Otherworld - Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Falling deeper into the rabbit-hole of the Michigan Dogman, Jack speaks to Grace and Nancee who encountered a bipedal canine with the face of a man. Seeking to unravel the truth behind their chilling experience, he consults wolf researcher, Maeve Rogers, to explore whether such a creature could truly exist. 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. In the last episode, we spoke to Emerson, a self-described, hardcore skeptic, who had a very brief but strange encounter with a wolf, during which he was chased and then saw the wolf get up on his hind legs and continue running full sprint, upright, like a man would run. After this, he did some research and discovered a local legend called the Michigan Dogman. a legend that may or may not be partly a hoax. After this, I decided to try speaking to some biologists or wolf experts in Michigan.

Normally, this wouldn't be something that's very hard for me to do, but nobody, and I mean nobody, wanted to talk about the Michigan Dog Man. However, they did send over the DNR data for Michigan, and told me that there are no known wolves in the area where Emerson had this experience, which I thought was really interesting. This all led me to talk to the man who started this all, or at least named it, the radio DJ Steve Cook.

After speaking to him, it seems that the Michigan Dogman was definitely started as joke. The history behind it was made up by Steve, and Steve certainly fueled the fire of this hoax by releasing fake footage. But he also told me that he has talked to so many people over the years who he believes had very real encounters with something that sounded a lot like the Michigan Dogman. I think this story is a very realistic representation of the paranormal in general.

Lots of fake material exists. People do make up stories. and because of that, much of the world assumes that it's all fake. Everyone wants things to be black and white, but it's just not the way this works. Well, on this show, we speak to a lot of people who thought something wasn't real until they saw it with their own eyes. And in the second part of this series, we'll be speaking to another person in Michigan who thinks they encountered the dogman as well. However, the thing that this person saw seems quite different than what Emerson experienced. It comes from a woman named Grace, and I will let her take it from here.

This is the Michigan Dogman, Part 2, and you're listening to Otherworld. Hello? Is this Bobby? Yeah, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue. I'm sorry about all of a science. Up in the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening.

I'm going to die up. It's slimmed. limbs were just like wrong. Everybody moves back into the night, even if it takes them ahead. I'm Grace. I am 31. I live in Los Angeles. I'm a director. And I grew up in Dallas, Texas. I went to Boston College. And then I went to work in New York. I actually worked at Saturday Night Live for a long time. And then I came to L.A. two years ago. And I've been directing for like three or four years and just directed my first feature.

I'm engaged to a guy who's obsessed with Otherworld. My fiance's name is Jack and I love him so much. And he moved to New York for me because he lived in Austin when we started dating. And then he very kindly moved to L.A. for me too. So he's been following me around. So I have to tolerate, you know, things like his podcasts, him repeating the entire. story of a podcast out loud, which podcasts can be riveting, but the retelling of them is less so. And he works at this wine story, works at Silver Lake Wine with a guy named Stephen,

who we love. And Stephen introduced him to this podcast. I also have been seeing Otherworld podcast billboards all over town, but I would kind of send the picture of the billboard and jest to the both of them because I'm going to be honest with you. I'm not a I'm not a fan of this podcast only because I'm not it's not you or the hosts. It's just I don't like spooky stuff. I'm not into ghosts. I'm not into, you know, um, you know, unidentified flying objects or anything. Sure, sure. I'm just like, I'm sure it's out there. It's not like I'm, it's fine, Grace. It doesn't exist, but it's just not for me. And so they, Jack,

It's not you, it's me. It's not me, it's you. And Jack, but Jack's obsessed with it. Jack loves ghost stories. He loves that kind of stuff. So to Stephen. And so they have like, they like really created their friendship over this podcast. And now, I mean, we went to their house last night for a movie night.

Like we were very close with them. And it really, I think this podcast is part of that. And so I had never told him this, We call it man dog, but I'm hearing people call it dog man. My mom was in town a few months ago, and so I had two friends over for dinner, and I cooked dinner, and my mom was there, and our friends were talking about how they think there's, like, a ghost in their apartment. And then, you know, Jack was sort of pulling questions out of, like pulling answers out of them because he was really interested in their ghosts. I mean, even in our house that I'm sitting in right now, we have, it's really old. It's from the 1920s and a woman died here and, you know, the lights act strangely and Jack thinks it's a positive ghost.

Only love and light exists, he's always saying. But, you know, I'm like, whatever, that's just an old house. And so we were sitting here and he was like at this dinner with my mom and my two friends and he asked the table. who's like, does anybody else have any sort of otherworldly stories? My mom looks at me and she goes, well, do you remember man dog? And I was like, oh my God, I completely forgot about man dog. And obviously Jack's ears perked up and he was like, man dog, what are you talking about? And then my mom was like, well, we were in Michigan.

And then Jack stopped her and she goes, wait, you know the Michigan dog man is like a legend. And we didn't. We knew that like dog man or man dog as we call. it was sort of a, you know, a lore. But I didn't know specifically that the Michigan dog man was this, you know, interest in a lot of worlds of otherworldly conversation. And so I, I remembered it. And my mom told a very brief version of the story, which is what I remember. But I haven't really intentionally, because Jack wanted me to do this podcast, I haven't really heard their full versions because I think probably for the best for your storytelling and for this story, I could just tell

my version of it because if you talk to my aunt, you might have a, I think memory works in very funny ways. So I think it might be more interesting if we tell you our raw versions of our stories. And so my mom told the story, the brief version that night, which was when we were driving through rural Michigan. We saw this dog with the face of a man. I kind of like had put it back somewhere in my brain, but it wasn't something that was like, oh, it was like, oh, yeah, the man dog. It wasn't, it wasn't something that took me a while to recall. It was something I remembered immediately. When my mom said that, Jack was like, why haven't you never told me that? That's the craziest thing that you've ever done. Why haven't you

told me that? And I just hadn't even thought about it in a really long time. So I think it was just one of those things. I also am not a person who is like, that was otherworldly, that was spooky. I was just like, that was really weird. That dog had the face of a man. And so it wasn't something that would have been something that I would have been like, oh my God, I had this spooky story because I really didn't have a spooky story in my head. It was more of like a crazy thing that happened to me. I was 13. My aunt had an apartment in Chicago. and a house in Buchan, like a country house in Buchanan, Michigan, and we were going to visit her house because we'd never been there.

And her husband is an artist who is very talented at a lot of things. And they bought this house in Buchanan, and they, it was an old house that he modernized with, you know, a new architecture and an add-on. And it was still, it had the sense of it being old and the basement was really scary, I remember. But it was also a testament to their style. He loved mid-century modern stuff. And my aunt has like a tiny collection of chairs that are all like famous mid-century modern chairs. Like they're into that kind of stuff.

I remember at night it was so dark and so quiet that you almost couldn't see. sleep. Only sounds you would hear were like howls and and wrestling and like the scariest shit ever. So sleeping there, I remember, was like a nightmare for me. And so we went out there from Chicago and we were there. I was 13. I was probably, you know, whatever, how eighth or ninth grade. I ended up going to my mom's room and sleeping in her bed. I remember because I was so scared. I remember also like it took a while to get anywhere because the road. I mean, you were just so far out that your house would be 30 minutes away from wherever you were getting your supplies or going to a restaurant or in my memory it was very far away. And so they were all, and all the roads were super rural.

You barely saw another car when you were driving down them. There was sort of just like land to the left and to the right. And so they had a nice house on their street, but the house is, next to them were not very nice. They were like, you know, run down and people clearly weren't keeping, you know, maintaining them. And they were a little spooky, you know, like I wouldn't want to go there alone. Yeah, and everybody's house was super set back on their lots. So you could see them, but not completely.

So it was also like that weird thing of not seeing anyone was sort of scary. Like you really did feel like you were alone everywhere. went, there weren't a lot of people around it, until you went to like a restaurant or a farmer's market. Then you would see a lot of people, but clearly these people are coming from all over the place. I remember not sleeping very well, obviously, because of the darkness and quietness. And we got up and we were like, we went to breakfast, we had, we had lunch, we did the thing. We went and had drinks. And then I remember it being dusky. Like, I remember part of the reason we left was because it was getting, it could get dark soon. And so,

I remember we were driving from like one place to the next and it takes a really long time. So we were going down these super rural roads. My aunt and uncle had this land rover and I remember the land rover because when we were driving in Michigan, we would pull over all the time if there was like a dead animal in the road and she would check on it or or you know if it was like a raccoon, she would like take its tail. She's very strange. But amazing. The four of us are in the car.

My uncle was in driving the car My aunt was in the passenger seat My mom was on the left side in the back seat And I was on the right side in the back seat And we were driving and obviously We were driving on the right hand side of the road And you know We'd just come from something

And I remember it being like a pretty rural part of the road And we We kind of are driving We see something ahead in the distance And it's sort of like a To me I remember it being like I didn't know what kind of animal it was because it was sort of, you know, when a dog is sleeping

and it wraps itself up in itself. So we're driving and we see something ahead on the road. And I don't really know what kind of animal it is because it's sort of curled up in itself. And my uncle, I remember him being like, what is that? And then my aunt, we pull up next to it. And my aunt, you know, she likes to check on animals, as I said. And so she was like, wanted to get out and check on it.

And I remember my uncle being like, no, stop. I don't think you should get out of the car. And he got out of the car. And I remember I was on the side of the road that had the dog on it. And so I remember like opening the door to the car and watching him go out and look at this dog. And the dog stood up. When the dog stood up, I remember being like, like the thing I'll say is the dog to me reminded me, do you know when Sirius Black turns into a dog in Harry Potter?

So I remember the dog having that kind of shape like mangy but skinny but long and and sort of feeling sad for the dog because feeling like the dog maybe was abandoned or whatever. But when it stood up, it was very clear that the dog had confidence and the dog, this is a weird thing to say, but it felt like the dog knew itself. You know what I mean? like the dog was very aware of itself and self-assured. And I remember my uncle was like, whoa. And he took a few steps back. He slowly, slowly walked back to the car. And then he got in the car.

He closed the door and said, look at that dog's face. Like, look at the dog's face. And as we turned back, I remember the dog started approaching the back of the car very slowly. And the dog, I swear to God, we look behind us. we're all looking at the back window and the dog props itself up onto the car and looks at us through the back window and the dog i swear to god had the face of a man like it was a man's it wasn't a threatening face but it was very clearly a human man's face like so masculine in the way that it reminded me of in my memory it reminded me of um like carry grant or or like marlin brando something like

really distinguished, confident, you know, rugged, a little bit man, like truly like a leading man. You know how a dog's face is pointed with its nose? And you know how like a pug is flat? It was neither of those things. It was sort of like the shape of a human. Like it was rounded in a way that doesn't, that I've never seen in a dog before. Like it was, or since, I have two dogs, one sitting on my lap. And like, the funny thing about it was, it was, yeah, it was just like, it didn't have, like, a point to its face. It didn't have a smashed face.

It had, like, a curved human face. And so I remember that being the thing that made me be like, oh, my God, that's the face of a man. Like, it wasn't a dog, the face, the body completely. But the face was strange in its. And the thing was it looked at us too. So I think the looking at us, it looked at us and it felt like being looked at by a man. It didn't feel like when a dog looks at you.

It felt like he was consciously recognizing that he was like, yes, I am a man. Like he stood up on the back of the car to be like, I, yes, you were right. I have the face of a man. And like, how did you know this wasn't, it sounds so stupid saying it, like a man in a dog costume or something. Like, because it just wasn't. It was like not, like, it wasn't big, big, well, the other thing too is like, it's,

it had paws and it had like skinny little legs and it, there's no way anything was inside of that creature. The body was so distinctly mangy and, and dog. Like, the other thing too is like, you know, you see coyotes in L.A. And I've seen wolves before, but it wasn't like that either. It was very much like the body was, was almost too, I don't know what the right word, it was like too gentle, not gentle, but like soft and skinny and skinny and to be a coyote or to be a wolf. Like it was definitely a dog.

and the tail wasn't so coyote either. The tail was the normal tail of a dog. Like not crazy big. It was just like, it felt to me like my uncle used to have this dog named Digger. And it felt very much like the tail of Digger. But the coat was very dark. Like the coat was sort of this like brownish, reddish, blackish coat, I remember. And then the face, the hair on the face sort of was less so.

Like the hair, there was hair on the face, but it wasn't like, it wasn't like dog hair. And the features were distinguished, like the lips were distinguished in a way that humans' lips are distinguished. The eyebrows, it had like, it had like distinguished. And the eyebrows weren't even like comical eyebrows. Like it made sense for its face. The dog, because I was sort of recessed from it, looked from afar to be like 60, 80, pounds-ish. And when it, I remember, I turned back to see my uncle, like to look at my uncle when he was before, when he said, turn around and look at that dog's face. But I remember it looking smaller.

And then when it came up to the side of the car, you know, Land Rivers are tall cars. And so I remember it thinking like, wow, this dog is really tall because the dog really was looking at us, like almost leveled to us through the back of the car. So I think the dog, I mean, I don't know how tall the dog was on all fours, but on two must have been maybe the height of a human man. So my uncle looks at us and is like turn around and look at that dog's face. And we turn around and the dog has since approached the back of the car. And it was almost like turn around and look at that dog's face.

And then the dog, as if it knew. that my uncle had said that, appeared in the back window looking at us, very curious about us, but also confirming this is my face. You know, like, oh, you're asking about my face? Here I am. I remember being, like, mystified almost. Like, like, whoa, that is crazy. That dog's, that dog has the face of a man.

Like, I was 13. I wasn't, you know, maybe a complex thinker, but I was just, like, moved by seeing a dog with the face of a man. And my mom's, I remember looking at her after I saw the dog, and she couldn't take her eyes off the dog. And she was just like, it was one of those things where it was just like, oh my God. And it was that collective experience that we were all having where I think if I had this experience alone, I would wonder today if it actually happened. But because I looked into the face of all the people that were looking at this dog, but we were all having this mystified sort of trance-like experience for a moment that I knew it was real. And then I remember my uncle was like, we got to get the fuck out of here.

And like, was like, we got to go. And my aunt started going like, go, go, go, go. Because they were like terrified. By that point, they were terrified of the dog. I was totally in sort of this like trance-like experience. But then when they broke me out of it to sort of with their own fear, I was like, oh, fuck, that is really scary. And then I remember thinking, like, this dog definitely knows where we live and definitely

knows how to find us. Like, I don't know why I thought that, but I remember thinking that. So we, like, drove out of there. We like, you know, he laid on the, the gas and we drove back to their house. We drove directly back to their house in Buchanan. And then I remember that night, like, I was in my bed and it was dark and there were no lights and the sound. It was very quiet. And there, and then that night, I swear to God, there was so much howling. Like, there was so much howling outside. But, But it didn't feel like a lot of dogs. It felt like one dog or wolf or whatever. It felt like one animal was making a lot of noise. When we got back to the house, we called my uncle, who lives in Dallas now, because he's really into spooky stuff. He's like a conspiracy light kind of guy.

And we called him. And I remember he Googled it while we were on the phone. And he was like, oh, there is this thing, this dog, man dog. At the time, we were calling a man dog. But he was like, there is this man dog theory that there is a dog with a dog with the face of a man that many people claim to say they've seen. At the time, it wasn't in reference to Michigan. It was just like this thing he found on the internet. And he asked us, I remember he asked us a lot of questions and was really like into the story,

which is I think why another reason why I really remember. remember this happening too is because my uncle was so, like, shocked and surprised, like, he was just surprised that we had run into something so mystifying. Like, he'd always wanted that experience for himself, maybe, and was really excited that we'd had it. In my memory, I think we were, me and my mom were leaving the next day, and I think they drove us back to the airport. And I, the whole time, we were just like, not the whole time, but we were, we were like, that man dog, that, that man, was crazy. Like, that's the craziest thing.

But again, something you need to know about me and my mom, too, is that we're not crazy ghost people. We're not crazy. Like, I mean, now thinking about it and telling the story, I'm like, maybe there is sort of this, this presence in that dog that I should have recognized and been more consciously aware of in that moment because he clearly was trying to say something maybe. but we're not big, spooky people,

so we kind of were like, that was the craziest thing ever. And then we kind of got on a plane and went back to Dallas. And every once in a while, we'd be all together and we'd tell the story to somebody and we would talk about man dog.

But it was more of a funny thing because a dog with the face of a man in a lot of ways is ridiculous. And I think telling the story was really fun for us because we got to be like, yeah, that actually happened. And there were four of us in the car and that happened.

And I think people were always really surprised by that. So that was fun for us. I mean, I think the thing that will be more interesting with my aunt than with me is that she was a full adult when this happened. And she knows that area very well because she had a house there. And she also like, there's the funny thing is when this got brought back up, there was no point where any of us were like, did that happen? We were all like, oh, yeah, man dog. And that, I think, is to me, the most striking part about it is that there is, there was, it's not even like any of us were like, wait, what? Or, you know, like, oh, yeah. It was completely for everyone like, yeah, man dog. So my name is Nancy Martin. I am Grace Godvin's aunt. Her mother is my sister. And the two of them, Grace and her mom, came to visit my husband and I in Southwest Michigan. I think it was about two.

2009. It was late afternoon, and we were going to go over to a place called Tabor Hill, it's a winery, and have a few glasses of local white wine. And I want to emphasize that this man-dog sighting occurred before we got to the winery. We had just left our house, and we were on a road called Boyle Lake Road, locally nicknamed Boiled Head Road. It's very deserted. It's a gravel road. There's maybe four houses on it. It's probably two miles long. Three of the houses look like they should be torn down or they're abandoned. And then there's one very nice home that is lived in by a very brave woman from Chicago. She lives there by herself. And we were just coming upon her house. Dan was driving. I was in the passenger seat. And Grace, and my sister were in the backseat. To our right, there was a gravel parking lot where people would come park their car

and put their boats in a little stream that took you to boil lake. And it was apparently good fishing. And the parking lot was empty and sitting in the middle of it was, and sitting very oddly, was a dog. It was a big dog. It wasn't recognizable as a breed, but it looked like, you know, I don't know, not a lab, not a golden retriever. It was kind of a hairy, big dog. And it was sitting with its two front paws, one crossed over the other. So it had this sort of, it was a weird way for a dog to sit. It was, in a way it was kind of elegant looking. But it was odd to me that it would sit there in a parking lot, this big dog and have its front paws crossed.

It had a human-like face. It did not have a snout. It had a flat face. It sort of stood up, and the best way I can describe it is it sort of walked like John Wayne. It had a saunter. and it just started coming at the car, not attacking, not fast, but it just started coming at the car. And for a moment, everybody froze because it was, it was odd. It really had a human face and it was walking towards us.

It just kept reminding me of, you know, John Wayne coming out of a saloon and, you know, kind of walking towards his, his nemesis. and I recognized it as a dog the way it was sitting in the parking lot. And when it started to walk towards us, I looked at its face. I could see these big, you know, round, human-like eyes looking at us, no snout, a flat face. And it just started walking towards us. And at the same moment, we all panicked and started yelling at Dan to, you know, go, go, go, go, go. And we took off and the dog just stood in the parking lot looking at us until we, you know, turned off Boyle Lake onto Gardner and, and high-tailed it to the

winery. And we talked about it all night, or we talked about it while we were having drinks. And then when we got back to the house, I don't know who did it, but somebody, we just kept calling it man dog, because it looked like a man and a dog. And when we got back to the house, it most likely was Grace. We started, she must have started Googling. And it turns out there is something called the dog man of Michigan. Like if you Google Dog Man of Michigan, there's websites dedicated to it. There's all sorts of sightings.

You know, we refer to it as manned dog just because we, you know, saw the, the, the dog man, whatever, before we knew it that this, that we were not the only people that had, seemingly not the only people that had this weird experience. I've never had any extra phenomenal, whatever they call them, you know, I don't think aliens have landed in my backyard. I don't, haven't seen ghosts, you know, I haven't done any of that stuff. The only strange thing that has happened to me and to anybody I know, which is my sister and Grace and Dan, was this, whatever, this brief interaction with Mantog. You know, it's made me more open to when people tell me something that sounds screwy. You know what I mean? Like, oh, we had this experience. Instead of

going, oh, you're ridiculous. You must have been drinking or, you know, you were, you're mistaken. I mean, I will tell you that I am in, not in my heart, but like what I experienced was not a dog. It was some sort of mixed species. It had very, very human-like. tendencies. The face, the rest of the body looked like a dog. It was covered in fur. It had four legs. It had a tail. I don't remember if it had ears. I don't know. I remember its face looking very human. And I remember its movements and its reactions and its gestures being more human than canine. So when people tell me nutty stuff, I'm more curious about it than I am you know, sort of just disdainful of, you know, well, you're crazy.

I don't reject things out of hand. I think that's the impact it's had on me. Anything's possible. All right. We have to take a break, but we'll be right back with the rest of this episode. Okay. Thank you so much to Grace and Nancy for showing that story. After hearing it, my first thought,

was that I really hope the image of a dog with a old Hollywood Clark Gable style human face doesn't appear in my head at any point when I'm trying to fall asleep. My second thought, though, was that whatever this thing was that they saw

is really not similar to Emerson's experience. Emerson said that he basically saw a normal wolf except for the fact that it got got up on its hind legs, and Grace said that this was clearly a dog until they got closer and realized it was more of a dog with a man's face. But in both cases, they went looking for answers and found out about the Michigan Dogman

and figured, this must be it. This must be what I saw. Shortly after interviewing Grace, to my surprise, I was finally able to get a hold of somebody who works with wolves. They do this in Minnesota instead of Michigan, but that's close enough for me. Either way, I just wanted to finally speak to somebody who knows about these creatures

and ask them some very basic questions. Like whether or not wolves display any strange behavior that might cause people to think they experienced something paranormal, like getting up on their hind legs, and what they think about the entire Michigan dogman. legend. So I talked to Maeve Rogers. She works at a wolf research and outreach program in Minnesota. She previously worked with wolves in Yellowstone National Park. And this is our conversation.

Maeve, what title would you like to use? How shall I introduce you here? Well, Maeve Rogers, I am a education and outreach specialist for a wolf project in Minnesota. and I've spent a lot of time following wolves and watching them in multiple different environments. So I know a lot about them. How and when did you get started doing this? So I grew up in northern Illinois, and I don't really know exactly when it started, but I have always had this deep fascination with animals, but wolves specifically. And in Illinois, we really don't have wolves.

So as soon as I could, I moved to Montana to pursue hopefully a career in wolves and went to Montana State University to study wildlife biology. And I chose a school specifically because of its close proximity to Yellowstone National Park. And eventually I was able to volunteer and work with the Yellowstone Wolf Project for four or five years. And that was my start. And what do you do now? So kind of around the time of the pandemic, I, actually moved to Minnesota up in some of the most remote parts of the state. But something about Minnesota just kind of piqued my interest because the wolves there act completely different from

the wolves in Yellowstone. And I really wanted to explore that a bit more. So I am still currently in Minnesota working with wolves. So for the past four years, I have been up in remote Minnesota studying and tracking wolves out in remote landscapes by myself, typically. A big part of my job is trapping wolves and putting GPS collars on them. Maeve, I wanted to ask you, before we go further, the fine biologist community of Michigan and wolf community of Michigan was really not interested in talking to me. Are you surprised by this? No, I wouldn't say I'm surprised.

I think kind of like the academic community and more professional community, well, not that this isn't professional. But it's kind of like the professional wildlife community doesn't like to typically comment on certain stories that people have. I'm not very surprised to hear it, though. Honestly, I am not super surprised either, especially the more I learn about the history of the Michigan dog man. But I did just want to ask very simple questions to these people originally. Now that I have you,

the first question I have is, are wolves known to approach people out in the wilderness? Or are the animals that are generally elusive and hide when they hear somebody coming? So I think this really depends. And it really depends, I think, on the population of wolves you might be around. For example, when I worked in Yellowstone, Yellowstone has some of the most habituated wolves in the world, just because they are super used to humans being around them, watching them every single day, and tracking their movements in such open landscape. They don't approach humans normally, naturally. It's usually just a sign of habituation, as I said, just due to exposure to human presence without any sort of negative impact to them.

Another way that wolves can get habituated to humans is through access to human food and trash. And this can lead to problems. But typically, wolves do not approach people whatsoever. Wolves are truly some of the most, if not the most docile animal in the woods that you can come across, in my opinion. I have spent thousands of hours in the woods by myself. And I have been attacked by a multitude of other animals, but never a wolf. have been attacked on many occasions by Mama Grouse protecting her babies. I've also been attacked by white-tailed deer on many occasions. Squirrels are also a lot more scary, in my opinion,

than wolves are. But yeah, I've never really felt threatened or scared of wolves, even though they are a big predator. Generally, they really don't want anything to do with you and we'll run the other direction. And I think that's something that a lot of people don't realize because of kind of the exaggerations with stories in our society. People think that just because a wolf is a predator, they might be threatening or aggressive towards people, which it can happen. I'm not saying that's impossible. It is very unlikely. And there are ways to go about handling a wolf encounter properly. I would always suggest just making yourself look as big as possible, menacing, aggressive, scream at the wolf, throw things at the wolf, chase the wolf. I've done

all these things. If I've felt like a wolf has gotten a little bit too curious and, you know, I've never had an issue. And again, with all the time that I have spent in the woods, going to areas that wolves have directly spent time in, if anybody was going to get attacked by a wolf, it probably would have been me by now. And I, you know, I still have not had any situation where I've truly felt fear around a wolf. But I still respect them as the wild animal that they are. And, you know, there is still like a little bit of an unpredictability about them. But it's not really something that I have come to fear through my experiences and knowledge. What did you think of the two stories that I told you about that we had on this show? Well, I mean,

I think both sound pretty terrifying in their own ways. I am a little bit skeptical maybe because I haven't experienced something like that. And I come from a very scientific background, but I'm not really one to discredit anyone's experiences, especially because I wasn't there. But yeah, they do sound pretty weird, but terrifying nonetheless, I don't really know what I would do if I was in a situation like that other than try to get away. Do wolves ever get up on their legs? I mean, a theme of a lot of these stories, especially with the Michigan dog man, is bipedal behavior. Like, do wolves get up on their hind legs? And if so, why?

So in short, no, they do not. While dogs and wolves may occasionally rise on their hind legs for brief periods, this is often when they're trying to reach or interact with something. this is not a natural and definitely not an effective way for moving for them. They are quadru pods, so that means that they walk on four legs while we are bipeds and we walk on two. And dogs like wolves, they're built for movement on all fours. And their skeletal and muscular structures are designed for speed and endurance when chasing fast-moving prey. So not for upright bipedal walking.

This would not be energetically efficient for them. they wouldn't be able to sustain the speed and distances that they'd need to take down these fast-moving prey, like deer, elk, bison, wolves also have these elongated limbs and specialized joints that make them excellent runners and excellent for endurance, but they are definitely not built for walking on two legs like humans. So that being said, like, what do you think of this story of something that looked like a wolf rising up on its hind legs and running full sprint? Definitely interesting. And I think stories like this, kind of just like stories in general, they often might arise from like a mix of human imagination and encounters with wildlife. I think wolves in particular have been a source of mystery and fascination due to their elusive nature and behaviors. You said that's really unlikely, but is it impossible? Is it a possibility that he saw a wolf displaying strange behavior?

And is it common for wolves to display strange behavior, or what an average person might think is strange? No, it is not impossible for wolves to go up on their hind legs. I have seen wolves on their hind legs jumping for things and kind of bouncing. Like if a crow flies around to kill, I've seen wolves get up on their hind legs and like snap at the air and try to get at them. But it's not like a way that they would choose to typically move. What do you think of this whole Michigan dog man thing? Did you get a chance to look into this at all?

Like what do you think of that whole legend? I mean, growing up in northern Illinois, there's a town that was less than an hour away from me that kind of had a similar dog man story. and I think I kind of grew up hearing about like certain creepy things in the woods and I always took an interest in them. I guess folklore in general. I think it's really fascinating. And again, I think that these stories often arise from like the mix of human imagination and encounters with wildlife. Folklore and myths, especially in like certain Western narratives, have long painted wolves as symbols of danger and destruction. Many of us grew up hearing the tale of the big bad wolf. I did, but I always like to remind myself, too, that not everybody shares that perspective.

And some native cultures specifically have a different narrative, one where wolves are seen as brothers and their fate is tied to their own. So I think it's kind of like our views on wolves might be shaped by what we're exposed to growing up. And if people are, people that you are around fear or hate wolves, you know, you might too. And if you grow up respecting them, that perspective stays with you as well. Beyond cultural narratives, human wolf conflict is often intensified by bad press and misinformation. You know, there's a lot of stuff out there about wolf depredation on livestock. And that's a huge conversation point when it comes to wolves. But here in North America, there's only been a fear.

few cases of wolves actually attacking and killing people. And by a few, I mean like two, but nothing in the lower. There's been no reported attack in modern history, at least of wolves attacking or killing people. How has the fear of wolves affected the wolf population in North America? Yeah, that's a good question. It has deeply affected the wolf population. You know, I think when Western settlers came in. They had ideas about things and kind of this idea that, you know, I guess like, I believe our attitudes towards wolves say more about us than like the animals themselves. I think wolves represent the unknown, the wild, and like untamed aspects of nature. And these are things that humans have long struggled to control and they can be unsettling.

And I think that we came in with this idea that we wanted to conquer. nature and wolves, along with other predators, were kind of looked at as just nuisance vermin that made living harder. And instead of trying to find a way to work alongside our wildlife, we just resorted to killing. So wolves were about the most widespread land carnivore mammal that we had here in North America. And due to predator eradication, wolves were completely eliminated. from the lower 48 states. Wolves along with other predators were eliminated, but wolves kind of got hit the hardest. They lived in just about every state across every different type of ecosystem and were completely eradicated. Wolves do have a place in the ecosystem and a pretty important one as an

apex predator. And after the eradication efforts, in the 1970s, we created the Endangered Species Act, kind of revolved around the wolf so that we could bring wolves back. back to places that they historically lived. And the hope is that we can have wolves be able to safely move into places like Wyoming and Idaho down to Colorado and eventually meet up with a small population of wolves, Mexican gray wolves in New Mexico and Arizona and kind of start having more genetic connectivity throughout the populations there. So, Maeve, it sounds like you're a little skeptical of my dogman stories here.

Yeah, I could maybe say that. That's your job, though, right? It is, yes. I am very science-based. I believe in data. Like, I really like to see hardcore data to, you know, start being able to draw conclusions. But, you know, that is the professional side of me. But then there's also the side of me as a biologist.

I would think that having other species that are not yet discovered, even though we've probably been living alongside of them. is really interesting to me. But yeah, I can't really draw too many conclusions until I see evidence. I wanted to ask you, what do you think about the hyper focus on wolves in terms of paranormal beliefs, folklore, things like that? I mean, I know it's really easy for people to say that it's a frightening animal. People are scaring themselves, imagining things, but, you know, you really don't see stories like this about bears, not only that these stories exist across cultures throughout

history, people having weird experiences specifically with wolves. What do you think of that pattern? Yeah, I think that alone is super fascinating, especially long before modern technology allowed people to really communicate across continents and different cultures and people groups developed eerily similar folklore and stories, like, tales of large, mysterious creatures whether they're wolves like we're talking about or Bigfoot, the Yeti or even dragons like exist across vastly different cultures. Yeah, it's just really interesting despite having no known way of sharing these legends at the time. It makes me wonder like, why do these themes persist in human history? And while we can't draw definitive conclusion, it's, it is really compelling

to consider how our ancestors living in different environments and places arrived at such similar narratives about the creatures. As a person who works with wolves, like, do you hear any strange stories about them? Are there any patterns to strange behaviors or experiences people have with wolves that you hear? For sure. I mean, I hear a lot of stories where, you know, they were out in the woods alone and got surrounded by this massive pack of wolves. And, you know, they were so scared that they had to climb up a tree and escape.

I hear things like that all the time. I've heard many stories about people just being out in the wilderness going down a trail or a road and seeing this wolf track that was like the size of a dinner plate. I've heard that quite a bit. Or just wolves being like these massive, massive creatures, you know, that are 200 plus pounds. Which is really funny because actually up in northern Minnesota where I work, the average size, the weight of a wolf is around 60 to 62 pounds. They really don't get too big.

Mave, I have to ask, have you ever had any strange experiences of your own while you're in the woods? Hesitant for this. But yes. Really? Yeah, I mean, I've had this, I had one moment that I keep kind of going back to and really wondering, like, what actually happened. And in the moment, it was really terrifying. But kind of having some time away from it, I have different ideas of, I guess, what I could have seen or what happened.

Are you willing to share this? Yeah, I'll share. So a big part of my job, again, is just going out into the woods and figuring out what wolves are doing based on the GPS locations. We also work with a large array of remote trail cameras. So on this day, I was maintaining a series of cameras that we had way out in the middle of nowhere, you know, in a lot of places that we hike, I feel like people really haven't been in centuries because it, the places are just really unappealing. You know, there's a lot of

like walking through swamps and bogs and like super thick forests with mosquitoes and ticks and everything. So I was way out there kind of going down a little game trail and I was using my phone to track the trail I was on and seeing exactly how far away I was from the camera. It just kind of it felt like a lot of things went silent around me. And a lot of times when that happens in the natural world, that kind of means there's a predator or something that prey animals or birds feel that they need to conceal themselves around. So I, you know, deafening silence kind of. And I hear a snap of a twig or something in front of me. And I look up for my phone and I see something, not exactly sure what it was, but it was large about the size of the small sapling trees that are. You know,

were around the game trail. I was walking down, so maybe anywhere from like six to eight feet tall. And it's just this mass. I didn't really see any definitive features to cue me into what it was other than it being gray. You know, I froze for sure. And I'm one of those people that kind of freezes in situations to try to get like a grasp of what could be going on. And I wanted to know how to appropriately react to the situation.

with whatever wildlife I was about to encounter, so I kind of just froze there. I'm literally employed to identify animals, and I'm very well-versed with animals up in northern Minnesota, and I still can't really describe what it was or what I even think happened. The only thing that I really remember is just gray. And it happened so fast, and it moved just in to the woods and out of sight. And I remember sitting there still in the silence and all I could hear. And I just remember this moment very clearly was just boom, boom, boom, just three very distinct bipedal steps going into the woods. And then nothing. It was silent. It kind of just felt and seemed like it disappeared because nothing else happened after those three steps. And I kind of snapped back to

and dove into a bush next to me because then I was like, okay, what is something's going on here? I don't know what just went into the woods. And just that feeling of like not knowing what's around you is very scary. I stood just trying to hear anything else because I figured if it was a moose, I would be able to pick up on that a little bit more because moose are also very elusive and scared to people, but they're huge animals. And when they get scared and start running through the woods, you're going to hear it. And they're going to hear their hooves hit the ground and their distinct gate with their four legs crashing through the woods, hitting branches as they go, snapping

logs and twigs and just creating a whole mess. But all I heard was silence and those three steps and nothing else. Yeah. So that, I guess, is my story. And I don't really have any other conclusions other than like something was there. It was definitely alive. And I think the scariest thing that I could think of is honestly just a man being randomly out in the woods where I was and disappeared into the woods next to me. I consider myself to be pretty agile in the woods, but I don't know. Who else has that much experience going through the woods where I was and why anybody would be out there. But yeah, it just kind of disappeared. How does that make you feel, especially in the context of your skepticism towards what we've been talking about?

Part of me feels like really frustrated that I couldn't figure out what it was because I really love seeing animals out and being able to like keep this list of like all these wild creatures that I've seen. And I think that's been kind of gnawing at me a little bit is not exactly knowing what I saw whatever it was. But yeah, I think that that must be the most frustrating part is just kind of not really knowing what was there. And I guess needing that validation and like the proof with my science side of the brain. But then like the curious part of me really was like, well, what was that?

Like, I don't know. It's hard to say. The biologist, like researcher side to me is very data oriented and very focused on science and needing like definitive answers. But then there is this other side of me, like my personal side, I guess, that is super interested in all these other things, you know, that we will never be able to explain and never have answers for just because that's the world. And I don't think we were meant to know everything. You know, I've had interesting, like, unexplainable things happen that, like, I can't really draw conclusions from. But I do know that we have these animal populations that live at such low densities, whether they're endangered or threatened, you know, kind of like how wolves used to be, to me, it makes me think that,

and especially in the area that I've worked at, I've had to go and try to recover some of our dead study animals. And even though we know pretty much exactly where they are due to their GPS callers, it still can be incredibly hard to document things and to gain data into. recover animals that have passed. So it kind of makes me think that if there are other populations, part of me really is so curious and I want to like just know more and to be able to prove some of these theories and these like stories from folklore would be super interesting to me because how are all these different people across time coming up with such similar stories? it just piques my interest quite a bit.

And just knowing what I know about, you know, more rare or elusive animals, they are hard to find even in modern day with the technology that we have. And we're still discovering new species, especially in the ocean. The ocean's not even like, it's barely been explored and researched. And we're still finding out so much more. I kind of think both sides blend a little bit that, you know, I'd like that hardcore data and science. but I am also super curious to the aspects that we don't know. And we're still trying to figure out. And again, going back to wolves,

they are some of the most studied land mammals and carnivores of all time. And we are still learning really important, fundamental things about them and their ecology. So the fact that something else could be out there, like something, some real aspects to these stories that people have is, yeah, just very compelling to me. always open to it because I'm super curious. But again, it's just like one of those things that I'd really like to see some proof.

Okay. Thank you to Mave for speaking with me. If you want to learn more about the work her and her organization does, they're called the Voyager's Wolf Project. I love it when I get an unexpected otherworld story like that, especially when it comes from somebody like Mave. I was not entirely surprised by her skepticism about the Michigan Dogman. That point of view was kind of why I wanted to get somebody like her on the show to talk about this. One thing that did stick out to me was near the end when she mentioned how hard it is to recover bodies of wolves in the wild, even when they know the exact GPS locations of where

they should be. I feel like anytime the existence of a mysterious creature gets brought up, people end up asking, why haven't they found any remains yet? It's a very fair question, but it's interesting to know that that's harder to do than most people realize. In terms of the Michigan Dogman, I think it's safe to say that the origins are a hoax. Steve made that pretty clear. But I don't think that means that all the people who have experienced something strange in Michigan related to wolves or dogs are just imagining it or creating a hoax themselves. My thoughts are that when people experience things like this, it's very confusing and stabilizing. And lots of times they go out looking for answers. I think the Michigan Dogman created a name and it gave.

people in Michigan an answer to something that they didn't have an answer for before. People were suddenly able to apply a name to something that they had experienced long ago and something that people continued to experience. I think assigning names and categories to this stuff can be a bit of a distraction sometimes. That's one of the reasons why I rarely do it. I consciously avoid coming in at the end of these episodes and saying things like, this person clearly encountered a dog man. I mean, how could I or anyone possibly know that anyway? But when it comes to the paranormal, I really believe that this stuff could be caused by many, many different things, or maybe a lot of it could all be connected to one thing. I have no idea. All of these. All of these.

experiences that we cover on the show could be connected to many different individual things or maybe there's a few things causing it all or maybe it's all just one thing. I have no idea. People have had strange experiences with wolves throughout time

and there is folklore from cultures all over the world. It's not just happening in Michigan. I think it's a really interesting pattern and I honestly hope we get more stories like this in the future. because if we're ever going to find answers to some of this stuff, I think the first step is to find patterns between these very strange experiences that people have.

That brings us to the end of this episode. I want to thank Emerson, Grace, Nancy, Steve Cook, and Maeve Rogers for speaking to us for this series. By the way, Steve Cook's album, The Legend of Michigan's Dogman, 25th anniversary collector's edition is available on Spotify for streaming if you're interested. It includes 10 different versions of the famous song. This has been The Michigan Dogman

Part 2, 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 North Americans. This episode was edited and engineered by Theo Schaefer. Our artwork is by Coldestack Studios. Nikki Kate Delgado is our associate producer, production help by Haley Pearson.

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