Date: January 10, 2009

Location: Wexford, Manistee, Osceola County, Michigan

We had an opportunity to do our Skinwalker preliminary investigation this weekend. Of course Saturday morning when we left we were getting pounded by snow. It is a good thing we had Chappy and his 4 wheel drive Ford F150 to blaze the trail for us; and we can't forget it is a full moon this weekend. Why a full moon you may ask? Mainly it is easier to track at night in the forest with a full moon and if it is a werewolf, a full moon couldn't hurt.

Wexford County is one area known as Dogman territory. There have been reports of Dogman from the lumber camps as far back as the 1850's. We spent sometime with retired Forester Carl who mapped out the locations of the old Victorian lumber camps that had had plenty of sightings of Dogman in their day and current sightings of Dogman still roaming those parts of the forest at night.

With our map in hand, we drove the two-track trails of the Manistee National forest and it was as Carl had described it - rough terrain and even that was an understatement. After a few hours we headed to the Wexford county library to see what historical information we could dig up on Dogman.

Now this is where it starts getting weird: We walked into the library and I immediately walked over to the information desk. There was no one present so I just stood there looking around. A librarian came over and said the information lady was out to lunch but didn't offer any help. As we stood their, an older lady stepped up out of nowhere and in a whispering voice said she would help the gentlemen. The librarian turned and left.

We returned to the information desk and sitting on the counter was a folder. She looked me in the eye and told me this is what you need and handed me the folder titled "Cadillac Legends: The Dogman". She instructed me to return the folder to the exact spot when I finished. A bit flabbergasted I took the folder to a reading table to review the contents. Jason's jaw was still dragging on the floor.

"Dude," he said. "It was like she was waiting for you to show up. What are the odds that folder would be sitting there? No one knew we were coming up here and certainly didn't know we were going to this library, hell we didn't even know we were coming to this library."

." I agreed this was indeed weird. No matter however weird it was we had the information we required. Chappy, a young man, sat across the reading table staring at me. I just smiled and told Chappy to sit and watch how the old timers did their research before they had the Internet and computers.

We spent the rest of the daylight hunting down the old logging camps of over 100 years ago. At sunset we decided to leave the forest and go to Reed City about an hour away to grab a bite to eat and check out that area since there had been a recent sighting of Dogman.

As we were traveling south to Reed City the roads were getting very icy in the National Forest. We came over the crest of a hill and hit an ice-field. Chappy's 4x4 wasn't going to get us out of this one! It was a wild ride as the truck moaned and groaned doing 360 degree spins all the way down the hill.

When we got to the base of the hill the truck was heading for the steep embankment that dropped into a frozen river below. At this point I was trying to calculate which side of the truck was going to hit first. Of course it turned out to be my side.

All of a sudden a vision of the "The Mothman Prophecies" movie came to mind when Debra Messing hit her head on the side window in the auto crash. I had visions of bending the brim of my favorite hat if my head hit the side window. As it turned out I had it timed right and ducked at the last second. That was one tough snow bank it stopped us from crashing down the embankment to a certain cold wet doom.

We got the vehicle back on solid ground and checked for damages. The only damage was a fog-light that got ripped off in the crash. We unplugged the wiring harness and threw the light in the truck. Oh, and my bag of chips I'd been saving all day, flew out Jason's window during the crash down into the river below.

We made a final inspection of the vehicle and told Chappy that the commercials were true about being Ford tough. The amazing thing was that my drink didn't spill and I didn't bend my hat. We had a good laugh sitting around the bruised truck in the middle of the National forest in the light of the rising full moon.

Well, we made it all in one piece to Reed City without further incident. Soon we were headed for the old abandoned school house that Linda Godfrey talked about her encounter with Dogman. This is a spot where there have been repeated Dogman reports. What a strange place, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. This old abandoned school house was set in the woods by the road.

I found some very strange tracks that were a couple of days old. They look like I would expect from a dog walking on two legs. The stride should be short. The prints were dog like and 10 inches across. We kept feeling that something nearby was watching from the woods. With my night-vision equipment I couldn't detect anything. Jason took a picture of the building from the road and on the second picture the building wasn't there. We kept matching the picture to the trees as reference. It was as if the building at that moment phased out of existence.

Jason took the video camera and went down the road to get to the front of the schoolhouse to capture some video. At a certain spot on the road the video camera died and so did his flashlight. He came back to the truck and got his still camera and returned to the front of the schoolhouse while I poked around the woods looking for Dogman.

Chappy stayed in his truck wondering why he joined us on this little adventure. At home he could be sitting in his warm lazy-boy with a good movie and a cold one; instead he was in 16 degree weather looking for werewolves under a full moon at a haunted schoolhouse that keeps disappearing on camera.

Jason came back all excited that he saw something dark moving about in the schoolhouse. He could see it moving past the windows. I quickly followed him to the front of the schoolhouse with my digital recorder in tow. He was right there was something strange going on there. It was like a gate way of some kind that was opening and closing again. It appeared the place is haunted and there was an apparition moving about the house.

I started up a conversation with whatever was in there. The full moon shown brightly and help show the shadow as it moved from window to window; especially the one with a ragged curtain that slowly waved in the every so slight breeze through the broken windowpanes.

I know from past experiences with this strange energy that surrounds a haunting I can pick up an EVP three floors down through walls and floors just like the ghost was right next to me. That night from the outside of the old schoolhouse I actually did pick up EVPs from that house.

We next moved to the side of the house in the same spot where Jason lost the video camera power. I pushed the record button on my digital recorder and it wouldn't activate. This never happened before. I returned to the truck and played with the recorder and it wouldn't record. I tried to play what I had previously recorded and it was playing at about ½ speed which my recorder doesn't do. Then it started to record again and when I played back the previous recording it played fine.

We decided it was time; it was a 3 hour drive back home and we felt we were a little closer to understanding and locating the Dogman. On the way back I sat in the backseat of the truck and decided to examine the video camera. I opened the carrying bag that retained the video camera.

I used my large maglite with new batteries to illuminate the bags interior. As I got the flashlight near the video camera the Maglite went from bright light to a dim weak amber glow. Even after I turned the flashlight off it still had a dim amber glow before it finally died. It was like it was on a rheostat. That was a very strange behavior for any kind of flashlight.

As a side note, the video camera never worked again.

Joe Stewart, The Paranormal Nomad.