherworld Pod. Thank you to the team at Odyssey. J.D. Crowley, Jenna Weiss-Berman, Leah Reese Dennis, Rob Morandi, Eric Donnelly,

Matt Casey, Moore Curran, Josephina Francis, and Hillary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld Now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained, you could send us your story at Stories at Otherworldpod.com.