Tonight's guest wishes to remain anonymous. With that in mind, I'm just going
to call him Mark. Mark, Welcome to the show. Good evening,
Vic, thank you for having me. Well, thanks so much for coming
on. We appreciate your time. Mark. Please give us a brief bio
in yourself. I'm fifty years old, have two daughters that are in their
early twenty spent twenty two years in the military, retired about ten years ago,
spend a little bit of time in law enforcement, decided I really want
to be retired, So now I run my own little business and just tinker
around my house a lot. Nothing wrong with that at all. It sounds
to me like you've carved a really good life out for yourself. And thanks
also for your service to our country. I appreciate it. Thank you,
Vick. I appreciate the sentiment. Well, you know, you're welcome.
Speaking of your time in the military, Mark, from what I understand,
when you were serving in the military, you actually let it slip one time
that you've had a dog me an encounter when work. Can you tell us
about that? Yeah? Absolutely. I was dating a girl back at the
time and we were watching a werewolf movie. We were watching a Silver Bullet
movie and it was a part where he was breaking through a wall or something,
you know, just causing general chaos amongst everyone. And I said to
my girlfriend, I said, ah, that's not true. Werewolves don't attack
you. And she just laughed and that was the end of it, and
we went on a few nights later, we were in the barracks. We
were talking and she says, tell us about your werewolf experience. You know,
I just I giggled and said, she has no, no, no,
no, I know you've got something to tell. So I tell what
had happened. And you know, there was that looked at me like I
was just skeptical. Nope, nobody laughing, joke and yeah, yeah,
yeah about Well, it was later in that week I get called down to
my first Arm's office. And the reason I guess that this was such a
big deal is when I was in the military, my job required that I
have a security clearance. It was a top secret with an identifier. But
it's nothing secret, squirrel or anything like that. It just happened to be
the job that I had which required that security clearance. These clearances, they
are I don't really necessarily understand the process of getting them. But there's a
whole process that involves everything from the FBI to the Secret Service that goes around
doing background. So it can take up to two years to get a full
clearance. So once you have that clearance, it's easy to lose that clearance.
Anything from I missed a car payment to my electric got shut off because
I didn't pay the bill. Anything can cause you to lose that clearance.
So anyway, I was called down and first Arnie says, hey, there's
a rumor going around that you're you had a werewolf experience. And you know,
I knew right off the bat, Hey be careful what you're saying here.
And I was taught to say, look, top, I know we
were drinking, we were having a good time. I was just spending you
on. We were just telling stories. So we you know, he kind
of poked and prodded a little bit and he was convinced, okay, so
you're just telling stories. And that was It had to been close to thirty
years ago, and other than trying to tell my girlfriend one time, maybe
a year or so ago, I've never spoke of it again. I did
not want to take that chance. Can't see I'll blame you. Yeah,
that was pretty close to you losing that clear ends all because your girlfriend decided
to bring that up at a very inopportune time. That's not good. She
was a very inopportune woman. Yeah, sounds like it. And you just
mentioned that your commanding officer's name was Top. Have you ever listened to episode
three nineteen to the show where Big Moo came on and talked about his dog
men experiencing His commanding officer was Top. His name wasn't Top. That's the
military jargon for the first sergeant. He's the senior enlisted within the company,
so his nickname is Top instead of saying first sergeants. There, you know,
you say hey Top. Oh I see, Well, thanks for clearing
that up for me. I'll starting to wonder. Oh yes, sir,
Mark, you were a kid of the seventies and eighties. How would you
sum up how it was different growing up back then compared to what it's like
now for kids present day, night and day. I mean, a telephone
was something that was attached to the wall and your grandma's stayed on it whenever
she was talking to the neighbors or whatever. There was no phones. There
was no Internet. There was you and outside inside we avoided because that's where
adults lived. You stayed outside the house, you stayed in the yard,
you did things on your own. These kids nowadays, it just I'll use
and this isn't derogatory or negative. I'll use my girlfriend in an example.
She's two years younger than me, and her she is just a helicopter parent,
hovering over everything. And I laugh and joke with her, and I
tell her, I said, you know, if I had to estimate my
childhood, I would almost bet ninety percent of my childhood was unaccounted for when
it come to adult supervision. So we were just everywhere. And my grandparents
stay owned six hundred and sixty seven acres. We had a farm doesn't work
today. So we were everywhere, and we had a river that run through
the land, and we were just we were all over. We were everywhere
but the house. We were everywhere but under a parent's nose. And like
I said, you know, obviously the Internet wasn't around, so there was
none of that any type of information we needed. He went to the library.
I come from a town that's so small that even in the mid eighties,
we still had a malt shop in the town we lived in at the
drug store. We had the drug store where people picked up their prescriptions,
and we had a soda jerk there the owner obviously, so we spend a
lot of times there on the times that I did spend in the city with
my cousins or my friends. If you wanted to know where all the kids
in their neighborhood were, you went out and looked for all the bicycles in
the front yard. That's where the kids were. So as far as the
difference between growing up then and growing up now is it's almost to the point
of growing up on two different planets, Isn't that the truth? Yeah,
it really was a different time back then, but so many things have changed.
I mean, we could do a whole show on that. That's right.
The world is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. It is, Yeah,
it definitely is. If you'd like to be able to listen to the
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To find out how, please go to dog Me and Encounters dot com Ford
Slash podcast. The encounter we're going to talk about tonight, Mark happened on
your grandparents property you just told us a few things about it, But what
more can you tell us about it? I come from the Ozark Mountains,
the foothills and the Ozark Mountains. You have to go a little bit more
to get into the full Ozarts. But it's full of hills, it's full
of woods. I would say less than one hundred acres of that property was
actual pasture land. And that was just the stuff around the house. You
know. The rest of the woods, you know, the cattle and stuff
would stay there. One of the things about it, when I was very
very young, my grandfather had taken me out. I was about ten when
he passed away, so this would have been the late seventies. He took
us out. He took me out. He took me into this place,
and to this day, I've tried to find it and I can't find it.
But I know it's there because I've seen it. So he took me
out and showed me what is basically, well, it's not basic to it.
It's an Indian burial ground. I would say there was anywhere from twenty
to thirty burial grounds. And this is I'm talking old stuff from probably the
late maybe mid eighteen hundreds. Because this was all Indian territory back in those
days. And you know, we've obviously moved this way and occupied this part
of the country. So we had that and all along the river that I
was talking about runs through my grandparents land. It's a lot of bottom land,
it's a lot of open fields, and these were big Indian settlements back
in the day. You can walk down on that river, you can just
darn near reach down and just grab a piece of gravel and you're going to
find something that's Indian related, whether it being an arrowhead or part of an
arrowhead, or even maybe a spear, you know, the tip of the
spear or something. The arrowheads and the spear tips are obviously much different.
So the place has a lot of history, a lot of history that we
don't know about, a lot of history that imagine is just lost to time.
Who knows. We also had the state had come in and least several
acres from my grandparents to quarry stone and rocks, basically just for building highways
and whatnot. I would say, back in the eighties and early nineties,
if you drove on a road in northwest Arkansas, that gravel probably came from
my grandparents quarry, so that and with it being a farm, there's not
a whole lot special about it. Just the Indian history, I think,
and the quarry, and just the fact that we had enough room to run
and do what we wanted to do. You're having over six dcres to run
around and get into things. As a kid's heaven to me when I was
growing up, I would have been all over that. Oh. We were
definitely all over it, and we were places we shouldn't have been, for
sure. I'm sure you were. Yeah, I would have been too.
All right, Mark, please tell us about your encounter. Now, give
us every last detail that comes to mind. Absolutely, this would have been
in the late eighties, eighty seven, eighty eight, somewhere around there.
Like I was saying before, you know, we grew up on this land
and we did a lot of honey, We did a lot of fishing,
and during the summers, one of the things that we would do is we
would go down and on the river we would set what's called a trot line
or drop lines, jug lines, things like this. And if you're not
familiar with a trot line, it's just it's a line. It's a nylon
line that you run across the area that you want to fish, and you
bait it with whatever you're baiting it with, whether it being the other little
perch or liver or whatever it is that you're going to bait it with,
and you throw it down and it's good for catching catfish. So we had
run these lines and during the summer, I mean this was a daily thing.
We spent our lives on that river. We spent almost every minute we
had in the summer on that river. So we had run these lines and
we were back home that night my grandparents, and this was probably around midnight,
and that's when we would check them. We would set them around,
you know, before dark, and we'd check them at midnight or around there,
and then we'd go down at daybreak and pull them up so that they
could be said it later again that night. So we were going down to
check them, and this was about midnight. Was myself, my brother,
and my cousin. They're both younger than me by about three years or so.
So this road my grandparents house where the now I don't know if this
is important, it's not really, but my grandfather had passed. He had
passed in the early eighties and This was eighty seven, eighty eight somewhere around
there. So the road going up to my grandparents was just an old dirt
road. It had some gravel on it that the state contracted with my grandparents
to put on the road to keep it a little less muddy. But that
road just basically it ran into the main road, which was a state road.
But he got to understand though, especially where I am from around here,
there wasn't a lot of road maintenance back there. It was just barely
above a dirt road. You know. It was considered paved, but only
during certain times of the year and depending on how high the river got whether
it washingtap thing out. So this road is about probably about half a mile
maybe a little bit further from my grandparents down or to this other main road.
Well, as you're walking down this road towards the main road, the
rock quarry is on your left now because the state, at least this part,
they had come in and put we call them yard lights, I'm sure
just basically street lights or whatever, but they put up telephone poles. So
as you got closer to that road going into the quarry where all the heavy
equipment went into the quarry and whatnot. There was probably I would say about
five of those lights, maybe fifty to one hundred feet apart. There'd be
a light. One hundred feet there'd be a light. One hundred feet there
would be light. So this goes down there's probably five of those to get
to the road, and then on the other side there's another five or so
something like that. So it's well lit. You can see these are big
lightbulbs at light area, very very well. So we're walking down this road
and as we're coming up to the entrance into this quarry, my cousin it
was, I don't remember which one it was, but one of the two
said, hey, look and they point and we can see sitting on the
side of it there's a small berm, a dirt berm that kind of guess
shielded the road from the quarry on the inside. It was a man made
deal. But there was also large boulders on the side of this hill.
Now this boulder had um the one that it was sitting on. It was
it was a little large boulder and hawking, you know, several several tons
that it just they just moved every whatever for Again, I don't know,
I don't know why they did it, but that's how it was. So
they point and I look, and we can see it looks like a coyote.
But the problem is it's solid white. I mean, it's just solid
white. It's down on all fours. And we thought, man, that's
crazy. That's an Albano coyote. You see albino everything, squirrels, raccoons.
I mean, it's just you know, that little thing in nature.
Every once in a while, nature says, I forgot to throw some pigment
in there, so that's what you get. So we thought it was a
coyote. Well, we have been very diligent and keeping the coyote population non
existing around there, and a lot I hear a lot of people complain about
killing coyotes about you know, oh, you guys are out there killing coyotes
and it's tarat and you're skinning them, and you're selling the skin. And
I'm not saying that they're not, but I do not know anyone who just
goes out and kills kyotes for the skin. But if we're going to kill
them, why not do something with the skin, you know. And the
state of Arkansas, the Arkansas Game and Fish has classified coyotes as a nuisance
animal, because that's what they are. They're a nuisance animal. They will
kill chickens, they will kill your dogs, they will kill cats. We've
had neighbors the coyotes come right on their porch and snatch a house animal like
cat or a dog or whatever. So anyone who's saying, oh, you
guys are just being terrible killing these animals, I assure you everything we did
on the farm that came to taking the life of an animal was for a
specific purpose that either helped the farm thrive or it was just something that had
to be done. I don't know anyone where we just we're going to just
kill stuff. So the thing was sitting there, and like I said,
we thought it was an Albano cotty, and it was looking away from us,
and we thought. And the thing about a coyote's you just don't,
especially when they're by themselves, you don't get as close as we got to
it. I would say we were at most thirty yards away at most,
and that might be a bit of an exaggeration because it was pretty close and
we're just looking and I said, I wonder if something's wrong with I wonder
if it's hurt if it's sick, what's wrong with it? So we just
stood and watched it for a minute. Well, I had a little twenty
two pistol, and that's not gonna kill a kywity. It's not gonna do
anything but wounded in my crawl off and die somewhere. But it's you're not
going to stop the kyality or kill a kality with a little twenty two matters
factor. I think it was twenty two short, so you're surely not going
to do anything with those. So I tell my cousin. He's standing to
my right, and I thought, all right, he's he can run,
he can get And besides, I guess maybe I was being lazy. I
was older, so I get to tell the younger kids what to do.
I said, Hey, sneak back up the road a bit until you're not
gonna hear us, and then run back to the house and grab that thirty
thirty and come back down here because I want to kill it. There was
plenty of light to see, said, run there and grab that run of
the house, grab the thirty thirty and get back down here. And you
know, my line of thought is that thing something's wrong with it. It's
just going to keep sitting there. I barely got finished that sentence. I
mean, barely finished that sentence, and that thing just turned and looked.
I want to say it snapped its head like. I mean, it just
looked. It turned and just looked right at us. And the thing about
it, I don't. Once it looked at us, you knew it wasn't
a coyote the second you looked at it. It's like, that's not a
coyote because it had a short snout. The snout was there, but it
was kind of short. Um. I guess maybe I would not like a
German shepherd, maybe like a pitbull or something like that. I'm it just
wasn't real long and it but it had the big pointed ears like a German
shepherd up on its head. Um. That's the best I can describe it.
It just had that short snout. It didn't you couldn't see its teeth
or anything. And it just turned and looked at us. And I don't
think I know. I didn't say anything, And if those boys said anything,
I did not hear it. I was just locked looking on this thing
and it's staring at us. I cannot tell you how much time went by.
It might have been a second, it might have been a minute,
I don't know, but it felt like an eternity in my mind, I
guess. And this thing I keep saying thing, and that I just as
silly as this sounds, it sounds offensive to save thing, because if you
could have felt what we were, at least what I was feeling, you
wouldn't call it a thing. I'm using this as an example, but it's
how I'm want to describe it, but it's not what it was. If
you ever crack your knuckles all at the same time, and that sound that
you get when you crack your knuckles all at the same time, that's the
sound. I don't know where it came from. It was like it kind
of moved forward, I mean just a little bit, like maybe one little
paw kind of went forward a little bit, and then you heard this that
crack, like knuckles popping. And it wasn't like the thing was hurt.
It didn't seem like it was hurt, and it just it just stood straight
up on that rock or boulder, whatever you want to call it. It
just stood straight up. It looked it never took its eye, it never
stopped looking our way, and it walked to the edge of this rock.
Now, the edge of this rock was only maybe maybe two or three feet
I'll go with three feet from the top of this rock to the ground.
And it was a hill. It wasn't a huge slope. Maybe I'd give
it somewhere around the twenty degree slope something like this. It wasn't a terribly
steep incline. It comes to the edge and it just hops off like it
just I don't know, like a person, like it literally like a person,
and it just hops off and it's standing there. It didn't go back
down on fours. Well I say, it's just standing there. It hopped
off and it just kept walking and it just walked down the hill onto the
road. But it just walked like that was It's everyday normal way of getting
around. It was just like I'm bipedal, and this is what I'm going
to This is how I get around. I don't know. I don't know
why I was on all fours, who knows. But it just gets up
and it just walks down and it just walks right to the road. And
when it gets to the road. Now again, this is a dirt road,
so you know it's oh gosh, I shouldn't. Might have been twenty
twenty foot wide, maybe something big enough for the big equipment to get up
and down it. It just walks the road and it just keeps walking,
or walks right to the middle of the road. Obviously I didn't know as
far as a kid, but I think back on it. I spent twenty
years in a military. I know what a soldier looks like when a soldier
is marching, and this thing looked like it was marching. It wasn't swinging
its arms or anything, but just the way it was walking, it seemed
the way it was marching. And it just got to the middle of the
road and it just did almost it just did a complete right face and was
looking right. I mean just a complete right face, just like a soldier
would do and when they stop and they make that right or left face.
It just did a perfect right face. I remember I could see its legs
the way it was walking versus how it should have been walking. How the
legs were looking. It looked like a German shepherd standing up on its hind
legs. And I've had plenty of germant I got German shepherd right now,
and you put that German shepherd up on its hind legs. He's he's like,
oh dud, my little dancing better thing and walk, but he's awkward
and weird. This thing was just perfectly okay. And that's exactly what the
legs look like. It looked like how you know, how the thigh kind
of goes out and then it bent back, and then the legs went the
the the femur bone, I guess it went back down towards its toes,
you know, And I can't it's I couldn't tell really what its feet looked
like. I couldn't tell if it was feet with you know, like long
coves, if it was a paw. I could not see what the feet
looked like. The hands, I could tell that they had their were long
fingers. I had a thumb. I could tell there was a thumb.
It had the four fingers. It kind of looked like maybe it had some
sort of claws, but it wasn't like overly exaggerated. The claws were there,
but they just they were there. That's all you can really say about
is that they were there. This thing was completely white, I mean white
white. But when it turned, when it turned, it was facing us.
It had a perfect diamond right in the middle of its chest. I
mean perfect. Like you see these animals that you know you'll have, they'll
have certain spots or whatever, and these the spot if it's a black and
a black animal with a white spot, it'll have some black hairs kind of
growing around the lines, and it'll be some white hairs got into the black.
This one like it was like it was spray painted on there. I
know that. I don't know how that sounds, but it was like it
was. It was like it was spray cand on. It was just perfect.
It was a perfect and jet black diamond. And this thing was just
white. It didn't show its teeth, and it didn't snarl, it didn't
growl, it didn't raise its arms in any way. Its eyes. I've
heard other guests who were speaking and they talked about these yellow eyes. They
didn't have yellow eyes, and if it did, I didn't notice them.
They looked human. I mean this thing when it stood there and was looking
at us, it was it was like the thing was trying to speak.
I mean it was almost like I'm going to say something. Stand by and
wait for it. That's just how that feeling had and there was a I
need to back up and say that when that thing came down, there was
no fear, Like there was absolutely no fear, at least for me.
I had no fear of this thing. It wasn't I wasn't like, oh
man, this thing's gonna turn and it's just gonna get us. There was
no fear. There was a familiarity there there. And I know that sounds
crazy. I don't know how it sounds, but it was like I knew
the thing, like well not maybe not know it, but there was something
there is like it just seemed familiar and it just stood there and all it
did was look at us. It just stared at us. And a few
days later after it was I think it was the next day and my brother
and I were talking my cousin as well, and you know, I told
him, I say, hey, look, basically, it's like that thing
is like it never took its eye. It's like it made eye contact with
me. My brother says, yeah, it made It's like we had ye
contact. Well that's not possible. It can't be making hawk contact with all
three of us at the same time. But my brother my cousin are both
are saying Yeah, it was like it was looking right in my eyes.
And that's how I felt. It was like it was looking right in my
eyes. But it's impossible. It could not have been looking at all.
Three it was dead in the face at the same time. But that's how
it was. It's the whole The whole time it was standing there, it
was like it was looking me right in the face. Right. Oh no,
I don't know if this is It was like it was just it was
like it was examining my soul. I felt like I was standing it felt
like I was being judged. That's I don't like I was being judged.
Like this thing was like, hmmm, let's see what went on in your
past. Let's see what kind of person you are, my cousin, it's
kind. He is just the typical and I don't mean this derogatory. He
is the typical redneck. I mean the boy couldn't find his way out of
a wet paper bag, you know, he could not figure out how to
open a door. But you could take him outside and tell him to strip
that motor down and put it back together, and he would take a motor
apart and put it back together. Hard working, the most hard working kid.
I mean he to this day, he's still this hard working kid,
but just dumb to him as a bag of bricks, and it's not you
just gotta know and understand that that's not an insult. And he's always been
that way from what I can remember. So I notice him from the corner
of my eye and he's bending down, but I don't look at him.
I'm looking at this. I'm looking at whatever's in front of him. Like
I said, this is a graveled road, it has grabbing rocks. Whatever
you're gonna call him, And so I guess, guess, and to it
he did. He picked up a rock and he throws it. He throws
it at this animal. He doesn't overhand it. He throws it like if
you've ever skipped a rock. Anybody's ever skipped a rock? How you just
just snap your wrist and you throw it from a side angle, you know,
you throw it with that side snap he threw. He throws this rock
like that. And you can see this rock and it's headed, you can
see it in a lot in that artificial light from those street lamps or whatever
they're called, and it's going and as this thing is, as this rock
is on target, headed down there. I mean it's headed rock towards this
thing. It jumps, I mean it jumped straight in the air, not
a foot, not too foot. This thing had to have jumped at least
twice. It's high. And that's the other thing. It wasn't. Man,
I can't I don't know if I can judge how tall it was.
But it wasn't like this tall creature it was. It was Paul. I
would say six feet, but not sixty three sixty four, I would say
that would be the hythe and I think if I if I went with sixty
four, I'm probably exaggerating. I would say it was right around sixty he
throws this rock. That thing jumped straight. It's just jumped. I mean
like it was on a spring or it just launched straight up in the air.
And that rock, you know, honestly, it went right underneath it.
And this is the part that I really don't know if I remember it
the correct way, because it just seems I don't know. Everything about that
seemed unreal. But I mean it was there and standing there. But anyway,
this thing when it jumped up, it's funny now, wasn't funny then?
Because when it jumped up, the entire atmosphere it just changed. It
went from everything's fine to just heart stopping fear. We got run. But
this thing jumped straight up in the air, and like I said, I
don't know if I'm just remembering this wrong, but it's what I remember.
It was like if anybody's ever watched Scooby Doo or any cartoon where something jumps
and its legs are running before it hits the ground, It's like that's what
the thing was doing. It jumped, it just strapping air, and its
legs were just they were getting it. I mean they were at it.
They were getting it before they even hit the ground. I didn't let it
hit the ground. When that thing went up and that fear kicked in,
I said, that's it, I'm out. I ran track in school,
so I was not worried about out running no cigarette smoking fools. I knew
they weren't gonna out run me. So I was just thinking, I just
got to get ahead of these boys. You know, I'm gonna sacrifice the
week because I didn't know what this thing was doing. And I was a
kid and I didn't know any better. So I turned around, I ran
and I mean I was running and we were probably I would say at least
a quarter of a mile from the house. Well, as you're as you
leave that quarry area where they go into the where it goes in, the
road goes up and then it makes a dog leg back to the left.
It just curves back around to the left, and then the rest of that
road is just a straight shot to my grandparents house. After my grandfather had
passed away, my grandmother crunter, you know, I can't don't want to
live in the house anymore. So she left the old house on the hill,
on the top of the hill, and she went down probably about I
don't know, two hundred yards from the old house, and she had a
new house built mountain there. So that's when she was living. But the
old house my uncle, so her daughter was living there, her husband,
so my uncle by marriage, he and my aunt were living there in that
house. Well, like I said, it's mid nike, He's everybody's asleep
already. But for whatever, when we come up that road, I mean
we're yelling. I mean I'm yelling. I'm yelling from my uncle, I'm
yelling from my grandmother. I'm yelling forever that thing's right behind me or at
least you know. But after we got there, it wasn't a feeling like
the thing was chasing us. I didn't feel like it was chasing us,
but I didn't look either. So as I'm running up the road, I
can see that the porch light is on, and I can see that my
uncle is on the porch, and I mean, we're getting it up through
there and we're yelling. He was like, hey, it's chasing us.
It's chasing us. It's chasing us. And he's like, what And the
world is wrong with you? Boys? What are you doing? And we
get up there and said, you know, this is this thing is chasing
us. This is what it is. This is what we saw. And
of course, I'm sure we were very animated, and I know we were
very excited. And he was like, you boys, He's like, what
is wrong with me? And he said, I don't know what you saw,
but you you probably saw a kyote or you saw somebody's dog. And
we're trying to explain it to him and he is adamant at it. He's
like and it was like he was trying to convince himself that we didn't see
what we saw. And finally he said, you boys, get down to
the house, get in bed and knocking nonsense on. So we did.
We You know, I was on a down henry yard block. So we
booged our little butts on down the hill a little bit and got into my
grandmother's and there was no going to sleep, and we stayed up all night,
I mean all night. And it when our yearest neighbor might be three
it probably further, but at minimum of three miles. So when I tell
you that he can go outside in our barn, the barn. Now,
at this point in the time after my grandfather passed, the farm was non
producing, as in, we only reduced what we needed for the farm.
So we didn't have a lot. We weren't selling anything anymore. We weren't
producing anything outside what we use. So we still had rabbits for eating,
We had chickens, had a few hogs, you know, typical farm animal
stuff. Well, even at night, these animals they'll scurry, and especially
like if a fox or something like that is trying to get into the barn.
Oh, those animals are gonna make some rucis and you're gonna know they're
there because they're you know, they're saying, hey, hey guys, anyway,
gume, come o here and take care of this. But if it's
a super if it's a really big predator aim, if it's a predator animal,
an animal that's just gonna you know, rip the cage apart or something,
those things will get very quiet. They won't make a sound, even
the chickens, until you actually disturb them. They will just be very very
quiet. And that was the thing. After we got back, we would
go outside and look and we would listen, and there was nothing. There
wasn't a cricket, there was not a whipper wheel, there was not a
frog croaking in the pond. It was quiet. And anybody who's spent any
time in the woods knows that the woods are not quiet. Even at night,
they're not quiet. There is something going on when the woods are quiet.
That's when you better be quiet. When the woods are quiet, you
better sit down, you better go inside if you can. If you can't,
then you set your butt down and you'd be as quiet as you can
and you don't move either. That's I mean, that's just how the woods
are. If it's quiet, there's something out there, and you can go.
Like I said, it's just how nature works. Nature is great.
You can go out in the woods and you can trump through the woods,
and unless you just start banging on trees or breaking stuff, just being an
absolute menace, the crickets are still going to chirp, the whipper wheels are
still going to let you know what's going on. They're still going to be
annoying. The wood's good quiet when something's going on. And that's what it
was all night long. Now this was the summer, so you know the
sun's starting to come up. About six o'clock is when the sun's really up.
But from this encounter, like I said, it was right around midnight.
It might have been a little before midnight. I'm not sure, but
that was about the time that we went and checked those lines. So we
were probably back in the house. I promise you no later than twelve thirty.
So you've got all that time from the time we were back and we
didn't sleep, and we would go outside. We would open windows, maybe
crack open a door and step out on the porch and listen, but we
did not. There was nothing, not a sound. The barn was quiet,
the pond was quiet, the woods were quiet, and when you were
out there, it just felt like something was watching you. I mean just
that thing where the hackles on the back of your neck stand up and you
know that something is looking at you, and something is like, give me
an opportunity and see what happens to you. So we didn't venture far,
but we would got there and listen. It got to the point, this
is I don't know it was. We've been back, we've been home for
a few hours. I went out on the porch and just in a normal
voice. I didn't say it real loud. I didn't won't wake up my
grandmother or anything. I was afraid she was gonna wake up anyway, and
that would have been a bad deal because she had to be a church in
Sunday, and that would have been a bad deal. She probably would have
killed us and we wouldn't had to worry about whatever it was we saw.
But I walked outside and I just said more voice. I said, look,
I'm sorry, we are sorry. We did not mean anything. There
was no harm. We did not mean to offend you. I probably said
something different back then, but we did not mean to fend you. We
did not mean any harm. I'm obviously paraphrase, and I don't remember exactly
what I said. I that's what I said, and I just did there
for a second. Nothing changed, The air didn't change, the atmosphere didn't
change. I said, Okay, good night, please, I'm going to
go in the house. And I just went in the house and we never
went back outside. The next morning, we went down to see if there
was like maybe well, I say, next morning it's probably or along the
afternoon timeline. But we went down to see if maybe there was prints or
maybe even if there was some sort of scatter something up there or was sitting
on the rock. But there was nothing. There was literally nothing. But
then again, I mean that's not unusual because like I said, this road
was it had grabbl on it. I mean you could reach down and pick
up a handful of gravel, so even if it was raining, it would
probably didn't very unlikely that there was any type of track or anything. But
there was no scat, there was no marks on any trees. It was
just normal. And I have never had that experience again. And other than
the two times I was talking about trying to other than my brother and my
cousin, I say, there's those times we send I talk about it.
We haven't talked about in a long time. My brother, he's to the
point to where I guess maybe this is I don't know, maybe a couple
of years ago. I said, do you remember that thing we saw?
And he said, you know, we see a lot of things at night,
don't we. And that was end of He's just like I knew,
he didn't want to talk about it. Where I live now, it's still
in the woods. I have a few neighbors around me, but they're definitely
a lot closer than they were when I was growing up. I mean,
I can actually see a couple of neighbors houses. This is an old Indian
place too. Just around the corner from us. There's a federally protected Indian
site where they call him the Bluff Dwellers. It's not like the stuff out
in Arizona where you got them building all these crazy mudhouses and stuff way up.
These are just I'm wanting to say that ze watchitah or something like that.
I don't know. I'm I'm getting the name completely wrong. I'm one
hundred percent European. Theres We did a DNA test and I am absolutely one
hundred percent European. So I have no spiritual connection to this stuff. And
my ignorance is just you would think that because I live here and grew up
here, I would try to get more in touch with this stuff around here,
but I just I'm just ignorant when it comes to it. They have
a place down there and it's bluff dwellers, and it's federally protected and you
can go down there, but you can't walk. I don't all that good
stuff. And then just up the road from me, my neighbor bought some
land up there, whatever we're gonna call it, and they built a house
and they're from Wisconsin or something like that. And when I say my ignorance
about the Native Americans around here, oh, I'm a walking encyclopedia compared to
these guys. They've known nothing and I know nothing. But he was like,
hey, look at what I found here. And you get the looking.
And it's a flint pit. It's a pit where they made their arrowheads
and whatever it was. So I mean, and it's just deep. You
can get it. It's broken arrowheads, is what it is. We've dug
around in it quite a bit and we've never found anything of any value.
Other than oh, look that one's broken. That one didn't make it.
So this is a place it has that heritage as well. The Indians were
all over some of this land that I own back here. I don't know.
Again, I feel dumb because it's just my ignorance. I have to
try to give a description to that. What it's called. The Indians back
in the day, they would take a sapling and they would bend it over
and tie it to the ground with a leather strap or whatever, and then
that's how that tree would grow. It would grow up, but it would
be bent over. That the tree would point towards a trail, or it
would point towards water, and so you see that trail and you're like,
okay, well I gotta go. They would bend it so that it pointed
to the direction that you're supposed to go to find a trail or find water
or whatever. And you can go back here. Some of this land a
lot, and there's several of those trees back there. They are old.
They're old, old, old trees been old and it's been over. So
that's a long way around. The barn is saying there's a lot of Bandian
activity around here. I tell you all that to tell you this. I
have a malamute husky mix. This is not a little dog. I think
he weighed in at one hundred and thirteen last time I took him to the
vet, and the last time I took him to that was a couple months
ago. I think he's a big dog, but he's a baby. This
guy, he just wants to go. The worst thing that my dog has
ever done. I let him out one day and he went down to the
neighbor's house and he stole back of chicken wings out there. It's signing down.
I gave him twenty bucks for ten chicken wings. But that's the worst
thing's ever done. This dog does not want to be in the house.
I mean, he does not want to be in the house. So I'll
let him out. Mostly, I'll let him out at night because we're getting
a lot of people that are moving in here, and they're coming from other
places, and they just don't understand that dogs run around here, so they
like to complain. So I've got to where I'm letting him out at night.
And this has been going on for about it about two years or so.
Some nights you come out here the crickets are chirping the nights, just
being beautiful. The animals are doing what they do out here. Possums are
running around the yard, and raccoons are tearing up your trash can and it's
just normal stuff. And you'll let I let Forest out and he goes and
he does his business and he comes home a few hours later. There are
some nights I will walk out here and it will be quiet, and it's
just like that quiet from when I was a kid, when that experience happened.
It's just like that quiet. And I'll say, Forrest, you want
to go outside? And he is like, no, I'm good, Yeah,
you know what, Hey, yeah, you know what. I gotta
go peete, but I want to do it right here in front of the
bush. And he'll come out, he'll do his business and foom right back
in the house and you walk out here, and like I was saying,
it's just that feeling that you have when I was a kid when all that
stuff happened. Just like, man, something is out here now. It
could be coyotes. We have a lot of coyotes around here, but they're
just it just it feels different. I don't know how to describe it.
It just feels completely different. When we were talking before, I never had
because, like I said, until my bonehead cousin through that rock, there
was no fear about this thing. We weren't worried, we weren't scared.
But when he threw that rock, that just the fiercit in it. So,
like I said, this old girl that I was dating when I was
when I first went in the military, you know, we're laughing about the
silver bullets part, and I'm like, that's just not how it is.
And I always just thought like that the Werewolf movies. I didn't see American
Werewolf in London until oh my gosh, I think that movie came out in
like eighty one or eighty two, and I think I saw that in like
ninety five or ninety six. My grandparents are Catholic. I was raised Catholic.
There's no room for nonsense, there's no room for fairy tales and things
like that, and there's short no room in her house for any of those
types of movies. So I was never really allowed to watch that stuff growing
up. And I'm Catholic too, I'm a very devout Catholic. So I'm
poking at her, but I'm not poking at her when she said, now,
you're not gonna have that double stuff in here, and she meant it.
And so I was never allowed to watch that stuff. But you watch
those movies, and I always thought, I'm like man, and I had
no reference to the dog Man. I had no idea what a dog man
was until it maybe two or three years ago. And you know, I
kind of thing. I saw a couple of movies and they've made reference to
the dog Man or whatever. And then somehow, and I'm sorry for this,
but somehow I stumbled across your podcast. I wasn't looking for, but
somehow I stumbled across it, and I tried every night to listen to an
episode. My point is that until I started listening to your episode, I
never believe the far road. I was still was like, oh yeah,
we definitely saw a wearabool, because that's what we thought. That was the
only reference I had until we got to the dog Man, where I was
like, okay, what's this. But I always was like, man,
this is crazy. I don't understand how this works. But my only again,
my only reference was a wearabol So I would watch these movies and I
was like, that's just not how it is. Those things are not violent.
They do not attack you, they do not come after you. So
I was under this belief for a very long time up until just a few
years ago, I think. And I listened to episode ninety and ninety one
and that's when it was episode talking about these attacks, and I thought,
man, that is crazy because obviously if somebody is attacking, killed or notton,
they'll tell that story. So the only story is gonna get out of
people that survive it or just have the encounter or whatever. And it really
started resonating with me. Wow, we might have been very lucky that night.
We might have been like that thing just wasn't hungry, or that thing
didn't want to hurt if it wanted to hurt us. There is no doubt
if that thing wanted to chase us and catch us, it would have had
us, and it would have had us well for that dog leg in that
road, because we were a good quarter of a mile from that house,
and I'm sure it could have just poured through all three of us. But
again, we did not have that fear. At least I didn't have that
fear. I'm just I'm at a loss. I'm really at a point where
I'm trying to understand. I know what I saw. Even though people tell
me you're crazy, you didn't. Well, a few times I've told it,
so I can't say that. A lot of people put my uncle when
he said, oh, you good boys are crazy. What are you doing
out there? Where'd you get a hold of I'm at this point to where
I am trying to understand what in the world I saw, If this thing
is dangerous, if this thing is just I don't know, I don't know.
I'm just I'm just confused. But I guess that's basically the sum of
my encounter. You hadn't heard about dog Man back when you had that experience,
But have you heard about Sasquatch back then? Yes, they didn't call
it sasquatch. I'm going to mess this up. They called it something like
an oogie boogie or something like this, And I know that just sounds silly,
but that was what they called it. They had down in around Texarkana,
Arkansas, the Legend of Boggy Creek or something like that. And now
this movie came out in the seventies too. When people would talk about this
thing, no one was really worried about it, if that makes anything.
I mean, the people are like, oh, yeah, I saw it.
There's my barn door was ripped open last night and munch of my chickens
were killed. I would tell my grandmother I'm going somewhere, and she would
say, be careful, keep your wits about you, because the blacks had
some sheep killed last night and they don't know what killed it. I never
saw it. I heard of the stuff. I never saw it. And
we've got the old timers around there who would tell you that this thing is
there. And like I said, it's the Ozark Mountains. There's things out
here. I don't know if this is like I was saying. When I
was growing up on my grandparents land. This was you know, years and
years before I ever had this encounter. You would hear stuff way off in
the woods. I mean, I can tell you several times when we were
outside at night doing whatever it was kids were doing at night, and you
would hear off in the distance of how, I mean a how, and
you're like, what in the world is that? Because, like I said,
I didn't have any reference to wear wolves or dog men. I didn't
know anything about that. I mean, I knew what a werewolf was because,
like I said, we had a soda shop at the drug store where
I grew up, and they sold comics. And I know, the younger
folks listening to this guys, it was different back then. We we looked
at comics and we got a lot of our at least where I'm from,
we read our monsters and stuff from comics. So I had understanding of it.
But also my understanding of the wherewolf was long Cheney junior. You know,
where you just had that flat nose and some hair growing out of this
zer. So I never had that reference. But you would hear that stuff
when I was growing up a few different times. You could hear that how
but it was way way. Like I said, my grandparents had hundreds of
acres, and especially in these haulers that think of how and it might be
behind you. You might hear it over here in front of you, but
that thing might have been coming from behind you. You just don't know where
it's coming from. But it never really scared us. Didn't scare me anyway.
But I guess that's again, that's the long answer to your question.
Apologize, No apology required, Thank goodness, it didn't frighten you as much
as some of my witnesses have to deal with because of their experiences. You
went out and looked for prince the next day, you said, but did
you actually go out seeking out another experience with it? Oh god, no,
uh no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no there there there no. I guess that's the short answer.
No. And when we did go out that See, I can't really
call these experiences because, like I said, we live out here and people
will tell you. You will tell game and fish. I saw a panther
and they are like, you are crazy. There's no panthers around here.
But I'm telling you there are. Our dogs have treedom. There are things
in the dark out there. There has been times, I mean after this
encounter, you would hear something. We'd be on the river camping or whatever,
and across the way you would hear something, and so you would shine
your light over there and you would get that, um it's called eyeshine.
You get that eyeshine and you're thinking, man, that thing, whatever that
is, is not little. And you could really tell, because it would
be across the river, but you could tell that that sucker was not on
the ground. That he was up higher, but again, it was nothing.
Every anything that ever felt dangerous, you could just ignore it. Mind
your business mostly how everything is in the woods. You mind your business and
it's going to mind its business. So I don't know if those were encounters
or not, but I definitely have seen eyes in the dark that I was
like, I don't know what that is, and I don't care to find
out. And if it wants to tell me what it is, that's just
it telling me. It wants me to get in the canoe and get on
down the road and out of its purview. So no, I never I'm
it's weird. I'm not afraid of them. After listening to ninety ninety one,
I'm like, this is crazy, but I'm still I don't want to
see it again. But I'm not afraid, if that makes any sense.
And I'm sure not going to walk into the woods on those nights that it
feels like something's out there. I'm not going out there. So no,
I do not want to have another experience. I always tell people to listen
to your instincts, So yeah, I'm glad you're doing that. You described
it as having a white coat mark, but what kind of condition was it's
coat in It seemed clean. And again I don't mean to offend anyone.
When you kill coyote, you know that it's been sleeping in a den.
You know that it's just full of dirt. It's just dirty, because that's
what kyodies do. They sleep in the den, and they're you know,
they're brown, the color of a kylody. They're just brown. And you
can still see that dirt on on this thing. It was just like it
was snow. It was it was very it was hypnotizing, I guess,
you know, it almost and again it's been so long ago, I don't
know if I'm remembering this correctly, but it almost felt like there was a
glow about it, if that makes any sense. It wasn't glowing, but
it felt like that, but it was. The fur was clean. It's
just with that black diamond ride in its chest. I don't know how to
explain it, but yeah, that appearance of a super clean coat's not unprecedented
when it comes to sasquatch or dog men. If you've had a dog me
an encounter, would like to speak with me about it, whether I'm private
or on this show, please go to dog Mean encounters dot com and submit
a report. If you've had a bigfoot sighting and would like to be a
guest on one of my two bigfoot shows, please go to my Bigfoot Sighting
dot com and let me know. Did you ever see a tail on it?
You know, I can't remember seeing one. I would think that if
it had a tail, that would have been something that would have stuck out.
But again I can't those eyes when it looked at us from that rock,
it was like you were just locked on it from the time that it
stood up. You're just looking at it. I mean, I remember,
I remember the legs, and I remember the arms because, like I said,
it's that thing where you're like, how is that thing moving so fluid?
You know, always like that just looks normal. But I can't tell
you if it how to tail or not. I want to go with if
it did it did not have a big one, because I'm positive I would
have noticed it. It would have really stuck out. So I'm gonna go
with I don't know. No, I believe you if it did have one,
I bet you would have noticed it, considering the way it moved,
almost as if it was marching. Do you think that lends credence to the
claim some people have made about them being government experiments. You know, I
don't know, I don't know, it's I don't know. I mean,
wow, that's just a whole other conversation about the stuff that the government's involved
in. The fact that it felt so intelligent it tells me that it makes
me feel I'd say, it tells me that's not true. But the fact
that that intelligence felt that it felt intelligent, I think. I mean you,
the military trains dogs. The military trains German shepherds and every other dog
to do all kinds of stuff that you wouldn't think a dog was smart enough
to do. So if it's some sort of military experiment, it wouldn't surprise
me, just because the military is good at what they do. They're good
at what they do, and they're good at hiding what they do. The
only reason I wouldn't think that that's the military experiment is, like I said,
I'm in Those aren't mountains. The nearest military base to US is Fort
Chaffee, which is around Fort Smith, and that's an artillery range out there.
It's got a little bit of history with I believe I think it was
a I know it was a pow camp in the war, but I don't
know who they kept there. There was some stuff that went on with Cuba,
but it's I don't think they could hide that type of stuff at Fort
Chaffee. I don't think they have the ability to be clandestine there. So
if that came from somewhere, if that's a military experiment, it has to
come from a much larger facility, and I would not understand how or why
it would be in this area. How far is Fort Chaffey from you?
Oh? Fort Chaffee is, as the crow flies, one hundred miles.
That seems like a good distance, but not for a dog man, So
does make you wonder. Yeah, that's the perfect point, I mean for
them. Yeah, And I don't know how fast they moved. This thing
was very deliberate in its movements. It was very fluid. And the time
it took to walk from that rock down to the road. I bet it
took it thirty forty five seconds to walk, and it's only walking maybe gosh,
I don't know. I'm gonna say fifty feet. Yeah, that wouldn't
take it any time to walk that distance. When you factor the good view
your uncle had a three of you boys as you ran back to the house
mark. How sure are you or aren't you that he didn't see that dog
men? I'm not sure. I'm not sure at all. I didn't feel
that it was chasing us. Again, I didn't look back, so it
may not have been chasing us. And if it was, it sure it
did not want us. But the thing that was very curious about my uncle,
I don't know. I'm not sure how to articulate. When he was
telling us we didn't see anything. He was telling it like he was trying
to convince himself that we didn't see anything. There's just a lot that goes
on out there. Well, I say, out there talking about my grandparents
place, but I mean in the area in general. You mentioned the Sasquatch
deal earlier, and that was really just a thing that nobody talked about.
I mean, it was it was like, oh, yeah, yeah,
so and so this might have happened, but boogie boogie or whatever whatever they
were calling it, I don't know, I don't remember, but it was
just something they didn't talk about it. They a lot of people seemed very
very sensitive when it came to talking about anything that could be considered supernatural.
Back then, the word crypted. I learned that word from your show,
and that's only been you know, within the last probably year or so.
So the word crypted, as far as I know, was nowhere around.
So anything that fell out of the norm of everyday life was absolutely considered something
from the devil. Like said, my grandmother was Catholic, so everything was
the devil and then the people around most of the people it was hard for
us, It went hard, but it was different for us because we were
the only Catholics in the area. Around here, You've got Protestants and Southern
Baptists and Baptists, and man, you can just throw a dart probably hit
a name on a dartboard, and that got that religion around here. And
it was Sunday church. Even though we weren't Baptist. We went to Baptist
meetings or whatever it is, the Baptist call it the Baptist stuff, where
it was church in the morning and fried chicken in the afternoon and everybody got
together. And that's just the way it was around here when I was kids.
So anything that was outside the purview of God or what God does that's
good and religious, it was automatically the devil. So we didn't talk about
it. Yeah, that didn't help. Although thank goodness you weren't traumatized by
the experience, because if you had been traumatized by it and needed a lot
of help getting over it, not being able to talk about it would have
made it just that much worse. Right, And I guess it's again a
lot of people make they laugh and joke about us gen X kids, and
I don't think they understand how on point we were. You know, a
gen X kid. We had thirteen different ways to get bloodstains out of our
clothes, so that so that Grandma didn't know you got blood on your new
clothes, So there wasn't there's not a lot that really phases us. And
the fact that when there was any type of trauma in our life, it
was just like are you breathing now, I'm breathing, Okay, then you're
fine, Look get away from me, go away. So even if there
had been some sort of real emotional trauma, I don't think they probably would
have just been like, yeah, you're fine, stat of Grandma's special cabinet
there on the bottom. It definitely was a different time back then, So
now I understand what you're saying. What's about time for us to get out
if you're in Mark, But before we do, do you have any closing
comments you'd like to share her? I guess what I would say in respect
to everything that's going on. If I had not had this encounter myself,
I would be one of the biggest skeptics. I would probably not believe this
stuff. And even though I can tell you it really did not have that
big of an effect on me, I still went honey and still went fishing,
camping, all that stuff. I'm a little more cautious things in this
world that we encounter. It may not have a total impact or any type
of impact on you as an individual, but that same incident, that same
situation could be absolutely paralyzing for another person who has gone through that. If
there is anyone who is saying, I don't know what I saw, I
don't know how to handle this, I absolutely encourage you to get in touch
with vic. This man. He's very, very in tune to helping with
what's going on, and I think that he can put you on the right
path to getting that help and enjoy in life. Because if I when I
was a kid, if I would have let this experience affect me in the
way that I've heard some people have been affected, it would have destroyed me
because it would have taken away everything about me that was a kid of running
the woods and doing this. So if there is things like this and you
do not have anyone to talk to, absolutely get in touched with Vic.
And I'm not going to go any further than that because I'm not capable of
speaking for this man, but he is someone that you should get in touch
with. Well, Thank goodness that experience didn't ruin you in Thank you for
the kind words too. Having said that, Mark, thanks again so much
for your time, and have a great night.