Bipedal Canids – in Dallas?

As I am sure I have mentioned, I follow Lon Strickler’s wonderful Phantoms and Monsters blog. I was interested to see this fascinating article from an anonymous witness in the Dallas, Texas area. The events described in the witness statement happened 9 years ago but, as a lover of werewolf/shapeshifter lore, I could not resist commenting on this story.

There are a number of points that pique my interest in this story. Here are some of my thoughts as I read through the witness statement.

First of all, the diagram pictured in the article shows that the incident occurred not far from a crossroad. As I have noted in my post Come to the Crossroads, crossroads are inherently magical places that could certainly be “activated” by the use of magic in the area. There are plenty of pagans and other assorted magical practitioners in the Dallas area that could have opened a doorway and not done a good job of shutting it. In addition, you would be surprised at how many people are surreptitiously leaving offerings to their favorite crossroads spirit at intersections all across this land. Repeated use of a crossroad for such purposes might tend to weaken the veil between the worlds in these places and make incursions from other beings more likely.

Second, the witness notes that the eyes of the creature that she saw glowed yellow even when they were not being hit by light sources such as head lights or street lamps. While I am sure that there must be animals out there with bio-luminescent eyes, I have not heard of any wandering the Dallas area in the form of a bipedal canid. Glowing eyes are most often associated with paranormal creatures such as the famous (or infamous) Phantom Black Dogs which is often said to have glowing red or yellow eyes.

Third, the witness’ reaction to the phenomenon seems genuinely confused. On the one hand, she states that, while the creature was menacing, it was not as menacing as she would expect a werewolf to be. On the other hand, she and the man who later became her husband went back to his apartment and, rather than engaging in planned hanky panky, “sat there in silence trying to rationalize . . . “. While one can certainly make the case that seeing an unknown animal might produce a shocked reaction, I would suggest that this witness’ reaction went beyond shock. One does not forego the pleasures of the flesh and sit in silence with the object of one’s desire unless something truly strange and unexplainable has happened. This type of cognitive dissonance seems to me to be quite common in people who have seen something truly unexplainable. One might get this reaction from a sighting of an unknown animal but, to me, it smacks of an encounter with the Otherworld.

Fourth, the witness saw this creature in a “well populated suburb south of Dallas” and she states that she “did not get the sense that it cared that we saw it . . . “. This sort of brazen behavior is not something that one would expect from an unknown animal which, by its nature, should be elusive. If this episode were taken by itself, the witnesses might be said to have had a “one off” experience, a stroke of luck in spotting an elusive animal. One has only to look at the extensive work of Linda Godfrey to know that this type of incident happens all too frequently (although usually farther north) and that the same sort of brazen, “I do not care if you see me” attitude seems to characterize these beings, whatever they are. In many cases, the witnesses felt almost challenged by the creature. Fortunately, most people have an instinctive understanding that playing dominance games with a seven foot bipedal canid is probably not a good idea.

Finally, skeptics will immediately try to pawn this off as a sighting of a coyote or dog engaged in some sort of unusual behavior that made it stand on its hind legs for a while. I love these non-explanations. Canids are not set up to walk on their hind legs and can only do so very awkwardly. A dog or coyote on its hind legs can certainly not move as swiftly or gracefully as the witness remembers this creature moving, nor would any dog, no matter how large, be able to clear a four lane road in four steps as the witness describes. The same arguments would apply for an out of place bear walking on its hind legs (although finding a bear in that area would be almost as strange as seeing a manwolf).

I think that, excluding the possibility of fabrication, we can feel pretty certain that this witness saw something exceptional that night. Given the work that Linda Godfrey has done on the manwolf phenomenon, I would be interested to know if there was a cemetery or Indian mound or other Native site anywhere in the area since these creatures seem to be often associated with the dead or with Native American sacred sites such as mounds.

I realize that people are reticent about reporting these incidents but I do wish that we could get some fresher cases. I would love to do an etheric projection to one of these sites and snoop around on the Otherworld side while the “scent” is still new. I will be talking about my experiments with this type of “astral” projection in a future post so stay tuned.