Unexplained

00:00 This is an iHeart Podcast. 00:02 Guaranteed human. 00:04 Hey, Portlandia fans. 00:05 Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. 00:07 The dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. 00:10 We're launching Podlandia AO Rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made. 00:22 And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Kreisel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. 00:34 Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song. 00:39 Well, I thought you were all going to write a song. 00:41 I remember you thinking that. 00:43 Listen to Podlandia, AAO Rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 00:51 What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and iHeart Women's Sports. We're breaking down the biggest headlines. Naomi Osaka showing out. Shout-outs to you, Naomi. The viral moments. I've been obsessed with Kashawn Rock's boxing journey. She looks good. Her combos are swift. And the stories everyone's talking about across women's sports. 01:14 Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to Everyone Watches Women's Sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 01:21 I'm Nick Turturro. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman. And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza to a new guest. 01:32 I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins. What are you doing with my belt? To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. 01:42 And now we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Turturro. 01:47 It's called happiness. Delivering happiness. 01:49 And many, many more. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, and listen now. 01:56 I'm Jake Brennan, and on the Disgraceland podcast, I explore the wild lives of rock stars and unbelievable true crime stories from music history. These are the stories you haven't heard, the kind you'll end up telling someone else. 02:11 Like the time Paul McCartney spent in a notorious prison, or the bizarre crime Lady Gaga is accused of, or that time Blondie's Debbie Harry escaped Ted Bundy. Listen to Disgraceland on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 02:29 Hello and welcome to Unexplained with me, your host, Richard McLean Smith, where each week we explore another true tale of high strangeness. If you're new here and you're a fan of expertly told atmospheric stories about the strange and unexplained, then you've come to the right place. And please subscribe to the show if you haven't already done so. I'm very excited to be taking Unexplained to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year. I'll be performing at the Space's Surgeon's Hall venue at 10.05pm every night from August 7th to the 29th, except for the 16th and 23rd. 03:04 You can get tickets at thespaceuk.com forward slash shows forward slash 2026 forward slash unexplained hyphen live. For those watching on YouTube, you can find the link below. With all that out of the way, this is Unexplained, Season 9, Episode 29, The Howling Woods. 03:35 When Marco Polo published his travelok in the year 1300, it amazed the reading world. 03:42 A rare popular success in an era before printing and widespread literacy, the book chronicled Polo's exploration of Asia and his time in the court of the Mongol emperor Kubla Khan. The adventurous Phoenician claimed to have encountered all manner of strange sights, from unicorns on the Indonesian island of Java, to gigantic birds that soared above the Indian Ocean, each large enough to grasp elephants and their talons. 04:11 But he wrote with particular horror of the Andaman Islands, where he observed a very particular native population. 04:19 I assure you, Polo writes, the men of that island have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise. In fact, in the face they are like big mastiff dogs. They are a most cruel generation, and eat everybody that they can catch. 04:36 Of course, it would be naive to assume this is a literal description of actual dog-headed humanoids. Marco Polo wouldn't be the first person, and certainly not the last, to depict others in racist and crude ways in order to emphasise a perceived lack of civility. But Marco Polo was far from the only writer in antiquity to mention dog-headed people. Back in the 5th century BCE, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote of dog-faced creatures who haunted the lands to the west of Libya. 05:11 Again, it sounds like fantasy at best, xenophobia at worst. Yet on a plateau in the western Libyan desert, there is a dried riverbed called Wadi Matandush, where the dusty banks and boulders are covered in graceful, dexterous etchings of animals both known and unknown. 05:31 Among the camels, giraffes and buffalo, there are depictions of humans sporting distinctly canine heads. and the carvings are 4,000 years old. 05:42 Perhaps the fullest description of dog-headed men was recorded by the Greek physician Theseus in 400 BCE. 05:50 He referred to the race as chinocephaly, from chino and cephaly, the Greek words for dog and head respectively. Theseus describes them as a cave-dwelling tribe who lived in the mountains of India and North Africa. Their teeth were larger than dogs, their nails longer, and they spoke only in a range of guttural barks, he said. 06:14 In the same era, Alexander the Great wrote to his tutor Aristotle, claiming that he had battled and captured a horde of dog-faced men in India, who were little more than snarling beasts as he had it. Likewise in Welsh folklore, King Arthur is fated for his battle with the vicious Cumbin, or dogheads, in what is now Edinburgh. As romanticised in the Black Book of Carmarthen, Arthur and his knight Bedivere slew hundreds of the canid enemy in a supposed effort to protect the realm from their encroaching savagery. 06:50 This beast-like framing of the chinocephaly recurs in cultural histories across the globe, from European legend to Chinese Buddhist texts to the tribal memories of the Ural Mountains. Dog-headed men, it seems, haunted the fringes of the entire ancient world. 07:09 With time, these stories have steadily dissolved into folklore, or have been interpreted as fearful depictions of the other, or simply rationalised away as misinterpretations of baboons and lemurs, among other animals, and the world moved on from such tall tales. However, there does remain one corner of the modern world in which the so-called dogman has not yet been explained into extinction. 07:38 where rumours persist of strange shapes seen prowling between the trees. 07:44 I shine, glimpsed at the edge of the campfire glow, and where dog is anything but man's best friend. 07:53 You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. 08:04 For most people, the story begins in 1987 as an April Fool's prank. 08:09 In Traverse City, Michigan, a young DJ named Steve Cook hustled into the WTCM radio studio with a grin. 08:18 The station always ran an April Fool's joke, but that year they'd been short on ideas. 08:24 That morning, host Jack O'Malley had played things straight, and he'd been relieved when Steve finally arrived. 08:32 Steve was a lover of the weird and the absurd. He, more than anyone at the station, had the right kind of mind for the occasion, and he hadn't let them down. 08:42 This year, he'd written a song. 08:45 Jack read through the lyrics and felt it seemed a little more Halloween than April Fool's, but without anything else to hand, it would have to do. A few minutes into his show, Steve played the song to his unsuspecting audience for the first time. 09:01 It was called The Legend, a rather grandiose title for such a crude effort, but one that would prove far more fitting than Steve could ever anticipate. 09:11 The legend is a rhythmic poem set to a backing track of timpani drum and ululating synths. 09:18 It opens with the story of eleven lumberjacks working in Wexford County, close to the Manistee River. 09:25 The men chase and torment a strange dog-like creature until it's finally provoked into standing upright on its hind legs, at which point the men flee in terror. never saying much about what happened to them that night. 09:40 Each verse of the song takes us through history decade by decade, with the re-emergence of the creature in every spring and summer of every year that ends with a seven. In 1917, a sheriff finds his band of horses dead from fright. In 1957, a pastor is alarmed by claw marks carved deep in his church door. 10:04 The song tells us that though the newspapers said they'd been made by a dog, he'd have to have stood seven foot four. 10:12 Finally, Steve reaches the current spring of 1987 and confesses that no stories or sightings have yet appeared that year. 10:21 Have the dogmen gone away, he asks. 10:24 It was supposed to be a bit of fun, but no sooner had the final beats of the song faded to static than the calls began. 10:39 Incredibly, after Steve Cook's song went out on air, local listeners of WTCM radio began ringing in with their own sightings of the very creature it described. 10:51 One woman reported that she'd grown up hearing similar tales from her uncle. 10:56 At first, Steve just laughed it off. 10:59 He put it down to the success of his storytelling and his lucky amalgam of all the things that frighten you in the night, as he put it, just coming together at the right time. 11:10 But Steve's song, unwittingly, had done much more than that. It appeared to have opened a sluice gate in the pool of local lore and memory. 11:20 Over the next week, the DJs at WTCM radio heard from many more people, claiming first-hand experience of the monster, and they were weirdly specific. 11:31 Callers told Steve and his colleagues, over and over, that the canine thing was an upright, hairy, bipedal creature. But crucially, it was not a werewolf. Of that they were clear. Its body was specifically defined as being part human and part dog. 11:50 Over the years, Steve Cook estimates that he's been told well over a hundred distinct accounts of what has come to be known as the Michigan Dogman. They span a century or more, and came in from all across the state. 12:05 There is a locus, though, and it matches Steve's song. 12:09 Mapped out, the supposed dogman encounters reveal a clear epicenter. 12:15 The majority of sightings occur in or around the Manistee National Forest. 12:20 This sprawling mosaic of hardwood trees and hardy townships covers nearly a million square acres and is popular for hiking, hunting, fishing and cross-country skiing. 12:33 of the thousands of adventurous souls who venture into the red pines of the manisty most return with memories of a fine day out but there are some who bring back stories of meetings they are never quite able to explain of being pursued by something that walks like a human and looks like a dog but is in fact neither It was the summer of 1938. 13:05 Down on the banks of the Muskegon River, on the edge of the Manistee Forest in Paris, Michigan, 17-year-old Robert Forney was enjoying a rare day of peaceful fishing. 13:17 From a quiet spot behind the local fish hatchery, Robert had watched the day glide past at the end of his fishing rod. 13:24 By the afternoon, the breeze was moving briskly through the foliage along the banks as the sun danced on the shallow, slow-moving water. As it had on and off throughout the day, Robert's attention slipped from the lure on the end of his rod to whatever a young man had to daydream about in 1938, when something suddenly punctured his reverie. 13:48 A disturbing clamour of growls and barks, accompanied by the crackle of undergrowth that seemed to be drawing nearer. 13:56 It sounded like a ravenous pack of wild dogs, or coyotes even. 14:01 Robert glanced at the rifle lying by his feet and then quickly snatched it up. 14:06 But as he well knew, as he angled the barrel toward where the sound seemed to be coming from, there were limits to how well even a crack marksman can wield one weapon against a pack of feral animals. Robert was far from that, and the dogs sounded full of fury. 14:24 The terror of rabies was just slipping across Robert's mind when the first of the dogs breached the tree line on the opposite bank. Dark furred and of no determinate breed, it bounded straight into the river toward him without hesitation. 14:39 Robert's heart caught in his mouth when the rest of the pack burst through moments later. There were five of them in total, all running and snarling into the water. 14:50 Robert hurriedly raised his rifle and pointed it vaguely in their direction, not entirely sure how he was going to handle this. 14:58 But as he peered down the scope, he couldn't help but be distracted by one of the dogs in particular. 15:04 For a start, it was larger than the others, much larger, with a broad black back and longer limbs. And in the treacle slowdown of time, Robert noticed there was something very strange about this animal that sheer size didn't account for. 15:22 It was something about its proportions and the way it moved. 15:26 Then suddenly he snapped back to the present, because the lead dog was already halfway to his side of the river. 15:34 With trembling hands, Robert raised his rifle and fired a single shot into the sky. 15:41 A flurry of birds blasted from the trees and the dogs snapped to a halt, then turned to flee. 15:48 Robert exhaled in relief as the dogs quickly turned and scurried back into the trees. 15:54 But his relief was short-lived because one of the dogs didn't flee. 16:04 What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam Jay. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. 16:14 Because let's be real, women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. 16:18 So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is just like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. 16:34 and the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. 16:41 Naomi Osaka showing out. She beat Sabalenka. Shout-outs to you, Naomi. 16:46 You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened, we're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to Everyone Watches Women's Sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 17:04 Hey, Portlandia fans. 17:05 Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. 17:07 You know us, or rather, you know them. Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. 17:14 We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia AO Rewatch, our brand new podcast. 17:22 Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. 17:35 How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. 17:40 And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Kreisel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. 17:52 Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. 17:58 Well, I thought he was going to write, I thought you were all going to write a song. 18:00 I remember you thinking that. 18:03 Listen to Podlandia Ayo Rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 18:12 This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse, the world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. 18:22 If you come over here to play games, I'ma check you, okay? If you do some in the news that don't sound good, I'ma play you. 18:31 Join Yamanika Saunders as she breaks down the week's most problematic stories on her new podcast, You're the Problem with Yamanika. 18:38 Do you know I just found out who Sydney Sweeney was? 18:42 New episodes weekly every Wednesday as part of my new network, the Dear Chelsea Network. 18:47 If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less so I don't have to do so much. 18:54 So join Yamanika each episode as she answers one question. Who's the problem? 18:59 I'm Yamanika and I'm out. 19:02 Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 19:12 I'm Nick Turturro. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman. But I'm also from Queens, which means I know pizza. And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza from Prince Street Pizza to a new guest. Are you delivering pizza now? Then we sit down for a real conversation. I've shared a slice with everyone, from Seth Rollins. What are you doing with my belt? To Alex Rodriguez. 19:36 Just to let you people know, we're talking to one of the goats here. 19:39 To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. 19:46 And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Turturro. 19:50 It's called happiness. Delivering happiness. 19:52 Mariano Rivera. Oh, my God. And many, many more. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro. And listen now. 20:06 Robert stood deathly still, keeping his eyes fixed on the strange creature before him. 20:13 The dog, if that was what it was, stood its ground two dozen feet from the stricken boy. 20:21 Robert slowly took up the rifle again and pointed it toward the panting animal. 20:27 His finger poised on the trigger. 20:30 Get gone, Robert said. 20:33 But the dog didn't flinch. It simply stared Robert down with eyes that Robert only then noticed were an almost preternatural icy blue in colour. 20:45 And then the dog stood up. 20:50 As Robert would later recall, it didn't stand like a dog trained to do so for treats or tricks. It stood up like a human. 20:59 As Robert had it, it had shoulders and arms that dangled to its waist ending in a clawed appendage that was somewhere between hand and paw. 21:09 Its feet were submerged in the river, but its legs, which he could see, were apparently bent backwards at the knee, not at all like a human, or a bear, as some have theorised it might have been. 21:23 And once those legs were fully extended, the figure is said to have stood roughly seven feet tall, a vicious-looking giant covered in dense black fur. 21:34 The head was said to have been almost entirely canine in nature, with a long muzzle, erect ears and hideously sharp teeth. 21:43 Only those deep blue eyes struck him as being close to human, and it took all the will that Robert had to pull his own gaze away. 21:53 Robert fired another shot, wildly and without proper aim, but again the strange dog-like creature didn't flinch. 22:01 Instead, it bared its teeth in a distinctly un-canine manner, Decades later, after DJ Steve Cook's song had renewed interest in earlier accounts of the creature, Robert said that he thought the dogman, as he came to call it, may have been smiling at him. But he wasn't sure. So much time had passed. 22:25 but he remembered the distinct way in which its lips had curled up, in a way that was unlike any dog he'd ever seen. 22:33 Finally, the dog-like creature turned on its hind legs and followed the pack back into the trees, still apparently striding upright as it passed from Robert's sight. 22:52 After Robert Forney told select friends and family about his frightening encounter, it wasn't long before word got around, as it does in small rural towns. 23:03 For years, more anecdotes circulated of strange figures seen in the woods around the town of Paris and in surrounding counties bordering the Manistee Forest. 23:15 One day, some time after his song had aired, Steve Cook received a handwritten letter. 23:21 It was from a young man named Brian who remembered how his father had forbidden him and his sister to venture out of the house after nightfall. 23:30 Brian, who was from the town of Big Rapids, six miles south of Paris, claimed to have grown up hearing his dad cursing the coyotes and wolves that he sometimes heard at night. He used to assume they were the reason why his dad had been so uncompromising with him and his sister. 23:49 Only later did Brian discover that it was something else entirely that his dad was afraid of. 23:56 Brian's family lived across the road from a manufacturing plant where his dad worked as a night watchman. Both the house and the factory abutted a stretch of wilderness known as the Haymarsh State Game Reserve. 24:09 Back in the summer of 1961, Brian's dad was working another of his night shifts. 24:16 Sometime around 3am, during a quick break, Brian's father headed home to make a pot of coffee, one of the perks of living so close to the job. 24:26 With coffee in hand, he took a seat in the rocking chair on the porch and gazed out toward the plant, faintly visible under the soft, cool-whip glow of the moon. 24:37 As he traced his gaze along the chain-link fence, he caught a flash of movement, causing him to sit up suddenly. 24:45 Someone appeared to be moving along the road that ran between the house and the factory. Brian's dad knew instinctively that anyone moving about at that hour of the morning most likely had nefarious intentions. 24:59 Brian's dad put down the coffee and quietly rose from his seat. Then, with one hand on his gun, he tentatively made his way back to the plant. 25:09 Halfway there, he froze suddenly in utter horror. 25:13 The figure was neither a vandal nor thief. 25:17 It wasn't even human. 25:19 Brian's dad would later tell his son that the thing he saw was taller than any man, with a muscular body covered in dense fur, maybe grey or black. He couldn't quite tell in the dim light, but it was walking on two legs. 25:43 As Brian's dad apparently continued to stare at the strange creature in utter bemusement, it dropped momentarily from a bipedal stance to scurry about on all fours like a dog before rising back onto two legs like a human again. 25:59 It seemed to be searching for something. 26:02 Gently, desperate not to attract attention, Brian's father rushed to retrieve a camera from the house, an old Kodak that he had some skill with. 26:12 Brian's dad knew how to handle the lighting, how to account for the soft light of the moon and the street lights that created deep pools of shadows between them. So he waited until the creature stepped into an island of light and then adjusted the lens for a long exposure. With trembling fingers, the man snapped what is thought to be the first and most compelling photo of the so-called dogman ever taken. 26:40 It shows an empty street, topped by an arching canopy of trees, with a chain-link fence in the background. 26:48 In the foreground, a street light casts its harsh glow, and beneath it, half obscured by the light pole itself, is a figure that looks for all the world like an upright dog or wolf caught on the cusp of movement. 27:04 Its shoulders are thick and heavy, surrounding a distinctly canine head, while its torso narrows to a pair of legs angled like those of a dog. 27:15 A heartbeat after the photo was taken, the creature is said to have dropped once more to all fours and sloped off through the trees and into the haymarsh beyond. 27:27 Brian included a print of the photograph in his letter to Steve Cook and offered to provide the original negatives. 27:34 As the so-called dogman has grown in notoriety over the last 40 years, naturally Brian's photograph has been at the centre of the debate. 27:43 Although the film stock has been authentically dated to the early 1960s, to the modern eye in an era of digital manipulation, the image at the centre of it may seem a complete farce. 27:56 However, as many experts have argued, if indeed it were a hoax, any tricks that would need to have been employed to achieve it were much harder to pull off, if not practically impossible, in 1961. 28:17 Of course, there are many who consider the all-too-convenient synchronicity between Steve Cook's Dogman song and the sudden emergence of apparently historical Dogman encounters to be proof of a hoax. 28:30 To sceptics, at least, it's clear that it was simply the furore around the song that birthed all the outlandish backstories. 28:39 Yet it's hard to dismiss the earnestness and speed with which Steve's first callers responded to the legend, For a start, several called the station within minutes of hearing the song for the very first time, eager to share their own encounters, with little to no time to have manufactured their stories. 28:59 And what then, of the encounters that came after? 29:03 Steve's song ends in 1987, with an acknowledgement that the creature had not yet been sighted that year. 29:11 In 1997, on the 10-year anniversary, Steve Cook re-released The Legend, but this time there was an extra verse. 29:24 Then in the summer of 87 near Luther it happened again at a cabin in the woods. It looked like someone had tried to break in. 29:33 There were cuts round the doors that could only be made by very sharp teeth and claws. He didn't wear shoes cause he didn't have feet. 29:43 He walked on just two paws. 29:46 Startlingly, this was no make-believe addition that Steve had grasped out of thin air, but was in fact taken from an apparently very real sighting that was documented in the local paper. 29:59 On July 22nd 1987, in Luther, a small town close to the northern arc of the Manistee River, a pair of summer tourists were woken in the night by a commotion near their cabin. 30:12 When they peered nervously through the window, they apparently saw a large shape moving about their property. 30:19 Too intimidated to investigate further, they simply hunkered inside until whatever was prowling outside left them alone. 30:28 In the morning, they ventured out to find the walls scarred with claw marks, Suspecting a bear attack, they called the Department of Natural Resources and a pair of agents were dispatched from the nearby Baldwin office. 30:43 So the officer and I went out there to take a look at it. You know, it was obviously it wasn't a bear because, you know, he just tried to chew in around the doors. And you could see a dog print, you know, alongside the windowsill there. And so it was obviously a dog. 31:04 It looked as though something had been trying to claw its way inside the cabin. 31:09 The Department of Natural Resources agent discovered paw prints on the windowsill and on the ground all around the cabin, but they were huge, bigger prints than either agent had ever seen before. 31:23 When word of the assault on the homestead got out, locals were quick to link it to the song that they'd so recently heard on the radio, and what had been a bit of local colour took on a darker hue, but that was far from the last sighting of the so-called Michigan Dogman. 31:45 What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam Jay. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. 31:55 Because let's be real, women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. 32:00 So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is just like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. 32:15 and the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. 32:23 Naomi Osaka showing out. She beat Sabalenka. Shout-outs to you, Naomi. 32:28 You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened, we're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to Everyone Watches Women's Sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 32:46 Hey, Portlandia fans. 32:47 Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. 32:49 You know us, or rather, you know them. Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. 32:55 We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AO Rewatch, our brand new podcast today. 33:03 Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. 33:17 How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. 33:22 And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Kreisel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. 33:34 Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. 33:39 Well, I thought he was going to write, I thought you were all going to write a song. 33:42 I remember you thinking that. 33:44 Listen to Podlandia Ayo Rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 33:54 I'm Nick Turturro. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman. But I'm also from Queens, which means I know pizza. And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza from Prince Street Pizza to a new guest. Are you delivering pizza now? Then we sit down for a real conversation. I've shared a slice with everyone, from Seth Rollins. What are you doing with my belt? To Alex Rodriguez. 34:18 Just to let you people know, we're talking to one of the goats here. 34:21 To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. 34:27 And now we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Turturro. 34:32 It's called happiness. Delivering happiness. 34:34 Mariano Rivera. And many, many more. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search delivering happiness with Nick Turturro. And listen now. 34:43 This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse, the world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, you're the problem. 34:53 If you come over here to play games, I'ma check you, okay? If you do some in the news that don't sound good, I'ma play you. 35:02 Join Yamanika Saunders as she breaks down the week's most problematic stories on her new podcast, You're the Problem with Yamanika. 35:10 Do you know I just found out who Sydney Sweeney was? 35:13 New episodes weekly every Wednesday as part of my new network, the Dear Chelsea Network. 35:18 If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less so I don't have to do so much. 35:26 So join Yamanika each episode as she answers one question. Who's the problem? 35:30 I'm Yamanika and I'm out. 35:34 Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 35:48 Since 1987, there have been dozens, maybe hundreds of sightings of a hair-suit, towering figure, prowling the edges of the Manistee. 35:58 Often, it's no more than a glimpse between the trees that line Michigan's county roads, a fleeting did-you-see-that-moment from a car window. 36:07 There have been more up-close and personal encounters, though, like the ones a deer hunter named Sam was said to have had in November of 2007. 36:18 That year saw a particularly high number of dogman sightings, but few, if any, were as telling or frightening as his. 36:27 At the time, Sam was on a week-long hunting trip with two friends in the woods outside Reed City, to the immediate east of the Manistee. 36:36 Over the course of a long chilly day, all three young men had separated to take up positions in their respective tree stands, essentially extended high chairs that hunters can sit on for better cover. 36:50 As four o'clock came and went, the sun began to descend fast on the snow-covered forest. 36:56 Sam thought it was time to regroup and go home. 37:00 He had one foot on the ladder to get down from the tree stand when he became suddenly aware that all sound in the forest had ceased. 37:09 Even at just 20 years old, Sam was experienced enough to know that that meant something predatory other than himself was in the area. 37:18 Trying to stay calm, he stepped back up to the chair to wait and see what might happen next. 37:24 Within minutes, the spell was broken, as the sound of soft crunching snow was followed by the appearance of two fair-sized bucks in the clearing below. 37:34 But the deer were not alone. 37:37 Sam watched in disbelief as a very different animal slinked out of the trees behind them. 37:44 Tall, powerfully built, covered in hair and standing on two feet. 37:50 At first he thought it was a bear, which were known to rear up on their hind legs, but the way it walked, hunched back and hurried. Bears didn't move like that. 38:02 Sam felt a rush of excitement shoot through his body as he wondered for a brief moment if this was in fact a Bigfoot encounter. 38:12 But then the creature dropped to all fours and Sam saw how its ears stuck up straight from its crown and its muzzle protruded. 38:20 Then he caught the ice blue of its eyes in the dusk light. 38:25 He realised then that what it most resembled was a dog. Some kind of husky maybe, but with black fur, and much, much larger than any dog that he'd ever seen. 38:37 From below, Sam got the whiff of a hellish odour, sulphurous and sour. 38:43 Was that the stink of the creature itself, he wondered. 38:53 Whether it was the noxious scent or the sound of movement, something alerted the deer to the strange creature's proximity, and together they dashed from the clearing, then the creature rose back up onto two legs and rapidly gave chase. 39:09 All three animals were gone in seconds, leaving a terrified Sam alone in his tree, just trying to process what on earth he'd just seen. 39:19 When his friends arrived, wondering why Sam hadn't met them at the truck, he haltingly told them about the strange creature. 39:27 Assuming he was playing a prank, the others just laughed until they saw the look on Sam's face. A short time later, all three of them were back beneath Sam's tree stand as Sam pointed out the strange tracks in the snow. 39:41 His friends could only stare at them with wide-eyed disbelief. 39:46 They were dog-shaped for sure, but huge. 39:50 When the young men measured them, they found the front paws to be over five inches long, with an extra two-inch claws. The back legs left prints closer to eight inches in length. 40:02 Sam began to wonder if it was the so-called dogman that they'd heard so much about growing up. 40:09 Though his friends weren't quite sold on the theory, they had to admit at least that the tracks would have been large for even the biggest black bear. 40:18 The following day, Sam was far from eager to head back into the forest, so his friends left him at the cabin with a walkie-talkie in case he changed his mind. 40:29 As the morning lengthened, boredom and self-doubt began to creep in and Sam decided to go back to his tree stand after all, but this time he armed himself with a knife and a pistol as well as his hunting rifle. 40:44 Once back in his stand, the hours passed without incident, until night began to fall. 40:52 It was sometime around 5pm when Sam heard a single gunshot ring out from the direction of his friend's tree stand, roughly a hundred yards away. 41:02 At least someone's had some success, he thought. 41:06 Then the walkie-talkie sprung into life, and a tinny scream ripped through its speaker. 41:18 Within seconds, Sam heard someone coming fast through the trees. Then his friend burst into the clearing, wide-eyed and yelling about having seen the same creature that Sam described from the day before. 41:32 In utter terror, he sprinted up the ladder to join Sam, his feet barely touching the rungs. 41:38 Moments later, the dark-furred figure apparently ran into the clearing. 41:44 This time, Sam had time to take in its details. 41:48 The disproportionate length of the arms that dangled to the waist like a human's and ended in those same strange hand paw-like things, just like Robert Fortney had described in 1938. 42:03 Then slowly, horrifyingly, it turned its piercing blue eyes up to where Sam and his friend huddled in the tree and bared its teeth, almost as though it were grinning, is how Sam would later describe it. 42:18 Then it took another step closer. 42:21 Scared that it was about to climb their ladder, Sam drew his pistol, but just as he was about to shoot, the creature apparently jerked away, then ran on two legs from the clearing. 42:34 The two young hunters tried desperately to raise their other friend on the walkie-talkie. 42:39 When their friend finally picked up, the voice on the other end asked, is this your idea of a joke? 42:46 What, said Sam, perplexed. 42:49 Is this you in a werewolf costume at my tree? Because it's not funny. 42:54 Before they could respond, another screech of feedback shot out of the walkie-talkie, followed by five sharp gunshots. 43:03 Sam and his friend are said to have leapt down immediately and raced to their other friend's location. When they got there, they apparently found him shaking at the foot of his tree stand, with his rifle gripped tightly in his hands. 43:17 When he finally calmed down, he filled them in on what happened. 43:29 Having decided to call it a day, Sam's friend had just climbed down from the tree when he saw what he assumed was one of the other two dressed in a werewolf suit. 43:39 He was just about to call out to them when the creature suddenly charged him. 43:45 With nowhere to run, the man held the gun out between them and braced for impact. 43:51 As the story goes, the creature knocked him off his feet and swiped ferociously at his face, but the young man managed to hold him off with his gun. 44:01 Then somehow he'd got a shot off and the creature pulled back. 44:05 Another shot had it scurrying all the way back into the trees. 44:09 The man claimed to have fired another three times, right into the creature's back as it went, but it showed no sign of being hit. 44:17 The young man offered up the stock of his gun for Sam and the other friend to examine. 44:23 Deep grooves had been scratched into the wood, supposedly caused by the creature's claws. 44:29 There was nothing left but for the three young men to nervously make their way back to the truck and back to the cabin. 44:37 When they got there, they are said to have been unsettled to find that the snow around the property was littered with large paw prints, as if something had expressly been looking for them. 44:50 Deciding that they didn't want to wait around to find out what it was, they quickly packed up their belongings and brought the trip to a swift end. 44:59 A short time later, with night time having well and truly fallen, It was with some relief that Sam started up the engine and eased his truck away from the cabin for the last time. 45:11 Then, a few hundred yards down the narrow track, Sam felt the entire truck jolt as though something heavy had just collided into his rear passenger door. 45:23 It would have been impossible to see what it was in the moonless dark of the forest. 45:28 But Sam knew. 45:30 And though he would never forget the whole terrifying ordeal, he never reported the incident to officials for fear of ridicule. 45:38 He'd heard the legends himself and never taken them seriously until then. He hardly expected anyone else to. 45:47 Today, Steve Cook has moved on from his radio DJ days, and that song of his, that some say started it all, could be said to be a relic of a less hyper era when the media had time to dwell a while on the oddities of small-town Americana, before hoaxes and disinformation became just another cynical tool with which to flood the zone. 46:11 Yet, hoax or not, that novelty folk song still resonates among the town and villages in the shadow of the Manistee, and plenty would say there's a real warning to be found in its closing lines, that somewhere in the northward's darkness, a creature walks upright, and the best advice you'll ever get is don't go out at night. 46:38 This episode was written by Neil McRobert and produced by me, Richard McLean Smith. 46:45 Please remember to like and subscribe if you've enjoyed the show. Unexplained is an AV Club Productions podcast created by me, Richard McLean Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at Unexplained Podcast and on X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod. 47:16 Until next time, stay strange and dissonant. 47:43 And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Kreisel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. 47:55 Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song. 48:00 Well, I thought you were all going to write a song. 48:01 I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia, AAO Rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 48:12 What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and iHeart Women's Sports. We're breaking down the biggest headlines. Naomi Osaka showing out. Shout-outs to you, Naomi. The viral moments. I've been obsessed with Kashawn Rock's boxing journey. She looks good. Her combos are swift. And the stories everyone's talking about across women's sports. 48:35 Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to Everyone Watches Women's Sports on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 48:42 This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse, the world gets crazier, and Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible you're the problem. 48:51 Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less so I don't have to do so much. 49:01 I'm Yamanika, and I'm out. Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 49:12 I'm Jake Brennan, and on the Disgraceland podcast, I explore the wild lies of rock stars and unbelievable true crime stories from music history. These are the stories you haven't heard, the kind you'll end up telling someone else. 49:28 Like the time Paul McCartney spent in a notorious prison, or the bizarre crime Lady Gaga is accused of, or that time Blondie's Debbie Harry escaped Ted Bundy. Listen to Disgraceland on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 49:45 This is an iHeart Podcast. 49:47 Guaranteed human.