One of the most mystifying puzzles of relatively recent times is that of what has become known as “The Dogman.” The creature resembles a huge wolf – but with one big difference. This creature walks on its back legs. An upright wolf? Well, yes. Or, the closest thing to it. Inevitably, parallels between the Dogman and werewolves abound. Certainly, the leading expert in this field is Linda Godfrey, who has written a number of excellent books on the subject, including Real Wolfmen and The Michigan Dogman.

One of the lesser known aspects of the Dogman phenomenon is that which connects it to the Men in Black and the Women in Black. That’s right: there are cases in which witnesses to – and investigators of – the Dogmen have been visited by WIB and MIB and warned not to talk about their encounters. Granted, the number of cases is small: I have just six. But, when compared to each other, a pattern definitely emerges. One of the cases comes from none other than Linda herself. In the first weekend of August 2016, I spoke at Ken Gerhard’s Dogman Symposium in the city of Defiance, Ohio, which was the site of numerous werewolf/Dogman sightings back in 1972. It was during a break at the Dogman Symposium that Linda briefly mentioned her odd story to me; a story that she went on to expand as follows:

“It was around 2003, a sunny and warm day, and I happened to be out on Hospital Road, which is just off Bray Road, and where a lot of sightings of Dogmen have taken place – on that particular juncture of the road. There were a couple of cameramen and two colleagues of mine that were with me, and we were all being filmed for a TV show. It was the turn of one of my colleagues to be filmed. The other one and I were just standing at the side of the road – waiting and seeing what was going on – when this very large, black sedan pulled up. And as the window came down there was an older woman in the car. Nobody that I knew. We looked at her as the window came down and she said, in an accent that sounded kind of like a Russian accent, but could have been eastern European; I’m not sure: ‘Do you need any help?’

“There was something about her mannerisms: it wasn’t as if she was tentative or worried about anything. She just stated this in a really almost commanding way. And my friend and I looked at each other and we just said: ‘Thank you, no; we’re just filming.’ And it was like she didn’t really understand what we she said, because she said again: ‘Do you need any help? Can I help you?’ We said, ‘No, thanks,’ again. She still didn’t drive away; she looked over at the cameraman who was filming the activity and she seemed a little reluctant to leave. But, there wasn’t any great reason she could think of to justify staying. So, she finally turned and stepped on the gas kind of slowly. And that was it.

“But, it just struck me as so strange at the time. She was dressed in black, but it wasn’t a formal business suit or anything like that. The car was black and the interior was kind of dark. I would estimate she was probably in her sixties and she had a deep voice. Her hair was grayish and pulled back. There was a bit of exoticness to her. It was such an odd thing; it was out of the ordinary and stuck in my mind. She didn’t fit in with the local populace, put it that way.”

Of course, those of a skeptical nature would likely be inclined to say this was simply a case of a woman in a black car taking an interest in a TV shoot, rather than an incident involving a definitive Woman in Black. I should stress, though, that in the other cases I have on file – where witnesses saw the Dogman and were then visited by a MIB or a WIB – the black-dressed entities were on the scene almost impossibly quickly, and always in cars. You know the color of those cars. Methinks we should take a deeper look at the Dogman-MIB-WIB phenomenon…