Soon afterwards a group of soldiers stationed at Fort Hill also claimed to have seen the werewolf and freely admitted that the sight had frightened them. One elderly gentlemen named Donald Childs is alleged to have suffered a heart attack after observing the monster on its hands and knees trying to drink water from his empty front yard fish pond. When released from the hospital two days later he told police that the creature was tall, covered with hair, including his face, and wore ill-fitting trousers.
Another werewolf-type inhumanoid allegedly attacked a railway worker from Defiance, Ohio on July 31st, 1972. It was nine feet tall, the witness claimed, with a wolf-like head and long fangs. It had sneaked up to him in the early morning darkness and clobbered him with a short length of two-by-four! Other witnesses chimed in, describing the beast as “human,” with an over-sized wolf’s head, glowing red eyes and an elongated snout. Other witnesses said that it “stood between six and eight feet in height, had huge, hairy feet, fangs, and ran ‘from side to side’ like a caveman in the movies.”
Another biform enigma, said to resemble the classic werewolf, was seen near an area known as Silver Run in Caroll County, Maryland that same year, and again some twenty years later near the Pennsylvania border.
In September, 1976, two northern California hunters claimed to see a huge dark shape standing about a quarter-mile away in a fast-flowing river. At first they thought it was a bear, they said, but when they approached for a closer look the creature waded out, on two legs, to the far bank where it turned and stared at the men. They described the thing as between eight and nine feet tall, two-legged and upright. It was covered with black hair, they said, and had a face that appeared to be a mixture of a dog and a man. The creature’s tracks revealed a four to five foot long stride.
According to a 1987 newspaper article in Traverse City, Michigan’s Record Eagle, these Dogmen are even capable of swimming after their prey. The article recounted an old lumberjack’s tale involving two fishermen trying their luck (which was none too good as it turned out) in Claybank Lake. Author Linda Godfrey, the world’s leading Dogman authority, summarizes the tale in her 2008 work, ‘Lake and Sea Monsters.’ She writes:
“As the sun was about to set, they (the two anglers) began packing their lines and lures and were ready to row to shore when they spotted an animal swimming towards them. One of the men owned a coonhound, and the pair figured the dog had somehow gotten loose on shore and plunged into the lake to find its master. But as the supposed coonhound paddled closer, the men realized they were mistaken. What they had taken for a coonhound had a dog’s head, but the body looked strangely man-like.
The men panicked when the creature began to climb into the boat. Wielding oars, they clubbed the scary and baffling animal to prevent it from coming aboard. Eventually it gave up and slunk back into the lake and the men were able to row back to shore. Michigan reporter Sheila Wissner later contacted one of the men, but he was still too spooked to talk more about the animal.”
The Beast of Bray Road
Perhaps the most famous and well-publicized of all modern-day werewolf encounters, the Beast of Bray Road came to the forefront of Forteana in the early 1990s largely due to the efforts of one woman, Linda Godfrey, who covered the subject for the Wisconsin newspaper where she worked.
Lorainne Endrizzi, a twenty-four-year-old Elkhorn, Wisconsin woman driving home alone one evening in the fall of 1989, rounded a corner on Bray Road when she saw what she thought was a person crouched over in the gravel at the edge of the road. Curious as to what the “man” might be up to, she slowed down, then the thing lifted its head, turned and looked right at her.
She later described the beast’s appearance as a wolf-like humanoid, with a long snout and eyes that glowed yellow in the headlights. It was covered with gray-brown hair, she claimed, had large fangs, pointed ears, muscular human-like arms and an extremely wide chest. It looked to be eating a dead animal, perhaps roadkill, which it still held in its hands. It just squatted there on the side of the road, completely unafraid, and stared evilly at the witness as she drove by.
(Illustration of creature © by Linda Godfrey)
The woman, understandably jostled, stepped on the gas and got out of there. Later, while visiting a library, she found a book with an illustration of a werewolf and was astounded by the similarity to the beast she saw.
There had been similar inhumanoid appearances in the area, it seems, but before the Bray road incident such encounters seemed to be put in the same category as the local unexplained lights and legends of the Skinwalkers and dismissed. The first Elkhorn werewolf reports were, not surprisingly, met with laughter. At first, Mrs. Godfrey thought the werewolf sightings would just go away like they always do. But the reports kept coming in. On a foggy night in the autumn of 1991, the beast surfaced again on Bray road. Another female motorist, Doristine Gibson, had at first thought she had run over something in the fog, so she pulled over, stopped the car and got out to take a look. She stood there for a few moments behind the car, eyes searching the roadside trying to pierce through the fog. Then she saw it; a huge, hairy, muscular inhumanoid running towards her through the darkness and fog.
How it must have filled her soul with terror to see such a sight. Luckily for her, she didn’t freeze or become paralyzed with fear as many other inhumanoid witnesses report. Not even taking the time to scream, the woman scrambled back into her car, locking the doors just in the nick of time as the frothing beast, in a clear display of human intelligence, began tugging at the door handle. It was covered with long brown hair, she said of the werewolf, and had a large muscular chest like that of a weightlifter. She stomped on the gas pedal and peeled out of the area just as fast as she could go.
The monster reports became more frequent, all from the same general area and all involving terrified witnesses claiming to have seen a creature that they all described the same. A “werewolf.” It had glowing eyes and was larger than a man, many witnesses claimed, and exhibited both bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion.
A twelve-year-old girl claimed that she and a group of friends had sighted what they thought was a large dog while walking near a snow-covered cornfield. They began to call to it and it turned and looked at them, then rose up menacingly on its hind legs and stood there like a man. The children screamed out in alarm as the beast dropped back down on all fours and started running toward them. Luckily for them, when the creature neared, it inexplicably veered off in another direction and ran away.
As the bizarre subject began to be taken more seriously, similar cases which had taken place in the 1960s and ‘70s, and even earlier, soon emerged again. In 1936, for example, a security guard in Jefferson County, while making his rounds one evening saw a tall, hairy creature kneeling on a small hill, clawing savagely at the dirt as if digging for something. The creature ran off, on two legs, as he approached the hill.
The following evening he stopped at the same location and saw marks on the ground that the thing had made. Moreover, he recognized that the hill he was standing on was an old Indian burial mound. The following evening he again saw the beast, this time standing in a threatening manner and giving off a foul odor. The area has remained an active one throughout the years.
In 2001 in Henrico County, Virginia, residents were alarmed by a peculiar wave of ‘howling’ sounds coming from several different locations. Soon things were being seen as well. Multiple independent witnesses claimed to see a strange pack of white wolves acting very oddly, strolling mechanically, as if entranced, along roadsides and resident’s back yards. The unsettling presence of the lupine intruders merely presaged the appearance of something far more sinister. Other witnesses in the area of Battlefield Park claimed to have seen a horrifying beast-man. It was described as man-like and covered with dark gray hair. It stood over six feet tall on two legs, like a man, they claimed; but ran on all fours like a dog. The entire area is said to have a history of such sightings spanning decades.
Could some of thes
e creatures be blood-thirsty? Even killers? There is no doubt. In March 2004 in the Ajeuela Province of Costa Rica, two witnesses, a man and his son, heard a commotion from the henhouse and went out to investigate. On arriving they found the hens strangely quiet, and they soon saw why. There, standing in the beam of their flashlights, was a black-colored animal with a long tail. It resembled a small dog, they said, but was standing on two legs. Frightened by the flashlights, the thing fled swiftly into the darkness leaving behind over twenty dead chickens which had been drained of all their blood through two small holes in their backs; presumably left by the fangs of the creature. None of the meat had been touched.
Patricia Law of Pikeville, Tennessee got the shock of her life while driving one night down a lonely stretch of highway in the winter of 2003/04. She spotted what, at first, she took to be a darkly-clothed hitchhiker. When her vehicle neared and the man turned to face her, she was horrified to see that it was no hitchhiker at all, but a terrifying, hair-covered Inhumanoid with the head and face of a snarling wolf. It walked on two legs, she alleged, and, as we have come to expect by now, had a long, lupine snout and sharp-looking teeth.
A Kenosha County, Wisconsin man claimed to have seen a werewolf-like Inhumanoid near Powers Lake on two separate occasions in mid-February and again on April 25th, 2006. The events all took place as he was returning home from work around 3:00 a.m. driving down the same stretch of road. The first time he saw the creature, he said, it was crouching down in a roadside ditch.
As he watched it, the thing stood up on its hind legs, arms down at its sides “...like a human’s” and glowered at him, apparently unafraid of his presence, with glowing yellow eyes. He further described the beast as hirsute with a wolf-like head with pointed ears, lupine hind-legs and a long, bushy tail. He’d seen the creature crossing the road on all fours as well and, in this position, he estimated the creature’s length as five feet from nose to rump. Its back was around three feet off the ground. He also noted that when it stood it appeared slightly hunched over. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen before, the witness claimed, and he has no idea what it was. He started carrying a camera to work with him after the sightings.
Werewolves of Kentucky
As I illustrated in my first book, ‘Mysterious Kentucky,’ (Vol.1) the Bluegrass State has a long history of encounters with such lupine terrors. The ‘old timers’ of the region, when describing creatures of this nature, still call the beasts ‘Werewolves,’ just like they did in the days of old. They know nothing of ‘cryptozoology’ and have never heard the term ‘Dogman.’
Sightings of these monsters are not taken lightly, either. Perhaps one reason for such trepidation regarding these creatures; if their frightful appearance alone isn’t enough; is the commonly recurring theme in many Kentucky Dogman reports of violent and aggressive behavior towards both humans and animals. Such reports are commonly linked, at least to the casual investigator, to the ‘Bigfoot’ phenomenon.
Even many seasoned researchers feel that most, if not all, Dogman encounters are simply cases of mistaken identity in which a Bigfoot is seen under less than favorable conditions and merely ‘looked’ like it had a canine snout, fangs, long, pointed ears and talons. In truth there can be no doubt that these are two entirely different creatures. If Bigfoot have nightmares, then it is these Dogmen that they are most likely dreaming of.
Friend and fellow Fortean, the Rev. Joshua Sparks, of eastern Kentucky, related to me during a conversation in 2006 how his aunt, Jeannie, had been badly frightened while driving to work one morning just before dawn in Boyd County back in 1975. She had taken the shortcut route from Ashland to Catlettsburg and Rt. 168 was a typical Kentucky country road, narrow and tree-lined and, for this reason, the woman wasn’t traveling at a high rate of speed.
As she rounded a curve she noticed something moving off to the side of the road only a short distance away. When the vehicle’s headlights swung around, she saw what appeared to be some type of dark, hairy animal walking upright on its hind legs near the road. It had stopped abruptly when the lights hit it, and remained motionless as the car approached.
On drawing closer, she saw that it was about six feet tall with ‘long, dark, shaggy hair all over it.’ It didn’t appear scared and made no move to run away as the vehicle approached, but simply stared at her through the window as she drove by.
“I will never forget it,” she said. “It looked just like a werewolf.” It had an elongated nose, or snout, like a dog’s, and long, sharp looking teeth, she claimed. Strangely, as she drove by this creature and made eye contact with it she was struck with the peculiar sensation that “time had just slowed down,” like she was moving in slow motion. It was a very odd and frightening feeling to her even though the creature itself had never made a threatening move in her direction, nor any movement at all, as she passed; it just stood there glaring at her. Of course she didn’t stop.
Boyd county, especially the area in and around Ashland, has a history of hairy biped sightings usually associated with the Bigfoot phenomenon but, strangely enough, reports of ‘Dogmen’ are commonly present in the same areas where Bigfoot activity is allegedly witnessed. There can be no confusion between the two, however, when examining the many local werewolf legends to be found throughout the Bluegrass State. Ashland has its own legend concerning these nightmarish beasts which are said to be regular ‘haunts’ of a local cemetery situated in the southern part of the city.
Of all the many strange things which have reportedly been encountered in this location, surely the werewolf is the most frightening. In all likelihood, the legend is as old as human settlement in the area but, more recently, several bizarre events were said to have taken place in the Ashland Kentucky Cemetery back in the 1980’s when this creature seemed to be at its most active. Many who had seen this thing said that it could run both on two legs and on all four and was capable of leaping, from a standstill, completely over the ten-foot-high gate at the graveyard’s entrance.
The animal seemed to delight in chasing humans and, thankfully for the town, stopping or turning away just before its prey was reached. Encounters with the beast invariably took place at night. The local werewolf soon became the talk of the town and it didn’t take long before the local police were sent to check out the scene of one of these disturbances.
Once inside the cemetery gate they made their rounds, shining their flashlights among the headstones. Then the beast appeared in all its terrifying glory, at which point both of the armed officers turned and immediately fled for the front gates and the safety of their patrol car with the werewolf nipping at their heels. To their great dismay, they found the gate inexplicably shut and locked, effectively trapping them inside with the creature. Several citizens, it is said, heard the terrified officers screaming for help over their police-band radios that evening but, the extent of their injuries, if they were injured at all, has never been officially disclosed.
One Dogman witness claimed that he had seen the creature twice on different occasions while crossing the cemetery at night. The first time he saw it, he said, he was walking through the graveyard when the lights from a passing car shined on this ‘evil looking thing with a wolf-head and fangs’ as it ducked down behind a gravestone. He bravely walked over to investigate but there was nothing there. His second encounter cured him of any notions of bravery concerning the beast, however.
This time he was accompanied by several friends and family members when, according to Sparks, the creature appeared and began to chase them on all fours. They all ran completely through the surrounding woods, all the way to the Southside swimming pool before the werewolf turned away and disappeared back into the trees. They all said that it ran very swiftly and probably could’ve caught them easily if it had wanted to.
The same could be said for many, if not all, other Dogman encounters, I’m sure. In any event, reports of the werewolf persisted in the area. In 1991, two witnesses had gone out one night, again in Ashland, to investiga
te a supposedly haunted bridge that was located in an isolated, hilly, wooded area in Boyd County. While at the bridge they heard rustling sounds coming from the woods about 50 yards away in the direction of an old barn. Thinking it might be a deer, they decided to walk to the barn to try and get a look at it.
Suddenly, a loud, deafening “scream-roar-growl” noise and the sounds of heavy footsteps came from a field adjacent to them and, when they looked, they saw running towards them on all fours a massive creature with long, shaggy hair. It stopped about fifteen feet away from the witnesses and stood up revealing its full height of an estimated sixteen feet!
Naturally, the two ran for the car with the creature reportedly giving chase. Fortunately for them, as they reached their car another vehicle drove past and apparently scared the beast away. It was described as being man-like in appearance with a wolf-like head. The two reportedly came back to the location the next day and claimed to find some rather weird looking tracks in the field.
Another sighting took place in nearby Greenup County around the year 2001 as a young man and his wife were driving home one night in two separate vehicles. Her car had been ‘acting up’ lately so they were using a pair of walkie talkies purchased at a local Wal-Mart in order to stay in constant contact with each other should something go wrong. When she began to slow down the husband asked her what the matter was. She told him that something was running down the middle of the road in front of her, coming in their direction. Then she suddenly slammed on the brakes and screeched to a stop. The thing wasn’t moving now she told him, just standing in the road, and it was some kind of monster.
He could tell by the tone of her panicky voice that she was definitely not joking. He was only a few seconds behind and, as he approached his terrified wife’s automobile, the ‘thing’ she was looking at bounded up and over her car, landing in the road behind it, and started running towards the second vehicle. It was very swift and in a flash it was upon him. He was able to get a good look at the thing before it leaped over his own car and disappeared into the darkness behind them.
The Inhumanoids Page 50
