Terrifying Transformation: Witness the Moment a Fighting Dog Stands Up Like a Dogman!

She thought she was watching two dogs fighting in her backyard. Just a normal Tuesday afternoon until one of them stood up on two legs, turned its head toward her kitchen window, and looked directly into her eyes with something that wasn’t animal. What she saw next made her question everything she thought she knew about what lies in the woods behind suburban America.

I’m 72 years old now. I’ve been carrying the secret for 47 years. Until recently, I had only told three people what really happened that October afternoon in 1977. My name is Margaret Chen. And for nearly five decades, I’ve lived with the knowledge that something impossible exists—something that watches us from the edges of our safe, normal lives. This is the story of how an ordinary housewife in suburban Michigan became a witness to something the world isn’t ready to accept.

A Normal Life

October 1977, Gerald Ford had just left office. Star Wars was in theaters. I was 25 years old, newly married to my husband, David, and we had just bought our first house in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. A small three-bedroom ranch on half an acre backing up to a decent stretch of woods. Nothing fancy, but it was ours. I was working as a secretary at an insurance company, while David worked at the Ford plant. We were living the American dream, or at least our version of it. Normal people, normal jobs, normal life.

The neighborhood was quiet, filled with families and retirees. The kind of place where everyone knew everyone, where you could leave your doors unlocked, where the biggest excitement was the high school football game on Friday nights. Our property backed up to about 15 acres of undeveloped woodland. Not a big forest, just a strip of trees that separated our neighborhood from the industrial area beyond. During the day, you could hear trucks from the factories. At night, it was quiet except for the usual sounds: owls, crickets, and the occasional rustle of raccoons or possums going through someone’s trash.

I loved that house. I loved the privacy of having woods behind us. I’d sit on the back porch in the evenings with my coffee, watching birds, enjoying the green space that felt like a little escape from suburban life. David traveled for work sometimes, usually just a few days at a time for training sessions in other Ford facilities. I was used to being alone in the house. It never bothered me. I grew up with two brothers; I wasn’t scared of much.

The Fateful Day

October 18th, 1977, a Tuesday. David had left that morning for a three-day trip to the plant in Louisville. I had taken the day off work because I’d been fighting a cold, and my boss told me to stay home rather than get the whole office sick. It was unseasonably warm—mid-60s, sunny, beautiful fall weather. I spent the morning doing laundry and housework, nothing exciting.

Around 2:00 in the afternoon, I was in the kitchen making myself lunch—a tuna sandwich. I remember that detail clearly for some reason. The kitchen window looked out over our backyard and the tree line beyond, about 50 feet of grass between the house and where the woods started. I had a clear view of the whole area. I was standing at the counter spreading mayonnaise on bread when I heard it. A sound that made me look up.

Deep, aggressive barking, snarling. The kind of noise that makes your stomach drop because you know something’s fighting. I looked out the window and saw them—two large animals at the edge of the woods, maybe 30 feet from my back porch. At first glance, they looked like dogs. Big dogs—maybe German Shepherds or something similar. Dark-coated, moving fast, circling each other aggressively.

Dogs fight sometimes. It’s not pleasant, but it happens. I figured two neighborhood dogs had gotten loose and were fighting over territory or food or whatever dogs fight about. I watched for a few seconds, trying to decide if I should go out there and try to break it up or just let them work it out. They were really going at it, lunging, snapping, that horrible growling sound that dogs make when they’re serious about hurting each other.

And then everything changed. One of them, the larger one, suddenly pulled back from the fight. Instead of staying on all fours like a dog would, it rose up. It stood up on two legs like a person. I froze with the butter knife still in my hand. The thing was tall, maybe 6 and a half, 7 feet. Its body shifted from horizontal to vertical in one smooth motion. Not awkward or unbalanced, but natural. Like this was something it did regularly.

The other animal, the one that still looked like a dog, immediately dropped to the ground, submissive. It didn’t run away; it just lay there, head down, completely still. The standing one looked down at it for a moment. Then it turned its head slowly, deliberately, and looked directly at my kitchen window. At me. I dropped the knife. It clattered into the sink. The thing’s head was wrong. Not a dog’s head, not a wolf’s head—something in between. The snout was too long, the jaw too heavy, but the eyes—God, the eyes—were looking at me with an awareness that no animal should have.

We stared at each other for maybe three seconds. It felt like an hour. Then it dropped back down to all fours and vanished into the woods. The other animal scrambled up and followed. Both gone in seconds, like they’d never been there. I stood at my window for a long time, hand shaking, trying to convince myself I’d seen something else. A trick of the light. A bear, maybe, though we didn’t have bears in suburban Detroit. A person in a costume, though that made even less sense. But I knew what I’d seen. Something that shouldn’t exist had been standing in my backyard, and it had looked right at me.

Keeping the Secret

I didn’t tell David right away. When he called that evening from his hotel in Louisville, I almost said something. Almost. But how do you explain something like that over the phone? How do you tell your husband that you saw a creature that walks like a man and looks like a wolf standing in your backyard? He’d think I was losing my mind or that the cold medicine I’d been taking was making me hallucinate. So, I said nothing. I told him I was feeling better. I asked about his trip. Normal conversation, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I kept going to that kitchen window, staring out at the woods, looking for any sign of movement. Nothing. Just trees swaying in the wind, squirrels, birds, normal things. That night, I barely slept. Every sound made me jump—the house settling, the furnace kicking on, tree branches scraping the roof. All of it sounded threatening now. I kept seeing that moment when it stood up. The way its body shifted, the way it looked at me—that wasn’t animal behavior. That was something else, something intelligent, something that knew I was watching and wanted me to know it was aware of me.

Wednesday morning, I called in sick to work again. I wasn’t really sick anymore, but I couldn’t imagine sitting at my desk typing up insurance claims, pretending everything was normal. I spent the day researching. This was 1977, so there was no internet. I went to the library. I asked the librarian if they had any books about unusual animals in Michigan. She looked at me oddly but showed me to a section on local wildlife. I spent three hours reading about bears, coyotes, wolves, foxes. Nothing matched what I’d seen.

Then I found something in a collection of local folklore and Native American legends—a section about creatures. The indigenous tribes of the Great Lakes region had stories about beings that walked like men but had the heads of wolves or dogs—shape-shifters, guardians, tricksters. The library book called them by different names depending on the tribe. But they all described similar things: creatures that lived in the forests, that could walk upright or on all fours, that were intelligent and powerful and dangerous.

I checked out the book and took it home. I read it cover to cover that evening. Some of the stories were clearly just myths, exaggerated tales meant to teach lessons or scare children into behaving. But others were different. They were told like witness accounts, people describing encounters with specific details—the way the creatures moved, the sounds they made, the intelligence in their eyes—just like what I’d seen.

David came home Thursday evening. I’d made dinner—pot roast, trying to maintain normalcy. We ate together, talking about his trip, about work, about plans for the weekend. I kept looking at him, wanting to tell him but not knowing how. Finally, after dinner, as we were cleaning up, I said it. “David, something strange happened Tuesday afternoon.” He was loading dishes into the dishwasher. “Strange how?”

I told him. All of it. The fighting animals. The way one stood up, the way it looked at me. I watched his face the whole time, trying to gauge his reaction. He listened without interrupting. When I finished, he was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “Margaret, you were on cold medicine. You weren’t feeling well. Sometimes medications can cause visual disturbances.”

It wasn’t the medicine. I know what I saw. “Okay. What do you think you saw?” I don’t know, but it wasn’t a dog. It wasn’t anything normal. David put his hand on my shoulder. “Look, I’m not saying you’re lying or making it up. But there’s got to be a logical explanation. Maybe it was a bear standing up. They do that sometimes. Or someone’s exotic pet that got loose.”

I wanted to believe that. God, I wanted to believe there was a normal explanation, but I couldn’t shake the image of those eyes looking at me. That wasn’t a bear. That wasn’t a pet.

The Obsession Grows

Over the next few weeks, I became obsessed. I started watching the backyard constantly. I bought binoculars and would scan the tree line for hours. I set up a folding chair on the back porch and would sit out there, even when it got cold, watching, waiting. David was patient at first, then concerned, then frustrated. “Margaret, you’ve got to stop this. You’re barely sleeping. You’re calling in sick to work. You’re spending all your time staring at those woods. This isn’t healthy.”

“Something’s out there, David. I saw it.” “Even if you did see something unusual, what are you going to do about it? You can’t just watch the woods forever.” But I couldn’t let it go. I started walking the tree line during the day, looking for evidence—tracks, scat, anything that would prove I wasn’t crazy. I found things. Tracks that were bigger than any dogs, with claw marks that looked wrong. Pushed-down grass in patterns that suggested something large had been moving through. Scratch marks on trees high up—higher than a dog could reach.

I took photographs with our camera, Polaroids that came out blurry and inconclusive, but I kept them anyway. Evidence that I was building for myself, even if no one else would care. In November, something else happened. I was in bed around 2:00 in the morning. David was asleep beside me. I heard something outside—not close to the house, but out by the woods. A sound I’d never heard before. It started as a low howl, like a wolf, but deeper, more resonant. It went on for maybe 10 seconds, then stopped.

Then it started again, but this time it changed pitch midway through. It went from a howl to something that almost sounded like speech, like syllables, like language. I sat up in bed, heart pounding. David stirred but didn’t wake up. The sound came again, and this time I was sure. It wasn’t just an animal howling. There was structure to it, pattern. It was communicating.

I got out of bed and went to the window. Our bedroom was on the second floor with a view of the backyard. I pulled back the curtain and looked out. The moon was bright that night, almost full. I could see the yard clearly, and there in the middle of the porch was something that hadn’t been there before. It looked like a pile of sticks, but they were arranged deliberately, crossed and stacked in a pattern that was too organized to be random.

I grabbed a flashlight and, against my better judgment, opened the back door. The pile was made of long, straight branches. They’d been stripped of their bark and arranged in what looked like a symbol, a design, almost like a peace offering or a message. I bent down to look closer, and I saw something else. Caught in the sticks was a piece of fabric. Dark fur, but not like animal fur. It was too coarse, too thick, like the hair I’d seen on the creatures.

It had left this here deliberately, a gift or a message, proof that it was real, that I wasn’t crazy. I carefully picked up one of the branches. It was smooth, clearly worked on, shaped intentionally. This wasn’t just something it had gathered from the forest floor. This was crafted. I took the whole pile inside and examined it by the kitchen light. The pattern was consistent, methodical. This required planning and intelligence. Whatever these things were, they weren’t just animals. They were thinking, creating, communicating.

I kept the branches in a box in the basement. I never told David about them. That was my secret within the secret. But that night marked a change. I realized I wasn’t dealing with a monster. I was dealing with something that had its own culture, its own way of thinking—something that lived parallel to our human world, hidden but aware. I started leaving small things at the edge of the yard—a wind chime, a piece of colored glass, a small mirror—things that would catch light and make interesting sounds.

Over the next few weeks, they’d disappear. And sometimes, new things would appear. A rock with an unusual shape. A bird’s nest, empty but intact. A deer antler polished smooth. We were trading, communicating without words, building a strange, silent relationship across the boundary between species.

The Final Encounter

One night in October, exactly one year after the first sighting, I saw all three of them again, standing at the tree line—the big one in the middle, two smaller ones on either side. I was on the back porch sitting in my chair, drinking tea. They didn’t hide. They just stood there upright, watching me. I raised my hand and waved—just a simple gesture. Hello, I see you. I acknowledge you.

The big one raised its hand and waved back, an exact mirror of my gesture. Then they turned and walked away into the woods. And I knew somehow that they wouldn’t be coming back, that this was goodbye, that they’d been staying near our property for some reason. And that reason was finished. I never saw them again—not in our backyard, not in those woods. They moved on or went deeper into hiding. Or maybe they’d just been passing through, and our house happened to be on their route.

But I knew they’d been real. I had the branches. I had the memories. I had the knowledge that something impossible had existed in my life for one year, and I’d been changed by it. David and I lived in that house for another 12 years. We never spoke about the creatures to anyone outside of each other. Not family, not friends, certainly not authorities.

In 1990, we sold the house and moved to a condo closer to the city. David was retiring from Ford, and we wanted something easier to maintain—something without a big yard, something without woods. But I think about those creatures almost every day. I’ve spent 47 years thinking about what they were, where they came from, whether they’re still out there.

I’ve done research over the years. With the internet, it became easier. I found other stories—lots of them. People who’d seen things in the woods, things that walked upright, things with dog-like faces and intelligent eyes. Most people called them Dogmen. Some called them werewolves. Some called them skinwalkers or wendigos—different names for the same phenomenon. Creatures that exist in the spaces between our understanding, that live in forests and remote areas hidden from human civilization, watching us from the shadows.

There are patterns in the sightings, consistency in descriptions—too many similar accounts from too many different places for them all to be lies or hallucinations. I think they’re real. I know they’re real. I’ve seen them. I’ve interacted with them. And I believe they’ve been here as long as we have, maybe longer, living alongside humanity while choosing to remain hidden.

Maybe they’re smarter than us in that way. They know what happens to things that humans don’t understand. We hunt them, study them, cage them, destroy them. By staying hidden, they’ve survived. And maybe the ones I encountered recognized that I wasn’t a threat, that I was willing to coexist peacefully. That’s why they showed themselves. That’s why they engaged with me in that strange silent way.

Or maybe I just got lucky. Maybe I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and they were curious about the woman who lived at the edge of their territory. I’ll never know for sure. David died three years ago—a heart attack. Quick and painless, the doctor said. I miss him every day. He was the only person who shared this secret with me—the only person who believed me without question after he saw those tracks in the ice.

I’ve told my daughter some of it. She’s 40 now, married with kids of her own. I showed her the branches I kept in the box and told her about the creatures in the woods behind our old house. She listened politely, didn’t say I was crazy, but I could see in her eyes that she thought it was a story I’d convinced myself of—a memory distorted by time, something I believed.

But that wasn’t really true. Maybe she’s right. Maybe after 47 years, my brain has created something bigger and stranger than what actually happened. Maybe I did see a bear standing up and the stress of being alone caused me to interpret it as something more. But I don’t think so. I remember too clearly the way it moved, the way it looked at me, the intelligence in those eyes, the deliberate gestures, the crafted branches. That wasn’t a bear. That wasn’t a person in a costume. That was something else—something the world doesn’t have a category for.

I’m 72 now. I don’t have many years left. And I wanted to tell this story before I’m gone. Not for attention or fame. Not to convince anyone of anything. Just to document what happened, to add my account to the others out there. To say that in October 1977, in suburban Michigan, something impossible existed for one year in my backyard, and it changed me—made me understand that the world is bigger and stranger than we’re taught to believe. That there are mysteries living right at the edges of our safe suburban lives.

I hope they’re still out there, still hidden, still surviving in the deep woods and remote places where humans rarely go. I hope they continue to avoid us, to stay secret, to protect themselves from our tendency to destroy what we don’t understand. And I hope that somewhere in a forest I’ll never visit, there’s an old creature with graying fur who remembers the woman in the house at the edge of the woods—who remembers the exchanges of gifts and the peaceful coexistence.

That’s my legacy. That’s what I did with the knowledge I was given. I kept the secret. I protected them by staying silent for 47 years. And now, finally, I’m speaking—not to prove anything, not to convince skeptics, just to tell the truth about what happened to me. On October 18th, 1977, I saw something that shouldn’t exist, and it was the most extraordinary thing that ever happened in my ordinary life.

If you made it this far, you’ve just spent 40 minutes hearing about something that sounds impossible but happened anyway. If this story made you think, made you wonder, or made you look at your own backyard a little differently, hit that like button and subscribe. There are more stories like this one, more accounts from ordinary people who witnessed extraordinary things. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll realize the world is stranger than you ever imagined.