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Post by Con on Apr 27, 2019 23:26:57 GMT
So I've given it some thought over a while and I just wanted to throw this out there, see what you guys think. I can't say it's absolutely, unequivocally related to Dogman, more a series of events that when put together leave me wondering if there's a bigger picture here.
So to start, I lived abroad for a few years in the Mediterranean, went to a local school, moved back home to the UK then moved back again when I was older (back in the UK for good now though). I used to go out into the woods on my own, it's a fairly small place packed with people, even the "wilderness" is never bigger than a few hundred meters to maybe a kilometre and a half from civilisation, but it's extremely thick and where I lived had loads of mountains and hills by the coast. Everything's also condensed and there's a bunch of micro-climates, very beautiful and a great place for hiking and trail running, it's very safe so long as you stick to the roads (poisonous snakes).
I can't say my first few years were anything out of the ordinary, but I never went far. Only the second time I was there when I as older did I start going out pretty far during my runs. During these runs I'd come across odd things from time to time, such as goat carcasses that had been stripped almost clean, apart from the fur (a few times I noticed had been moved to one side). Now this I thought was due to scavengers like foxes or perhaps stray dogs since we had loads of them, only, I've never once seen or heard a fox, and I hadn't seen a single stray dog when I was out in the woods, only the Shepherds dogs were out there. One carcass I found inside a half built house on an abandoned development site down a short step to what would have been the bathroom. I had thought that the goat died there when I first saw it, but now I think that something must have dragged it inside. There were, incidentally, two goats that had gotten lost and were sitting on the balcony of the same building for some reason.
There were also times that I'd explore the woods and find "dens" that were almost carved out of bushes or thick trees in an dome kind of shape. Not very big and quite messy, but I always brushed it off as shepherds making a place to lie down to take shelter from the sun, since the summers there routinely got up to 50 degrees Celsius. The more I think about, the more I remember finding them in the middle of nowhere, in odd places outside of the shepherd trails I'd follow.
Then of course, as I've told a few of you, I've had that strange feeling when I was out hiking. I had found, practically around a dense corner of trees and out of nowhere, an old Orthodox church that had been left to rot in the woods. Before finding that however, I had been "hit" with some kind of sensation that made me take out the earphone I had in me (I always listen to ambient music when I'm out and about and get myself into specific moods for different areas, it's like my meditation), and I had been anxious all day that day, but this feeling hit me out of nowhere and I got the most calm and serene sense I had ever felt, and it felt like everything was going to be alright. Just after that, I turned a corner and saw that old chapel. However, the woods around me were extremely thick and hard to see through, and not only that but I vaguely recall it being quiet when I took out my earphone, but I can't say for certain.
I've also had a few other strange feelings from other areas, although I can't say I ever really figured it out, nor was it threatening in nature, at least from what I can recall.
I have to say, this was all way before I had even heard of the whole dogman thing. As far as I was aware, dogman was only a Michigan occurrence and that was that, "Werewolves" didn't exist. Now I'm starting to wonder if there wasn't something in those hills that was with me a few times, be it a dogman or something more mundane. Like I said before, an extreme lack of wildlife apart from lizards, snakes and birds. I recall hearing the "reeting" sound of a boar in amongst some dense shrubbery late one evening when I was out, but that's the only time I've heard big wildlife, and we're supposed to have the occasional small deer up there and hedgehogs. The only wildlife people talked about was found near human civilisation, and we had a big stray dog problem, but not once did I see a stray out in the woods, or even in the countryside at all really.
I didn't put this in encounters since it's not actually a dogman encounter at all (I think...) more of a series of thoughts. If anyone has any opinions on this, please share, I'd love to hear them! It feels good to get this down in writing as well, actually put the whole thing together and think about it properly.
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Post by ag47 on Apr 28, 2019 3:44:41 GMT
Thanks for sharing. Interesting.
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Post by ISK8pdFrmaLab on Apr 28, 2019 19:47:44 GMT
I'll jump in.
In the late 90s I and a friend from work went hiking on the Barr Trail, in Colorado Springs and we had a late start.
The sun went down so we broke out the head lamps and kept going, as the plan was to look around and set up camp. So we were walking slowly, our aim was to stop at the first area flat enough to sleep on.
Then this strange chanting began. I mean gutteral god-awful hair raising chants, as if a dozen orcs were having severe gastric distress and were trying without success to move colon obstructions en masse.
It sounded painful. Not emotionally, but literally painful. Mass rape? Some cult activity? We did not stick around to find out, and did an abrupt about face and got the hell out of there. Never went back, not going back.
There is something evil going on up there. I do not care to figure it out or expose it without a crew of six vets with ex wife issues and hollow points at my side.
Anyway, it was just noise but it creeped us both out of our socks.
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Post by Con on Apr 28, 2019 22:40:15 GMT
Yikes, that totally sounds like you stumbled across a cult doing... something. I've heard of stories on the internet of people saying they've had similar experiences of orgies or ritual chants going on. It's spooky how close you can be to other people in the woods and never even know it.
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Post by whitefeather on May 6, 2019 20:47:11 GMT
Very interesting Con,
I've already shared most of my thoughts on such feelings in the post I wrote on my experience with a specific patch of forest.
Feral dog packs seem to be a problem that's growing under the radar here in the States. I remember watching one documentary about the packs that had taken over abandoned neighborhoods in Detroit. They were living in abandoned houses and had presented threatening behavior towards people, I can't remember if anyone had suffered an actual attack at that time, but my sense was that things were headed that way.
I've had two personal experiences with feral dogs. The first, and scariest, happened when I was fishing the bank of a local lake about twilight. I was alone and unarmed when eight dogs came out of the dark brush behind me and made a very aggressive approach. Luckily the lake prevented them from surrounding me, although "lucky" is not how I was feeling standing thigh deep in October lake water holding my bass rod like a poor excuse for a sabre and contemplating the fifty yard hike through the now pitch black brush back to the truck.
That was such a seminal moment in the development of my personal philosophy that although it happened when I was nineteen and I'll turn fifty-two this summer, not once in all the intervening years have I put a line in the water anywhere without a handgun somewhere on my person.
The second time occurred when my best friend Doc and I were fishing a beautiful small trout stream that ran through one of the local state forests. About a quarter mile along we found the remains of a yearling whitetail deer. Scavengers had fed on it and we just assumed it had died of natural causes without giving it much thought. A few hundred yards further along we found the remains of an adult whitetail that had fairly obviously been killed by a predator. Finally, we found a third deer, and being curious by now we looked it over pretty thoroughly. This one was also killed by predators, which we concluded from the many dog tracks in the area. What we realized was that only a small portion of each deer had been eaten. It very much looked like the dog pack had been killing them for sport. We ended our fishing trip early that day despite both of us being armed and while backtracking to the parking area stopped long enough to verify that dogs were very likely responsible for all three kills.
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Post by Con on May 6, 2019 22:33:46 GMT
Thanks whitefeather!
That's a bit scary, reminds me of all the trouble they have in Moscow with dog packs living in the underground.
That would scare the living daylights out of me if I was alone. Hell, I'd probably want to carry a gun on me if I thought that kind of threat was hanging around. It's good to hear you got out of that without getting hurt. The police where I used to live would go out in force and hunt down stray dogs if they got aggressive, so that problem was nipped in the bud before it ever really became one.
That second one is eerie. I haven't heard of dogs killing for sport before, though I guess it can happen. They do love to chase as I've found out being a runner. Only had a few try to nip at me though, never any more than one at a time thank God. I wonder why they'd only eat part of the dear though? It's very strange, not something I'd like to come across out in the woods.
Speaking finding dead animals, on this gruesome subject, my Dad used to take me out hiking when I was young. He's ex-military so he's had all the training in the outdoors. I was too young at the time to really enjoy the woods like I do now unfortunately, but we came across this dear sitting in the middle of the Scottish woods, sitting up straight and still as a tree. Dad and I quietly crept up on it, and realised as we got closer that it wasn't moving at all. It was dead, apparently killed by poachers, I've guessing by some kind of poison or toxin. Real nasty, but it was sitting straight up, like it had been petrified. I've never seen or heard of that since.
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Post by whitefeather on May 6, 2019 23:19:22 GMT
To be honest, as scary as the encounter was, the hike through the dark woods back to my truck was worse.
I imagine the feeling of discovering those "dens" in places that didn't make logical sense is somewhat similar. If you don't mind me asking, do the laws where you are allow for you to own firearms?
Having spent my entire life in the U.S., and being raised in a rural area where guns were a common and unremarkable part of daily life, I would be very uncomfortable not having access to one.
The concept of a poacher taking animals with a toxin caught me off guard. The meat would be useless, but I guess they could have only been after a trophy.
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Post by Con on May 7, 2019 0:36:43 GMT
Ugh, I can imagine...
Yeah, the dens were weird, still don't really know who made them. I live in the UK, and the only way I can get access to firearms is through some very strict rules and regulations. Even then I can only use it for hunting and need to keep it locked away in a secure place. You also get occasional visits from the police to make sure your firearm is locked away in accordance to laws. So unfortunately not. Even carrying a knife in the outdoors is illegal under certain circumstances (some guy got a criminal record for carrying one while hiking), so if a Brit encounters a large predator, shouting at it or throwing rocks is really the only thing you can do, though thankfully we have no large predators around (except for those "large cats" and potential dogmen of course). Back where I used to live in the Mediterranean though, loads of people had guns, so I could have gotten one there, but I think you still need a license, although its much more lax.
I agree with that. Anyone living in the outdoors needs to protect themselves from wildlife, and I'd more than likely own a gun if I was living in rural America.
I really don't know what they could have been after, but a trophy makes sense. All my dad told me was that poachers did it and he involved the local police.
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Post by ag47 on May 9, 2019 3:00:48 GMT
Interesting thread. The defense/firearms/weapons part is of interest too because it's important to me. I'm in PA and we are, at this point, still fairly friendly to law-abiding firearms ownership, but there are a lot of people getting into government who think restricting our rights and access will make them safer. They are so clueless to the fact that criminals and psychos will get access to whatever they want, just like they do drugs which have been illegal since their onset. I'm hearing there is at least one attorney near where I live who is pointing out that when people & agencies/businesses put up these "Gun Free Zone" signs they are assuming liability for the safety of all who enter their area and should expect to be sued if anyone gets assaulted and hurt/killed in these killing zones. Also the local government in Pittsburgh is currently in direct violation with state firearms law because they made restrictive firearms laws when the state law says it's expressly illegal for them to do that. They are about to be held responsible legally unless certain political parties are able to force their disregard for the law. Funny, our state constitution is VERY explicit about the rights to own firearms: "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the State shall not be questioned. Art. 1, § 21 (enacted 1790, art. IX, § 21)" Here is an interesting site: www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/statecon.htmI used to live in Maryland and it has become a terrible place for anyone who wants to own a firearm (unless you're a criminal, in which case your having a gun is by default illegal, so why should you care about additional gun laws?). To own a firearm in MD requires tests, extra checks probing one's data, fingerprints, licenses, fees, etc.. I don't know all the details, just that I will never live there again. Site on state gun laws: www.gunstocarry.com/gun-laws-state/ This site is new to me, but it looks comprehensive. Where I live right now it's not uncommon to see a citizen open-carry a handgun and those who live here don't think anything of it unless the person looks like they're up to something or a bad guy (example - seasonally inappropriate clothing, tats (certain ones in particular), colors and other gang or criminal markers, etc. I'm not in any kind of health to be going deep into any woods, but if I'm going to be in any remote area I will be armed with a reasonable handgun and extra magazines. As far as knives go, I honestly don't know how to fight with one, so they are more tools to me than anything, but I always have at least two or three small ones on me (multi-tools, pocket knife, folding box-cutter blade knife for opening packages & mail, etc.). If going in the outdoors, I'd probably include a good fixed blade like a Kabar or something. My car has several things in it that COULD be used for defense if needed. One has to be careful though as we do have one ambiguous law in PA called "Prohibited Offensive Weapons," and the way it's written a "prohibited offensive weapon" is just about anything the District Justice lets cops say it is. If you hit someone with a hammer or bat, you might be in as much or more trouble than if you used a firearm. Legally speaking, lethal force is lethal force, but certain things when used as weapons have a 'stigma,' knives being one of those things. That being said there are some knives we can't carry or even have. It's just a piece of metal, but in the wrong configuration it can get you serious jail time. There are a whole lot of gun laws like that in the U.S., some federal and some state. The difference between having a shotgun with an 18 inch barrel and one with a 17 inch barrel is several years in jail. No appreciable difference in function. If you're going to own a semi-automatic rifle, you'd better brush up on those laws too because there are several "traps" that seem to serve only to make law-abiding persons criminals. Interesting point of the hypocrisy of gun laws. It is my understanding that suppressors used to be not only legal but encouraged in England because they reduce noise. Suppressors in the U.S. are considered Class III weaponry (same basket as machine guns), and can only be obtained by an onerous federal process and acquisition of a special (not cheap) stamp. That process also abdicates the owner's rights to freedom of unreasonable searches as it grants BATFE carte blanche access to the premises of the owner without a warrant (correct me if I have any of that wrong). |
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Post by Con on May 12, 2019 23:22:18 GMT
I have to agree, going anywhere into any wilderness, you need at least a knife or a gun if you're willing to and have the experience to carry it. I would be uncomfortable myself since I have almost zero experience with firearms, but if I moved to the US or Canada (Something I'd like to do at some point) I'd at least carry a good knife, maybe even a firearm if I had the training and felt the need to.
British laws have been and still are bizarre. I won't go too far into it since it would derail the thread but we're a nation with strange leaders and odd lawmakers, and a police force that's highly underpaid and understaffed and overworked to the highest limits.
On the topic of the outdoors, there's a small thing I just remembered. When my dad was still about, we camped out in the garden of our old country home when I was about 4 or so. We slept in it, or I slept anyway, then I was woken up sometime during the night by dad and my dad told me we needed to get inside since it had started raining. I can't remember if it was raining hard or not, but I wouldn't have thought rain like that would be too much of an issue for a tent, but who knows. Probably nothing out of the ordinary there and I'm just looking for strange things where there isn't anything.
I'll say that with my life experiences so far, I'll be taking greater care in the woods and listening to my body and gut when they start acting up. I wonder how many of these missing people had a bad feeling and ignored it?
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Post by ag47 on May 13, 2019 23:14:17 GMT
Same here. I usually work a shift where I come home at about 3AM and I live in the middle of nowhere. There are plenty of houses and farms around me, but someone could get murdered right on the road and no one would come out. One night I stopped in a semi-wooded area because a rotten tree had broke off and fallen into the road. It was about 6 inches thick and broken in pieces, so I got out to move it off the road. When I was just about finished I started becoming more aware of the woods around me and I started getting a sense of urgency to get out of there, like someone or something was watching me. I ALWAYS carry multiple flashlights with me in the car and at least one on my person. I remember shining it around and not seeing eyes or anything. Probably nothing, but it stuck with me enough to remember it. btw, I get a lot of lights and related stuff from www.batteryjunction.com (this not promotion spam). If you sign up for their newsletter they send you about one a week and sooner or later they'll send an ad for something you'll like at a greatly reduced price. My favorite EDC light for the past couple years has been a NITECORE MH12 (which is essentially a P12 with a built-in USB charging port). Do NOT buy cheapo Lithium Ion batteries and the associated "suicide" chargers which will burn down your house. Stay with name brand like Nitecore, Klarus, Olight, etc. and use an intelligent charger which adjusts the charge and shuts it down when needed. When buying Li Ion cells (usually you'll be using some of the many 18650 form factor batteries) buy those with protection circuits built in. |
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Post by trolljegeren on May 13, 2019 23:46:17 GMT
I've definitely had the experience of entering a place and feeling a profound sense of "I don't belong here." I believe areas where trails are located and frequented have been "civilized" to a degree. My forays into the "wilderness" are primarily bushwhacks. I rarely stick to a trail and often times they are non-existent. I've pondered a good bit about that feeling. I can't say for certain but it seems to originate from, I'll call it the Elemental Spirit of the place and not necessarily some sentient, corporeal dogman-like or other critter. I will say it is palpable and distinct, as in hairless bi-peds don't belong there, I am an invader and I immediately find myself supplicating the powers of the place and apologizing, almost instinctively. It's weird but I'm convinced there is something different about those places.
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Post by Con on May 14, 2019 7:16:01 GMT
ag47 Sounds like something may have been around and was watching you! Could have been an animal, but your body picked up on it. I'll be checking out those lights (especially headlamps) for hiking! Friends of mine gave me a chest mounted light for hiking but I haven't used it since I got it since I haven't been hiking in years  trolljegeren I usually stick to the trails where I lived since there were snakes and such off road. Saying that, every time I had an odd feeling was after I'd gone off trail so to speak, and deeper into the woods following the shepherd trails. Staying around houses or on the roads was fine, so maybe there's something to that. I think there's spirits in the forests as well, and some of them might be territorial, hence why people can get strange feelings from some areas. Could have been what happened to me, that's what I thought after it had happened anyway.
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DogFlabber
Full Member
Texas, Sam Houston National Forest, BF/DM Rules The Night
Posts: 175
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Post by DogFlabber on Oct 12, 2019 8:19:23 GMT
Thanks for sharing. Interesting. From Con..this feeling hit me out of nowhere and I got the most calm and serene sense I had ever felt, and it felt like everything was going to be alright. I had a feeling very similar to this the other day, I was going to this little hidden spot in the woods above a creek, in the woods behind my house, to do standing Qi Gong meditation which I had been doing there every evening around the time of sunset, but I had an encounter close to 40 years ago that left me afraid of the woods, so almost every time I go there I feel a little afraid, some times so much that one day I was pointing to the locations I thought two of them where hiding, but anyway this one day I had just started my meditation, and I got a little bit of a fearful feeling but then almost immediately I got this huge feeling of peace, and comfort and protection come over me, and I actually felt like I might have had an angle on each side of me protecting me, and I felt wonderfully safe for the first time. I had the best meditation ever out there, after my meditation, it had become completely dark so I headed back to the house, and when I got right outside of the wood line about 100 feet from where I was, I heard two very loud clacks like two rocks being hit together right in my hidden little spot that I had just left. I still felt very brave and was going to go back to see it, but I remember some native american on a podcast I like to listen to, a few days earlier, saying when you hear a knock, you should leave and show them respect, because that means they don't want you there, but it seemed to me that it was asking me to go back, but I went home anyway. I went back a few days later, and smacked together two of the largest rocks I could find, as hard as I could but the sound was only about 1/10 of the sound I had heard. On two other occasions I have heard wood knocks once only 25 feet from me right when I was at the edge of the wood line when I am leaving on my way back to the house, I do not know what this means. |
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DogFlabber
Full Member
Texas, Sam Houston National Forest, BF/DM Rules The Night
Posts: 175
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Post by DogFlabber on Oct 14, 2019 8:18:12 GMT
Con, I have heard reports of what people think are BigFoot building shelters out of sticks and leaves for sleeping in and some for ambushing animals, so maybe you should looking into these dens, or structures that you found. Look around on the internet to see if you can find some similar types that you found.
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