Speaker 1: At a book.
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show without ads and have full access to bonus content,
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Dogmanencounters dot com Forward Slash Podcast. Well, Merry Christmas everyone.
Hope you're having a great Christmas, and I hope this
upcoming year is so much better than this past one was.
It's been a rough one, it really has been. Well,
I can't thank you enough for joining us for the
special Christmas Night episode of the show. I really appreciate
you being here and tuning in. I really do you.
Onto the topic of tonight's show. Growing up, we have
had so many experiences, innocent experiences where you've just gone
off and all you had to worry about was being
a kid. Well, just imagine, as I'm sure a lot
of us have, going out into the woods on our own.
Some of us actually did some camping on our own
as kids. Others only snuck away during the daytime and
roamed around in the woods. Well, imagine what it would
be like if something broke the innocence of doing that
sort of thing. Very few of us have had anything
like that happen, Thank goodness too. But just imagine how
that kind of an experience might affect you. If you
were shown at such an early age that monsters actually
do exist, it would just make things totally different for
you than how they would be in most cases as
you're growing up and maturing. Well, Tonight's guest he's had
more than one encounter, but his first encounter is basically
laid out. Like I just mentioned, he was camping when
the experience, the first experience happened, and on tonight's show,
we're going to get into details with him on how
it affected him and of course how it played out
well without any further ado, let's get him in here
now so we can get to it. Tonight's guest is
Mason Evans. Mason, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Hey Vic, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're welcome. Yeah, we appreciate your time. Mason, please
give us a brief bio in yourself.
Speaker 1: My name is Mason Evans. I live in Kolcaska, Michigan.
As of now, I work as a construction worker. I
grew up lived in the woods my entire life. I
lived in Boyne City until I was about ten years old,
lived out in the woods there and then moved to
Traverse City out off Supply Road on Island Lake, where
I spent the next ten years of my life. And yeah,
pretty much like riding dirt bikes and fishing and just
being out in the woods since that's all we were
surrounded by. And so a few houses down for me,
there was this kid playing on the beach and my
mom got me to go over there and finally talk
to him, and he ended up me and my best friend.
His name's Billy, and me and him would just hang
out pretty much every day after school and just do
our thing and you know, enjoy the outdoors.
Speaker 2: Well that's a great waste, so grow up. That's a
really good way to do it.
Speaker 1: It was pretty good childhood, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure it was. How old were you when
you had that first experience?
Speaker 1: I think I was fifteen.
Speaker 2: You were fifteen. Can you point to anything in your life,
any effects that you think are definitely attributable to that encounter.
Speaker 1: That you had, You know, like my mom used to
tell me that I used to have dreams of like
wolves walking on two feet and stuff. And then I remember,
you know, when I was a young kid, the Michigan
dog Man song came out and that song just really
gave me the heavy gbis. I don't know why I did,
but it did. And that's kind of when my for
me that you know, I used to have nightmares of
similar things like this, and so I always thought that
was kind of strange, but you know, never it always
scared me. But you know, never seen anything and heard
anything until I did.
Speaker 2: Did those nightmares not start about upright, Keennits until after
you had that first experience?
Speaker 1: No, I was before.
Speaker 2: Before. It makes you wonder if you might have been
destined to have those encounters. Do you subscribe to that idea?
Speaker 1: I sure do, I really do.
Speaker 2: You might be right about that. You want to consider
the strange ways that these guys affect eyewitnesses, apparently entering
their sleep and causing them to have nightmares. Who's to
say they couldn't enter your sleep and then fluid to
you before you had that encounter because somehow, some way
they knew that the encounters were going to happen. It's
really hard to say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sure is, and looking back on it, it
sure seems to be that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah it does, doesn't it. How close were you to
the up when this happened.
Speaker 1: We're probably two and a half two hours from the
up maybe so maybe less than two, so.
Speaker 2: You were a pretty good distance in. Yeah, this might
or might not come as a surprise TOEA that there
are quite a few people, even in Michigan who think
that there are no dog men in the lower part.
They're only found in the Upper Peninsula. Did you know that.
Speaker 1: I did not know that at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people there think that for whatever reason.
But there's this idea that in Michigan the only place
you're going to find a substantial amount of forest cover
is in the up But yeah, that couldn't be further
from the truth. There's tons of forest in the lower
part as well.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yep, there sure is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. When when you had your encounter, if I
remember correctly, you said you're about a mile from your home.
What can you tell us about the area directly around
your home?
Speaker 1: So? I lived on a little private lake called Island Lake,
and it's completely surrounded by woods and the main road
that runs from Traverse City out to like South Boreman
and then you know, any other like bigger towns from there.
It's all heavy wooded area all around there. So it's
a pretty big plot of just what it is. And
I was pretty much smack dab in the center of it.
And there was a bunch of trails that we would
you know, walk on, ride our dirt bikes or bikes on,
and just rate right from our driveway. Pretty much there
was trails and that's pretty much where we would spend
our all of our hours that we could, was out
there in the woods.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't blame you at all. Yeah, that's where
I would be. You talked about a perfect place for
a dog me in to scratch out a living. Doesn't
get any better than that.
Speaker 1: No, it's really it's perfect spot. There's going to be one,
you know. It's where you would think it would be.
Speaker 2: Oh, I definitely no doubt about that. All right there, Mason,
Please tell us about your encounters. Now, give us ever
last detail that comes to mind.
Speaker 1: So, h Billy and I we were out well, we
would have this We had this shooting range set up
that my dad, he like, built the stand for us
and we would all go out there and shoot guns
and stuff. It is probably a one hundred and fifty
yard like valley pretty much. And so when we weren't
shooting guns out there or something. That was just kind
of just our hangout spot that we would go out to.
So on our summer vacation, before any of us could
driver even had cell phones, we could pretty much count
on one of our friends or one of us being
out there. There's probably five or six of us that
all lived in the area. So we just migrated out
there and we had tents set up, we had a
little fire pit, and that's just where we would spend
our time on our summer break. And so one night,
you know, not it's just like any other night. Billy
and I were just out there by ourselves, and we're
sleeping in this tent and in my dream, so I'm
like hearing something in my dream that caught my attention,
some noise, and it woke me up. So I'm laying
there just not knowing if it was the dream or
what was going on yet. And then I heard the
noise and I yelled, hey, Billy. I was like, you
hear that, and he says, yeah, I've been listening to
it for a half hour now, and I'm like, oh geez.
And this noise sounded like it was coming from this
road that was probably three chords to a mile away
running lake road, and it was like the most horrific
sound I had ever heard, followed up by a loud
thumb like this. It felt and sounded like a tree
dropping without like branches breaking or any of that, just boom.
But the noise I could best describe it as it
was like big, like thirty eight inch truck tires peeling
out on the pavement very slowly, a vehicle that was
already running, and then hitting the starter like a grinding starter,
and then like a girl screaming, all combined in the
one and it lasted for like two three seconds, just
and instantly boom, and we're like, what the heck? And
we're just laying there, And it was probably a minute
and a half two minute intervals, and it kept happening,
and it kept getting louder and closer, and we're just
laying there, you know, tight as could be in this tent,
just like what is going on right now? We didn't
want to get up and run, and we just laid
there and listened to it, and it kept getting closer
and closer till it was at the It was on
the trail at the far end of the valley where
we would shoot to, and you could hear there was logs.
Every time I go off, you'd hear like a log
rolling down the hill. And it was the most terrifying
thing I'd ever heard in my life. So I'm laying there,
not knowing if I'm even going to make it till
the morning, because I couldn't even begin to tell you
what this thing was. At first, I thought it might
have been a chainsaw or something a tree falling, so
that is the closest thing I could relate it to.
But clearly, as it kept going and gotten closer, that's
not what it was. And as it got very close
and there was bogs rolling down the hill. After it
go off, it just stopped happening. And we laid there
for a few minutes, four or five minutes, and I
swore I heard like little rocks or twigs or something
bouncing off the tent, like something was getting taught at
the tent, something very small. So I'm just laying there,
laying there, and then I opened my eyes. I had
fallen asleep, open my eyes and this morning time, so I,
you know, thank God to be alive, and I shoot
out of the tenth go look for evidence. I didn't find.
There was no logs, no broken trees, no prints, no
ruffled up leaves, nothing at all. And I knew that
area very very well. So that was very strange. And
I don't know if I was a dog man or not,
but you know, that's what I thought it probably was.
And so that same summer vacation, Billy, our other best
friend Chucky, and my little brother Evan, we were riding
our bicycles on the Vasa Trail. It's a bike trail
in the wood. It's a pretty big loop. A bunch
of people come and ride it, and it ran right
behind Trucky's house. So we were over there hanging out,
and we just hopped down the trail on our bikes
and started going like we'd done all, you know, often enough.
And there's this one part where the trail it crosses
over the power It crosses the power lines, and right
there to the left when you cross, there's these two
big sand hills, probably five hundred yards in between them,
and you're at the top of the one when you cross,
and they look like almost like a wall going up
the other side, and it's there's sandy hills and it's
like grass and trees off to the side, you know.
And so we get to that point and we look
over and running up this hill is this super long wolf.
It looked like a wolf, and we're all just like, what,
there's no wolves around here, you know, That's what I
was thinking. And this thing was running up the hill
and it didn't even look like it was running really
like there's no shoulder movement. It almost looked like it
was just effortlessly like gliding up the hill. And I
could tell this thing was super big because I knew
all these woods and areas very well, and this thing
took up a large portion of that hill. And so
it's going up the hill and I like yelped really
loud just and the thing stopped and it turned its
head to the left and it looked back at us,
and we just are all standing there like, oh my gosh.
And the thing keeps, you know, starts running again, and
it's going up the hill right on the trail, and
it gets pretty much to the top, and I went again,
and it stopped, turned its head back to the left,
looked at us, stood straight up on two feet, and
it walked on two legs to the left that direction
we had come from into the trees, and we were
all like, what just happened? What was that? So we
just booked it as fast as we could from there
on our bikes. Yeah, so I thought, yeah, what we'd
heard in the woods, you know, had to have been
what that was like. It looked just like a large
timber wolf. You could say it was definitely a wolf.
It had like long, like long, scraggly, dark gray almost black,
like pepper colored hair, and like its head was I
remember having a really big head, and like the hair
on the back of its like neck, and like upper
part was like thicker than the rest, but like the
hair just looked scraggly. I guess it almost looked like
it was wet, you could say, like just kind of drungy.
And the thing wasn't super like big around, but it
was very long and it was like lean and yeah,
so we, uh, well, me and my brother told my
parents about this thing, and you know, who knows what
they thought about it. But within the next week, my
mom tells us I've seen it, and we're like, what
she said. I was driving down Supply Road and I
seen this wolf, this really big, mangy looking wolf eating
something on the side of the road. She said that
she had slowed down almost to a stop to see,
you know, what she was looking at and get a
good look at it, and the thing just kept eating
really would kill and didn't even look up at her
or anything. She realized what she was looking at and
took off. So, and that was just within like a
week time from when we had seen that, And it
was directly parallel because the power lines are straight right there.
Supply roads got a really long straight away on it
where the Vasa trailhead is, and she had seen it
pretty much parallel with right where we're seeing it, just
maybe a mile over. So that was pretty pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, crazy is a good way to sum it up,
that's for sure. You said that you're about a mile
into the woods when you and Billy had that first experience,
But how far back does that woods.
Speaker 1: Go, you know, from my house to like Rennie Lake
Road where we i'd heard that noise, where it was
started at and it was coming from, is probably only
like a couple of miles from that shot. But if
you were to like look at it from a map,
it's like from the Bay, uh, you know, the Bay
there all the way to Highway one thirty one is
pretty much all heavily wooded, and that's a pretty large
area of woods for anything to roam in. Like I've
last year, I've seen a few I've seen bear a
few times, which I had never seen before because they're
doing a lot of clear cutting. Now, even right where
we had seen or heard that at, they're clear cut.
They have clear cutted all that, which is kind of
a uh, not very good thing. I don't like that
very much. But so what I'm getting at is they're
pushing all these animals, you know, they have less room
to go. But overall it's a big that's a big
chunk of woods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sounds like it must be. It sounds like a
great habitat. But is there much in the way of
moving water.
Speaker 1: Uh, there's a lot of like little inland lakes in
the area, like a ton of little small lakes, but
that's about it. And then like the bay or whatever,
the Lake Michigan that's got that's where town's at, like
the main highway and everything. So I would assume all
the wildlife, you know, tries to get away from that area.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure they do. If all this back. There
are lakes, though it sounds like they're all spring fed.
They aren't any tributaries keeping them filled.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're all spring fed.
Speaker 2: Okay, I see, Yeah, a Sasquatch dog man's going to
try to seek out moving water, not standing water like that.
But if those lakes are a spring fed depends on
how much the supply of fresh water coming into the
miss I mean, if there's a lot of water coming in,
and that water is going to be pretty fresh and
pretty clean. So that would explain it, it really would.
How many times have you two been camping back there
for the first experience happened?
Speaker 1: You know, often that whole summer vacation, we were out
there a lot, you know, at least two, three, four
times a week we'd be staying the night out there.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a lot. I think I know the answer
to this question, but I'm going to ask it. Anyway,
did that spell the last time you guys ever went
out there and camped?
Speaker 1: No, it didn't, actually, wow, you know, no, did you know?
Hearing that didn't really it didn't prevent me from going
out in the woods or going camping or doing any
of that. It really didn't. It was kind of so surreal.
It happened so fast, but it was obviously terrifying just
from what we had seen. But the thing was running
away from us. It acknowledged us when I yelped at it,
and it kept running and it walked off. It didn't
have any concern with us, So I'm sure if it
would have, you know, had some aggression or something, it
would have been totally different outcome. With me being friendly
with the woods.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure, yeah, I think that's a given there.
Why do you think it ran away from me? Though?
Do you think it was frightened?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I mean it didn't. It wasn't
like running running away from us. But when we had
first left eyes on it, it was already in motion
going up the hill, so it just kind of looked
like it it was on its way up, And I
don't even it didn't even know we were there until
I had yelled for it, and then it stopped and
looked back at us, seeing us, and then it just
continued on its way.
Speaker 2: Did you ever think back on what happened then? I
wish you never would have yelled at it.
Speaker 1: Uh, honestly, no, I'm glad I did. That's just kind
of the person I am. Like. You know, if it
would have been running at us or something, I wouldn't
have done anything like that. But you know, just seeing it,
I wanted to get as much information and see as
much as I could on this thing while I had
the chance, and you know, it was in the opposite direction,
and it probably wasn't the smartest thing for me to do,
and I got lucky that it turned out the way
it did. But I don't regret doing what I did.
Speaker 2: Well, you were fifteen, so not only did you think
you're a bulletproof, but obviously didn't have the best judgment
back then. But that doesn't make any different from the
rest of us when we hear that age, So can't
fault you for that. That's just one of those things,
it really is. Yep, Definitely if things would have gotten dicey, though,
would you or Billy have been more likely to bolt
for it?
Speaker 1: Well, honestly, I've always been a little chicken when it
came to like being in the woods. Billy was always
like a big He's bigger than me and we were
both kind of tough kids growing up in that, But
you know, he would never show any signs of being
scared of the dark or anything. And whenever we'd have
friends from school out, because you know, most of them
lived in town and stuff. We were kind of those
redneck country kids from the woods, and when they'd come out,
we'd be like, oh, we're going for our night walk now,
and we would just go through walks in the woods,
you know, on the you know, at night time when
it's dark, and I'd always be scared, but like, I
wouldn't be as scared as the person that we would
have with us, So it made me feel better. But
you could ask Billy, there's been times where we're probably
a squirrel took off of a tree or something, and
I probably jumped on his back.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, that happened sometimes, that's just how it is.
How did that experience affect your relationship your friendship with
Billy though? Did it make you closer friends or did
it in a way drive you apart.
Speaker 1: No, We've always been our best buds, just being a
few houses down from each other. And you know, his
dad even told us when we were kids, you guys
are going to be best friends forever. I know it.
And here we are fifteen years later, we're still best friends,
so you know, I didn't really interfere with you know,
our friendship Onceoever, it was just kind of something that
happened real quick and we all got to experience it together.
Speaker 2: That's great you. I'm glad it was a good encounter. Well,
if there is such a thing as a good encounter,
it was as benign as they can be. So that's
definitely a good thing. And considering that fact, it's no
surprise it did draw you closer together as friends. That's great,
it really is, and I'm glad he was there to
experience it with you. It'd be one thing to happen alone,
but in fact he had your best bud there with you.
That had to help a lot. It really did.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. With there being four of us there,
you know, it made it a lot less scary than
if I was by myself when that happened. I wouldn't
have been yelling at it like I did. There's no way.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm sure you wouldn't have. Yeah, that just makes sense.
When you got home from seeing it, did you tell
your mom about it right away as soon as you
could or did you wait to do that?
Speaker 1: Oh? No, Yeah, I told her told her right away
what we had seen, and I don't you know, I
don't think she thought we were lying or anything like that.
But you know, see anybody coming to you with a
story like that and kind of makes you wonder, you know,
like that's not something people see. So you know, I
don't blame her for if she did have doubts about
what we've seen.
Speaker 2: Well, i'll see that's the thing. I'm sorry getting reupted.
Please continue.
Speaker 1: Oh, I was just saying, yeah, you know, I told
her right away.
Speaker 2: That's the thing. The general public thinks that that dog
men are things that people don't see all that often,
but that's not actually accurate. More people than you would
believe see these things. I mean, people listening to this,
I'd be surprised if every one of them hasn't met
someone who's actually had an in care but they don't
know it because that eyewitness never told them about their encounter.
And it's understandable you see something like that and whatnot.
I mean, who are you gonna tell your friends, your family?
Evey're not gonna believe you in almost any case, so
why bother putting it out there? So it really does
only make sense. It does. How long did it take
you to find out what it was that you saw meson?
Speaker 1: Well, I knew right away. As soon as it stood
up on two feet and walked on two legs, I
knew exactly what it was because at first, when it
was running up the hill, I was like, this is
that a wolf? But you know, I didn't think there
was wolves around here at all period, And it was
like a wolf. You would think it would be more
filled out, and it wouldn't. This thing was like long
and skinny and had long, natty hair, so it just
looked like a wolf that had mains. I was really big,
I guess you could say. But as soon as it
stood up on two feet and walked away, I knew
that it was a dog man.
Speaker 2: So you knew about dog man back before you had
that experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like with the song the dog Man's Song, and
I was a total believer in it, like it. It
made me feel a certain type of way. When that
song would come on, even in the car, I would
like hunker down and just it would freak me right out.
So there was never a time in my life where,
you know, so like my mom told me about me
having those dreams and stuff, and then the song. You know,
I just was one hundred percent total believer in it.
Speaker 2: If anyone listening is wondering what song he's talking about,
he's talking about the song called The Legend. It was
written by Steve Cook, and if you haven't heard it,
it's a really good song. Of course, it's available on YouTube.
If you just go to YouTube and do a search
for The Legend Steve Cook, it'll be really easy to find.
How did your mom's encounter affect her? Did she handle
it well or did she struggle with it?
Speaker 1: You know, I think she handled it well. You know,
I think I had more problems with just thinking about
the dog man and stuff. And I'm sure she heard
it a lot, so I'm sure more of like the
emotions with dog Man and the family came from me,
which probably, you know, with me being her son and
young at the time, probably took it off her mind less,
I would assume. But you know, we've never really we've
talked about it from time to time, but you know,
we've never gotten a deep conversation about it. Just kind
of she said what she's seen and she knew what
we had seen, and that was about it.
Speaker 2: Had she spent much time in the woods or does
she stay out of them.
Speaker 1: For the most part, she stays out of them. We
live in the woods, you know, we've always lived in
the woods, but she doesn't really go out hiking or
walking in the woods or any of that.
Speaker 2: No, she didn't spend much time at all in the
woods before. But after having that sighting, does she have
an aversion to them now?
Speaker 1: No, you know, I don't think it really freaked her
out that much, to be honest. I mean, she told
me it was freaky, and you know, it's a freaky thing,
but I don't think she's really worried about it, to
be honest.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's good. That's really good. It sounds to me.
I don't want to put words into your mouth, but
it sounds to me like the dog men she saw
it just might've been the same one that you did.
What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am almost one hundred percent sure that it was.
The way she described it. It sounded just like the
one that we had seen, and with where she had
seen it at was directly parallel with from where we
seen it at. You know, it wasn't very far at all. Yes,
and it was within like a week time too, So
you know, I was pretty sure that that was it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it was. And how
tall did you say it was?
Speaker 1: It had to have been at least six and a
half seven and a half feet tall, it was, It
was tall. It was a long, long wolf dog man. Yeah,
it just looked really long and lean and long, straggling
blackish grayish black hair.
Speaker 2: After he had that experience, did anything ever happen around
your home? I mean your house was only about a
mile from that location where you saw it. Did anything
ever happen around your home that you think might have
been related to that dog man?
Speaker 1: Well, not at my house particularly, But when I was
I would say, I would say I was eighteen, I
had this lifted up red geo tracker. And one of
my friends that I had met in eleventh grade he
moved here from New Hampshire. He became one of my
really good friend Zach. We were so right where we
had seen that dog man on the power line. It's
a super steep sand hill and between the Vossa Trail
and that hill, there's a two track that cuts around
that and it's less deep and you can get through
there with a vehicle without having to have a four
wheel drive truck. And we went down and there, and
it's kind of sandy at the bottom, and there's like
a little pond that had formed between the power line
the bottom to the left and the trail that we
were at. It's real like marshy, like boggy and stuff,
and there was standing water there for some years there.
But anyways, there's some sand on the trail there at
the bottom. And I had got out and seen these
very very large dog prints, like very big, like bigger
than my hand significantly. And so I got out and
I was telling him about I had told him about
this thing, and he wasn't really a believer or anything
like that. And so I get out and I'm following
these footprints towards where we had seen it years previously,
and I start going up the hill where it's wooded
and there's trees. I'm off the powerland obviously, and I'm
making my way up on foot and then I hear boom,
boom boom at the top of the hill. It sounded
like five like a five foot log foot diamond or
just getting hit off of a tree with no rebound
like almost instantly, boom boom boom three times, and I
sprinted back down the hill, ran back to the tracker
and I was like, did you hear that? And he
was like, yeah, I heard it, and you know, he
didn't really think much of it. I knew something was up,
you know, there was obviously something at the top of
that hill, and I didn't know what could be making
that type of noise. So we get in the tracker.
I hopped in and then I continued up that trail
to the top hung or right, and I was heading
back towards like where that power line hill would come
up to the top at it, and I'm about halfway there.
I killed the tracker and I start howling. I could
hot kyoto, you just oh. And I did that for
probably fifteen to twenty seconds, and off to the left
angle like to the left, you hear boom, boom, boom,
like five like one and I'm three in succession, then
another one, and it was the same exact noise. You
could almost feel it in the ground. And I looked
at him and he looks at me with her eyes
wide and was like, all right, dude, I'm convinced there's
something going on now, and so that was that. We
drove off, hung out for the night, YadA YadA yah.
And within the next couple of weeks me Chucky and
our friend and Tim and I think my little brother
Evan was with us. I'd been telling these guys about
what we had heard, and I was like, we need
to go look around and see if we can find anything.
So we go out there and we start hiking into
the woods at the top of that hill on the
power line, and we walk into the woods. I'm trying
to go to the direction where I heard that noise from,
and almost instantly like we walked right to it. There's
a really big tree with no branches for you know,
to way up fifty feet up, forty feet up, but
like ten twelve foot up in this tree probably i'd say,
there was huge claw marks, like several inch two inch
deep claw marks just tore this tree up and they
were way up there. And we thought that was really
strange because that head have been they were fresh, that
had to have been what Zach and I had heard.
But what we heard was like a loud bang. It's
like boom, boom, boom, and these trees are scratched up
real deep and this tree was so we found that
and then I told them, you know, there was another
sound that we had heard. So we go off to
that area and this field or this area had been
clear cut in the past, but it was you know,
coming back, and it took us a little bit but
not super long. And we found this other tree, same
kind of tree as one that they had left, and
same thing, just claw marks gouging way deep into it,
really high up. And as we were trying to find
that tree, we see like a path going across this
where they had clear cut it, and you can see
like a beat down trail with really big dog prints
on it. So after we found this tree, we go
back to that trail and we followed it all the
way to where it starts to go down this really
big hill and it's all heavily, heavily wooded. And this
is like a spot where people don't go, you know,
it's just off the trails. The Vosa Trail kind of
runs by that area right there, but this specific spot
is off of any trail. And it's like, I got
this weird feeling when we got there. I was like,
there's this is just creepy feeling. So it just felt
so desolate, and so we started walking down this hill
and before long we found like a couple birds that
were dead, and there's like feathers everywhere kind of in
this pile. And we kept going down. We found a
couple of like thick plastic jugs that had been torn
to shreds, like claw or teeth marks in them. And
on this trail, like I said, the whole time, there's
giant dog prins. And we get down to the bottom
of this hill. We're just going real slow, watching our backs.
And at the bottom of this valley, I guess you
could say, we get to the bottom and there's probably
a fifty foot maybe diameter of all these big, you know,
bigger pine trees like probably six inches diameter, all maybe
four to six inches diameter, all snapped clean in half,
probably four foot up and they're all leaning in the
same direction, like into the center. And it was all
fresh because the all the pine needles were still on
the trees. We didn't like try going in there, looking
in there or anything, but we thought that was kind
of odd. And we had found, you know, a bunch
of pilesive dog do doo that were really big and
completely just full of hair, just hair sticking out of
it everywhere. So that was another one of my experiences
with whatever is out there and the dog man. That's
what I thought I had to have been. I don't
know what else could make some marks up in a
tree like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty typical behavior for them. I'm pretty sure
that's what it was. After having all these experiences with
apparently the same dog man, do you feel marked in
a way?
Speaker 1: Honestly, I don't know, because I had never seen it
or heard it at my house or you know, the
one time camping. I felt marked that time when we
were camping, because it was very clear, and it seemed
very clear to me that it knew we were there,
because they were just kept getting closer and closer and closer,
until it was at the top of the valley and
the trees were rolling down into the valley and then
it stopped, you know, and you could tell it. It
was a ways away at first, like quite a distance,
but it was super loud so you could hear it.
But by the time I got close to us, it
was very close. And then it stopped completely and then
I heard little things getting tossed off the tent, so
I thought I was hearing anyway, but we were too
scared to get out and look. So I felt totally
marked that time, but since then, I no, I haven't.
Speaker 2: Well that's good, that's good. And yeah, don't blame you
for not getting out to look, because curiosity did kill
the cat. It did. And for people that don't know
the woods beach trees, if you've ever been in the
woods and seeing a tree that's got real tight looking,
smooth gray bark, well that's a good sign that it's
a beach tree. And beach tree bark is really easy
to gouge and mark. That's why when you're in the
woods and you see people writing scratching their names into
tree trunks, a beach tree is just screaming out to
you do that on me, because it's just perfect for
doing that. Not a good idea to do that, of course,
but a lot of people do, unfortunately, when they're looking
to do that kind of a thing. Well, it's one
thing for a dog man to gouge beach trees because
they're so easy to do, but they'll actually gouge trees
like shagbark hickories that aren't easy to gouge, but they
don't care and they don't seem to have a problem
with doing it. They'll just reach up and really dig
those claws in. And if you come across gouges like that,
it can really freak you out, understandably. So let's talk
about those prints that you found me soon. You said
that the prints were bigger than your hand when you
put your hand out next to them. In inches, though,
how far across would you say they.
Speaker 1: Were from like the bottom of the pow at the top.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from the bottom of the paw to the top,
or from left right?
Speaker 1: I would say probably, I don't know. It was probably
good seven inch paw, eight inch paw maybe. Oh, you know,
I don't really know how big my hand is, but
it was. I could put my entire hand in it
and it was still, you know, another inch or two
around my hand. H if there's a big craw marks too,
like a wolf print. You know, it looked like a
wolf print.
Speaker 2: Oh, I bet it did have big claws. But the
thing is here, the biggest wolf print that you're gonna
find is normally going to max out at about six
and a half inches across six and a half If
you found prints that were eight were tickling eight. Yeah,
that's definitely no wolf print. Now did you look to
see if the prints were left right left or a
left left right right pattern.
Speaker 1: I couldn't really tell because you couldn't see every single print.
So like when you know, you could just catch the
ones that were in the softer dirt, and that actually
made a definite imprint. You know, there's a lot of
leaves and other stuff. But like at the bottom of
that trail and Zach and I had seen it, there
was sand down there, like I was saying, and that's
where I could see several prints. And then I just
kind of the path because you could tell her and
made a little there was a little path through the woods,
not like straight dirt, but you can tell something that
had walked through there, and that's the path I was following.
But you couldn't really make out, you know, the stride
that was taken or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, yeah, that's understandable. It really makes you wonder though,
you and Billy had spent so much time in that
woods back there and never saw or experienced anything, and
then all of a sudden, bam, bam bam, you started
having these experiences with that dog man or dog men plural.
It makes you wonder if all of a sudden, that
dog man just came into the area and that's when
you started having the experiences. I don't believe that to
be the case, but it is possible, and it definitely
makes you wonder about that, It really does. You heard
about another encounter that involved a DNR officer that happened
in your area. One more can else about that?
Speaker 1: So on Google? Well, I'd been told about this and
I looked it up and found it years back. I've
tried looking for it, you know, for five ten minutes.
I've tried scrolling around and finding it lately within the
last five, six, seven years, but I've had no luck
finding it. But I have found that article a handful
of times in the past. And it was written by
DNR officer who was staying at his in laws on
Island Lake or in law as in laws on Island Lake,
and it was evening time they had finished up supper,
and he took his mountain bike for a ride on
the trails that were around the lake. And I knew
those trailers like the back of my hands. So like
when reading it, I knew exactly where he was at.
I could picture in my head as I was reading it.
And he said, as he came up to this four
way intersection, he heard like dogs fighting or like you know,
dogs fighting. And he looks to the left and down
this straight away, which is probably two hundred yards, there's
this big field and there was this old, creepy camper
and that had always been there since I moved there,
just left in the woods. And he said he could
see he's seen a dog man inside of this camper.
He could see its head through the window of the
camper and it had like he said, I remember it
saying that it had like illuminated eye like that he
could see the eye was real glowy, I guess you
could say. And seen the side of the thing's head
in the camper, and he just turned around and high
tailed it back. But it said he was a d
N officer for some time and he had never came
across anything like that. And that spot, that four way
intersection is so the valley that we were camping in
where the shooting range was, was right at the bottom
of this little you like, you go halfway across the
shooting range, go up the trail not very far at all,
and then you're at that four way intersection. So we
were camping like i'd say, one hundred yards from where
he had seen it, hire fifty yards from where that
DNA officer seen it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's way too close for comfort. Did you ever
find out if that camper had been damaged and there
was a hole in the side that this dog man
had allegedly gone through to get into it, or if
it was the case of it opening up a door
to get in.
Speaker 1: I don't remember remember if there was ever a door
on it. This thing was pretty beat up. Actually, one
of my friends and I kind of like finished this
thing out with like logs and stuff when we were kids,
just kind of beat this thing down to where there
was nothing, you know, collapsed, because this thing was super
old and like almost you know, barely staying together until
we had done that. I can't recall if there was
a door even on it or not. I don't believe
that there was.
Speaker 2: Oh that's all right, that's something you probably didn't even
think about and understandably, So let's go back and talk
about the dog man. When you saw it, I know
you had a lot on your mind. At the time.
But did you ever remember seeing a tail on it?
Speaker 1: I can't really picture what the tail looked like. I
don't remember seeing like, you know, locking eyes on a
tail or. That really doesn't pop up a picture in
my head of when I seen it. I just I
believe it had a longer long tail bush your tail.
But you know, I don't remember the tail playing a
big you know, I wasn't part of the part of
my memory of it.
Speaker 2: Oh that's all right, Like I said, you had a
lot in your mind, so that's understandable. You recently heard
about an episode, actually you heard an episode of VIEP
of dog Me and Encounters where the guests said something
that really caught your attention when work? Can you tell
us about that? Oh?
Speaker 1: Wait, what's that? Sorry?
Speaker 2: Oh no, you're fine. Yeah, there was an episode of
the show that you heard not too long ago that
really caught your attention, something that the guests said, What
more can tell us about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So was this this last Saturday? I was listening
to one of your episodes, which I do very often,
and it was the one that says I shot a
dog man with a thirty yard six And I'm listening
to that, and about thirty minutes in or so, the guy, well,
in the beginning he had mentioned he's in northern Michigan,
so that obviously makes me curious where at But I
was listening and he mentioned right here off Fife Lake Road,
and I'm like, did he just say five Lake Road?
And went back and listened and again, and sure as heck,
he said right off Fife Lake Road. He had some
property and he ended up selling that property after this.
But one of his friends or something like that kind
of set him up, like his friend had seen this
dog man and tried to get him to go. He
got him to go out there where he had seen
this guy, and then he ended up seeing it and
shot it, and he was freaking out in the moment
he shot this thing, drew back his gun and the
thing was still standing there staring at him, and you know,
he kind of gathered his thoughts and he pulled up again,
shot it, and he stayed looking through his scope and
he said he could see the blood flying off, you know,
seeing the blood spray off this thing when he shot it,
and it didn't kill it or anything like that. And
Wife Lake Road is just two miles or so two
and a half three miles maybe from Island Lake Road
where I grew up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really good. Close. In that episode that you're
talking about is episode twenty one. Learry is the guest's
name who came on that show and talked about that
experience and the fact that he had a thirty odd
six that he knew how to use. He shot this
dog me in and didn't get the desired effect. What
does that tell you about the logic of stuffing a
forty five caliber pistol into your belt heading out into
dog mean country, knowing that they're out there and doing
things that you think that forty five is going to
be able to protect you from. I mean, if a
thirty odd six isn't going to get the job done
with these guys, why would you think that a forty
five or any pistol is going to get the job done?
Because it won't. It really won't.
Speaker 1: No, No, I won't at all. A thirty odd six
is a beast of a gun, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, compared to any pistol, it is definitely. Well, let's
get to the listener's questions from the live chat. The
first one up on deck is from truth quest and
she wants to know. Do you think it may have
circled around behind you talking about that sighting?
Speaker 1: Yet I'm not too sure. I don't think it did
because of the fact that it looked like it was
already going the way it was going when we had
seen it, and I interrupted it to get its attention,
and then I just kept going on the way it
was going. And when it got to the top and
stood up, it went, you know, away from us. It
went to the left, and it just it seemed like
it was it knew where it was going, or it
was just doing its thing and it didn't really mind us.
But right there at the top of that hill, I
might have had when it turned, when it stood up
and walked on two legs into the woods, that's right
where we had found that tree with all the scrapes
on it, first tree that was right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like everything did happen in the same
general area. I think I know the answer to this question,
but I don't want to assume things. I'm going to
ask you, if you had your druthers, would you like
to have another encounter with one of these things? Or
are you good?
Speaker 1: Ah? It's hard saying you know, if it was another
encounter like that, yeah, I would love to, just because
I would love to refresh that image in my head
and you know, get it on camera would be really cool.
But you know, knowing what it could be capable of doing,
it's kind of wrong for me to just be so
willing to want to see one again because they're not
out there. I don't feel that one was not there
to get seen. I don't think like we caught it.
We've seen it on its way away and we caught
its attention and then just kept going away. But you know,
if it could have turned around and came my way,
I could be a goner and we could all been goners.
So I can't really say i'd want to see one
for that reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why tim fade. It's best not to if you
can avoid it. Some people have very benign experiences like
the one that you had, and then they want to
do all they can to try to have another encounter
to push the issue. Well, just because your first encounter
was benign like that, that doesn't mean by a long
shot that your next encounter is going to be the
same way. I mean, sometimes people force the issue and
they actually do wind up having another encounter, and the
dog man's apoplectic. So be careful what you wish for.
It's just best not to have an encounter with one
of these things. Why encourage it. This next question is
from farm Cat. She wants to know what does the
song say? Please? She's talking about The Legend, that song
I mentioned by Steve Cook. Is it the song that
was changed to a beer? I'm not sure what that means.
But if you go to YouTube like I said, and
do a search for a song called the Legend and
type in Steve Cook, it'll pop up. There'll be several results,
it'll pop up. It'll be really easy to find and
to listen to that way, So yeah, please do that.
This next one is from truth Quest. She wants to
know did you think that? I guess that's the same
question she asked earlier, So we'll move on to the
next one, which is from Miss fire Horse three point
thirty three. She wants to know what year did this happen? A?
Speaker 1: Twenty ten This is when we had seen it, and
then it was probably two thousand and two and fourteen
or fifteen when Zach and I had heard those noises
and found those trees.
Speaker 2: So it stayed around for a while.
Speaker 1: Then, yep, I think it's still around. Man.
Speaker 2: Well, like I tell people, I think dog men have
a huge home range that they just operate in like
any large predator would. I mean, if they stay in
any one particular area for too long, they're going to
deplete the resources in that area the same way that
a mountain lion or a bear would. So it's natural
they know they have to move around to avoid that happening.
So yeah, you'll notice that they'll be there for a
certain period of time and then they're gone in most cases,
and then after a certain period of time they'll show
up again. Well that's just a case of them circling
back around to that area to take advantage of the
resources there again. So that would definitely explain that meadow
dream is next question, they want to know what's the
name of the county. This happened in.
Speaker 1: Grand Travers County.
Speaker 2: Grand Travers County. All right, that's your answer. This next
question is from dog me and tepee Hunting, and they
want to know have you had any other non related
phenomenon happened to you prior to or after seeing the dogma?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I didn't you know, I kind of thought
about saying this or asking you if I could talk
about this, but I decided not to just because it
wasn't a dog man related. There wasn't a dog man.
So last year, during a lunch break, we were doing
a hardwood floor for this lady out by Lake and Michigan,
and we went down to the Cedar Lake boat launch.
We would often go there to eat lunch, care break
and stuff. And I had my truck pulled up towards
the lake, and the guy I worked with had his
truck pulled up a little further than mine. I was
ready to get going back to work. We had been
there for probably thirty forty minutes, and he was down
standing by the water like looking for Potoski stones, and
I yelled over to him, like, hey, you ball ready
to get going back, and looking past him in like
the cacktails cocktail cocktails, I could see this big tan
like sphere, like a ball, the big tan ball, and
it kind of resembled like a duck line or something,
but I knew there wasn't a duck blind there. So
I'm looking at this thing and I seen it. It was
like slightly rolling or it was slightly rolling a little
bit moving around. I'm like, hey, Mike, look over at that,
and he's like what, And he's kind of looking around
as he gets his visuals in that direction. This thing,
it literally just went down and just was it was gone.
I didn't see it like vanished, like with the stap
of a finger, but it was just like like it
rolled down under the weeds almost. And this thing was
probably it looked like I had to then five foot diameter,
and I was like, there was just this tan bar
right there. And as we're you know, like instantly as
I say that, this human like humanoid like a person
stood straight up in the same spot and its torso
and the top of it was like, you know, five
feet above these probably three foot cactails. And what I
could see was it had like a blue torso and
on the top of it its head was it was
a big white solid like looked like a big white afro,
like a big circle on the top of its head,
and it looked like it was just staring straight at us.
It felt like it was staring into my soul. And
we're both just standing there and you know, I'm sitting
in my truck. He's standing there and we're just sitting
there jaws drop, and this thing stood there for a
solid ten seconds and then it just went down. I
pulled out my phone started recording, and in the video
you can see so I pulled my phone out, start
recording over there, and you can see some a big
animal in the cat like just barely above the cacktails,
like it looks like up there or a sasquatch straight up,
and you could see it kind of moving around and
then it would it would stick its head down into
the cactails. I read my truck up. It popped its
head back up and you could see a huge, dark,
furry animal in that same exact spot where we had
just had just seen this big tanball and then this
person thing with a huge white circle on its head.
And then it was a big hairy animal. And in
the video you can see it's right where the water
makes the cactails. Like halfway up the cacktails, there's these
gold they look like gold tubes, like gold tubes that
were like I would say, maybe a foot and a
half long, and there were spaced like two foot apart,
and they were literally floating above the water just a
little bit and they go for like ten fifteen feet
and then they go up ten foot ten to fifteen
feet and it's like a backward shaped l. And inside
of that was where we seen all this stuff. In
my video. It looks all like blurry right in that box.
And these little gold things are literally moving, like flopping almost,
and you can see the ones that were on the
water running like even the war. We're kicking up little
splashes of water. And then they went up this tree,
like in front of a tree, and it was so weird.
So I'm like, I'm going over there, and I got
a video of all this, and he stayed over at
the boat launch, but I walked over there. Nobody walks
over here. You know, there's a house way back over there,
and nobody on that whole corner. So I'm going through here,
recording on my phone. Hopped over this creek and then
I see this this like little hut thing. It was
made like pieces of not tree bark, but like pieces
of chunks of tree, and it was probably four and
a half five foot tall by about the same with
and it had a roof on it too, all made
out of chunks of tree. And I'm circling around this thing,
and I look into the front of it, and like
halfway through it, there's a log or like a big
you know, like a tree, like a six inch tree
running through it. And then the left side of it
is like all dirt and like a shelf kind of.
And on my side of it, where I was standing,
was just a huge black hole, like a hole in
it going down, and I just I took off and
I told them about it, and we went back to work,
and then we went back to check it out, you know,
at a later date, not much later, and I had
sat in my truck and recorded that same spot that
I've seen that just to make sure it wasn't a
fluke or just anything. And it wasn't. You know, that's
exactly what we had seen. And we went over there
and took a really long stick put it down in
that hole, and I never felt bottom. So yeah, I've
had that experience as well. And now it was just
this last year.
Speaker 2: Holy cow, Mason, let me get this right. You see
all this freaky crap from a distance, and your response is, Hm,
I need to head over there.
Speaker 1: Yep. I guess I'm just kind of a daredevil, if
you will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, i'd say you are. You're not feeing of heart,
definitely by a long shot. But please remember curiosity did
kill the cat. I'm wondering, though, what's going on with
this white afro? I mean, was that the head of
a huge head of a sasquatch that you saw that
was white. It happened to be white and wind up
looking like an afro because it was behind the bull
rush or the cat tails, And that's why I looked
that way. I wonder what was going on with that.
Speaker 1: Well, honestly, it seemed like it was three totally different things.
Like I seen the big tan ball. It was very
clear as day, you know, it looked like a tan
duck blind, but it was perfectly circular, and it was
sticking up good four foot above the cactails, which means
this ball had to have done pretty big. And it
was slightly moving around And I stared at that for
a good five six seven seconds until I was like,
you know, you know, I was like, hey, look at
that thing. And as he got his head in that direction,
it had just went down, and I was like, there
was just a ten ball right there. And then something
stood right up out of the cocktails, totally different from
the tam You know, it wasn't the tamball. It looked
like it reminded me of like an old like Cherokee,
Indian or something. It had like blue on its stomach,
and you know, you could tell it had a face
like a human. It was it was a human, but
it had a huge white ball on top of its
head that had to have been at least two and
a half foot, you know, circumference or diameter. And this
thing just just stood there, perfectly still for a solid
ten seconds, i'd say, and then it just went down.
And he's seen us too, you know, we've both seen that.
And then in the video and you could barely see
it by person so so far away, but in the
video you can see it very well. There was a big,
hairy animal right there moving around. That is I don't
even know how to explain it. It was just the
wildest thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how could you explain that? That is freaky? A
lot of strange things going on. You told us you
took that stick and tried to reach the bottom with it,
but you couldn't the abyss. Were there any stones around
you could pick up and toss in?
Speaker 1: No, there wasn't any rocks in that area. I just
grabbed a long, you know, long branch, stuck it down
in there, and there was no bottom to be felt.
I didn't toss it down in there. I guess I
could ever should have, But you know, I had a
good eight foot stick and I just went r riding
it down there. Man, there was nothing in there. It
was hollow, it was deep.
Speaker 2: Mason Mason, Mason, Oh man, what you've done? Because there
are definitely creatures around there. You saw that, strange creatures.
So you're poking a stick down into the abyss. What
would you've done if one of those freaky creatures would
have just popped up out of that abyss and grabbed
you around your legs?
Speaker 1: Al they've been done for. But yeah, I didn't, you know.
When I seen that there was a huge hole in there,
I took off, and you know, I told my buddy,
my coworker, and showed him the video, and I was like,
we gotta go back. So we ended up going and
checking it out, you know, a couple of few days
later or whatever, and he was with me when I
stuck that stick down there. But I don't know, I
guess I don't know. I don't know what I would
have done.
Speaker 2: Holy cow, how old were you when you did that?
Speaker 1: Twenty nine?
Speaker 2: Twenty nine? Okay, way too old to make a mistake
like that. But I don't know. After all you've been through,
I'm sure that curiosity was really peaud. I can understand
how when you're that curious about things like that, how
you do things that most people kind of look at
and shake their head. But yeah, I wish you wouldn't
have done that. You could have definitely lived or regret that,
and maybe not even very long. So wow, that's scary,
not good at all. Well, I've got another few questions
for you. The next one is from Cookies and Cream.
They want to know was it a full moon that
night when you saw the dog man?
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you. I honestly don't know.
Speaker 2: Oh that's all right. I'm sure that's the last thing
that was on your mind at the time. You're some
mind blown, So no harm, no foul on that. This
next one up is from Christian and Christiane wants to
know did the dog me and smile at you?
Speaker 1: No, I don't think it smiled at us. That it
turned back, turned its head back and looked at us
just for a brief moment, and then it kept going
on its way, looked back at us when I got
to the top, and then it looked back, kind of
turned back the way it was stood up on two
feet and walked on two sheet straight ahead into the woods.
But no, I wasn't smiling at us that I could
see anyway it was. It was a good distance away,
but very you know, clear as day. There was nothing
obstructing our vision.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it didn't sound like it was in the smiling
mood anyway. It was just concerned about getting some distance
between you and it. This last one, I'm going to
ask you, because it's almost a quarter after it is.
Madra's Curizalez, and he wants to know, were there any
areas that were closed off for in your reason that
it didn't that up?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, No, I don't think so. No. Yeah,
but Matt Hill going up where we'd seen it running,
people don't really drive up back. It's so steep like
we would and stuff just because we were crazy kids
and we would ride our garbikes up it, so we
knew exactly how steep it was. But it looks like
a looks like a wall. I'm almost looking at it
from one side to the other, so like people don't
really go right there. They take that two track around
to the side where Zach and I had seen that
pauprint and I heard the banging on the tree.
Speaker 2: As big of an area as it was or is,
sounds like it's a pretty hard area to close off anyway,
so that doesn't come as a surprise. Well, what's about
time for us to get out if you're a Mason,
But before we do, do you have any closing comments
you'd like to put out there for us?
Speaker 1: You know, if you've seen a dog man, please get
a hold of Vic, and don't be afraid to tell
your experience because everyone here obviously has something in common
and that's the dog man. So everybody would love to
hear you know your experience.
Speaker 2: That's well said, because yes we would, We definitely would. Well,
me Snike can't thank you enough for coming on, especially
on Christmas night, ensuring these experiences with us. I really
appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Well, absolutely, Vic, I'm glad I could be on.
Speaker 2: Well, what's been great having Yeah, thanks again so much
for your time and have a great night.
Speaker 1: Thank you you too, and Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2: Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1: To use.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you much, we'll see. Well that's it for
another one. Like I said at the head of the show,
mirror Christmas everyone, I hope your Christmas has been an
amazing one and I hope this upcoming year is even
better than this year was, which, like I said, that
wouldn't take much. But if you've had a dog mean
encounter and need help with it, or if you'd like
to be a guest on the show, all you need
to do is to go to Dogmanencounters dot com and
submit a report. If you do that, then I'll contact
you to schedule a phone conversation so we can find
out what's going on with your encounter and take it
from there. But having said that, thanks again, as always
so much for listening, and have a great night.