Welcome back to DEAD Time. I hope you left a light on for me because this month, we’re on the hunt for the Michigan Dogman and other cryptids that might be lurking in the darkness. I talked to Shetan Noir, a cryptozoologist, Michigan based author, journalist, and paranormal researcher about her career, as well as her personal experience with cryptid sightings.
Shetan is the Lead Investigator for the Michigan chapter of the North American Dogman Project and she runs the paranormal investigation team for the Michigan Center for Unexplained Events and Phenomenon. Her fascination began with lake monsters at an early age when she first learned about the Loch Ness monster, then heard reports of lake monsters in her own state of Michigan. Her research has since grown to include Michigan’s own Dogman and Nain Rouge, Bigfoot and ghost hunting. Her books include The Hounds Tooth Cookbook, Bone Arfp’etit!, Flying Creatures of the Midwest, Beyond the Mothman!, and Lake Monsters and Odd Creatures of the Great Lakes.
Shetan Noir is also the owner of Squatch GQ Publishing, Dinosauria and Prehistoric Creatures Magazine, as well as Squatch GQ Magazine.
Bloody Disgusting was excited to talk with Shetan about her career as a cryptozoologist, the Dogman, cryptid sightings, and a lot more.
Bloody Disgusting: When did you first become interested in cryptozoology and why did you decide to pursue it as a career?
Shetan Noir: It all goes back to when I was a young girl, and I was between the ages of nine and eleven. I live in Michigan and like a lot of midwestern families here our summer vacations were spent camping. Here in Michigan, there was a campground called Crystal Lake. Not the same Crystal Lake as the movies [laughs]. This one was much scarier. Outside the gift shop, there was a crocodile or alligator. He was about five feet long; he might have been bigger. He was in a dog kennel with a chain link fence around it and a door they would open to go in. There was a little cement pond for him to soak in. They would just throw crabs and fish in there to feed him.
I firmly remember the people in the gift shop telling all the kids that they caught him in the lake that was there and there might be more of them out there. So, I would not go swimming or fishing; I wouldn’t even go to the beach. My dad had to force me into the little boat to go fishing and I was like, “Oh, we’re going to die.” [laughs] I was just so panic-stricken. If that wasn’t enough for young me, one of the weekends that we were there, they did a family movie night. The two films they chose to show that night were The Patterson-Gimlin film, where it shows Bigfoot walking across the dried river bed, and then The Legend of Boggy Creek. One of the scenes in that is when the creature is reaching through the window trying to grab at a guy. Oh my God, I was so terrified. Young me was just like, “Nope.” So, I spent another 45 minutes after those movies hiding in the women’s bathroom. I was just so scared that those things were out there. I never thought they were real until I saw those movies and then I thought, “Oh my God, they’re real. There’s not just one of them, there are hundreds of them.” That was it for the weekend; if I went outside it had to be daylight.
Then after that curiosity got the best of me and I got a subscription to Fate Magazine. At that time, they were doing monthly issues of Fate Magazine, and I would devour each issue that I got, reading it from cover to cover. Then I would go looking for books. At that time, everything cryptid, paranormal, UFOs, Atlantis, all that fell under the umbrella term of New Age. So, you would go into the bookstore and go to the New Age section, and they had very few books. So, I would buy those books and build my education on the subjects from there.
BD: So, it sounds like your interest in the subject started with fear and turned into fascination.
SN: It very much did. Whatever I was afraid of, I found a way to conquer it as much as I can. So, that is something I have done throughout my life. It brought me to where I am today. If I’m afraid of something, I ask myself, “Why? Why are you afraid of this?” Then I analyze it and try to see if it’s something I need to work on and overcome. As kids we were all afraid the Bermuda Triangle was going to suck us all in or we wouldn’t go out in the woods because of quicksand [laughs]. That’s the generation I’m from.
BD: You’re the lead investigator for the Michigan chapter of the North American Dogman Project. Can you tell me about the Dogman and your work with the project?
SN: The North American Dogman Project is all about bringing awareness to the phenomenon known as Dogman and developing investigation teams. So, when people have a sighting and feel threatened or overwhelmed by how it might affect their lives, they reach out to the North American Dogman Project, and they filter out the reports to each state chapter. Because I am the chapter head for Michigan, I get all the reports. The sighting report gets sent to me and then I establish contact with the person and have them fill out a questionnaire. I don’t start an investigation until I receive the questionnaire. I really have to filter through people who are just looking for attention or are hoaxing and making a false report and wasting everyone’s time. Usually, one out of three reports will be an actual, legitimate sighting report, and the others are just someone hoaxing. As a field investigator, you kind of have to be a psychiatrist, too [laughs], and look at why someone would be filing a report. You have to set up your filters and red flags, too.
We get a lot of misinformation about the Dogman. A lot of people think it’s the werewolf superstition or Hollywood’s wolfman. The Dogman is a bipedal, upright creature that is a canine-humanoid in shape that is canine-humanoid 24/7. They don’t transform from a human being into a dog creature on the full moon. Just like Bigfoot is a bipedal primate, the Dogman is a bipedal canine. They always stay canine; they don’t transform into a human being. They do have the ability to go down on all fours and there is a reason for this—they have different hunting strategies as quadruped or bipedal. One of the strategies of being quadruped, on all fours, is to be seen on roadways or paths and appear to be injured. Almost every person that I talk to would stop their car and get out and try to help that “dog.” They would try and help an injured animal that got hit by a car. What people don’t realize when they follow the injured animal into the woods, is that this could be an ambush situation where the rest of the pack is waiting. We call it Dogman, but in actuality it’s just like most canines are in a hunting pack. It’s easier to take down prey as a pack. So, you might see one Dogman, but that’s not the one you should be worried about; it’s the ones that you don’t see that are probably the threat.
They have another hunting strategy that works very well with roadways and that is that they know when traffic is coming. They know from the position of the sun that humans are most active in the morning and late in the afternoon. That’s when we’re driving up and down roads because we’re either going to work or we’re coming home from work. So, a hunting strategy that they have developed is to chase deer out onto these roadways when they know a car is coming. The deer gets hit and either limps off to the side of the road and dies or goes into the woods and dies. Once all the traffic is cleared away, the Dogmen go and collect the deer carcass and there is dinner. I think the Bigfoot also use this strategy. One of the interesting parts of the Dogman and Bigfoot scenario is that you will never find them in the same area. What usually happens is the Bigfoot will set up a home territory, and it’s usually females with young Bigfoot, and one solitary, alpha male, who services the females.
They will pick areas where there are food crops, deer, fresh water, and suitable habitat where they can have shelter for their family group. When a pack of Dogmen move into that same area, the Bigfoot will leave. For a mother Bigfoot or Sasquatch with offspring, her sole job is to protect her offspring. If a group of Dogmen move into the same area, they are looking for food and resources just like the Bigfoot, but the Dogmen are more predatory than the Bigfoot. The mother of the baby Bigfoots will leave and find another location. If it’s a pack of Dogmen versus a pack of Bigfoot, the Dogmen are going to win. Now we know it’s not just Bigfoot out there; there are Dogmen, too. We get worldwide reports of both, but we’re starting to get more Dogman reports because people are becoming more familiar with that creature.
BD: Have you had an encounter with a cryptid you can share?
SN: Oh yeah, absolutely! I’ve had a Bigfoot sighting, I have found evidence of Dogman, and I’ve had a possible second Bigfoot sighting or Dogman. The creature was a little bit too far away for me to make out all the details about him, but the first sighting that I had was actually coming home from my Mom’s near the North American Bear Society up in Ely, Minnesota. I’d gone up to visit her about 10 years ago. I’d gone up to visit her the last week of October and I was trying to get home before a huge snowstorm was coming through. And I was just coming up on to the exit to go from one highway to another outside of Virginia, Minnesota. I was in my Jeep Wrangler Sport. I’m talking about dimensions so I like to give people that information first, so people can compare it. I was in my Jeep Wrangler and I was about to go up the on-ramp. My headlights, which I had set to bright, were shining in front of me, and what I saw was headlight, thick furry leg, tall grass, thick furry leg, headlight. And my eyes proceeded to travel up as far as I could. The hair was, I could distinctly see it, it was a blackish brown. The fur was thick but obviously matted in areas. Standing outside my Jeep Wrangler I could put my chin on the roof. I’m 5’ 8”. So, given that measurement, the head of this creature was probably about 7 feet. By then I was up on the expressway. Up in that part of Minnesota it’s very rural, very desolate. The exit is probably about 5 miles outside of Virginia. And you could see woods all around you. So, I get up on the expressway and I brought my Jeep to a stop.
At that point I’m trying to decide if I should cross the median and go back down the other off-ramp to go back around and see if I can get pictures of the creature. At the time I had a mobile phone and it was one of those phones that you could hold in the palm of your hand and you could open it and you could take pictures. They wouldn’t have been very good quality pictures, but I could try to get pictures of it. But then the cautious part of my brain kicks in and I’m like, “What are you thinking? You could go back down and try to get pictures of it and try and see more of it. But what if you make it angry? Because obviously that creature is very strong. How are you going to explain to your mom, a tow truck Driver, and state police how your Jeep ended up on that side. In a ditch?” It’s 3:30 in the morning at this point and I’m like, “Nope I know what I saw. Chances of me getting pictures of it? It’s probably gone by now.” So, that was my first encounter.
I usually go up to Minnesota once a year to visit my mom and at different points throughout the year they’re doing road work. Sometimes you’re not taking the same route that you’re used to; sometimes you get detoured. And on this particular occasion I was headed back home and was hitting all these detours. It was dusk out; it just started to get dark. So, I’m sitting at this stop sign and when I start going forward, I notice that there is a very large creature about to come up to the side of the road about 150 feet in front of me. So, I’m sitting in my car watching this creature and it proceeds to stand fully upright. Then it turns its head, and it sees my car approaching and it leaps from that side of the road to the middle of the lane on the other side of the road. It does a leap then stands up and runs into the woods. So, by this point I’m 50 feet from where it was standing, and it was so tall that it could only be either a Bigfoot or a Dogman. I’m thinking it was more Dogman because Bigfoots rarely go onto all fours. So, that was my second sighting.
Now the evidence I collected was on my way up to Menominee, Michigan to do a Bigfoot conference. There is a rest area on the shores of Lake Michigan where you can walk along the beach. I had my little Miniature Pinscher with me, and we were walking up and down the beach and she had her hiking harness on and we’re the only ones on the beach. She knows how to use her nose, and something was making her sneeze; she didn’t like the smell of something. So, as I turned to see what she was smelling she pulled away from me. I look down and there are these humongous paw prints coming from the road down the beach to the shoreline. I wear a women’s size 11 shoe and I took a picture of the footprint next to my foot. The footprint is wider than my foot and over half the size of my foot in length. My Miniature Pinscher was leaving a very tiny footprint in the sand and her footprint is about the size of a quarter. These footprints of whatever this creature was, I’m thinking it was a Dogman, were pressed about three quarters of an inch into the sand, which means this was a very big animal.
So, I took several pictures of my foot next to the clearest track in the sand and proceeded to go back to my car to continue on my way to the Bigfoot conference. At the Bigfoot Conference there were several other cryptozoologists including Ken Gerhard, Barnaby Jones, and Alison Joynland. I showed everybody the pictures and I said, “Okay guys, tell me what this footprint is.” They said, “It’s not a Bigfoot and it’s not a cat print. It looks canine. We’re pretty sure that is a Dogman track.”
For more information on Shetan Noir and her cryptozoological adventures, you can visit https://shetannoir.wixsite.com/squatchgqmagazine, as well as Shetan’s website.
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