This wasn’t a random predator. It was a dogman, and it was hunting deliberately.
I bought this property five years ago, about 40 acres of pasture land and woods in the hills northeast of Knoxville. The place was perfect for what I wanted—remote enough for privacy but close enough to town that I could get supplies when needed. Good water from a well that never ran dry. A barn in decent shape. Fencing that needed some work but was mostly solid.
The previous owner had let the place go a bit after his wife died, but the bones were good, and the price was right. I remember the day I first walked the property, seeing the potential in every overgrown field and weathered fence post. I’d been farming my whole adult life, growing up doing it with my parents before they passed, so I knew what I was getting into. Hard work, long days, but honest work that lets you sleep well at night.
I started small with chickens, added some goats the second year, and then got a few pigs. Nothing fancy, just enough livestock to make a modest living selling eggs, meat, and the occasional breeding animal to other farmers in the area. The local feed store knew me by name. The butcher shop took my pigs on a regular schedule, and I had customers who’d drive out from town just to buy my fresh eggs.
The first three years went exactly like I’d hoped. The animals thrived. The land produced well. I fixed up the barn, mended all the fencing, cleared some of the overgrown areas, and made friends with a few neighboring farmers who’d come by now and then to chat or lend a hand with bigger projects. Life was good. Simple, but good.
I’d sit on the porch most evenings with a beer, watching the sun set over the hills, and think about how lucky I was to have found this place. The quiet was exactly what I needed after spending years working construction in the city before my parents died. The property itself was beautiful in that rough Tennessee way. Rolling hills covered in oak and pine, a creek that ran along the eastern boundary, meadows that turned gold in the late summer sun. The barn was old but solid, probably built in the 30s or 40s based on the construction and the square nails I’d find when doing repairs.
The house was nothing special, a simple two-story farmhouse with a wraparound porch, but it had good bones. I’d spent countless hours fixing it up, replacing rotted boards, painting, making it feel like home. I knew the area had wildlife. Deer would come right up to the edge of the cleared land in the evenings, sometimes a dozen at a time, grazing in the meadow. I’d see raccoons, occasionally possums, the usual small critters. Once in a while, I’d spot a black bear passing through, usually in the spring when they first came out of hibernation.
But I’d taken all the normal precautions—secure coups and pens, sturdy fencing, livestock guardian animals. I had two dogs, big mixed breeds that I’d raised from puppies specifically to protect the farm. Then last fall, things started going wrong in ways I couldn’t explain.
It started with the chickens. I have about 30 birds in a coop behind the barn. Nice setup with a secure run that I built myself using hardware cloth instead of chicken wire because I know predators. The coop has a solid door that latches from the outside with a heavy metal latch, windows covered with wire mesh, no gaps in the walls. I’ve never lost a bird to predators in three years of keeping them there.
One morning in late September, I went out to feed the chickens like I do every morning before breakfast, walking across the dewy grass with my feed bucket. I found the coop door hanging open—not just unlatched, but actually torn partially off its hinges. The metal latch was bent and twisted like something had grabbed it and yanked with enormous force. Inside the coop, five chickens were dead. Not eaten, not carried off, just killed and left lying there in the straw and wood shavings. Their bodies were torn apart, ripped open, but barely anything was actually consumed. Just senseless killing.
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I stood there staring at the carnage, trying to make sense of it. A fox or coyote would have taken birds with them, eaten what they killed, or at least tried to carry some away. A raccoon might kill more than it needs, but it wouldn’t have the strength to tear that door open. A dog would have left different marks, different damage patterns. I’ve dealt with every common predator you find in Tennessee, and this didn’t match any of them.
The force required to bend that metal latch and tear the door from its hinges was enormous. That kind of strength suggested something big. Maybe a black bear, though bears don’t usually bother with chickens when there’s easier food available in the woods. The strange thing was my dogs. Both of them usually bark at everything, especially at night when predators might come around. They’d gone after coyotes before without hesitation, chased off foxes, alerted me to every deer that came near the property. But that night, I hadn’t heard a sound from them. When I checked on them that morning, they were in their doghouse, both huddled together in the back corner, refusing to come out. They were trembling, whining, acting like they’d seen something that terrified them to their core.
I’d never seen them like this before. These were brave dogs that had never backed down from anything. I spent that whole day reinforcing the coop, added a second latch, installed a heavy-duty bolt that cost me $30 at the hardware store, put extra braces on the door hinges. I figured maybe the original setup had a weak point I’d missed, and something big, maybe a black bear that hadn’t denned up yet, had gotten at it.
Three nights later, it happened again. I heard the chickens making noise around 2:00 in the morning. That panicked squawking they do when they’re terrified. The sound cut through my sleep like an alarm. I grabbed my shotgun from beside the bed and ran outside in my underwear and boots. The cold night air hit my bare legs. The security light I have mounted on the barn was on, illuminating the chicken coop about 50 yards away. I could see the door hanging open again. I could hear the chickens still screaming inside. I started running toward the coop, shotgun raised, yelling at the top of my lungs to scare off whatever was in there.
That’s when I saw it move.
Something big detached from the shadows near the coop and bolted into the woods. It moved on two legs, running upright like a person, but way too big to be a person. Even in the poor light, I could tell it had to be 6 1/2 or 7 feet tall, maybe more. Dark-colored, shaggy, moving with this loping gait that covered ground incredibly fast. Within three seconds, it was in the treeline and gone, swallowed up by the darkness between the trees.
I stopped dead in my tracks, my heart hammering so hard I could hear it in my ears. What the hell was that?
I stood there for maybe 30 seconds, shotgun pointed at the woods, too scared to move closer and too scared to turn my back on those trees. The cold was biting into my bare legs, but I barely felt it. Eventually, I forced myself to keep walking to the coop, checking over my shoulder every few steps, my finger resting on the safety of the shotgun.
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Inside, six more chickens were dead. Same pattern as before, torn apart, but barely eaten. Just a few pecks of flesh missing. Nothing that would explain the violence of the kills. The new latch I’d installed was bent and twisted beyond recognition. The heavy-duty bolt I’d added was ripped completely out of the wood, screws still attached. Whatever did this had the strength to tear through reinforced construction like it was made of cardboard.
I didn’t sleep the rest of that night. I sat on my porch with every light in the house on and the shotgun across my lap, watching the woods, jumping at every sound. My dogs stayed in their house. Wouldn’t come out even when I called them, even when I tried to coax them with treats. That scared me almost as much as what I’d seen. These dogs were supposed to protect me, warn me of danger, and they were utterly useless.
When the sun finally came up, I walked the treeline looking for tracks, the morning dew soaking my boots. The ground was dry and hard in most places, not great for tracks, but I found a few partial prints in some soft dirt near the creek that runs along the edge of my property. I had to get down on my hands and knees to really see them, brush away some leaves and debris that had collected overnight.
The prints made my blood run cold. They were shaped like a large dog, maybe the size a mastiff would leave, but there was something wrong about them. The toes were too long. The claws were thicker and longer than any dog I’d ever seen, and they showed deeper definition than a dog print should. And the stride pattern was all wrong. These prints showed a bipedal gait, something walking on its hind legs, not a quadruped. The stride length between prints was huge, maybe five or six feet, way longer than any human could manage.
I took photos with my phone, measured the prints with a tape measure I keep in my truck. The longest print I found was 14 inches from heel to toe, with claw marks extending another inch or two beyond that. The width at the widest point was about six inches. I laid my hand next to one print for scale, and my hand looked like a child’s by comparison.
I took dozens of photos from different angles, trying to capture every detail I could see: the claw marks, the depth of the impression, the spacing between the toes. I spent the rest of the day online searching for what could leave tracks like that. I felt stupid even typing the search terms into my computer. Large bipedal canine tracks. Upright walking wolf, dogman sightings, Tennessee.
But I couldn’t ignore what I’d seen and what I’d measured. The evidence was right there in my photos, undeniable and documented. I found stories—hundreds of them—from all over the country. People reporting encounters with creatures that looked like huge dogs or wolves, but walked upright on two legs. Dogmen, they called it. Cryptid sightings going back decades, maybe longer. Some of the stories were clearly hoaxes or exaggerations, people looking for attention or trying to sell books. But some had a ring of truth to them, detailed accounts from credible witnesses who had nothing to gain from lying. Hunters who’d spent their whole lives in the woods describing encounters that terrified them. Farmers who’d lost livestock in ways they couldn’t explain. Hikers who’d seen something that made them never want to go into the woods again.
I’ve lived in rural areas my whole life and I’ve never been one for ghost stories or monster tales. I believe in what I can see, can touch, and explain with basic common sense. I’ve dealt with every kind of predator that lives in Tennessee. I’ve trapped coyotes, scared off black bears, shot feral dogs that were threatening my livestock. But I couldn’t explain what I’d seen or those tracks I’d found. Nothing in my experience as a farmer, nothing in my knowledge of local wildlife could account for this.
I bought more ammunition the next day in town. Heavy buckshot loads designed for big game, the kind you’d use for bear or wild boar. I also bought a trail camera, the kind hunters use to monitor game trails, and mounted it pointing at the chicken coop. The camera cost me almost $200, but I needed to know what I was dealing with. If this thing came back, I’d at least have footage of what it was.
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I also bought some heavier chains and locks for the barn and coop doors, the kind meant for securing heavy equipment. For three nights, nothing happened. The chickens were fine. The coop stayed secure. No unusual sounds or signs. I started thinking maybe whatever it was had moved on, found different hunting grounds.
Then on the fourth night, the trail camera captured something that made my hands shake when I reviewed the footage the next morning.
The time stamp showed 3:15 in the morning. The camera had motion-activated recording, so it only captured when something moved in front of it. The footage showed the area in front of the chicken coop in that greenish night vision glow. At first, the frame was empty and still—just the coop door and the surrounding area. Then something walked into view from the left side of the frame, moving with deliberate purpose.
It was huge—maybe 7 feet tall—walking upright on two legs like a person, but it wasn’t a person. The proportions were all wrong. The legs were too long and digitigrade, bent backward like a dog’s hind legs. The body was lean and muscular, covered in dark fur or hair that seemed to ripple as it moved. The arms were long, hanging down past where the knees would be, ending in hands that looked almost human but with long clawed fingers that I could see even in the low-quality footage.
The head was the worst part. It was definitely canine, shaped like a wolf or large dog, but the size was impossible. Pointed ears stood upright on top of the head, a long snout visible even in the night vision footage, but it sat on top of a neck and shoulders that suggested something more human in posture. This thing stood upright naturally, not like a bear rearing up, which always looks awkward and temporary.
The creature walked directly to the chicken coop, each step measured and careful, and examined the door. It reached out with one of those long-fingered hands and grabbed the chain I’d installed, the expensive heavy-duty chain I’d bought just days before. I watched in the footage as it simply pulled, and the chain snapped like it was made of paper. The heavy-duty padlock went flying across the frame, still locked, attached to pieces of broken chain.
The creature then grabbed the door itself and tore it open, the reinforced hinges screeching as they gave way. It ducked inside the coop, and I could hear the chickens screaming, even through the camera’s audio. After maybe 20 seconds, the creature emerged, stood up straight, and looked directly at the camera. It stared into the lens for just a moment, and even in that grainy night vision footage, there was intelligence in that look, awareness. It knew the camera was there, and it didn’t care. Then it turned and walked back into the woods with that same measured pace, disappearing between the trees.
I must have watched that footage a hundred times over the next few days. I slowed it down, froze frames, zoomed in as much as the resolution would allow. Every time I watched it, I hoped I’d see something different, find some explanation that made sense. But the evidence was undeniable. This was something that walked upright, had human-like hands with opposable thumbs, possessed incredible strength, and showed clear intelligence in how it approached and accessed the coop.
I showed the footage to my neighbor, who farms the property to the south of mine, a man named Harold. He’d been farming these hills for 40 years, knew everything there is to know about local wildlife and weather. If anyone would have answers, it would be him.
I drove over one afternoon with my phone, found him working on his tractor in his barn, and asked if he had a minute to look at something strange I’d captured on camera. He watched the footage once, his expression never changing from that weathered, stoic look most old farmers have. When it finished, he handed my phone back without a word and went back to working on his tractor. I stood there for a moment, confused, then pressed him for his thoughts.
He stopped what he was doing, wiped his hands on a rag, and told me in a flat voice that I should take that camera down and forget what I’d seen. Said there were things in these hills that people didn’t talk about because talking about them only made things worse.
I pressed him for more information, told him I needed to know how to protect my livestock. Harold looked at me for a long moment like he was deciding how much to say, then started talking. He told me his grandfather had raised livestock on this same land back in the 50s and 60s, right where my farm sits now, and he’d had problems, too. Lost sheep and goats to something he could never catch or kill, no matter what traps he set or how many nights he stayed up watching.
The old man used to say there were wolves in these hills, even though wolves had been extinct in Tennessee for over a century by that point. But he didn’t mean regular wolves. He meant something else, something worse.
Harold said his grandfather finally made peace with it somehow. Started leaving offerings of fresh meat at the edge of his property every few days. Just roadkilled deer or old livestock that died naturally, dragged out to a specific spot at the tree line, and the killing stopped. His stock were left alone after that.
I told him that was crazy, that I wasn’t going to feed some predator to make it leave me alone. That wasn’t how you dealt with pests and predators. You shot them, tracked them, drove them off. You didn’t negotiate with them like they were intelligent beings. Harold just shook his head slowly and said shooting it would be a mistake, that guns just made them angry. He said his uncle had tried that route back in the 80s. Went after one with a rifle after it killed some of his hogs. Shot it multiple times, maybe even killed it. They never found a body. But after that, the attacks got worse, more destructive.
His uncle eventually had to sell the farm and move away.
Harold finished by saying he told me more than he probably should have and that if I had any sense, I’d either start leaving offerings or sell the property and get out. Then he went back to working on his tractor, making it clear the conversation was over. I stood there for a minute wanting to ask more questions, but the look on his face told me I wouldn’t get any more answers. I thanked him and left. We haven’t talked much since then. He avoids me now when he sees me in town.
The killings continued but spread beyond the chickens. Two weeks after I got that trail camera footage, I found one of my goats dead in the pasture. It was a young female I’d named Daisy, about 8 months old, healthy animal that had been fine the evening before when I’d done my rounds. She was lying in the middle of the field about a hundred yards from the barn, torn open from chest to belly. Again, barely eaten, just killed and abandoned. The killing had been violent, but precise.
The goats sleep in the barn at night for protection from weather and predators. I keep the barn doors closed and latched, a routine I follow religiously, every evening before dinner. But that morning, when I went to let them out, like I do every morning, I found one of the big sliding doors pulled partially open, not unlatched, pulled open with enough force to bend the metal track it slides on. The wood around the latch was splintered where something had forced it, and there were claw marks gouged into the wood, deep grooves that looked like they’d been carved with a knife, three parallel lines that ran vertically down the door.
I examined those marks for a long time in the morning light, running my fingers over them. Three parallel grooves, each one maybe a quarter inch deep into the hardwood of the door. Whatever made these marks had claws strong enough and sharp enough to carve wood with a single swipe. The pattern of the marks suggested a hand-like paw, three main claws across the width of what must have been a very large palm.
That day, I started sleeping in the barn with the livestock. I brought my sleeping bag, my shotgun, a camping lantern, enough supplies to spend multiple nights out there if needed. I figured if this thing came back, I’d be right there ready for it.
The goats and pigs seemed nervous when I stayed out there with them the first night, more restless than usual, bunching up in corners and watching me with weary eyes. But I told myself that was just because they weren’t used to having me there at night. The first night in the barn, nothing happened. I dozed on and off, jerking awake at every sound, but no attacks came. Every hoot from an owl, every rustle in the hay made my eyes snap open and my hand go to the shotgun. The second night was the same. I was starting to feel foolish, sleeping in a barn with animals, like I was some kind of nighttime security guard. But I kept at it because I couldn’t keep losing livestock like this.
On the third night, I heard it for the first time. I was lying in my sleeping bag on a pile of hay bales, maybe half asleep, when a sound cut through the quiet that made my eyes snap open and my skin go cold. It started as a low rumble, like distant thunder rolling across the hills, then rose into something that was part growl and part howl, deep and resonant, coming from somewhere in the woods east of the barn. The sound seemed to vibrate in my chest, even from that distance. The sound lasted maybe 10 seconds, echoing through the hills and valleys before it cut off abruptly.
In the silence that followed, I could hear every animal on the property going crazy. The chickens in their coop were raising hell, squawking and flapping. The goats were bleeding in panic, running in circles in their pen. Even the pigs, which are usually pretty calm at night, were squealing and thrashing in their pen. Every animal knew something was out there. Something wrong, something dangerous.
I sat up and grabbed my shotgun, checking to make sure I’d loaded it with the heavy buckshot rounds. My hands were shaking. I stayed where I was, watching the barn doors, listening. 5 minutes passed, then 10. The animals gradually settled down, but never completely calmed. They stayed alert, nervous, bunched together in groups instead of spreading out like they normally do.
Then I heard the footsteps. Heavy, crunching through the gravel of the barnyard, slow and deliberate, not trying to be quiet. I could track the sound as whatever it was walked past the barn, circling around the building. The footsteps had a strange rhythm, not quite like a four-legged animal would make, but not exactly like a human walking either. There was a pause between steps that suggested weight shifting, careful placement of each foot, like something testing its path.
I stayed frozen, shotgun raised, pointed at the door. The footsteps stopped somewhere behind the barn near where the pig pen was. I heard the pigs go into full panic mode, squealing and running, crashing into the sides of their pen. Then I heard wood splintering and cracking, the sound of boards being broken. The creature was breaking into the pig pen.
I ran to the back door of the barn, threw it open, and saw it clearly for the first time in full view under the moonlight. The creature was standing in the pig pen, easily 7 feet tall, covered in dark brown or black fur. The body was lean and muscular, built like an athlete. But the proportions were wrong for either human or canine, too tall for a wolf, too animal for a person. The head turned toward me when I burst out of the barn, and in the moonlight, I got a clear look at its face. It had a long snout like a wolf, maybe 8 or 10 inches from nose to the back of the head. Pointed ears stood upright, swiveling toward me like radar dishes, and eyes that reflected the moonlight with a yellow-green glow, set deep under a heavy brow ridge.
The mouth opened slightly, and I saw teeth—long and sharp, designed for tearing meat. I raised my shotgun and fired without really aiming, just pointing in the creature’s general direction and pulling the trigger. The blast was deafening in the quiet night, the recoil slamming into my shoulder. I saw the creature flinch and heard it make a sound that was half snarl and half something that sounded almost like words, a guttural vocalization that had structure to it, syllables and emphasis. Then it vaulted over the 5-foot fence of the pig pen like it wasn’t even there and ran into the woods.
I ran to the pen and found one of my pigs dead, throat torn out, bleeding into the dirt. The animal was still warm, the blood still flowing. The fence where the creature had broken in was smashed. Wooden rails snapped like twigs. I’d built that pen to keep pigs in and predators out using heavy-duty lumber, and this thing had gone through it like it was nothing.
I didn’t go back in the barn. I ran to the house, locked every door and window, grabbed all the ammunition I had, and spent the rest of the night sitting in my living room with every light on and the shotgun across my lap. At some point near dawn, I must have dozed off from sheer exhaustion because I woke up to full daylight streaming through the windows.
When I went outside in the morning light, the evidence was undeniable. The broken fence, the dead pig, and tracks everywhere in the soft dirt around the pen. The tracks were the same as what I’d found by the creek before, but now there were enough of them to really study the pattern. There was also blood in several spots along the trail where the creature had gone into the woods. I’d hit it with my shotgun. Not a clean shot, obviously, or it wouldn’t have been able to run, but I’d drawn blood.
I spent the next several days fortifying everything. I installed motion sensor lights all around the property, six of them covering different angles. I put up more trail cameras—four total now. I reinforced every fence, every door, every entry point I could think of. I bought more ammunition, enough to fight a small war. Boxes and boxes of heavy buckshot shells.
I contacted a few other farmers in the area and asked if they’d had similar problems with predators, trying to be casual about it. For two weeks, nothing happened. No attacks, no sounds, no signs. I started to think maybe I’d scared it off, that my shotgun blast had convinced it to find easier prey elsewhere. I kept the cameras running and the lights on, but I started to relax a little.
That was a mistake.
The attack came on a Tuesday night, the first really cold night of the year, with temperatures dropping into the 20s. I was in the house, exhausted, trying to eat dinner, even though I had no appetite. I heard a sound on the front porch that made me freeze with my fork halfway to my mouth. A heavy thud, like something large had been dropped on the wooden boards. Then footsteps, those distinctive bipedal footsteps, walking slowly across the porch.
I grabbed my shotgun and moved to the front window, peering out through the curtains. Standing on my porch, less than 10 feet from where I was looking, was the largest of these creatures I’d seen yet. It had to be 8 feet tall, maybe more, with massive shoulders and long, powerful arms. The fur was dark brown, almost black, and I could see its breath coming out in clouds in the cold night air. The creature was holding something in its hands.
As I watched, it lifted the object and threw it at my front door. The object hit the door with a wet thud, and I saw what it was. The head of one of my goats, cleanly severed, blood still dripping from the stump. The creature had brought me a trophy, a message. This was a statement of dominance, a show of power.
The creature stood there for a moment longer, staring at my front door like it knew I was watching from the window. Then it opened its mouth and made a sound that froze me to my core. It was speech—guttural, harsh, nothing like human language, but clearly structured communication. The sound was directed at my house, at me. It was talking to me. Then it turned and walked off the porch with that loping gait, disappearing into the darkness beyond the reach of my security lights.
I stood there shaking, unable to move, the shotgun trembling in my hands. That was the moment I knew I couldn’t stay here anymore. This wasn’t about losing livestock. This was about survival. These creatures had decided I was an enemy, a target, and they weren’t going to stop until they’d driven me off or killed me.
I spent that night packing essential belongings. I threw clothes, important documents, and anything of value I could carry into my truck. I left the livestock, left everything else behind. As the sun came up, I took one last look at the property I’d spent five years building, and walked away.
I drove to my brother’s place three counties away and told him I was done with the farm. He asked what happened, and I told him the truth. He didn’t believe me. Nobody does.
I listed the property for sale, but I’ve been honest with potential buyers about the problems. I tell them there are predator issues, show them some of the photos and videos. Most think I’m crazy. A few have asked questions that suggest they know more than they’re letting on, that they’ve heard stories about things in those hills. Nobody’s made an offer yet.
I still have nightmares about those creatures. I see their eyes reflecting light in the darkness. I hear those strange vocalizations that were almost like words. I wake up in a cold sweat, thinking I heard footsteps on the porch. My brother thinks I need to see a therapist, that I had some kind of breakdown from the stress of farming. Maybe he’s right. But I have the footage from my trail cameras. I have photos of the tracks. I have the documentation of all my losses, the broken fences, and destroyed doors. I know what I saw was real.
I’m telling this story because other people need to know. If you’re thinking about buying rural property in the mountains of Tennessee or anywhere else where these sightings have been reported, do your research first. Ask the locals about predator problems. Look for signs of livestock losses or abandoned farms. Trust your instincts if something feels wrong. And if you do encounter these creatures, my advice is simple. Don’t fight them. Don’t try to prove they exist. Don’t shoot at them unless you have no other choice. Just get out. Leave the area and don’t look back. Because these things are stronger than you, smarter than you want to believe, and they don’t forgive or forget.
I lost my farm, my livelihood, and nearly my sanity to those creatures. I got out with my life, and I count myself lucky for that. Some people who’ve encountered these things haven’t been as fortunate.
The stories are out there if you look for them. People who disappeared in the woods, hunters who never came back, livestock operations that failed, and families that abandoned their homes. The official explanations are always mundane. Bear attacks, coyotes, mental illness, accidents. But the people who’ve been through it know the truth.
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There are things in the deep woods that don’t want to be found, that guard their territory viciously, that are far more dangerous than any recognized predator. And once they’ve decided you’re a threat or a target, your only real option is to run.
I’m writing this from my brother’s spare bedroom, sleeping with the lights on and a loaded weapon next to the bed. The farm is still for sale. I doubt I’ll ever find a buyer willing to take on what comes with that property. Maybe eventually I’ll just walk away from it completely. Let the bank take it or let it sit abandoned until the woods reclaim it.
The financial toll has been devastating. Between the mortgage payments on our property I can’t use and the cost of replacing all the livestock I lost, I’m looking at bankruptcy. My brother has been generous letting me stay here, but I can see the strain it’s putting on his family. His wife looks at me with a mixture of pity and concern, like I’m a mental patient who might snap at any moment. Their kids avoid me, probably because I look like hell and act jumpy around loud noises.
I’ve tried to go back to normal life, but I can’t. I got a job at a hardware store in town, but I couldn’t handle being around people. Customers would ask simple questions and I’d zone out, seeing those yellow-green eyes in my mind. I’d hear a door slam in the back and jump like I’d been shocked. They let me go after two weeks. Said I wasn’t a good fit for customer service. They were being nice about it.
The worst part is the isolation. I can’t talk to anyone about what really happened. The few times I’ve tried to tell the story, people’s eyes glaze over or they make excuses to leave. One guy at a bar actually laughed and said I should write a horror movie. Even my brother, who’s been supportive in his own way, thinks I need medication and therapy. He’s probably right about the therapy, but medication won’t make those memories go away.
I’ve connected with a few other people online who’ve had similar experiences. We found each other through forums and discussion boards dedicated to cryptid sightings. Reading their stories, seeing their evidence, it’s both validating and terrifying. Validating because it confirms I’m not crazy, that what I experienced was real. Terrifying because it shows how widespread this problem is and how little anyone can do about it.
One woman in Michigan lost her entire sheep farm to what she describes as a pack of these creatures. She went through the same progression I did. Started with a few animals killed, escalated to coordinated attacks, ended with her fleeing the property. She said the attacks became personal after she wounded one with a rifle. They started destroying equipment, tearing down fences even when they didn’t need to access livestock, leaving dead animals on her porch. She had to abandon everything, filed for bankruptcy, and now lives in a city apartment where she feels safe.
A hunter in Wisconsin told me he tracked one of these creatures for three days after it took a deer from his hunting site. He followed tracks and signs deep into the wilderness, farther than he’d ever gone before. On the third day, he found what he thought was their den site, a cave system in a remote valley. He saw evidence of multiple creatures living there, remains of dozens of animals, crude tools made from stone and wood. He left immediately without trying to document it. Said he felt watched the entire time and was lucky to get out alive.
These stories are all the same in their basic structure. Someone encounters the creatures, tries to fight back or document them, and either flees or disappears. The ones who flee are the lucky ones. There are dozens of reports of hunters and hikers who went into areas known for dogman sightings and never came back. Official explanations blame getting lost, falling into ravines, bear attacks, but the people who’ve encountered these creatures know better.
I’ve thought about contacting wildlife officials or universities, trying to get someone to take this seriously, but I know how that would go. I’d be dismissed as a crank. My evidence would be explained away as misidentified bears or hoaxes, and I’d become known as that crazy guy who believes in monsters. My footage is good, but not perfect. The cameras weren’t high resolution enough to capture every detail. The tracks could theoretically be explained as elaborate fakes. The destroyed property could be attributed to bears or vandals. Anyone determined not to believe could find alternative explanations.
The truth is society isn’t ready to accept that something like this exists. The implications are too disturbing. It would mean rewriting our understanding of North American wildlife. It would mean acknowledging that large predatory cryptids have been living alongside us for generations, maybe centuries. It would mean admitting that vast areas of wilderness are not safe for human habitation, that there are places where humans are not the dominant species. And the authorities wouldn’t know what to do even if they believed me. How do you manage a species that’s intelligent, dangerous, territorial, and apparently numerous enough to have breeding populations across multiple states? You can’t hunt them to extinction because they’re too smart to be easily caught. You can’t capture them for study because they’re too strong and coordinated. You can’t ignore them because they’re actively attacking livestock and potentially threatening human life.
There’s no good solution. So, I sit here in my brother’s spare bedroom, writing this account, knowing that nothing will change. The farm will sit abandoned until the bank takes it. The creatures will continue to live in those hills, claiming the territory as theirs. And the next person who tries to farm that land will go through exactly what I went through, unless they’re smart enough to heed the warnings and walk away before it’s too late.
I’ve started having panic attacks. They come without warning, usually triggered by something innocuous. I’ll see a dog walking on its hind legs to catch a treat and suddenly I’m back in that barnyard watching that creature vault over the fence. I’ll hear a loud vocalization from a neighbor’s dog and I’m frozen remembering those howls echoing through the hills. My heart races, my hands shake, and I can’t breathe. My brother has found me like this several times, sitting on the floor of the spare bedroom, gasping for air, sweating despite the cool temperature.
The nightmares are worse than the panic attacks because I can’t control them. I dream I’m back on the farm trying to protect animals that I know are doomed. I dream those creatures are breaking into my brother’s house, coming up the stairs to the spare bedroom. I dream I’m trapped in the barn while they circle outside. There are shadows moving past the windows. I wake up screaming sometimes, which doesn’t help my brother’s family feel comfortable having me here.
Family games
I’ve lost friends over this. People I’ve known for years have stopped returning my calls or making excuses when I suggest getting together. They don’t want to be around the crazy guy who believes in Dogman. They don’t want to hear the story anymore. They’ve decided I had a breakdown and they’re uncomfortable being reminded of how fragile mental health can be. I understand their perspective even if it hurts. The isolation is crushing in a way I never expected. I went from being a respected member of a small farming community to being an outcast that people whisper about.
The feed store where I used to shop, where everyone knew my name, now feels hostile. I went in once to buy something for my brother and the conversation stopped when I walked in. People stared. Someone made a joke. I couldn’t quite hear but heard the laughter that followed. I left without buying anything and haven’t been back.
I think about the farm constantly. I dream about what it could have been if I’d never encountered those creatures. The plans I had for expansion, the breeding programs I wanted to start, the sustainable farming practices I wanted to implement, all of it gone. Five years of hard work and savings and hope, destroyed by something that isn’t supposed to exist.
Sometimes I wonder if I should have handled it differently. Should I have taken Harold’s advice and left offerings? Would that have worked or would it have just enabled the attacks to continue? Should I have been more aggressive earlier, organized a hunt with other farmers, tried to track them to their den? Or would that have just led to more deaths? Either mine or someone else’s.
But deep down, I know there was no winning scenario. These creatures are too smart, too strong, too coordinated to be defeated by one person with a shotgun. And they hold grudges. Even if I’d managed to kill one, the others would have retaliated. The farmer in Kentucky learned that lesson. His life became hell after he wounded one. My life is already hell, and I only shot at them a few times.
I keep the trail camera footage and photos backed up in multiple places. Cloud storage, hard drives, copies sent to people I trust. If something happens to me, if I disappear or have an accident, at least there will be evidence that I tried to document what happened. Maybe someday someone will take it seriously. Maybe someday enough evidence will accumulate that society can’t ignore it anymore. But I’m not holding my breath.
The evidence has been accumulating for decades, maybe longer. Hundreds of sightings, dozens of detailed accounts, photos and videos, and tracks and physical evidence. And still the mainstream scientific community refuses to acknowledge the possibility. Still, the authorities dismiss reports as misidentifications or hoaxes. Still, the media treats it as entertainment rather than serious investigation.
So, here I am, six months after fleeing my farm. Still trying to piece my life back together, still jumping at shadows, still sleeping with lights on, still unable to function in normal society. The farm is in foreclosure proceedings now. I couldn’t keep up with the mortgage payments, and there are no buyers. The bank will take it eventually, add it to their portfolio of repossessed properties, and probably sell it at auction for pennies on the dollar.
And whoever buys it at that auction, whatever family or person thinks they’re getting a deal on rural Tennessee property, they’ll learn the same lessons I learned. They’ll discover what lives in those hills. They’ll experience the same terror, the same losses, the same impossible choice between losing everything and accepting something that shouldn’t exist. And maybe they’ll be smarter than me. Maybe they’ll leave immediately instead of fighting. Maybe they’ll survive with their sanity intact.
But I’ll never forget what happened there. I’ll never stop seeing those eyes in the darkness or hearing those strange vocalizations that sounded too much like speech. And I’ll never go back to those hills. Not for any reason. Because I know what’s waiting there in the woods. And I know I got out just in time.
