Werewolves, Dogmen, and Other Shapeshifters Stalking North America

Table of Contents

Title Page

Werewolves, Dogmen, and Other Shapeshifters Stalking North America

By

Pamela K. Kinney

DreamPunk Press

Every effort has been made to ensure that the information in this book is accurate at the time of publication; however, the author and DreamPunk Press neither endorse nor guarantee the content of external links referenced in this book.

Werewolves, Dogmen, and Other Shapeshifters Stalking North America

Published by DreamPunk Press, Norfolk, VA

www.dreampunkpress.com

[email protected]

copyright © 2022 Pamela K. Kinney

All rights reserved.

Cover art: ©Mohamed Hassan via Pixabay

Cover design by: Tara Moeller

OpenDyslexic font from www.opendyslexic.org

First Edition

ISBN 13: 978-1-954214-08-8 (OpenDyslexic)

ISBN 13: 978-1-954214-07-1 (Deja Vu)

ISBN 13: 978-1-954214-09-5 (e-book)

Printed in the USA

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those who believe in werewolves, Dogmen, and other kinds of shapeshifters, that they exist outside the pages of fiction, off the movie screens, stalking outside of television shows, and most of all, snarling from all the legends man has ever told since the caveman days. I also dedicate this to my readers: remember, whether by full moon, magic, possession, or maybe even from possible dimensional portals, these shapeshifters and cryptids are stalking the United States of America for you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My first thanks go to my publisher, Dreampunk Press, for publishing this book. I also like to thank my editor, Tara Moeller, for making this book the best it can be.

I also like to thank my husband, Bill, for once more being patient as the dishes and housework fell to the wayside as I read and researched online for my book, then wrote it and edited it. I love you, Bill, because you’re one in a million, backing me in all my writing endeavors.

Thanks to all the writers, researchers, and fans of cryptids and werewolves—you made this book possible. Keep on investigating them. As X-Files says: the truth is out there!

Most of all, I like to thank my readers. Without you, there wouldn’t be this book or the others I have written and gotten published in the past. No author is an island without their readers. This book acknowledges you, too.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Shapeshifters Among Us

WEREWOLVES

Werewolves in Virginia

Werewolves of West Virginia

Rougarou (Loup-Garou)-Louisiana

Werewolves and Witches

Werewolves from Outer Space and Other Odd Things

More Werewolf Stories

DOGMEN

Beast of Bray Road and Other Dogmen of Wisconsin

Dogman Encounters in America

Wolf and Dog Guardians of the Bridge, Crossroads, Bypasses, and Onramps

Dogman/Werewolf Stories That Ended Up on Travel Channel

OTHER SHAPESHIFTERS

Alaskan Shapeshifters

Shapeshifting Witches

Cannibal Shapeshifting Monsters

Felines Shapeshifters

Other Odd Shapeshifting Beings

Shapeshifting Beings of Native American Stories

BIBLIOGRAPHY

There is a beast in man that should be exercised, not exorcised.

~Anton Lavey

Introduction

Timber wolf at Richmond Metro Zoo in Mosley, Virginia.

Shapeshifters Among Us

It seems that werewolves, dogmen, and other kinds of shapeshifting beings are stalking North America. When one thinks of werewolves, they think of Lon Chaney Jr.’s wolfman, who was bitten by a gypsy werewolf and cursed to change at the full moon every month. As we all know, it was someone who loved him who caused his downfall and ultimate death. Ever since, Hollywood (and yes, even before The Wolf Man, there was Werewolf of London, released in 1935) has been making movies about werewolves—and other shapeshifting beings, too.

Before that, we had writers writing stories about someone becoming a wolf or some other beast. It is still happening. Even before we heard the term Dogman, Whitley Strieber had written a horror novel, Wolfen. Wolfen were a race of canine-like creatures living among mankind since man walked the Earth, preying upon us. They resembled the supernatural werewolves, but they didn’t turn at the full moon or any other time, either, but were in this shape since birth, mating and birthing young ones and living in packs. They looked like descriptions of the Dogman, way before Linda Godfrey coined the title. These intelligent beasts kept to the country and woods, in the shadows, hunting all types of prey, but man most of all. With humans building villages, towns, and, eventually, cities, they soon stalked their prey among the homeless, who wouldn’t be missed. But in the novel, in New York City, those missing were noticed, and the police became involved. A movie based on it was filmed, although they made the creatures look like werewolves that were Native Americans. It was an okay movie, but it was not the book, except for still being set in New York City and the two lead characters. Later, Strieber wrote an actual werewolf horror novel, The Wild.

What is a Dogman? Dogman describes a group of more than one type of large cryptozoological beings sometimes described as looking like upright canids. One type of Dogman is said to look like an upright canine, while some witnesses have described what they saw as looking like a Sasquatch with a muzzle instead of having a flat face. Eyewitnesses who have had encounters with the second type mention their beasts as having claws on their fingers and toes' tips, instead of fingernails and toenails, the way a Sasquatch would. Eyewitnesses who have had Dogman encounters often report that they saw the one moving on both on all fours and upright.

Interestingly, whether with a short snout or a longer one, this cryptid looks remarkably like what we thought of as a werewolf for centuries. If these creatures are real, have people seen them in the past, all over the world, and assumed a shapeshifter? Or could this be an actual shapeshifter, captured or killed to prove to others, and it becomes human once more, leaving no evidence of a furry beast? Or did it come from another dimension by a portal to our world, as theories out there mention? It might've been brought here by aliens, as in the same stories concerning Bigfoot, and even the wendigo posted online or published in books. So many ideas and possibilities. Again, just maybe, until we have one brought for proof and DNA testing by scientists, the cryptid is nothing more than a legend.

The first alleged documented Dogman encounter in the United States happened in Wexford County, Michigan, in 1887. Two lumberjacks reported seeing a black, furry creature they described as having a man's body but with a dog's head. Robert Fortney was attacked by five wild dogs in Paris, Michigan, in 1937, and said that one of the five walked on two legs.

The belief in humans that turn into wild predatory animals exists in all major world cultures. And has done so for an exceptionally long time, maybe as far back as prehistoric man. After all, man and woman changed, some shapes never staying, others becoming the next form in evolution, until one day they became the modern humans. So, werewolves are just one way to shift into the shape of an animal. Modern science believes that the stories may have come about as a result of the physical or mental characteristics of humans under the influence of real-life illnesses that made them look or act like wolves.

Reports of dogmen or wolfmen go back to ancient times. One monstrous cannibalistic race that breathed fire and was feared was called the Cynocephali, or Dog-heads. Court physician to Artaxerxes of Persia, Ctesias of Cnidus, wrote of a race of dog-headed men that lived in India in the 4th century BC. Pliny the Elder quoted Ctesias in the 1st century of his work Historia Naturalis. Ctesias said that the Indians of India called the dog-headed men Calystrians, which meant dog-headed in their language, and these beings lived on raw meat.

Of course, some pointed out that Ctesias never went to India and only got all this as hearsay. And that these dogmen might only be monkeys or a race of hairy pygmies called Veddud from Ceylon.

In lore from Egyptians, Queen Hatshepsut sent sailing men to the Island of Punt (part of Somalia), and they found dog-headed male warriors there.

For the supernatural version, there are several ways to make the change, according to the myths. One is, of course, the full moon. Another way is by being cursed or bitten—like those criminals cursed by priests who then became werewolves. Though the bitten part is exceedingly rare in lore, unlike how we find it in movies or fiction books. A third way (and I read a book that had something found on a medieval manuscript) is by taking a belt made of wolf fur and chanting some words during the full moon to shift into the wolf form. Another way said they were possessed by demons. Some lycanthropes (according to tales from the 17th century) assured people that they really were wolves and that their fur grew inside their body. Also, to drink rainwater of the paw print of a wolf or drink from enchanted streams also affected metamorphosis.

Werewolves or lycanthropy can be traced back to King Lycaeon of Arcadia's Greek myth, where he was turned into a bloodthirsty wolf by a wrathful Zeus. The story goes that the monarch sacrificed a human child and had the meat cooked and served to the god. The god realized what the meat was and, in vengeful anger, cursed the king.

There is a tale of a baroness who drank from a spring in Germany that caused her to become a werewolf and that her husband, when hunting one night, cut off her paw and later found his wife back in their home, her hand missing. This is the same spring that legend says Hitler urged his little werewolves, or Gestapo, to drink from.

In Italy, France, and Germany, it was said that a man could turn into a werewolf if he, on a certain Wednesday or Friday, slept outside on a summer night with the full moon shining directly on his face. In other cultures, individuals born during a new moon or suffering from epilepsy, were considered likely to be werewolves.

Ireland has lore about werewolves, like the one concerning St. Patrick. It seems the saint did more than chase snakes from the old sod. He also laid a werewolf curse on a noble Irish family for mocking him.

Lycanthropy is often confused with transmigration; but the essential feature of the were-animal is that it is the alternative form or the double of a living human being, while the soul-animal is the vehicle, temporary or permanent, of the spirit of a dead human being. Still, humans reborn as wolves are often classed with lycanthropy, as well as those instances labelled in local folklore.

There are also tales of humans descending from animals. This is common reasons for tribal and clan origins. One story has the animal assuming human shape, so their human descendants retained their human shapes, while another one has a human marrying a normal animal. North American indigenous traditions mingle the idea of bear ancestors and ursine shifters. Bears would shed their skin and mate with human women in this guise. The resulting offspring might be monsters and yet again, may be born as beautiful children with uncanny strength, even becoming shapeshifters.

One being, Pan Hu from various Chinese legends, is depicted as a supernatural dog, or a canine shapeshifter. Supposedly, he married an emperor’s daughter and founded at least one race. He can become human in shape in all parts of him, except for his head. The Chinese stories write that the race descended from him are monsters with combined human and canine anatomy.

The shamanic Turkic peoples believed they are descendants of wolves. They tell a Turkic myth about Asena. Asena is the name of a she-wolf associated with the Oghuz Turkic foundation myth. The legend of Asena tells of a young boy who survived a battle; a female wolf finds the injured child and nurses him back to health. The she-wolf, impregnated by the boy, escapes her enemies by crossing the Western Sea to a cave near the Qocho mountains and a city of the Tocharians, giving birth to ten half-wolf, half-human boys. Of these, Ashina becomes their leader and establishes the Ashina clan, which ruled over the Göktürk and other Turkic nomadic empires. The first Turks became known as experts in ironworking, as Scythians are also known to have been.

This story of a she-wolf and human boys is similar to the story of the she-wolf who suckled the twins, Romulus and Remus, whose story of one brother killing the other tells the events that led to the founding of the city of Rome and the Roman Kingdom by Romulus. Although the tale takes place before the founding of Rome around 750 BC, the earliest known written account of the myth is from the late 3rd century BC. Possible historical basis for the story, as well as whether the twins' myth was an original part of Roman myth or a later development, is a subject of ongoing debate.

According to the tale, Romulus and Remus were born in Alba Longa, one of the ancient Latin cities near the future site of Rome. Their mother, Rhea Silvia was a vestal virgin and the daughter of the former king, Numitor, who had been displaced by his brother Amulius. In some sources, Rhea Silvia conceived the twins when their father, the god Mars, visited her in a sacred grove dedicated to him.

Seeing them as a possible threat to his rule, King Amulius ordered them to be killed and they were abandoned on the bank of the river Tiber to die. They were saved by the god Tiberinus, Father of the River, and survived with the care of others at the site of what would eventually become Rome. In the well-known myth, the twins were found and suckled by a she-wolf, in a cave now known as the Lupercal. Eventually, they were adopted by Faustulus, a shepherd. They grew up tending flocks, unaware of their true identities. Over time, they became natural leaders and attracted a company of supporters from the community.

There are dog-headed men mentioned in Christian writings, like the Theodore Psalter, which illustrated Jesus Christ preaching to dog-headed men. Others claimed that St. Christopher was a dog-head and that he ate human flesh. They reported him to be enormous, with the head of a dog, a characteristic of the Marmaritae. Speculation said that this Byzantine depiction of St. Christopher as dog-headed might have resulted from a misreading of the Latin term Cananeus (Canaanite) as caninus, that is, "canine".

There are tales of dogmen attacking homes, people, and animals, scaring some people to death, and leaving teeth marks grooving doors' wood. Some fishermen in a boat had to fight off a creature with a man's body but the head of a dog. The monster swam up to their boat through the waters of Claybank Lake in Manistee. 

In the Middle Ages of Europe, not only were those accused of being witches prosecuted and burned at the stake, but those accused of being werewolves were done the same. It was thought that lycanthropy was practiced by witches, too. The stories were told that the witches morphed into wolves and roamed the countryside to frighten people, killing and devouring them, too, besides livestock of the humans. Lycanthropes were even believed to be minor demons, and some, whose killer instincts were considered exceptionally strong, were thought to be the Devil himself. Even if the werewolf was not a morphed witch, it was still related to witchcraft: tales were told about witches who arrived at Sabbats mounting these creatures. The evil and wicked acquired, according to Paracelsus (a 16th century alchemist), the shape of a wolf upon death, or could become such creatures if they were cursed by a priest, remaining morphed for seven years.

Although there was the belief that one became a werewolf through a contract with the Devil, others were not so demonic. Those born during the new moon in Italian folk tales would become a werewolf. Anyone who slept under the full moon outside on a Friday would become a werewolf in the same Italian folklore. In the Balkans, they believed that a specific nameless flower (no, not wolfsbane!) turned anyone into a werewolf if they ate it. If someone drank water from a wolf's paw print, or drank from a stream a wolf pack drank at, or ate a wolf's brains, guess what? Yes, these are all ways to become a werewolf. This last belief might connect to rabies, which might include that a bite from a werewolf made you one, except that is a more modern trope thanks to the movie, The Wolfman.

If one strips naked, slabs on an ointment, and puts on a wolf skin belt or the whole hide, then say the correct incantations, they