New Publications of Mine

New "Animals and Men" issue was just released! Excellent articles and interesting ideas. I also had an article included in the issue, titled "Jumping to Conclusions: Could Kangaroos explain the American Dogman Phenomenon?" I was quite happy with how it turned out. Jon even included an accompanying comic strip. You can read it here.
The full table of contents is as follows:
2. Contents
3. Faculty
4. Editorial
9. Newsfile: New and Rediscovered
16. Newsfile: Chupacabras
19. Newsfile: Man Beasts
21. Newsfile: Mystery cats
23. Newsfile: Aquatic monsters
29. Newsfile Xtra (1): The Scottish “Polar Bears”
31. Newsfile Xtra (2): The Philippino“Polar Bears”
36. Watcher of the Skies by Corinna Downes
54. Phantom Black Dogs in the Netherlands by Loes Moddermann
65. Jumping to Conclusions: Could Kangaroos explain the American Dogman Phenomenon? by Colin Schneider
68. Phantom Kangaroos by Scott Kroll
78. Ape Canyon Feature Film seeks Financing by Harrison Demchick
71. Still on the Trail of the Tasmanian Wolf by Richard Freeman
81. Duties for Regional Representatives—A Discussion Document
82. Letters to the Editor
89. Reviews
92. Recent books from CFZ Press

Also, a new issue of the wonderful Cryptid Culture Magazine was released a couple days ago. I recieved mine in the mail and loved it. I had an article in there called "The Monsters of the Fay" about how cryptids and faerie lore could be connected. You can check it out here.

The full table of contents is as follows: 

6: Monsters of the Fay by Colin Schneider

9: The Water Hounds of Ireland by David Weatherly 

13: Dragon Puppet Theater by Jason Ropp

16: Clergy of the Deep: The Sea Monk and the Bishop Fish by John Meszaros

20: The Van Meter Visitor: A Case of High Strangeness by Kevin Nelson

26: A Brief History of SasWhat by Mark Matzke (I was recently featured on that excellent podcast which you can hear here.)

30: Cryptid Poetry by Richard Stevenson

33: Robroy Menzies, Crypto Artist by Robroy Menzies
41: Cryptozoologist: A Documentary
42: Water Monsters by Robert Robinson
46: Disney Cryptids by Scott C. Marlowe
55: The Green River Monster by Zach Bales

Both magazines are excellent and I would recommend them to anyone interested in cryptozoology or the weird. 

Books, UFOs, Werewolves, and Ghosts (What I've Been Up to Lately)

I know posts have been few and far between, unfortunately that will have to continue for another week or so. I have been incredibly busy with working on my book and some personal stuff that suddenly came up.

Regarding my book, I have about three chapters drafted so far and I plan to have another six drafted by the end of next week. I might post a brief preview of one of the chapters sometime in the future.

So what have I been doing other than writing my book?

I went to the Kecksburg Festival last week. It was a blast. I spent the entire time hanging out with my good friends Ron Murphy and Dr. Brian Parsons. I purchased Parsons' excellent E4 Method book which I would recommend to anyone who wants to learn proper interviewing and investigative methods for witnesses.

I also went to the phenomenal Dogman Symposium which was put on by my friend Ken Gerhard. It was honestly one of the best cryptid events I have been to. All of the talks were engaging and fascinating (which is rare for conferences, there is normally one or two talks that were duds). I got to meet a could legends in the field like David Weatherly, John Tenney, and the awesome Linda Godfrey! The talks were as follows:

• John Tenney: Michigan Dogman (but he also talked about elves and zombies)
• David Weatherly: Native American Skinwalkers
• Linda Godfrey: Beast of Bray Road and other Dogmen
• Ken Gerhard: Beast of Gevaudan
• Nick Redfern: Werewolves and Hellhounds of the UK
• Stan Gordon: Cryptids and UFOs of Pennsylvania

If you missed the Symposium, you missed out on one of the best cryptid events in the area! I can't wait until next year! I got a bunch of books at the event: I won a copy of the excellent In the Domain of the Lake Monsters by John Kirk, I also got Beast of Bray Road and Michigan Dogman by Linda Godfrey, Black Eyed Children and Strange Intruders by David Weatherly and an advance copy of Nick Redfern's The Monster Book. Needless to say, I have a lot of reading ahead! I will be writing reviews for each of the books as I complete them. 

I am also preparing to speak at the Blairsville Paranormal conference which is being run by Ron Murphy. Also, I'm writing the forward for Ron's upcoming book On Ghosts. 

Needless to say, I will be extremely busy. The next event I will be at is the Mothman Fest in September and the Minerva Monster Fest the week after. 

I have a lot of work to do, I better get back to it! Until next time, stay weird. 

I am now a Published Author!!

I recently wrote an article about dogmen and werewolves in Ohio and had it published in the official journal of the Centre for Fortean Zoology. I am extremely excited about being a published author.

You can find my article here. The article is titled "Ohio Dogman"

Please comment and let me know what you think.

Werewolf of Defiance

Defiance, Ohio, a sleepy little town, about 55 miles south of Toledo, had a series of unusual encounters in 1972 that will become whispered legend in the years after. Defiance is your average, small, Midwestern American town. Most of the people who live there make their living by working at one of the handful of factories around the area. Defiance is best known for its Fort Defiance, which has a colorful historical significance . So what happened in Defiance all those years ago? Possibly the oddest couple of Dogman encounters ever reported.

On July 25th, 1972, when two employees a local freight train company were working the graveyard shift, inspecting railcar braking systems. Ted Davis, one of the witnesses, during an interview with the Toledo Blade said, “I saw these two hairy feet. Then I looked up and he was standing there with a big stick over his shoulder. When I started to say something, he took off for the woods.” The creature was also described as having, “huge, hairy feet, fangs, and it ran side-to-side like a caveman in the movies.”

About a week after the first encounter, Davis claims to have seen the creature, at the same place as the first encounter, the rail yard. He said it looked at him from the edge of the woods, and the turned and left. That same night, a grocer reported an attack from a hairy, animal-headed creature wielding a two-by-four.

In a small town, nothing stays quiet for long. About a week after the initial events, the local newspaper caught wind of the unusual story. The headlines wrote “Horror Movie Now Playing on Fifth St.” and opened with the famous poem from The Wolf Man:

“Even a man who is pure of heart,

And says his prayers by night,

May become a wolf when the wolf bane blooms,

And the moon is clear and bright.”

The Crescent News, the local newspaper, and the Toledo Blade, ran a total of four articles about the incident. The longest of the articles focused on the local police force’s investigation into the incident. Headed by Donald Breckler, the police chief at the time, the police searched extensively for the “werewolf”. Although the general public thought that it to be a bored teenager’s prank, Chief Breckler considered the club-wielding, animal-faced assailant was a threat to the community. Eventually, after days of looking and no results, the search soon ended.

It is worth noting that Defiance, Ohio is no stranger to unusual phenomena. Within the past fifty years Defiance has seen hundreds of Unidentified Flying Objects, a Dracula lookalike running amuck, and numerous other tales of the weird.
Later this year, Ken Gerhard will be running a symposium about the Dogman and it is located in the town of Defiance. You can find more info here.

Here is one of the articles about the Defiance Werewolf

The North America Dogman Project

Joedy Cook, well known and respected Bigfoot research from Ohio, has recently begun a new group focusing on research of the Dogman phenomenon.

The new group is called the North American Dogman Project and is looking for new members.
I recently joined the group and am looking forward to working with Joedy in the future.

You can find the NADP's website here.

Werewolves

Werewolves, the man-wolf creatures of the night, said to terrorize townspeople and consume children and sheep. Werewolves are considered to be a strictly European notion, but most cultures around the world have some concept of people transforming into animals, in the Southern United States it’s the skinwalkers, in Japan, the kitsune, and in Mesoamerica, the nagual. Stories of these shapeshifting creatures are abundant, and many continue today.

The official term for shapeshifting into a wolf is lycanthropy. Many attribute legend of werewolves to people who had the mental disorder known as Clinical Lycanthropy, a form of psychosis in which one believes themselves to be a wolf or half-wolf.

Probably the best known tale of a werewolf are the stories of the Beast of Gevaudan. Gevaudan was the name for a mountainous region in the southern part of 18th century France. The Beast showed up in June of 1764 and terrorized the small town for three years. It killed women, children, livestock--anything it could. Eventually, nearly all of France had heard of the beast, and the king sent soldiers down to kill the creature. The soldiers succeeded in killing the beast and tried to bring it back to the king but because of decay and stench they buried it in an unknown location. Many speculate that the creature was just a hyena or an oversized wolf, but there are some who still call it a werewolf.
There is an abundance of modern werewolf sightings, not just in Europe, but in America as well. Researcher Linda S. Godfrey is the recognized expert on modern werewolf sightings and has a nearly complete list of modern American encounters. She has noticed, like many cryptids, there seems to be a correlation between sighting locations and the locations of both sacred sites and military bases. Godfrey speculated that this could be because the man-wolves are protection spirits from Native American mythology. Godfrey prefers to call these creatures Dogmen or Upright-Candids, because some encounters seem to attribute a more dog-like appearance to the creatures than wolf-like. Many researchers also feel that the dogmen are most supernatural than natural, due to the nature of many encounters. Nearly everyone agrees, though, that werewolves aren’t truly men transforming into wolves.

Sources

Real Wolfmen by Linda S. Godfrey

Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology by Michael Newton

Encyclopedia of Occultism by Lewis Spence

American Monsters by Linda S. Godfrey

New Rash of Werewolf Sightings in Britain

The cryptozoological community has seems to have become obsessed with sightings of werewolves, renamed 'Dogman' for a more broad moniker. Books, documentaries, and even a symposium have emerged from the recent excitement. 

New sightings of such creatures have started to emerge with more frequency, and they are being taken more seriously. 

The most recent set of sightings of bipedal wolf-like creatures have come out of Hull, East Yorkshire in England.

This 'flap' of sightings began in the late fall of last year when a witness claimed to have encountered a tall, dark dog-like creature that was walking on its hind legs. 

Many of the sightings, including the one above, have happened around the Barmston Drain, a channel dating back to 1798, and the industrial areas around the Drain. 

One of the witnesses also claimed that she saw one of the creatures walking with its hind-legs and all fours; “It was stood upright one moment. The next it was down on all fours running like a dog. I was terrified. It bounded along on all fours, then stopped and reared up on to its back legs, before running down the embankment towards the water. It vaulted 30ft over to the other side and vanished up the embankment and over a wall into some allotments.”

There seems to be an old history of bipedal wolves in East Yorkshire. There is an old legend of a wolf creature which had very bad breath, known as 'Old Stinker'. 

You can read the rest of the story here.