The Michigan Dogman is a cryptozoological creature first reported in 1887 in Wexford County, Michigan. The creature is described as a seven-foot tall, blue-eyed, or amber-eyed bipedal canine-like animal with the torso of a man and a fearsome howl that sounds like a human scream. According to legends, the Michigan Dogman appears in a ten-year cycle. Sightings have been reported in several locations throughout Michigan, primarily in the northwestern quadrant of the Lower Peninsula. In 1987, the legend of the Michigan Dogman gained popularity when disc jockey Steve Cook at WTCM-FM recorded a song about the creature and its reported sightings.
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History
This creature was unknown to most of the modern world until very late in the twentieth century. It is said to have been stalking the area around the Manistee River since the days when the Odawa tribes lived there.
The first known encounter of the Michigan Dogman occurred in 1887 in Wexford County, when two lumberjacks saw a creature which they described as having a man's body and a dog's head. It has also been spotted many times in the Upper Peninsula by locals. Horses that had died of fright were found nearby, surrounded by dog tracks.
In 1938 in Paris, Michigan, Robert Fortney was attacked by five wild dogs and said that one of the five walked on two legs. Reports of similar creatures also came from Allegan County in the 1950s, and in Manistee and Cross Village in 1967.
Linda S. Godfrey, in her book The Beast of Bray Road, compares the Manistee sightings to a similar creature sighted in Wisconsin known as the Beast of Bray Road.
The Cook Song
In 1987 (100 years after the first reported sighting of the creature), disc jockey Steve Cook at WTCM-FM in Traverse City, Michigan recorded a song titled "The Legend", which he initially played as an April Fool's Day joke. He based the songs on actual reports of the creature.
I made it up completely from my own imagination as an April Fools' prank for the radio and stumbled my way to a legend that goes back all the way to Native American times.
Cook maintains his skepticism about the possibility of a real dogman, he had this to say about the matter:
I'm tremendously skeptical, because I've sort of seen the way folklore becomes built from the creation of this song to what it's turned into ... but I do believe people who think they saw something really did see something. I also think the Dogman provides them with an avenue to explain what they couldn't explain for themselves.
Cook recorded the song with a keyboard backing and credited it to Bob Farley. After he played the song, Cook received calls from listeners who said that they had encountered a similar creature. In the next weeks after Cook first played the song, it was the most-requested song on the station. He also sold cassettes of the songs for four dollars, and donated proceeds from the single to an animal shelter. Over the years, Cook has received more than 100 reports of the creature's existence. In March 2010, the creature was featured in an episode of MonsterQuest.
Cook later added verses to the song in 1997 after hearing a report of an animal break-in by an unknown canine at a cabin in Luther, Michigan. He re-recorded it again in 2007, with a mandolin backing.
Feature film
In late 2011, film Rich Brauer released a film called Dogman, starring Larry Joe Campbell. The movie premiered at the State Theater in Traverse City.
The film included a brief segment of "The Gable Film", used with permission from Mike Agrusa, who received acknowledgement in the film credits.