Is the Michigan Dogman Just an April Fools Prank Gone Wild?

According to legend, there’s a ferocious 7-foot-4 creature roaming the woods of Northern Michigan, a mysterious beast that’s half-dog, half-man that only comes out at night.

He sticks to a schedule, too. He only comes out to attack every 10 years, and only in the seventh year of the decade. So you’re safe in 2026, but in 2027, watch out.

His name? The Dogman.

Yes, we might not have Bigfoot or Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster in Michigan, but we do have the Dogman. He’s only ever been spotted in Michigan, and more specifically, only in the northwest portion of the Lower Peninsula.

As legends go, the Dogman is Pure Michigan. We have a legendary woodland creature of our very own, and they’ve written songs and even made movies about him. The apple blossom is the State Flower and the American robin is the State Bird, but the Dogman is surely the State Creature. He’s ours alone.

Oh, and then there’s this: He was created as an April Fools prank, and it kind of went wild (no pun intended) from there. It’s also important to know that while it’s true he was created as a prank, there are still some people who would swear on a stack of Michigan state maps that he’s real.

So as we all sit around and nervously wait for 2027 to arrive, here’s the tale of the Michigan Dogman.

Legend has it that the Dogman first appeared in 1887, but he was actually born 100 years later in the mind of Steve Cook, a Traverse City DJ with a great sense of humor. In March 1987, with April Fools coming up, Cook and some buddies at radio station WTCM were trying to come up with a prank they could put on the air.

“I had kind of built a reputation of doing some pretty crazy April Fools pranks,” Cook said. “I said, well, I’ve had kind of had this idea rolling around in my head for a while to create this mythical beast for Northern Michigan, which is sort of comparable to the Bigfoot or a blend of all of those creatures that we hear about.”

Cook had never heard of a Dogman, but he decided that would be a good name and image for his new beast. He wrote down some lyrics that explained in gory detail about all the Dogman attacks that had taken place in Northern Michigan, starting in 1887 and continuing every 10 years. Every one of them was made up.

“I sat down in the studio with a little $99 Casio keyboard and rattled out this rhythm started to speak a poem to it,” Cook said. “The verses kind of came together, and I built this song where each verse represents another decade going back a hundred years. And it’s always in the seventh year of that decade that something occurs with this creature.”

It was April 1, 1987, and Cook’s radio crew slipped the recording into the playlist between two innocuous songs. They didn’t call attention to it. They just played the song and hoped that a few people might take their joke seriously.

They thought it might be a prank that would have a shelf life of an hour or so. It would spark a little chatter and then everybody would forget about it.

They weren’t expecting what happened next. The studio switchboard lit up with people who were basically all saying, “Thanks for the validation. I’ve seen the Dogman, too!”

The mythical creature that Steve Cook invented with his imagination and his Casio keyboard ended up being real, at least according to all the Northern Michigan residents who were calling in.

“A man called by the name of Robert Fortney,” Cook said. “And he said, I was listening to that song, and I had to pull off the road because I've seen that. He said, it was 50 years ago. in 1937, and he had never talked about it to anyone. And that set off sort of a cascade of calls from people saying, that’s no joke what you did this morning. That’s a real thing.”

Then came the Great Cabin Attack of 1987.

In July of that year, just a few months after Steve Cook’s song came out, a vacant cabin was attacked by an animal in Luther, a small town just south of Cadillac. As cabin attacks go, this one was pretty minor. The screen on the front door was ripped apart and some molding on both the door and one of the windows was torn apart. It appeared to be the work of a hungry animal trying to get inside the cabin.

But naturally, everybody in Northern Michigan thought: “It’s the Dogman!”

Newspapers across the state reported on the cabin attack, all of them raising the possibility that it might be the work of Michigan’s mythical beast. “Attack on cabin kindling fears of the dogman,” read the headline in the Jackson Citizen Patriot.

“Some people think maybe it’s true,” said Ann Cavender, a bartender at Joyce’s Tavern in Luther. “You have a lot of people who are superstitious, and your mind can work strange ways on you. There’ve been a few people who have gone out there to look at what happened, but they were afraid to get out of the car.”

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources investigated it as the work of a bear or wild dog. They eventually ruled it was a dog attack, since they found paw prints nearby and some dog bite marks on the molding.

A dog, the DNR said. Not a dogman.

Nonetheless, the Great Cabin Attack of 1987 is the closest we’ve ever come to a verified Dogman incident in Michigan. Although one would think that a ferocious 7-foot-4 creature would have been able to do a little more than just rip up a screen. People will believe what they want to believe.

The Dogman got a little more attention in 2012, when a low-budget independent movie came out called “Dogman.” It starred Larry Joe Campbell, a sitcom star from Cadillac who is best known for his role in “According to Jim.”

They made a sequel called “Dogman 2: The Wrath of the Litter” and then “Dogman 3: Fight to the Finish,” which came out just last year.

The woodland beast that Steve Cook created almost 40 years ago has legs, to be sure. And possibly a tail and some ferocious teeth, too. The Legend of the Dogman lives on.

And that brings us to 2026. According to the legend, we’re probably safe for a few more months, but once 2027 arrives, you folks in Northern Michigan might want to stay inside at night. You never know.