An amateur horror story or a real life werewolf slaying?



There are over 228 small family cemeteries, many forgotten about and lost, dotted thru out the acres of forests as it was once used as homes to early Kentucky settlers. Some of the earliest graves date back to the early 1700’s, which include graves of white settlers, veterans from nearly every war, including the Revolutionary War, and also those of black slaves and Chinese immigrants who worked in the iron furnaces that were in the area. There was also a very high infant mortality rate and many of these children were buried right outside the cabins from where they were born so that their mother could peer out the window and see the grave. There are also numerous Native American graves scattered thru out the acres, much older then even the earliest of settler graves, some discovered, others lay in secret beneath the layers of leaves and forest ferns.

Back before the 1950’s it always had been a very rural area to live in, with farmsteads far and few between, and with no real town to speak of except up at the north end in Grand Rivers. It was in this town, back in the mid 70’s that I first heard of ‘The Beast Between the Rivers’ or known now as ‘The Beast of LBL’. Some old timers would sit on this long wooden bench outside the old IGA store, that use to be the old ‘country store’ for decades before the grocery conglomerate came to town. I used to hang around there on the weekends during the day and listen to the stories they each would tell. These old men, most of whom used to live in LBL before they were forced to move, had some very interesting stories to tell about that part of the country.

There was talk of hauntings, Indian curses, mysterious lights over gravestones at night, old hag witches that lived deep in the woods, and more importantly, several tales of a wolf like creature that stood on two legs that would come out of the thickets and attack their cattle and live stock. Day or night. A creature that was taller then an average man by well over a foot, nearly 7 foot tall, with thick long hair covering it’s body, and a stench that matched that of some of the freshly open graves that were discovered now and then. This ‘wolf man’ left tracks like a barefoot man but where the toes should have been, instead were paw prints. The head was huge and wolf like in appearance, with an extra long snout, and uncanny long sharp incisors that glistened from the moon light with saliva, along with eyes that, “Radiated red, like one of the hottest fires in Hell’, they’d say. It had long arms that ended with huge hands and long spindly fingers with long, pointed, dirt caked claws. At night they would hear it howl; un-natural guttural sounds of painful hungry agony, and at that warning, all would go out and tie up their livestock and even bring their most prized selections inside their homes with them.

The legend of the beast went back at least a hundred years, and was passed along through time from family to family and updated as new sightings occurred. One old man said that his great great grand pappy told him that the creature use to be a man, a Native American that had the ability to shape shift, a powerful shaman that had been outcast from his tribe because he used his magic for evil. The Shaman had been tracked and killed while in his wolf state by a few warriors and a couple of settlers in the area. In his dying breath he cursed them and vowed to return from the dead to haunt the forests and seek revenge on their families and all who lived there. Another man on the bench with a leathery, weathered face, said he heard from his grandma that the beast was once a settler that came over from Europe back in the early 1800’s, with a disease that made him turn into a mad man at night. The disease was eventually passed along to his children, which never went to school, but stayed hidden away from the population. Many thought the family had died off because for years they never seen or heard from them and after investigations by some brave men they discovered the homestead vacant and abandoned in the early 1900’s.

The sightings of the monster where still frequent thru out the beginning of the twentieth century, and the elderly group on the bench each told some unsettling encounters they or members of their own families had had with it. Each one told stories of finding livestock slaughtered, ripped to pieces and ate upon. Cows and pigs with their legs dismembered from the sockets. Even a few horses had met their end with savage attacks upon their bodies. A few of them described what they saw at different times when they caught glimpses of the figure by peeking out of the curtains of the windows into the night. One man said it jumped out of one of the horse stalls one evening while he was putting up some animals. It stopped in front of him, arms spread out like it was getting ready to grab him, let out a howl and then sprang past him and into the dusky shadows of the sunset. This particular man said he ‘wet his overalls’ during the episode. Another man said he never seen it, but would always hear it’s baleful wails frequently at night, not like a regular wolf or a coyote, “No,” he said, “It was more deeper, longer, stronger sounding then what would come out of any animal I ever heard.” Another old timer said his wife had seen it trying to get into the chicken coup but gave up after getting tangled in the chicken wire. They all had tales of ‘someone’s hound dog’ getting killed, ripped apart limb from limb, ‘someone’s pig or cow or chicken’ getting eaten, the mysterious footprints left in the mud, and the stench it left behind where ever it appeared. And more then one had the same story of listening to it walk across their front porches at night and scratching on the doors and walls which would leave deep gouges in the wood they would find in the morning. All of them agreed that this was not a Bigfoot or Sasquatch. It would be only another year or two after hearing about this mysterious beast that I myself would encounter it at the home of a family member that lived in the same area.

But this isn’t the story I was wanting to tell you. This was just a brief introduction to the unwritten accounts of the darker side of LBL. A prelude actually to the real story I will begin to unfold. I just wanted to lay some ground work so you could get the big picture, and form some of your own opinions and theories. Walk with me now as I take you back about twenty two years, back to the early 1980’s. Where I use to work midnights at a gas station a few miles from the Kentucky Dam, which was a few miles from the beginning of LBL in Grand Rivers. And it was on one of these midnight shifts I had two visitors that would change my outlook on the subject of ‘werewolves’. (… and make me believe in what I had seen myself a few years back in the same area but had kept it between myself and two other family members that were with me at the time….but that’s another story to be written.) This story was never in the paper, on the news, or had any media attention at all. It was kept hush hush, and a sacred silence was demanded on all those involved. It couldn’t get out, ever. It was a few weeks before the beginning of tourist season, and tourists were what the locals survived on, they were the ‘bread and butter’. A story like this would be like screaming ‘Sharks!’ at Daytona Beach, or ‘Child Molester!’ at Disneyland. The people would stop coming out of fear.



For quite a long while the only thing that was heard were the crickets in the near by fields, the sounds of bugs hitting the fluorescent lights above us hanging from the gas station canopy, and the distant sound of highway traffic that was far and few between as it was in the wee hours of the morning. My mind was buzzing with various scenarios of the cause of their distress….a tragic car accident….possibly a motorcycle wreck…a boating mishap with drown victims….a murder…..a dead body discovered. (‘Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back…that’s why the cat has nine lives.’)

I don’t remember sitting down but after about 15 minutes of this hushed stillness I found myself beside them both on the curb staring out at the darkness of the nearby corn pastures, letting my mind paint pictures of imaginary traumas. Adam spoke first, breaking the silence of obscurity, “I can’t believe it…it’s not possible…I just can’t believe it…”. In a hushed agreement, that was almost inaudible, Bill replied, “I know…it was….is….it is so unbelievable…I’ve never seen anything like this before…”, a long pause, a deep breath, and he continued, “… or even heard of anything like this before.” I looked at Bill and then at Adam, they were both gazing, open eyed, unblinking, out into the inky color of the night. Adam’s bottom lip was trembling slightly, and it wasn’t from the slight chill in the late spring air. Something, or some thing had filled them each with a congested fear.



With the sun going down, it got dark pretty fast, so there was a flurry of flood lights from the cruisers being pointed in all directions, along with the excited movements of fifty dollar flash lights being held by nervous, restless hands, searching the trees, the ground, the leaves, the shadows. There was a parked motor home at the site, it’s frame being lit by a campfire close by, a fire that had almost went out on it’s own, but had been rekindled by the new crowd of men in uniforms so that they could have more light. The front and back doors to the home were open, one of the doors hanging by one hinge in a crooked slant. Through the windows they could see zig zagged movements of luminosity as the beams from flashlights searched the interior. Bloody hand prints slid down the thin metal walls close to the front door and more bloody hand paintings could be seen along the length towards the back door. Their images dancing eerily in the fire light like some ancient tribal symbols .

Adam and Bill did not even want to imagine what was inside the motor home, but then again, they would soon find out, that it wasn’t what was ‘inside’ but what was ‘outside’ that would change their lives forever. There was already crime scene tape placed in numerous, scattered parts of the area, and little white flags on metal stakes stuck into the ground marking evidence. Evidence of ripped clothing, bodies and body parts, separated limbs, a pile of bowels, pieces of loose flesh clinging to muscle tissue. What use to be three bodies, that just hours before had been a happy family, on a happy vacation, to create happy memories for years to come; a father, a mother and a young son.

The happiness was gone. Destroyed by a psychotic mad man, or was it ‘men’? A murderous rage had taken place, one so abhorrently appalling that there were few witnesses to the scene that had kept their composure or held their recently eaten dinners down. At first sight, the victims appeared to be butchered by some un-nameable weapon, possibly an axe, or a chainsaw. Upon further inspection, by the first arriving coroner, the wounds on the bodies were determined not to have been caused by a sharp instrument, but rather by some piercing, well-defined claws, and other wounds by some keen, mordantly long incisors.

Wildcat, bear, wolves? The coroner shook his head in a baffled disagreement with each guess from the officers. The claw marks, for instance, on the back of the fathers corpse were distinctively made by 4 long claws with a smaller digit, like a thumb, on the side, it’s span was wider then a man’s print, wider and different then a bears mark, with deep deliberate gouges in the flesh. Rake marks from an angry unknown source trying to grab it’s prey that was no doubt trying to escape. The wildcat and wolves theory was dismissed as the open wound marks were apparently made by a more grandiose animal source. The bite marks were much larger then any mountain lion, wolf or coyote. Whatever did it had a longer snout, and more sizable teeth. There was also indications in the larger areas of the cadavers, of bite marks where the flesh, meat and bone had been yanked away from the body. Like a human who bites into an apple and leaves the impressions of his bite and teeth marks, so were the open wounds on these individuals. Bears, well, they aren’t native to the area, but who knows, maybe a grizzly did sneak in some way, but that was far fetched, he would have had to travel several states and cross several rivers to even get close to that part of Kentucky. Every one present was betting on the ‘bear’ hypothesis anyway, and no one even thought of anything else to be the cause of such a savage attack. A bear, it had to be a bear.

From the back door of the motor home, an officer stepped down slowly, holding in his hands some type of garment. A dress. A small dress, that would have fit a small girl of around five years old. He informed the on lookers that there were more ‘little girls’ clothing packed inside the coach. This meant there was a missing person, or an absent body;a member of the family. They all prayed she was still alive somehow, hiding somewhere. A new search began.

As time went by, additional law enforcement employees arrived, as well as a few volunteer rescue squad members. Groups were spread out and assigned areas to examine and explore. Another coroner arrived to assist in the identification and causes of death, and much later a third one showed up, this one from a near by state. All types of samples were placed in plastic bags, marked as evidence, and carefully stowed away. As they were packaging up what appeared to be one of the fathers arms, one of the doctors noticed something wrapped between the dead fingers. Some tweezers slowly untangled a clump of long, grey and brown hairs. This too was placed in a bag, marked and put away to be analyzed at a lab later.



Whether Adam and Bill had played an elaborate hoax on me I’ll never really know for sure but their sincerity and fear painted a picture of truth in their eyes and actions. There are several more stories that I have heard about this ‘Werewolf’ over in LBL that have been told to me over the years after this particular incident. There were several groups of boy scouts that had seen it. Several more campers, fishermen and boaters that had seen it from the safety of of their boats, floating in some of the many bays that touched upon the shoreline. Hikers and bikers have heard its howling and have seen ‘something’ stalking them while they were on rural trails, hiding amongst the trees and foliage. Hunters have run across deer carcasses that had been brutally torn apart.

There was even a pair of curious grave stone rubbers, (those that go out in search of century or more old tombstones then make rubbings by placing paper against the coarse stones and using a piece of charcoal to rub across it thus capturing the images and dates from the stones unto the paper….similar to when as a child you use to take a pencil and rub across a piece of paper on a penny or other coin to see the image of Lincoln or Jefferson.) that had a fearful encounter with it at one of the old cemeteries. It had actually came up to the car as they were leaving and shook the back end of the vehicle up and down and left terrible scratch marks in the trunk lid as it tried to hold on to the little Toyota while the tires were spinning in the wet grass to get away. These two individuals didn’t stop driving until they were about 40 miles away, only then did they dare stop to investigate the damage done. I myself have seen those scratches. Much too wide for any man to have made them. They looked like a heavy metal garden rakes tracks.

But you will never read about it in the papers, or hear about it on the news, or get a confession from any law enforcement official or man of office. The media will say it’s a bunch of ‘Whoo Haa’, or just pranks, silly stories, urban legends, lies, tall tales and such. This is tourism country and that means millions of dollars to the area, so you can’t scare off business, can you?

But, as San says on her website, ‘You can’t tell me there’s no such thing!’, because I have my own tale to tell about this creature. That story will come soon, I promise, but this one had to be told first for it is far more scarier and full of detail than my own. And that bench, the long, sturdy, heavy oak bench, that sat in front of the old country store for decades? It is still in existence. In fact, I had the grand opportunity of acquiring it several years ago when an even newer version of an IGA store was being built upon the same grounds. The previous owners remembered my fondness for sitting with the old timers and having undying patience with their many stories and got a hold of one of my family members to ask if we would like to have it to keep in the family. The bench now sits in my front yard, by the driveway, where I sit to wave goodbye to all those who had come to visit for the day. I’ve learned to always wave goodbye, because you never know if you’ll see them again. You never know what lies in store for you or them. What lies in the shadows. Waiting. Watching. With hungry eyes and a drooling snout.


Robert Fortney Blue Eyed Dogman Encounter

Green Charter township, in Mecosta county, a man named Robert Fortney is camping along the Muskegon river when a pack of wild dogs close in on him.

The dogs cringed and turned to slink back into the forest, all accept one: a huge black dog with unusual eyes.

“They were blue,” said Fortney. “What kind of dog has blue eyes?” The big dog and Fortney considered each other for a long moment, less than ten feet separating them. Fortney fired another shot over the head of the strange dog. Then to Fortney’s shock and amazement, the black dog stood up on two legs and cast a glare that sent shivers down his spine.

“It reared up on its hind legs and stared at me,” said Fortney in a phone interview in 1987. “It may be that I was just scared, but I swear that dog was smiling at me.”

This detail of a Dogman seeming to smile is common to the legend of the Michigan Dogman and seems to suggest that the creature has a devious, calculating demeanor.

The First Dog Man Sighting

A cool summer mornin’ in early June is when the legend began,….At a nameless logging camp in Wexford County where the Manistee River ran. ….Eleven lumberjacks near the Garland Swamp found an animal they thought was a dog.

….In a playful mood they chased it around …’til it ran inside a hollow log….. A logger named Johnson grabbed him a stick and poked around inside… Then the thing let out an unearthly scream and came out …and stood upright. .

..None of those men ever said very much about whatever happened then. ….They just packed up their belongings and left that night and were never heard from again.

This is how Steve Cook’s “The Legend” begins and it is touted as the first Michigan Dogman sighting. Since the airing of the Steve cook song, there have been over 500 Wolfman/Dogman sightings.

The Gable Film (Michigan Dogman Hoax)

For me, the Gable film was one of the most intriguing pieces of crytozoological footage, I had ever seen. The 8mm film was alleged to have been purchased at an estate sale by an anonymous source. The footage was digitized and surfaced on the Internet in 2007.

The footage showed normal, everyday scenes of a family living a pleasant, rural lifestyle, riding snowmobiles, chopping wood, and working on trucks. Judging from the style of clothing and models of the vehicles, the footage appears to have been shot in the late 60’s to early 70’s.

The film soon takes a dark turn. The filmmakers are driving down a two track when they see something skulking by the tree line. They stop the car to get a better look. They get out of their vehicle only to be charged by this strange creature. It never gets up on two legs, but it is clearly a large, weird looking creature that has canid features. There are a few frames in this sequence that show a set pointy, canine teeth.

A second piece of footage is released and its contents were gory. It depicts Michigan state troopers documenting a bloody carcass. It appears to be the same man who is seen in the other piece of footage, except he is torn in have. One can only assume that this film is the property of the Michigan State Police and I don’t recall it ever being explained how this footage was released.

Like most things that are too good to be true, this alleged footage of a dogman murder was a well-crafted fake. Monster Quest interviewed the creature Mike Agrusa, where he explains in great detail how he had hoaxed the film.

Oneway Michigan Dogman Photo

There are two stories behind the 2004 Onaway, MI dogman photo, but both involve a young boy taking the picture in his families mini-van.

The first story involves the family hunting deer with relitives. With their kills gutted, the family climbs into their minivan to leave. The boy takes his seat in the back of the van. As the van rolled away, the boy turned around to see a huge, werewolf like creature standing over the gut pile and growling. He quickly grabbed his camera and snapped the picture.

The Second story involves the family pulling into a rest stop where they were going to take a break from their late night commute. As they came to a stop, they looked out the back window to see the fearsome creature baring its teeth and walking towards the van. The kid snapped the photo before they sped away into the night.

The Creature looks more like a bear than a wolf in my opinion and there are plenty of bears in northern Michigan. It is, none the less, a creepy photo. Tell me what you think it is in the comments.

Ohio’s Silver Creek Dogmen

A hunter in Norton, Ohio, has spotted a dogman, or bipedal wolf-like humanoid, not once, but twice. He was driving down Johnson road on a particularly chill Autumn evening in 2013, when Two deer leapt out in front of him. The deer were far enough away that he didn’t have to slam on the breaks, but rather came to a leisurely roll, afraid that more deer might run out in front of him. He slowly continued on when he saw what the deer were running from.

There were three of them, running in formation, one in front, two on the side. They were running bipedially and they were very fast and muscular, standing from 6 to 7 foot tall. They were dark in color, chocolate brown to black.

Less than a month later, the hunter saw two of the creatures again, on the same road. In a flash, they ran out from a field of full grown corn and leapt from the side of the road and into the field on the other side. They had to have been about 7 foot tall, or a little shorter, as they were as tall as the corn, which was about a foot taller than the hunter’s head who six foot tall. This time, the hunter noticed that one of them had a silver-ish, to white hair on its back and chest, which is a common characteristic of dogmen sightings.

I’ve seen in the comments that this area is actually fairly urban and would not lend too many hiding places for these creatures to reside without detection, however, I have heard of dogman/werewolf sightings happening in not just the suburbs, but in the middle of cities. That’s right, Tokka is real, ladies and gents.

Dog Man Vs. Hippies

In the Steve Cook song “The Legend”, There is mention of hippies encountering a dogman. It goes like this…

In ’67 a van-load of hippies, told a park-ranger named Quinlinn, they’d been awakened in the night by a scratch at the window, there was a dogman looking in and grinning.

This is allegedly a true encounter with a dogman happening along the Muskegon river in Michigan, however, reports of it are non-existant on the internet.

One very similar account, happened down in arkensas back in October of 72. This is recounted by Pam and involves her husband, brother, and her two sleeping babies being terrorized by a wolfman while camping out of ther Volswagon van.

He started the engine and that’s when, in the glow from the headlights, we could see a hairy THING, 10 feet away and coming toward the van!

As it got closer, its silver-tipped hairs glistened in the light. It had a greyish streak from its shoulders down its back, to its buttocks. The creature was walking on 2 legs, was around 7 or 8 feet tall, had a barrel-chest, and skinny legs. It never gave us a good view of its eyes, so I can’t tell you what they looked like. I COULD see that the face was not ape-like. It was dog-like. Its ears had tufts of fur on top of them and it was very human-like in its movements and general body structure.

It moved smoothly and quickly, around to the back of the van where it followed the base of the ridge, away from us. That’s when it let out a menacing “Huff” and a low, rumbling growl, like a dog.