Falling deeper into the rabbit-hole of the Michigan Dogman, Jack speaks to Grace and Nancee who encountered a bipedal canine with the face of a man. Seeking to unravel the truth behind their chilling experience, he consults wolf researcher, Maeve Rogers, to explore whether such a creature could truly exist. 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: What is the Michigan Dogman legend?
Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. In the last episode, we spoke to Emerson, a self-described hardcore skeptic who had a very brief but strange encounter with a wolf, during which he was chased and then saw the wolf get up on his hind legs and continue running full sprint, upright, like a man would run.
After this, he did some research and discovered a local legend called the Michigan Dogman. A legend that may or may not be partly a hoax. After this, I decided to try speaking to some biologists or wolf experts in Michigan. Normally, this wouldn't be something that's very hard for me to do, but nobody, and I mean nobody, wanted to talk about the Michigan Dog Man.
However, they did send over the DNR data for Michigan, and told me that there are no known wolves in the area where Emerson had this experience, which I thought was really interesting. This all led me to talk to the man who started this all, or at least named it, the radio DJ Steve Cook. After speaking to him, it seems that the Michigan Dog Man was definitely started as a joke,
Chapter 2: Why is the Michigan Dogman considered a hoax?
The history behind it was made up by Steve, and Steve certainly fueled the fire of this hoax by releasing fake footage. But he also told me that he has talked to so many people over the years who he believes had very real encounters with something that sounded a lot like the Michigan Dogman. I think this story is a very realistic representation of the paranormal in general.
Lots of fake material exists. People do make up stories, and because of that, much of the world assumes that it's all fake. Everyone wants things to be black and white, but it's just not the way this works. Well, on this show, we speak to a lot of people who thought something wasn't real until they saw it with their own eyes.
And in the second part of this series, we'll be speaking to another person in Michigan who thinks they encountered the Dog Man as well. However, the thing that this person saw seems quite different than what Emerson experienced. It comes from a woman named Grace, and I will let her take it from here. This is The Michigan Dogman, part two, 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.
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.
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Chapter 3: Who is Grace and what was her encounter?
I'm Grace. I am 31. I live in Los Angeles. I'm a director and I grew up in Dallas, Texas. I went to Boston College and then I went to work in New York. I actually worked at Saturday Night Live for a long time. And then I came to LA two years ago and have been directing for like three or four years, and just directed my first feature. I'm engaged to a guy who's obsessed with Otherworld.
My fiance's name is Jack and I love him so much. And he moved to New York for me because he lived in Austin when we started dating. And then he very kindly moved to LA for me too. So he's been following me around. So I have to tolerate, you know, things like his podcasts, him repeating the entire story of a podcast out loud, which podcasts can be riveting, but the retelling of them is less so.
And he works at this wine store. He works at Silver Lake Wine with a guy named Steven, who we love. And Steven introduced him to this podcast. I also have been seeing Otherworld podcast billboards all over town. But I would kind of send the picture of the billboard and Jess to the both of them because I'm going to be honest with you.
I'm not a fan of this podcast only because I'm not... It's not you or the hosts. It's just I don't like spooky stuff. I'm not into ghosts. I'm not into, you know... unidentified flying objects or anything. Sure, sure. I'm just like, I'm sure it's out there. It's not like I'm... It's fine, Grace. It doesn't exist, but it's just not for me. And so Jack... It's not you, it's me.
It's not me, it's you. But Jack's obsessed with it. Jack loves...
ghost stories he loves that kind of stuff so does steven and so they have like they like really created their friendship over this podcast and now i mean we went to their house last night for a movie night like we're very close with them and it really i think this podcast is part of that and so i i had never told him this this we call it man dog but i'm hearing people call it dog man
My mom was in town a few months ago, and so I had two friends over for dinner. And I cooked dinner, and my mom was there. And our friends were talking about how they think there's a ghost in their apartment. And then Jack was sort of pulling answers out of them because he was really interested in their ghosts. I mean, even in our house that I'm sitting in right now, we have... It's really old.
It's from the 1920s. And a woman died here. And, you know, the lights act strangely. And Jack thinks it's a positive ghost. Only love and light exist, he's always saying. But, you know, I'm like, whatever, that's just an old house. And so we were sitting here and he was like at this dinner with my mom and my two friends.
And he asked the table, he was like, does anybody else have any sort of otherworldly stories? My mom looks at me and she goes, well, do you remember Mandog? And I was like, oh, my God, I completely forgot about Mandog. And obviously Jack's ears perked up and he was like, man, dog, what are you talking about? And then my mom was like, well, we were in Michigan.
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Chapter 4: What details does Grace remember about the Dogman?
I kind of like had put it back somewhere in my brain, but it wasn't something that was like, oh, it was like, oh yeah, the man dog. It wasn't something that took me a while to recall. It was something I remembered immediately. When my mom said that, Jack was like, why haven't, you've never told me that? That's the craziest thing that you've ever done. Why haven't you told me that?
And I just hadn't even thought about it in a really long time. So I think it was just one of those things. I also am not a person who is like, That was otherworldly. That was spooky. I was just like, that was really weird. That dog had the face of a man.
And so it wasn't something that would have been something that I would have been like, oh my God, I had this spooky story because I really didn't have a spooky story in my head. It was more of like a crazy thing that happened to me. I was 13. My aunt had an apartment in Chicago and a house in like a country house in Buchanan, Michigan.
And we were going to visit her house because we'd never been there. And her husband is an artist who is very talented at a lot of things. And he, they bought this house in Buchanan and they, um, It was an old house that he modernized with, you know, a new architecture and an add-on. And it was still, it had the sense of it being old and the basement was really scary, I remember.
But it was also a testament to their style. He loved mid-century modern stuff. And my aunt has like a tiny collection of chairs that are all like famous mid-century modern chairs. Like they're into that kind of stuff. I remember at night, it was so dark and so quiet that you almost couldn't sleep. Only sounds you would hear were like howls and rustling and like the scariest shit ever.
So sleeping there, I remember, was like a nightmare for me. And so we went out there from Chicago and we were there. I was 13. I was probably, you know, whatever, eighth or ninth grade. I ended up going to my mom's room and sleeping in her bed, I remember, because I was so scared.
I remember also like, it took a while to get anywhere because the roads, I mean, you were just so far out that your house would be 30 minutes away from wherever you were getting your supplies or going to a restaurant or, in my memory, it was very far away. And so they were all, and all the roads were super rural. You barely saw another car when you were driving down them.
There was sort of just like land to the left and to the right. And so they had a nice house on their street, but the houses next to them were not very nice. Like they were like, you know, run down and people clearly weren't keeping, you know, maintaining them. And they were a little spooky, you know, like I wouldn't want to go there alone. Yeah.
And everybody's house was super set back on their lots. So you could see them, but not completely. So yeah. It was also like that weird thing of not seeing anyone was sort of scary. Like you really did feel like you were alone everywhere you went. There weren't a lot of people around until you went to like a restaurant or a farmer's market. Then you would see a lot of people.
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Chapter 5: How did Grace's family react to the Dogman encounter?
Like it was rounded in a way that doesn't, that I've never seen in a dog before. Like it was, or since I have two dogs, one sitting on my lap. And like the funny thing about it was, it was, yeah, it was just like, it didn't have like a point to its face. It didn't have a smashed face. It had like a curved human face. And so it,
I remember that being the thing that made me be like, oh my God, that's the face of a man. Like it wasn't a dog, the face, the body completely. But the face was strange in its... And the thing was, it looked at us too. So I think the looking at us, it looked at us and it felt like being looked at by a man. It didn't feel like when a dog looks at you.
It felt like he was consciously recognizing that we... That he, that it was, that he was like, yes, I am a man. Like he, he stood up on the back of the car to be like, I, yes, you were right. I have the face of a man.
And like, how did you know this wasn't, it sounds so stupid saying it, like a man in a dog costume or something like.
Cause it just wasn't, it was like not, um, like it wasn't big, big. Well, the other thing too is like, it's, it had paws and it had like skinny little legs and there was no way anything was inside of that creature. The body was so distinctly mangy and, and dog.
Like the other thing too is like, you know, you see coyotes in LA and you see, and I've seen wolves before, but it wasn't like that either. It was very much like the body was, was almost too, I don't know what the right word is, like too,
gentle not gentle but like soft and and and skinny and to be a coyote or to be a wolf like it was definitely a dog and the and the tail wasn't so coyote like either the tail was the normal tail of a dog like like not crazy big it was just like it felt to me like like my uncle used to have this dog named, um, named Digger. And it felt very much like the tale of Digger, but the coat was very dark.
Like the coat was sort of this like brownish reddish blackish coat. I remember. And then the face, the hair on the face sort of was less so like the hair there was hair on the face, but it wasn't like, it wasn't like dog hair. And the features were distinguished. The lips were distinguished in a way that humans' lips are distinguished.
The eyebrows, it had distinguished... And the eyebrows weren't even comical eyebrows. It made sense for its face. The dog, because I was sort of recessed from it, looked from afar to be like 60, 80 pounds-ish. And... I remember I turned back to see my uncle, to look at my uncle when he said, turn around and look at that dog's face. But I remember it looking smaller.
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Chapter 6: What is Nancee's perspective on the Dogman sighting?
He'd always wanted that experience for himself, maybe, and was really excited that we'd had it. In my memory, I think me and my mom were leaving the next day, and I think they drove us back to the airport. And the whole time, we were just like... Not the whole time, but we were like, that man-dog was crazy. Like, that's the craziest thing.
But again, something you need to know about me and my mom, too, is that we're not crazy ghost people. We're not crazy, like... I mean, now, thinking about it and telling the story, I'm like, maybe there is sort of this... presence in that dog that I should have recognized and been more consciously aware of in that moment because he clearly was trying to say something maybe.
We're not big, spooky people. So we kind of were like, that was the craziest thing ever. And then we kind of got on a plane and went back to Dallas. And every once in a while, we'd be all together and we'd tell the story to somebody and we would talk about man-dog. But it was more of a funny thing because a dog with the face of a man in a lot of ways is... ridiculous.
And I think telling the story was really fun for us because we got to be like, yeah, that actually happened. There were four of us in the car and that happened. And I think people were always really surprised by that. So that was fun for us. I mean, I think the thing that will be more interesting with my aunt than with me is that she was a full adult when this happened.
And she knows that area very well because she had a house there. And she also like There's the funny thing is when this got brought back up, there was no point where any of us were like, did that happen? We were all like, oh, yeah, man dog. And that, I think, is to me the most striking part about it is that there is there was it's not even like any of us were like, wait, what?
Or, you know, like, oh, yeah, it was completely for everyone. Like, yeah, man dog.
So my name is Nancy Martin. I am Grace Godvin's aunt. Her mother is my sister and the two of them, Grace and her mom came to visit my husband and I in Southwest Michigan. I think it was about 2009. It was late afternoon. And we were going to go over to a place called Tabor Hill. It's a winery and have a few glasses of local white wine.
And I want to emphasize that this man-dog sighting occurred before we got to the winery. We had just left our house and we were on a road called Boyle Lake Road, locally nicknamed Boyle Head Road. It's very deserted. It's a gravel road. There's maybe four houses on it. It's probably two miles long. Three of the houses look like they should be torn down or they're abandoned.
And then there's one very nice home that is lived in by a very brave woman from Chicago. She lives there by herself. And we were just coming upon her house Dan was driving, I was in the passenger seat, and Grace and my sister were in the back seat.
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