The Legendary Dogman
Some eyewitnesses are convinced they have seen it — like one man who posted his opinion on an Internet message board.
“If you also live anywhere north of Grand Rapids in Michigan, how can you not know about the Dogman? It is one of the largest legends in the area and the story has been around for years,” he wrote. “It seems to me it is more than just a huge fantasy.”
The Dogman is reported to have a canine-like head, human-like body, reflective eyes and walks upright.
According to one Ottawa County resident, a creature fitting the description of the Dogman appeared in Grand Haven from 1993-94. “Ben,” who was a young teenager at the time, claims to have seen the creature not once, but three times. He believes each time he was seeing a different creature, in what could have been a pack taking refuge in a Grand Haven Township park.
In 1993, after dark, Ben was hiking the trails in Hofma Nature Preserve with as many as four friends when, passing the float bridge near the center of the preserve, they heard a sound to their right. Ben spied what resembled a dog standing behind a tree on a ridge above, approximately 70 feet away.
“I thought it was just a dog walking along, then it stood up on its hind legs,” Ben said. “One of its feet gripped a branch on the tree. Our eyes met and we just stared at each other for about five minutes, then it ran off.”
According to Ben, the second encounter occurred in December that same year in the driveway of his family’s home on Lakeshore Drive. Ben went outdoors in the cold to start his mother’s car.
“I only made it as far as the front bumper of the car,” he said.
The creature then rose up from behind the vehicle.
“It stood up on its hind legs, it had yellow eyes,” he explained. “I’m 6 foot, 8 inches tall, and it was staring down at me. I froze and began crying out.”
The creature took three incredible leaps and disappeared into the brush as Ben's family rushed out to the driveway.
According to Ben, his third encounter with the creature took place in 1994 when he and a cousin were walking after dark in the direction of the beach from Lakeshore Drive along the edges of dunes. As the two watched a deer standing in a clearing, an enormous dog-like creature rapidly snatched the animal and carried it off into the brush.
“We went down to the spot, and you could see where the deer tracks ended,” Ben said. “They vanished, leaving only tracks from that thing.”
There is also a tale that in early 1994 a car on Lakeshore Drive was involved in a collision with a large animal. It is said the occupants of the vehicle were uninjured and police determined it was a deer strike. The tale includes a witness that claimed gray fur covered the grill of the wrecked vehicle, but no blood or animal carcass was found. It was said the driver couldn’t explain what he hit.
As fantastic as the tales are, area folks have told similar stories for more than 50 years.
One of merit is from Robert Fortney, who may have encountered the beast as he stood on the banks of the Muskegon River in 1938. It was reported that a large black “dog” reared up on its hind legs and stared at Fortney, who shot at the creature, which then fled.
“I wouldn’t want to call it a Dogman,” he reportedly said, but relayed that he did not know what to call the canine that walked like a man.
What many have pointed to as the best evidence supporting the existence of a Dogman was the Gable film, a video transfer of what was claimed to be a mid-1970s home movie showing the creature. However, the film was proven to be fake in 2010 — even its creators admitted it was a hoax.
Dogman in Grand Haven? It's hard to imagine, but at least it keeps the legend alive and barking. - Grand Haven Tribune
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Year of the Dogman
Phantoms & Monsters: Cryptid Encounters
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Wedding halted...barn owl flies off with rings
This was the moment a church wedding had to be halted halfway through the service – because a barn owl that was supposed to deliver the rings to the groom decided he liked it better in the rafters.
So instead of swooping in over the heads of the astonished wedding guests, and with the rings still attached to the ribbons around his feet, Darcey the barn owl flew across Holy Cross Church in Sherston, Wiltshire, and soared up to roof.
He liked it so much up there that he fell asleep for an hour, and no amount of coaxing and calling would make him come back down and deliver the rings. After halting the service for a few minutes, the vicar, the Rev Chris Bryan, decided to continue with the owl high above him, and the bride and groom used a back-up set of wedding rings.
“It was a lovely idea, and it was supposed to be really stunning – it would have been absolutely superb… if it worked,” said Mr Bryan.
“It was a complete surprise to the groom, although the bride was in on it. It was the bride’s mother’s idea. The groom is into falconry as a bit of a hobby and so it was secretly arranged for two falconers to suddenly appear at the moment when the best man hands over the rings. This chap popped up at the front of the church next to us with a gauntlet on, as another chap appeared at the back of the church with a box. The owl appeared, and took a bit of coaxing to take to flight.
“It paused for a little bit, eventually saw the gauntlet, took off but then instead of landing on the arm of the man by us and delivering the rings, it went up over our heads and landed up in the roof space.
“The idea was it would be amazing and would swoop over the heads of the guests, and they’d all feel the air rushing from its wings, but it didn’t quite work like that.
“We all had a bit of a laugh about it, and then we tried to get it down, but it didn’t come. In fact it fell asleep. It presumably thought ‘I’m a barn owl, this is like a barn’.
“We had a plan B. They say never work with animals, so we had a back-up pair of rings. After a few minutes, we gave up trying to get it down and carried on. It was actually rather nice when we went up for prayers and the owl was right above us,” he added.
The couple, from Oxfordshire, continued with their day on Saturday with the owl snoozing happily on.
“The chaps were there for probably an hour, and in the end had to get a long ladder to go up and get it down,” added Mr Bryan. “I thought it would be a really beautiful and interesting thing to do at a wedding.
“It’s important that people realise that a church wedding doesn’t just come as a package of things you have to do, and there’s no room for creativity. I’m all for including something of the personality and individuality of the couple getting married,” he added. - Bath Chronicle
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2013 Mothman Festival in 12th Year: September 21st-22nd, 2013
The Mothman Festival is celebrating it's 12th year. Come celebrate with us this year in Downtown Point Pleasant! We are planning some big things for the next decade of fun and weirdness. Don't know what the Mothman Festival is? Click below to find out more.
Mothman Festival
Phantoms & Monsters: Cryptid Encounters
The Mothman Prophecies
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UFO Encounters in Oklahoma
I received the following from my colleague David Garrison...a letter he received from a reader:
I want to tell you about a couple of odd things that have been going on around our area. My oldest daughter and I were coming home from Walmart about 40 minutes from our house when we saw a very odd and LARGE light along the road we were driving down. My daughter became more concerned as we neared the light and it was getting larger and larger. There are no large lights in the air along this particular section of the road. I tried to get a photo of the lights but could not get a picture. When we were nearly underneath this object my daughter had a better view of the object which was making no discernable noise at that point. It was arced with two long boxy looking projections off the front. There were what looked like 4-5 "windows" in the front portion of this thing and the hair on our bodies was standing up. My daughter sped up to get past this area because she said it made her sick to her stomach and quite frankly she sped all the rest of the way home. Approximately half a mile past the object we heard what sounded like extremely muted jet engines revving up and when I looked back toward the object it was just GONE, no trail no sound trail of engines leaving an area, it was just no longer there! When we got just outside of the next town before ours, while looking southward I was able to detect a long upright object which was glowing entirely too brightly in the southern sky which looked to be at least 4-5 stories high and at least that high off the ground, it too disappeared shortly after sighting. To make this even stranger, the area this second one is in has NO building that are higher than 3 stories period. Just odd, and wanted to share with you.
Followup:
The sighting was about a mile east of Arcadia, Oklahoma. I got one photo but all that it shows is a blur. My daughter was horribly disappointed as well. The second sighting was close to a town by the name of Jones, Oklahoma possibly Harrah, Oklahoma, hard to say since it was quite distant.
My daughter has been having a rash of sightings fairly late at night when she is headed home from work or when she is going to Shawnee, OK to visit my niece. She has been extremely "freaked out" by these sightings. It just so happened that when we had the one outside of Arcadia I was with her.
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