That Time I Saw A Cryptid

Naturalizing the Michigan Dogman

A cryptid is an animal currently unrecognized by the scientific community. Skeptics reject them as folklore and myth, supported only by sketchy anecdotes and bad photographs, but others believe. Skinwalkers, the Jersey Devil, the Mothman, Bigfoot, and the Chupacabra are all considered cryptids today. Though these creatures are often shoehorned into the category of the paranormal, there’s a wide range of opinion concerning the nature of these animals. Perhaps they are undiscovered species, yet to be recognized and cataloged by the scientific community. Others attribute extraordinary abilities to these creatures that would require a deeper reevaluation of received wisdom. 

I’m naturally inclined towards the “ordinary, but undiscovered” end of the spectrum regarding my own experience with a cryptid. There’s a precedent here: Many species we know about today were once considered cryptids. In Conversations in Science at Indiana University, Leecy Davis notes that the giant squid, the kangaroo, and the platypus were once cryptids, the latter initially dismissed as a hoax. Komodo dragons were treated as legend until 1910. Gorillas remained unrecognized by the western scientific community until the mid-19th century, shortly before the publication of the Origin of Species. Of course, eyewitness testimony of gorillas existed long prior to their official recognition. However, many eyewitness accounts supporting the existence of the great ape were provided by Africans, and the Europeans who heard their testimony dismissed the superstitious, primitive people and their tall tales. 

WHAT I SAW

When I was seventeen, I took a walk through the woods with my girlfriend at the time. It was the summer of 2012 in the town of Bloomingdale, Michigan – a rural community of only a few hundred souls. We were at least a quarter-mile away from the house, surrounded on all sides by forest and farmland, which stretched endlessly in every direction. The house was on the outskirts of Bloomingdale, a few miles west of town. We were in the middle of nowhere. That’s when we saw what looked like a wolf. 

It was pretty far away, but we could both see it clearly. Alarmed, we turned back and started walking briskly, trying to stay calm. The distance between us and the house felt infinite. The wolf – still on four legs – kept pace with us, moving parallel to our trajectory. We nervously accelerated little by little, afraid to run, worried that sudden panic would instigate a charge from the wolf. My girlfriend led the way forward through the brush as I kept an eye on the wolf. He was off to my right, and I kept him just in my field of vision as we moved progressively faster and faster. He remained parallel to us, always matching our pace, trotting along. Finally, our fear got the better of us and we broke into a sprint. She was still a couple yards ahead of me as I turned and looked every other second, alternating between dodging trees and making sure our new friend wasn’t coming towards us. 

Then, something extraordinary happened. In broad daylight, the wolf stood up on its hind legs and kept running. The fear I already felt morphed into terror, but I couldn’t turn my eyes away. I was transfixed on this upright wolf, which was moving along at a stunning pace. It looked unnatural. I had a clear view of the creature, who I saw move in that fashion for three or four solid seconds before I averted my gaze to keep from crashing into a tree. I looked back a few more times to confirm. This was not a fleeting image or a glance out of the corner of my eye. We were not on drugs. We had not been drinking. It was not dark out. We were certainly not looking for anything like this, nor had I ever heard of anything like this. For a few uninterrupted moments, I looked straight at what appeared to be a bipedal canine. 

By the time we burst out of the woods and into the backyard, I had lost sight of the wolf. Or whatever it was. 

“Did you see that?!” I asked breathlessly as we hurried inside. 

“What do you mean? Of course I saw it.” She was shaking.

“No, I mean – did you see it stand up?”

Her confused look answered my question. She smiled slightly, thinking I might be kidding.

“That thing…” 

“Yeah,” she nodded. 

“The wolf – you saw that.” 

“Yes!” 

“I saw – it stood up and kept running!” 

She laughed. I realized that she’d been just ahead of me the entire time we were running. I was the one keeping an eye on the wolf. The only time she saw it was when we initially spotted him and started going back to the house. I didn’t know what to say. From that moment on, a self-conscious feeling settled over me that did not dissipate for many years. I felt inhibited. How could I tell anyone about it? I couldn’t have seen that. But I did – plain as day. 

If another person tells you that they saw a bipedal wolf, how exactly are you supposed to react? I knew how it sounded, and (as I soon discovered) it’s not as if most people are going to believe you. So what’s the point of talking about it? I didn’t even want to think about it. It made me feel like I’d gone crazy. So I tried to suppress the ordeal and didn’t mention anything about it for a long time. Even my wife, who I met two years after the sighting, only just recently heard the story. 

I should mention an exception to the general trend. My brother Elijah did believe me from the start. When I began sharing the story again several years after it happened, I was surprised to find out that Elijah already knew about it. I didn’t recall telling him the first time, but I’m glad I did – he remembered the story and corroborated my memory of the events, which helped reassure me that the details hadn’t been warped in the intervening years. 

So, what changed that made me feel like I could be open about the experience? 

THE BEAST OF BRAY ROAD

As I mentioned, I didn’t set out looking for a cryptid. I hadn’t heard any of the stories about upright canines in Wisconsin and Michigan, or have any knowledge of or interest in cryptozoology. I didn’t know that anyone else had even claimed to have seen anything resembling what I had seen. 

Several years after the sighting, I was scanning the “P” section in the Traverwood branch of the public library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Philosophy” was a very sad, small section. Right next to it was the “Paranormal” section. Two books caught my eye: Midwestern Strange by B.J. Hollars and I Know What I Saw by Linda Godfrey. They were about folktales and mythology in the United States. So I grabbed the Hollars book and opened up to chapter one, entitled The Beast of Bray Road. Here’s what I saw: 

CASE FILE #1

The Beast of Bray Road

1936 - Present

NAME: THE BEAST OF BRAY ROAD

SCIENTIFIC NAME: DEFIES CLASSIFICATION

LOCATION: SOUTHEASTERN WISCONSIN

DESCRIPTION: APPROXIMATELY FIVE-FOOT-SEVEN, 150-POUND FRAME; HAIRY WITH A HUMANOID STATURE; OFTEN DESCRIBED AS AN "UPRIGHT CANINE," "BIPEDAL CANINE," OR A "DOGMAN." POTENTIALLY OF THE WEREWOLF FAMILY.

FIELD NOTES: SINCE THE 1930S, BEAST OF BRAY ROAD SIGHTINGS HAVE PERSISTED THROUGHOUT SOUTHEASTERN WISCONSIN (ELKHORN, DELAVAN, ETC.). IS IT A GRAY WOLF? A MUTATED CREATURE? A CANINE-SASQUATCH HYBRID? A MULTIDIMENSIONAL BEING? A WELL-TRAINED DOG WITH AN IMPOSSIBLY LONG LIFESPAN? WITNESSES AND EXPERTS OFFER NO SHORTAGE OF THEORIES. 

WITNESS TESTIMONY: "IT WAS STOOPED OVER GORILLA-LIKE, HAIRY, AND WITH A TERRIBLE STENCH TO HIM. I THINK [MY FATHER] SAID IT SMELLED LIKE ROTTING MEAT." 

JOE SCHACKELMAN, 2017

CONCLUSION: UNSOLVED

Our story begins in the fall of 1989, when twenty-four-year-old bar manager Lori Endrizzi—having just finished her shift at The Jury Room—began the short drive back to her home. Along the way she spotted a strange shape kneeling alongside rural Bray Road in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. She slowed the car to get a better look, her eyes settling upon a pointy-eared creature with its back to her. As she drove forward, her headlights shone over its brownish-gray fur, revealing that the creature appeared to be feeding on roadkill. The creature turned, and for forty-five terrifying seconds, Lori stared at it, its fangs and wolf-like snout leaving an indelible impression on her.

I stood there in shock. There was a name for it? I can’t fully convey the relief, the unexpected validation, the glimmer of vindication – others had seen what I saw! Just having a category to put it in made all the difference in the world, somehow. 

I scanned each line with urgency. Linda Godfrey appeared frequently in the first chapter of Hollars’ book. I flipped open I Know What I Saw by Godfrey. She also had a chapter on the upright canine. What’s more, sightings like mine appeared to be concentrated in Wisconsin and Michigan. Godfrey, it turned out, was a reporter working for a local newspaper when rumors of a bipedal canine made their way to her. After a few interviews, she became convinced, if nothing else, of the sincerity of the witnesses. Her series of articles later became a book entitled The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf. 

A wolfish-looking creature that ran on two legs and had been seen around the Bray Road area, stealing chickens, eating roadkills, and scaring the daylights out of locals who (sometimes literally) ran into it.

Although the stories seemed like grist for the National Enquirer’s mill, they were consistent enough to be intriguing. A certain number of people, good honest working fold, had seen something – something unusual. . . . The logical place to start was the county Humane Officer, Jon Fredrickson. It turned out Fredrickson has a manila folder in his files marked “Werewolf,” filled with note cards detailing six or seven such “sightings.” One referred to unusual tracks, another to a hairy pointy-eared creature seen chasing down a deer on two legs. . . . [Two separate women] saw the creature on different parts of Bray Road in the evening hours. Barbara is a working mother, age 26, and Pat is a high school student. And both are entirely serious about what they saw. 

Tracking down ‘The Beast of Bray Road’ - The Week (1991)

The Beast of Bray Road went by another name farther east: the Michigan Dogman (although the name itself started as a joke). As I continued to research the sightings of an upright, wolf-like creature in Michigan and the surrounding states, however, I was disappointed to see (to my mind) obviously legendary elements crop up in the accounts. Maybe a detail like “glowing eyes” could be overlooked, but the creature appearing in ten-year cycles that only fall on years ending in 7? Why would anyone include that in the record, unless they were entirely unserious, a prankster, or even a skeptic trying to discredit their target? Reports are verifiably not concentrated at ten year intervals or on years ending with 7. How exactly would that work, anyway? And of course, the specter of werewolves haunted every page. Did I really have to grant any credence to werewolf lore in order to accept these testimonies – including my own?

I wanted to strip away all the nonsense and find a rational explanation of what I saw, without compromising an inch on the facts. This wasn’t a recovered memory or a third-hand story. To quote the title of Godfrey’s book, I know what I saw. 

WHY A NATURALISTIC EXPLANATION? 

I’m going to outline one potential theory. The idea is to provide a parsimonious account of what I experienced without adding unnecessary paranormal baggage. Going forward, I’ll call this “the naturalistic explanation”. (“Naturalistic” is meant to refer to the natural sciences.) Its main virtue is that it doesn’t demand very much of us. The commitments required to explain what I’ve recounted are already in place and widely recognized, save for the last piece of the puzzle. So, using the resources of contemporary biology, and without any invocation of the supernatural or paranormal, I want to attempt to explain what I and many others have witnessed. 

I have two reasons for fleshing out this hypothesis. One motivation is simply the pursuit of the truth: I want to explain what I saw, and in order to do that, we should explore the full spectrum of possibilities, from the most deflationary and scientifically conservative to the most fantastical. The unambiguously paranormal interpretations of the dogman sightings are worth discussing as well, but I tend to be inclined towards the naturalistic end of the spectrum. 

Another motivation is spite. The skeptic community, which unequivocally dismisses all cryptozoology as pseudoscience, hoax, and folklore, has been a tremendous obstacle to the pursuit of truth in this area. They played a major role in inhibiting my own exploration, preventing free inquiry by socially enforcing a rigid set of boundaries. I was once a part of the skeptic community, and it wasn’t until I’d moved on that I could confront my own experiences honestly. In fact, I never would’ve uncovered my preferred naturalistic explanation had I remained within such an intellectually stifling environment. This hypothesis, to reiterate, requires almost nothing we don’t already know about. It invokes almost nothing beyond contemporary, mainstream wildlife biology. In other words, there is nothing contained in the naturalistic explanation that should offend the delicate sensibilities of the debunkers. I just want to prove that it can be done. Unfortunately, since I’m taking my own experience seriously, as opposed to dismissing it as a false memory, or as one skeptic suggested to me, a “fear-induced hallucination,” they will not abide even the naturalistic explanation. So be it. 

THE NATURALISTIC EXPLANATION 

If we randomly sampled one-hundred people, compiling and graphing their height, we would expect to see a bell-shaped curve representing the distribution. Those of average height fall in the middle of the bell curve, while exceptionally tall people exist at the far end of the distribution. The same holds for many traits found in nature – weight, strength, femur length, and so on. 

So, what’s necessary to allow an approximately 150 pound creature to run bipedally? Minimally, they’d need a good sense of balance, paws with the right shape and size, strength where it's necessary. Just as there’s going to be a wolf that’s faster than the great majority of wolves, there’s going to be a wolf with a greater sense of balance, wider paws, stronger hind legs, and so on. (If there’s some trait I’ve left out, there’s going to be a far end of the bell curve with respect to that characteristic as well.) In any population of organisms with genetic diversity, there will be outliers – organisms in the 99th percentile of a given trait. 

Consider the question, “Can humans run a mile in under five minutes?” Well, some humans can run a mile in under five minutes. But the vast majority of us cannot. If you pick a random human being, the odds are that they won’t be able to do so. Yet, a small minority of us can. It’s possible that a small number of wolves – perhaps only a few – have the ability to move upright. Perhaps I and a few others have seen one of these wolves exercise its extraordinary capacity, a capacity enabled by its position on the far end of the bell curve with respect to the phenotypic traits relevant to upright, bipedal movement. 

I’ve referred to the creature as a biped, but “facultative biped” would be more precise. A facultative biped is an animal that is capable of moving on two legs, but normally opts to walk or run on four limbs. Facultative bipedalism has been observed in several families of lizards and multiple species of primates, but it’s not (currently) recognized in canines. If facultative bipedalism in Canis lupus were a presently known phenomenon, it wouldn’t be necessary to classify a number of dogman sightings in Michigan and Wisconsin as paranormal at all, including my own. (Though, since I’m not a biologist, I couldn’t say whether it would be appropriate to officially classify wolves as facultative bipeds, even accepting the accounts like mine as veridical. Perhaps there are other criteria that lizards and primates satisfy that I’m not aware of.) Regardless, on the basis of eyewitness testimony, it seems plausible that bipedal movement in some wild canines is a genuine phenomenon, however rare it may be. 

One potential problem for the naturalistic explanation is the geographical distribution of the wolf population. Wolves are in Michigan, but it's unusual for them to be as far south as Bloomingdale. By no means is it a common occurrence to see a wolf in southwest Michigan, or anywhere in the Lower Peninsula. In the Upper Peninsula, the population is no less than six-hundred wolves. Wildlife biologists from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources released their latest gray wolf survey in January 2023, confirming that the northern population has remained steady for more than a decade. 

“These results show a continued trend of statistical stability, indicating that gray wolves may have reached their biological carrying capacity within the Upper Peninsula,” said Cody Norton, the DNR’s wolf specialist. “Wolf presence has only been confirmed twice genetically in the Lower Peninsula in recent times; in 2004 and 2014.”

Results from 2022 wolf survey show population remains stable (January 17, 2023)

There have been many more sightings and reports of gray wolves, but as Norton specifies, wolf presence in the Lower Peninsula has been genetically confirmed only twice in recent years. That is to say, there is weaker evidence of a wolf presence in the Lower Peninsula that surpasses the DNR’s conservative estimate, but we can’t say anything with much confidence. The Michigan DNR is being appropriately cautious. It is very unlikely that there is a notable wolf population in the Lower Peninsula. Though, in order for the naturalistic explanation to work, I suppose we only need a Lower Peninsula wolf population of one. 

Perhaps my upright canine didn’t belong to a pack, and the fact that a significant wolf presence does exist within a few hundred miles is enough to get the theory off the ground. Lone wolves have been known to travel vast distances. For example, the Voyageurs Wolf Project collared one lone wolf in the Spring of 2019 known as V075, who traveled over 1,800 miles in the span of fifteen months. 

The lone wolf hypothesis would also help make sense of parallels in the 1989 Lori Endrizzi sighting. Her sighting took place in the neighboring state of Wisconsin, whose northern half is known to be populated with wolves, but whose southern half is thought to be absent of them entirely, or nearly entirely. Maybe our upright canine was more likely to disperse from the pack, given his odd characteristics and behavior. Both in Michigan and Wisconsin, the wolf population is concentrated in the north. My sighting and Endrizzi’s sighting took place in the south, close enough to fall in the wandering path of a lone wolf. 

So, here’s the naturalistic explanation in a nutshell: 

A wolf is dispersed from its pack, wandering far from its original location. This wolf ordinarily opts to walk and run on four legs, but they are capable of walking and running on two. Their facultative bipedalism is enabled by their position on the far end of the bell curve with respect to phenotypic traits relevant to upright movement (e.g., sense of balance, size and shape of paws, strength of hind legs, and so on). 

One note on the naturalistic explanation: The “lone wolf” aspect is inessential. How exactly this wolf ends up so far south on its own (or nearly on its own) is not the essential core of the hypothesis.

Of course, the naturalistic explanation could be wrong. But that would mean the most conservative explanation is wrong, leaving only the more extraordinary options. Although skeptics could manage to produce several other deflationary explanations, none of them would be remotely compelling to anyone who has actually had the experiences. False memories, hoax, hallucination and the like are not going to satisfy first-hand witnesses like Lori Endrizzi or myself. 

I suppose the next rung up the ladder from the naturalistic explanation would be “undiscovered subspecies”. Still not paranormal or supernatural, but perhaps less likely than the explanation outlined above. New species and subspecies are still discovered today, but flying under the radar of wildlife biologists as a bipedal canine would be difficult, to say the least. (Though less difficult for a facultative biped!) 

An unrecognized species or subspecies is nevertheless a possibility. Recall the list of animals formerly considered cryptids. The giant squid had never been photographed alive by the turn of the 21st century, despite existing in lore for centuries, if not millennia. Genetic testing, as it’s become cheaper and more widely available, has also led to interesting developments. Botanists, for instance, have discovered “new” species that had been consistently misidentified in the past, being so similar in appearance to other plant species. It’s easy to see how this could happen with plants, but in principle there’s no reason it couldn’t happen with canines as well. 

I should mention that the naturalistic explanation has an advantage when it comes to the “dead body problem” often presented by skeptics. The challenge goes something like this: “If [cryptid] is real, why are there no dead bodies? You’re telling me one of these things hasn’t fallen off a cliff, or gotten hit by a train? Why are there no carcasses or fossils?” 

Responses vary depending on the cryptid and its nature. A few Bigfoot believers, for instance, say that their species leaves this world upon death, crossing over into a different plane of existence. Other advocates say they bury their dead. Still others argue that they are very hard to kill. But most point out that dead bodies in the wild are harder to come by than skeptical keyboard warriors might think, especially well-preserved bodies. Scavengers and the natural course of decomposition ensure that full, museum-ready bodies are not exactly common in the woods. (When’s the last time you saw a bear carcass lying around?) 

Skeptical arguments from the fossil record are on even shakier ground. As University of Florida anthropologist David J. Daegling explains, 

“Most primate paleontologists will tell you that the fossil record of recognizably modern gorillas and chimpanzees is virtually nil, and the remainder would concede that any fossils representing their ancestors are controversial. Chimpanzees and gorillas are real animals that had real ancestors, but it is not the fossil record that allows us to draw that conclusion. The truth of the matter is that the fossil record is spotty.”  

Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America’s Enduring Legend (p.13)

In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins makes a similar point: 

“We are lucky to have fossils at all. It is a remarkably fortunate fact of geology that bones, shells and other hard parts of animals, before they decay, can occasionally leave an imprint which later acts as a mould, which shapes hardening rock into a permanent memory of the animal. We don’t know what proportion of animals are fossilized after their death — I personally would consider it an honour to be fossilized — but it is certainly very small indeed.” (p.320) 

Even though the skeptics may be overconfident in their assertion that we ought to have found cryptid fossils and carcasses by now, the naturalistic explanation still puts us in a stronger position here, since it allows us to grant that we should expect to see remains from time to time, as the skeptic insists. We have seen the remains of these creatures – they’re just identified as wolves. Why? Because they are wolves. 

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE 

John Doggett: “You’re familiar with the principle of Occam’s razor?”

Dana Scully: “Yeah, you take every possible explanation and you choose the simplest one. Agent Mulder used to refer to it as ‘Occam’s principle of limited imagination’.” 

The X-Files, S8E3 - Patience 

I didn’t properly deal with this experience for years, and I’m glad I finally tried to figure out what happened. But what if I’m wrong to favor the more deflationary accounts here? Why would reality care which explanation accords most neatly with early 21st century biology? After all, many dogman sightings include features of the cryptid that go far beyond intermittent bipedalism. Skinwalkers, werewolves, and a surprisingly long list of other wolflike creatures haunt the endless pages of cryptozoological books and forums, daring us to leave the more conservative explanations behind. 

I wanted to share my interpretation of my sighting not to reify the default skepticism towards the paranormal, but to play what small role I can in destigmatizing openness about these subjects. Setting the question of interpretation aside, highly unusual things are happening to vast numbers of people. Understandably, they would rather not deal with the consequences of speaking honestly about their experiences. But what good is this self-censorship? It is a very interesting fact that people are having these experiences, regardless of how we interpret them in the end. 

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