This encounter happened many years ago when I was 15 years old. I only recently started reading information on the internet describing this creature and now have a desire to tell my story.
This encounter happened at my grandparent’s lake cabin, south of the town of Danbury, Wisconsin, east of Highway 35, around Devil’s Lake. My background has always been the great outdoors, playing and exploring in the woods. During this time period, I was very comfortable going out by myself, for all-day adventures. On the night of this encounter, I had gone to sleep around 10 PM. It was in the summer, so no school. This night was warm, so I had the bedroom window slightly cracked for some air circulation and to hear the crickets and outside noises. This always would put me to sleep every time because like I said earlier, I was very comfortable in the woods and nothing was out of the ordinary that night. Now at the time, my grandparent’s bedroom was on the other side of the cabin. They also had a black Labrador retriever that always slept in my room most of the time this fact will come into the story later on.
I had fallen asleep like I always did at this cabin. Hours later, I never knew exactly what time it was but it was late and everyone was asleep. I suddenly awoke feeling something was wrong. Being still groggy, the first thing I noticed was that nothing outside was making any noise at all. No crickets, frogs, whip-poor-wills. Nothing but total silence. I held my breath for a minute, listening very intently, thinking that was very odd. I moved my head to see the door of the bedroom. The night light from the hallway was giving a slight glow and I could see that my grandparent’s dog was not laying in his normal spot on the floor or any place in my room. I guess maybe 2-3 minutes had past and then I heard it. A sound that to me sounded like a raccoon or some other animal scratching the outside of the cabin. This continued and my mind wondered what the heck could have been making that noise. It was still totally silent, except that scratching noise that began to move down the wall, closer to the window of the bedroom. So, I turned my attention to the window. It was very dark outside but I could still make out the slight silhouette of the tree’s and the branches up high. All at once, the scratching stopped. I strained to adjust my eyes and that’s when it stepped out of the shadows and blocked out the view of the trees. It was huge! No animal I knew of or could envision was standing in my view. I couldn’t make out any features of its body, but I could see the distinct ears of a canine on a large head. Then, I saw its eyes and was paralyzed with fear! It was hunched down, looking in the window. Its eyes were a glowing amber color and blinked every 10 to 15 seconds. My mind was racing. Can it see me? What’s it going to do? What am I going to do? A chill went down my spine. I could hear it breathing. It let out an exhale that was deep, but not overly loud. Then, it began to sniff the air. I could hear it clearly, only being around 10 to 12 feet away from it. About 30 seconds elapsed which felt like forever to me, but looking back, it was not much time at all. The creature then began to show its teeth, almost like a grin of satisfaction that it had scared me so badly. Time stood still, then it stood up, off its haunches, erect like a man, and walked off, away from the window, in the direction of the lake. I knew this was my chance, so I jumped out of bed, into the hallway, away from the window and began to breathe heavy, because I think I held my breath for over two minutes. I looked into the living room and could see the dog standing totally still, in a rigid posture, hair standing on end, with a slight growl looking at the deck window. I turned to the hall closet and grabbed my 20 gauge shotgun and loaded it. It was only a single shot, but it was better than nothing, I thought to myself while I was trying to catch my breath. Then I realized, if it wanted to come into the house it could easily do it by breaking the glass on the deck patio. If it did that, I had no place to go, because I was trapped in between my bedroom and that patio window to my grandparent’s room, where my grandfather had a deer rifle that I couldn’t get to. I stood, waiting for around 5 minutes and nothing happened. The dog seemed to calm down and walked over to me and sat down wanting to get his head scratched. I thought about waking up my grandparents and telling them what I had seen, but at the time, didn’t think they would believe me. After all, I couldn’t believe it myself, so I calmed down and went back into my bedroom, pulled the covers off the bed and slept on the floor with the gun and dog, at the ready, in a half sleep for the rest of the night.
This encounter had scared me so bad I didn’t want to even get close to the window to close it all the way that night, for fear of that thing coming back. I waited until dawn before I closed and locked it. Once daylight was in full force, I went outside to see if I could find any scratches on the wall or anything else, like footprints. I didn’t find anything at all and was starting to wonder if I was going crazy. No. That thing was real. I continued to sleep on the floor for around a week before I felt it was ok to sleep in my bed again, but that window stayed closed and locked ever since. I didn’t have any other encounters with a dogman after that incident and the memory was put out of my mind over time until recently. I was reading encounters on your website and saw that two other people had an encounter in the same area as me. When I saw their encounters, I decided to share my experience. You don’t know what true primal fear is until you see one of these things and are face to face with one. I never want to experience it again!
Anonymous
Time: 2:00 AM
Date: July of 1984