Speaking to Emerson about his horrifying experience of being chased through the woods by a large, bipedal wolf leads Jack down the rabbit hole of the legend of the Michigan Dogman to explore the origins, myths, and ongoing mysteries of Michigan's eerie folklore. Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter For business inquiries contact: [email protected] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at [email protected] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Emerson and what is his experience with skepticism?
Something that I think is noteworthy about Emerson and maybe a little funny is that not only did he tell me that he has always been a hardcore skeptic, he also told me that he was once a very active member in the online skeptic community. Despite this, he ended up having A very strange experience while walking in the woods one day with an ex-girlfriend.
an experience that he couldn't quite rationalize no matter how many times he tried, and he still struggles with it to this day despite many attempts at explaining it. Emerson's story is actually quite a simple one, but it ended up sending me down quite a rabbit hole. This is episode 113. The title is The Michigan Dogman Part One, and you're listening to Otherworld. Hello? Is this Bobby?
Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue with.
I'm worried about all the science. Up in the sky.
Chapter 2: What happened during Emerson's encounter in the woods?
It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. His limbs were just like, wrong.
Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute.
My name is Emerson. I'm the oldest of four siblings. I'm about to be a dad. My wife is due any day now with her first. Actually, by the time this comes out, I might be a dad. So I'm excited about that. And I grew up in Michigan, spent most of my life in Michigan, just recently moved to Northern California. But yeah, this took place in Michigan.
I grew up in a Christian environment and sort of reacted against that. My family's in ministry. A lot of it's in ministry. My uncle's a pastor. My grandpa's a pastor. My parents have both been in and out of part or full-time Christian ministry. And when I was in my later teens, I started reacting against that a little bit.
If you remember the New Atheist Movement, I was pretty into that sort of thing and pretty skeptical. And I guess it's kind of ironic because what happened to me that we're talking about today, that happened like right at the beginning of me becoming like a pretty hardcore skeptic for like, I don't know, five or six years or something like that. And this did not square well with the rest of it.
And I honestly like tried not to think about it. told a couple people, did not exactly get, like, a warm reception, and then just kind of kept it to myself. But, yeah, I was pretty active in, like, the online skeptic community for a few years after this happened.
I'm surprised you haven't bumped into them a couple times, but it's just, like, a group of dorks on the internet who try to, like... Well, I mean, like, their purported goals, it's like, oh, we want to promote science and rationality, and we want to...
We want people to have beliefs that are based on the evidence, stuff that sounds really unobjectionable, but I just don't think they live up to their professed values. But anyway, they have a list of things that they don't like, that they think is, oh, no one should believe in cryptids or ghosts or anything religious or aliens.
They just have this list of things they don't like, and then they attack constantly. And it's going to be hard for me not to go into ranting about them just because I was like a part of that group for several years and then just came to see how superficial their understanding of some of these things are. Like they don't seem to understand what people really believe or like why they believe it.
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Chapter 3: Did anyone else witness the Michigan Dogman?
And then I was following her. I was the one kind of keeping an eye on the wolf. She only saw it for the first like, you know, 30 seconds that we were around it when it was just kind of standing there. So I just, I mean, I didn't know what to say. Like there was this kind of self-consciousness that
settled on me that i don't know like it felt i felt like inhibited um just as soon as i told her and i got that reaction from someone who'd been there with me you know but just hadn't been looking for the you know i mean i guess this whole thing it must have taken like as i'm watching it run that must have been like 20 seconds total you know like it actually was a really short window
And she just wasn't looking back when that happened. She was looking ahead. And just getting that reaction, just seeing the look on her face, it just really kind of closed me up. I just had that feeling for a long time afterwards. And especially if you're 17, any kind of social pressure, that can make you shut your mouth pretty easily.
Like I said, at first she thought maybe I was messing with her or something. Um, but I was clearly like afraid and I was dead serious and she just didn't know what to make of it. Like, yeah, she just didn't know. I mean, cause she didn't have a category for this either.
It wasn't like this was an established cryptid or like, I mean, she didn't know any more than I did that like other people had claimed to see something like this. Um, so it just came totally out of left field as far as she was concerned. Um, and yeah, I don't know. She just didn't, she just didn't know how to react. So we burst into the house, and I'm immediately telling my family who's there.
I tell my parents. I tell my younger siblings. And everyone is just kind of looking at me sideways. They can tell that I'm serious, and I don't lie about this kind of thing. I'm not prone to this type of thing. I don't know what to call it, but this sort of thing does not happen to me frequently anymore. Like, I don't even really have an interest in this, right? I didn't at this time.
So they don't really know what to do because, like, how would you react if someone says they saw a bipedal wolf? Like, what are you supposed to say? So, you know, I know how it sounds, and it's not like... It's not like most people are going to be like, oh, cool. You know, like, yeah, definitely. But I guess that my younger brother, Elijah, did believe me.
I didn't tell anyone about this story for a few years after this first day. Like, I just tried not to think about it. And then when I eventually had the confidence to be honest about it, yeah. My younger brother, Elijah, was like, oh yeah, I remember this. And I was like, okay, tell me what you remember.
And then I just zipped my lip because I wanted to make sure I hadn't confabulated anything or warped any details. And he, to my relief, he conveyed everything back to me as I remembered it. So I'm like, okay, I'm not changing any details here. So that was like seven or eight years later. But apparently, my younger brother Elijah believes me.
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Chapter 4: How did Emerson discover more about the Michigan Dogman legend?
But the lore is a little complicated because what people have definitely seen, like I said, is some kind of upright wolf-like thing. People have seen it chasing down deer and attacking them. They've seen it eating roadkill. They've seen it just running through a field. That's basically the core of it.
But then there's all this other stuff that gets added that I don't really take that seriously, where it does sound a little more explicitly supernatural. Like there's this one detail that really annoys me. I don't even know where it comes from, but it's like, oh, the dog man only appears on years that end in seven. And that just sounds like, I don't know, very goofy to me.
2012.
Okay. How old were you? I was 17. Seven, yeah. But they also say it smells a certain way and it has glowing eyes or something. So I don't know. I'm not really doubting what people are reporting, but it just seems like the more details you add like that... The more it seems like you're crossing some kind of line that goes beyond what everyone is saying they saw.
Like I said, the essential core of it is just some kind of upright wolf-like thing that runs around. Sometimes you see it attacking things like deer. Sightings do date back in Michigan quite a ways, like back to the 1800s. But there is this one detail... with regard to the connection to Michigan that I find really annoying because a lot of people misunderstand where this comes from.
So there was a guy who wrote a song, like kind of a parody song that included something about the Dog Man. Like it was like a Halloween song. He was like a radio DJ or something. It was like 50 years ago. So he wrote like a funny song that said something about the Dog Man. And it was like, like I said, some kind of like Halloween themed song.
And a lot of people think that that's where it all comes from for some reason. Like, oh, well, there was this song and then people started saying, you know, oh, I, you know, like... I saw the dog man. So like all the lore just comes back to this song. This guy made a funny song and like now all these idiots think it's real.
And like what actually happened is that first of all, there are sightings that go back before that song. And second of all, when that song came out, there were people calling in and this guy was kind of flabbergasted because he was just like, he didn't think he was doing anything serious.
But then there were all these people who called in like, you know, I actually did see that thing that you're talking about. And that's a phenomenon you see sometimes with these shows like Art Bell's show. I've just heard this randomly that he did like an episode about shadow people or something.
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Chapter 5: What are the origins and myths surrounding the Michigan Dogman?
Everything must be either real or completely fake. My position since the very beginning of Otherworld is that it's entirely possible that 95% of of all paranormal experiences could have a rational explanation. But even if 5% of those are real, that's a huge number, a number that should not be ignored.
Of course, on the other side of things, you don't want to be one of those people that instantly believes everything. But for me, I'm fascinated by the gray area of the paranormal. And for that reason, I'm the Michigan Dog Man situation really interests me.
So at this point, there was really only one person that I wanted to talk to, and that was the man who apparently started it all nearly 30 years ago in 1987, Steve Cook. I wanted to learn the real story behind this song, how much of it was a hoax, and what exactly Steve believes himself after all these years.
My name is Steve Cook. I am the former production director at WTCM Radio in Traverse City, Michigan. And I am the author and performer of the song, The Legend of the Michigan Dogman.
How many calls from people like me do you get?
It waxes and wanes. I would say... This is probably the third or fourth call this year.
It is January.
Yeah, it is January. Yeah. Oh, well, OK. In the last 12 months, it's just one of those things where people are finding it harder to track me down, I guess.
So I want to hear the story of this whole April Fool's joke. Can you can you tell me a little bit about that and like how all of this came to be?
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