I have this indescribable feeling that I'm not supposed to be seeing this.
The teller lived with their parents in a small mid-Michigan town ringed by cornfields, a short walk from downtown. It isn't a lonely place. The houses on their street sit close together and it's well lit. They weren't much of a believer in anything paranormal.
They're a night owl, and they and their old Pomeranian had a routine. Around 2:30 every morning the dog would come to their door and huff, they'd let him out the front door, and when he came back they'd share some ham straight from the fridge. The dog is so well trained he needs no leash or fence, and he always comes straight back.
One night in July 2021 he didn't jump off the porch. He stood staring across the street, longer than usual. When he finally went, the teller followed his gaze and saw what looked at first like a big dog, maybe a wolf, slinking across the neighbour's lawn about fifty feet away.
It didn't look right. It was too long, and it moved strangely. Oddly, it looked blurry, as if they couldn't quite focus on it. Their first thought was for the dog: if that thing noticed an elderly Pomeranian, he wouldn't stand a chance.
They eased the outer glass door open, hoping to make just enough noise for their dog to hear and no more. The dog turned and ran back. At the same moment the animal across the road began to turn its head toward them, slowly, in a smooth, mechanical way they compare to an animatronic. They had a sudden, overwhelming feeling that they were not supposed to be seeing this.
For one second they looked down to get the dog inside and pull the door shut. When they looked up, the animal was thirty feet to the left, in the neighbour's driveway, standing on its hind legs. It was seven or eight feet tall and it was looking straight at them. It hadn't made a sound.
They looked away again to lock the door and steady themselves. When they looked back, the driveway was empty. The whole thing had lasted twenty or thirty seconds.
Shaking, they gave the dog his ham and ran down to the basement to tell their nineteen-year-old brother, who looked up from his video game and said it was super weird. They say they just needed someone to know, so they couldn't talk themselves out of it the next morning.
Over the next few days they told everyone who would listen. The people closest to them were the most unsettled, because they knew the teller didn't believe in this sort of thing and could see how shaken they were. It was only after some restless late-night searching that they found the word "dogman," and a description that matched what they had seen exactly.