At a.
Book in.
Tonight's guest wish is to a mean anonymous and with that in mind, I'm just gonna call her TJ. TJ. Welcome to the show.
Hi Vic, thanks for having me.
Thanks so much for being here. We appreciate your time. TJ. Please give us a brief bio on yourself.
I am forty nine years old. I am originally from Millington, Tennessee. I have worked in the medical field for about twenty years, and I retire early so I could stay home with my son. After I had my son, and in twenty sixteen, we packed up from Millington and moved to Pensacola, Florida.
So you moved from Millington to Pensacola. What kind of a culture shock was at.
It's not that different because Millington's a Navy town and Pensacola is a Navy town as well. Like we're surrounded by the naval air bases and the Blue Angels are based out here, and they would always come to Millington for events and do flyovers over the house and whatnot. So it wasn't that much of a culture shock. Actually, it was kind of like being home.
Well, well, that's really good.
Then.
Sounds like you just adjusted right away. That's always a good thing. Speaking of Millington, that's where your encounter happened in two thousand and two. Were you living inside the city limits at the time, though, on the outskirts or outside of town?
We actually would have been considered at the time Shelby County. We were just outside of the Millington what they call the Millington at Annex, so it was Shelby County.
I see, sounds like you were just a mile or two outside of the city limits.
In Oh, yeah, I don't even know if it was actually a full mile. We were just barely outside the city limits, so you were closed.
Then. What was Millington like back then?
It was, you know, when I was younger, it was an actual naval a school, like the only inland Navy base that we had that was a school that they would teach at. But during this time two thousand and two, the school had closed and they started. It was a lot of like big wigs, I guess you would consider big wigs. I'm not necessarily a military person, like my family's never been in the military, but there were like a lot of admirals and generals and things like that that were stationed there.
So this wasn't exactly a two stoplight town. It adds some size to it.
It sounds like it did. It did, especially after the school closed and the generals and the admirals and all these other people came in, Like it grew it really it boomed after that, the whole the little town boomed.
Sounds like a good place to live, just outside of You had all the benefits of living that close to a town that size, which you're living out in the country, so you also had all the benefits that came along with that, unfortunately, including having dogmen around. But we'll get into that in just a bit here. Before we spoke for the first time, even though you're encountered, how and roughly twenty years ago, how much trouble were you having dealing with that experience.
Immediately afterwards. It was odd because immediately afterwards it was one of those things where I just didn't talk about it. I didn't talk about it. I put it out of my mind. It was a weird thing that happened, and it was almost I think it was almost like a denial. In fact, that was the way I coped with it. It was denial. It was just maybe you know, I dreamed it. I second guessed myself a lot, so yeah, that's basically how I dealt with it. Was just sheer denial.
Was that effective and dealing with that experience or did it not work all that Well?
It was effective until it got dark, and then that's when kind of that subconscious fear would set in. And we also we have coyote out there, so hearing them. I'm not sure if you've ever heard coyote yelp and carry on, especially during the spring when it's mating season, but it's very very eerie, and yeah, that would kind of set me off a little bit. But other than that, like it worked well.
I'm glad it worked at least part of the time. But yeah, I'm sure hearing those coyotes that didn't help at all. Yeah, answer your question. We do have coyotes here behind my house. It's not fun once they decide to start piping up late at night. Not a good thing at all. But that's all right, you'll have that. Sometimes. You were rinding a home next door to your parents' home at the time. Did your parents own your home though.
They did not, they were just they do now, but at the time they were really good friends with our landlord who had my parents had lived there for ages like ages, and they were good friends with him. So when he had it up for rent, my parents had asked them if it was okay, you know, and so we kind of had a nice little way to get our own little house. But yeah, that's how we got it.
Yeah, sounds like that did work out. Well. Have your parents lived there all that long?
Let's see, my brother I have an older brother who's seven years older than me, and he was probably two or three when they moved to that house, so they've been there. They have been there for probably fifty two years at this point.
Wow, and that is a long time. Have they ever noticed anything strange that might have hinted that something strange, like a dog mean, might have been lurking around?
Not necessary, There's been strange occurrences, but not necessarily dog man per se. There's been some paranormal stuff that goes on just around the not just with my parents' house, but our house, my sister and I his house as well, and just Millington in general. You know, odd lights, but a lot of times we blew that off as it's a military base and they have, you know, stealth fighters over there, and so we just kind of blew it off as military to be honest.
Well, I'm sure it's no mystery to you that military bases can have a pretty good amount of strange things happening on and around them. So maybe this is all connected. I don't know. Speaking of your sister, she was with you when you had your encounter. What can you tell us about her?
My sister is seven years younger than I am. We worked at the same hospital together. I worked nights and she worked second shift in the emergency room. And now she continues living in the same house. She has two girls, and she does medical coding for Progressive Insurance.
Well, if you have to have a dog, meaning the counter, it's always better, or at least I should say, it's normally better to not have it alone, to have someone else with you. And it sounds to me like you're you have a really good relationship with your sisters, so that just helps that much more, it really does.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good thing.
Do you think you're ever going to be able to live in the country again without being paranoid? Now that you know that dogmen are out there.
That's a good question. I don't I want to say yes, but I think I would be really, really careful, especially if I have animals. I have dogs and cats and things like that. I would be real careful. And you know, you always hear those stories of Appalachia and they close the blinds at night and lock the doors and you don't pay attention to any sounds you hear outside. I would probably almost be like that when it comes to living out in the country.
Yeah, don't look outside at night. Uh, I get it. Unfortunately, your son saw one about thirteen years after you and your sister did. Did you ever tell him about your experience?
No, no, I never told him about it. I didn't want to scare him from going over to my parents' house and visiting, as you know, his grandparents, and surely I didn't want him because he and my sister's oldest child, oldest daughter, they're real close. They're close like me and my sister are, and I didn't want him scared to go over there to play with her. So no, I never told him. I didn't tell him about it until way after, when he was old enough to.
Know a lot of parents would have handled it that way. Yeah, it just might be a really good way to handle it. You know him better than anyone else in the world, so you would definitely be the best judge on that on how to handle that. How's he dealing with that experience now? Has he come to terms with it?
He has? He? I mean, his experience is what prompted me to start talking more about my experience because he is a little bit more open about it than I was. But he's the same way as I am when it comes to There's just certain places he doesn't necessarily want to be at after dark, and he, you know, gets a little gets a little jumpy, and I mean he for the longest time he would sleep in the same room with me and his dad because he was scared of the dark, like he just fearful.
Well, everything you just told us about how you responded is totally understandable. You see a dogman that's going to tend to make you afraid of the dark. I get it. I do. Before I ask TJ to tell us about her encounter, I just want to remind you of that. Tonight's the premiere of my new dogman podcast. It's called dog Me and Tails. And it features fictional stories about dog men. Dog Me and Tails isn't available on YouTube
for listening. It's only available in podcast format. With that said, if you'd like to check it out, which I hope you will, please go to Dogmanencounters dot com and visit the podcast page. There you'll find links to the new show if you already have a favorite podcast app, though, dog Me and Tails is available anywhere you can listen to podcasts. Having said all that, tonight I published the first four episodes of the show. I hope you like him,
all right, TJ. Please tell us about your encounter. Now, give us every last detail that comes to mind.
Okay. It was two thousand and two and it was around eight thirty nine o'clock at night. My sister and I were leaving from my parents' house. We had had dinner with my parents that evening, and we had a black German shepherd. Her name was Kaylee. She would walk with us over to our parents' house and then we would bring her home at night, and all we were doing was crossing the yard. We didn't even have to go in the streets to walk next door because we had a chain link fence and it had a gate.
My dad had put a gate in so we could just walk, you know, in the yard. But I always had to carry a flashlight with me because Kaylee was so dark you couldn't see her at night. So, and she was a puppy, she was, I mean, she was a year old, but she was still a puppy, and she would run circles around you. And I used the
flashlight to keep an eye on her. And we were walking home and she took off running, growling and barking, went through the gate to our side of the fence to our house, my sister and I's house, and hit the gate, snarling and growling and barking at something that she saw in the field across from our houses. We have this huge field, and that year they were growing corn in the field and the corn was about ready to be harvested because they had the machines out there
to harvest the corn. I noticed that that night, and so it had to have been about six foot tall. So Kaylee is barking and growling and carrying on, and I couldn't figure out what it was she was barking at because she very rarely reacted like that. So I took the flashlight and shined it in the field to see if I could set eyes on what it was she was barking at. I was thinking maybe apossum or
you know, raccoon or whatever. And I noticed the corn stalks moving a little bit and I kind of stopped and I flashed the flashlight on it, and I saw something shadowy there. And when I hit the flashlight directly on it went it stood up. And when it stood up, it was I would say seven about seven foot seven to eight foot tall, dark fur, and it had the ears like a German shepherd, and it had amber eyes.
The eye shine was amber colored. And it was just far enough in the field to where I could see it, but it was more it was shadowy like it was. I couldn't tell. I assumed the fur was black. I'm not real sure because the visibility wasn't that great because it was a little further out in the field. But it stood up and I could see it from it's probably midway up its chest and up and it had
the big broad shoulders. And as soon as it stood up, Kaylee yelped and took off for our front door and was scratching and clawing at our front door to get in and crying. And by the time my sister and I got up to the front porch, Kaylee had urinated on the front porch, and you know, I was trying to fumbling for my keys, trying to get the key
in the door and get the door open. And as soon as I got the door open, she took off into the house and went under my bed and hid under my bed and she did not out until that morning. Till the next morning, I didn't hear a peat from her. And after that, my sister and I closed you know, we locked up the house, pulled the blinds and kind of looked at each other, like what what was that?
What did we just see? Because when it stood up like it did and I saw the ears and the you know, the the fur, I immediately thought werewolf because that's the best way I could describe it. That's what it looks like. I didn't know anything about dog Man or any of it. I didn't know nothing. I knew nothing about it prior to this event, to this encounter.
But yeah, my sister and I just locked the house up, pulled down the shades, closed the blinds, and like that was weird, and that was it like, we did not talk about it after that. We didn't tell our parents what we saw, We didn't tell any of our friends what we saw. It was just one of these things where it was unspoken between us and we just never talked about it.
Do you have any regrets about not talking openly about it with your sister or are you glad you did that? Still?
I'm glad I did it because I think both of our defense mechanisms. You know, It's like I said, it was just kind of a denial thing, and I knew what I saw, She knew what she saw. We both understood that we witnessed it together. The dog acted the way the dog acted that and we kind of had this understanding that even if we told our parents or told anybody, our friends or whatever, that they wouldn't believe us.
I think they would think we were crazy, or that it was like some sort of shared hallucination.
Yeah, you haven't experience like that. It's pretty hard to share it with people because you know darn well in most cases, they're not going to believe you, So why start all that mess? I get it. You're walking from your parents home to your home when your encounter happened, you said, but how far of a walk is at.
Oh, it's not far at all. I would say maybe five six hundred feet from one house to the other.
Well, that's still a pretty good walk. That's not a hop skipping to jump when all this happened, was Kaylee closer to the dog man than you were or vice versa.
She would have been closer because she hit the front part of our fence like she went exactly like she went straight to the spot where he was. And yeah, she would have been closer because my sister and I kind of stood in the driveway behind her, and that's when I was shining the light trying to see what it was that she was barking at.
If she went right to the spot where the dog man was, how close did she get to the dog man?
He was a little ways in the field, So I mean he was close. He was closer than he should have been. I mean, I would think he was probably about fifty feet.
Away, fifty feet from you or from Keihley.
He would have been fifty feet from us. He would have been a little bit closer to Kaylee because it was so you have our fence than our ditch, than our little street, and the streets are not very big. It's enough for two cars to pass another ditch and then the field. So I would say with Kaylee, he was a little bit closer since it was nighttime. I'm not a real good judge of distance.
Well, that's all right, just so I'm clear, though, when Kighley started barking, he was just to hear under fifty feet from her. Yes, okay, I see. So if she was just to hear less than fifty feet from him when she started going off, how close did she get when she approached it?
Oh, I don't know. I have no idea. And the way the field is set up, it's kind of so these fields that they plan in, you know, they have the runoffs for the water for the irrigation, so it kind of dips down as well, so like our houses are built slightly higher than what the field is. So
that distance kind of messes me up. But I mean she had to have been fairly close to him, because even from where I was looking, he looked huge when he still well, I mean he was because the he was towering over the corn.
Yeah, if you could see him that easily over the corn, he must have been but thinking of angles. I mean, she is a shepherd, She's not that tall off the ground, and if the corn was about six feet tall. Could she even see the dog man when she first started barking, but then he stood up?
I think she smelled something in the air, That's what I'm because I did not I saw the corn moving. I didn't see anything in the corn at first until he stood up. I just noticed it was moving. And because I was thinking coyote, because sometimes the coyote would come fairly close to the houses. But yeah, she when we as soon as we opened our gate that separated our houses, she hit the fence and was growling and barking. So it makes me think she picked up on a scent.
You're probably right, she probably did. Now, just so unclear on all this. When she started going off, How close were you to her?
I was about five feet away from her.
Okay, so really close? Mm hmm, yeah you were. Then after you put your flashlight beam on the dog mean and it stood up, did it seem to be mad at you that you saw it, or did it seem to be nonchalant?
It was very nonchalant. I got the feeling that, I mean, I got the feeling that it was watching us, but it was more interested in her and Kaylee than it was us.
Now that might be because Kaylee sounded the alarm and brought your attention to its presence. But yeah, you can't think for these things. As you know, it's hard to say what was in its head at the time. Now as you're standing there looking at this dog me and towering over the corn and looking at its features. If it was down in all fours and wasn't quite so big, would it look almost wolfish enough to pass as a huge timber wolf where its features too monstrous for that to even be the keys.
I don't know, I would almost think that it would pass for Yeah, I mean I think it would pass for something like a timber wolf. I mean just from and I didn't get a whole lot of detail from it because it was dark, and then you know, when it stood up, like I did not stick around to actually, you know, take in all the features I left.
But yeah, I mean it was very it was very wolf like. I mean, that's that's the only way I'd explain it. It. Just the thought of where wolf went through my head because it stood up and the way it was standing. It was standing like a man. But yeah, I could see where it would be. It could pass for a very very large wolf like dire wolf size almost.
Well some of that way. Some would pass as a huge timberwolf if they're down on all fours. Others they're just way too monstrous in their appearance to have a chance of passing as a wolf or anything like that. So you never know. That's why I asked that question. After it did stand up, though, did it turn and face you or stand facing a different direction?
It was facing us. It was facing us because when the flashlight hit its eyes, I mean I looked at dead in the eyes, just you know, with the eyes shine.
Oh I'm sure you did. I think almost anyone would when you hit it in the eyes with that beam. Though, did you ever noticed a shift in the she the color of its eye glow?
I didn't. It wasn't anything, honestly to me, it wasn't anything unusual like it looked like natural eye shine. It was just that amber color, that golden amber color. And to be honest, even to this day, I don't know if that's natural eye shine with any other predators that are out there or not. I've never actually looked into that. But yeah, I mean, nothing struck me other than its standing up on two legs and looking at us, and just that feeling of it knows that we see it,
you know. Other than that, I would almost take it for like a natural almost a natural predator.
This is asking a lot because he had so much going through your mind at the time. But by do you remember if you noticed any glow from its eyes before the beam hit its eyes?
Off hand, No, I don't remember the eyes glowing prior to me hitting it with the flashlight.
Well, like I said, you had so much going through your head. You're doing good to know your name, so you can't be foulded for that. Poor Kayley, though it frightened her so bad she needed on herself after she made it to the front door. Does she suffer from any behavioral issues after that?
She didn't like going out at night anymore. After that we would have to get her. She would go out just as the sun was starting to set, and then she would come into the house and get under my bed and sleep for the rest of the night and go out in the morning. Which prior to that, she was very We called her our feral dog because she was very wild, Like she was really hard to train, and she liked to just be free, and she would run between our yards and you know, my parents in
our yard. And but yeah, after that, she stayed inside at night most of the time, when usually she would like to stay outside at night.
Poor Keelle, it really took it out of her. I can understand why. Believe it or not, some dogs actually suffer a complete personality change after seeing a dog mean like that. It sounds like she didn't. She just wore off every wanting to go outside at night afterwards. But did you notice any aspects of her personality change she.
Was She seems like she was more fearful of people and everything. We would like I when my when I met my husband and we had started dating, she like I think he only saw her once because she would hide from people, like she and she didn't. She wasn't like that. When she was younger. She was very I mean, she was kind of suspicious of everybody, but she wouldn't
go and hide. She just I don't know, she kind of withdrew after this, like she just kind of kept to her her little immediate family us and my parents and eventually my sister's oldest girl after she was born. But that was it, Like anybody, any stranger that came over, you would not know we had a dog, like she would disappear.
Well, poor thing. Yeah, that really affected her understandably. So though, did your parents hear Achille going off that night and never wonder why she was doing that? Did they ever tell you after the fact?
No, And that's what makes it so bizarre, like they did not hear any of it at all.
Well, yeah, that is strange. Were you about halfway between your house and their house at the time or a lot closer to your house, because if you were that much closer to your house, then I guess in a way that would explain it.
We were closer to ours when it stood up, I was standing, we were in our driveway, like I was standing right behind Kaylee. So so yeah, yeah.
That would explain it. That's a pretty good amount of distance. You didn't tell your parents right away about what happened that night, but have you ever told them period about that encounter?
My sister and I told my dad, and he does not believe what we saw, Like he believes in Bigfoot, but he doesn't believe in dog man. Like he's in total denial about it.
Huh. Yeah, it's hard to understand why some people can be so convinced the sasquatch are out there, even though I haven't seen a sasquatch. But they just dismiss out of hand the possibility the dogmen or reality. But a lot of people think that way for whatever reason. That's just how it is. How about your husband, have you told him?
Yes, I've told him, and he totally believes me because you know, well, then my son's encounter as well, So.
Well, that's good. I'm so glad he does believe you. That's a really good thing. It's always so frustrating when a significant other doesn't believe that their wife or husband had an encounter. Some even make fun of them, which is even worse. But it's just horrible when that happens. It really is. If they do support their significant other, it makes such a difference. It's always such a good thing, it really is. Did you seem to handle that experience better or worse than your sister?
She and I are so much alike. I mean we pretty much. I think we handled it about the same. We both handled it about the same. Every once in a while we'll call. We would call each other throughout the years because it would just kind of we would see something on TV that would prompt it, like the whole just reliving that whole thing, and we would call each other every once in a while and be like,
did we really see this? Is this something that actually happened, because there's a lot of I mean, there's a lot of self doubt. I think that's the big thing, is this disbelief in what you saw. But yeah, we pretty much handled that the same way.
Self doubt goes along with dog me and the encounters like peanut butter and jelly. So that's a normal part of it. And I was having second thoughts about even asking that question because you two didn't even talk about the encounter. You said, So if that was the case, you wouldn't really have a beat on how well or how poorly she was dealing with it.
Right, right, she dealt with it the same way I did. But I mean we would discuss it every once in a while, once in a blue moon. What really, I think prompted us talking about it that Hey, do you remember when we saw was when a few years later we saw Linda Godfrey on something talking about the Beast of Bray Road, and my sister and I looked at each other like, oh, okay, so this is actually a thing. And then we kind of, you know, briefly, kind of talked about it and that was it. But yeah, she
handled it about the as well as I did. We didn't really talk about it. We didn't discuss it outside the family, and I mean we didn't even discuss it with our family until years later.
Yeah, that's some people choose to handle it, and for some people that works well, but for most it doesen't. I'm just glad that you're able to deal with that experience as well as you have, Thank goodness for that. How long did you and your sister live in that house?
Let's see after the encounter, we well, she's still there, I want to say we lived. I lived there for probably another three to four years, probably about four years, and then we moved. Then when I got married, I moved further north to uh Atoka, to Tipton County.
Was it agonizing to stay there that long after having that experience or did you take it in stride?
I just kind of took it in stride. I just never we never really again. I mean, we would get nervous or not nervous, but just kind of antsy when it got dark looking at the field. And it didn't matter what they were growing in the field, whether it was soybean or cotton or corn or whatever. I mean, if they grew corn again, that would really kind of freak us out. But yeah, we didn't really think that much about it until it got dark. But then at the time when she and I were it was just
us and we were living together. We didn't stay home a lot at night, like I worked nights, and then she would go with her husband, well boyfriend at the time, you know, they would go out or whatever, and then he would come back and stay at the house, that type of thing.
So yeah, even if you don't have a dog in the encounter, when you've got corn grown that close to your house and everything on the country, it is kind of creepy at times at night. So I get it. And with that in mind, if you stayed there for four years after the encounter, even with crop rotations and everything, I would expect at least one of the years for corn to be grown there.
Did they Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, with my son's experience, they it was corn again that year. As a matter of fact, I asked her not long ago if what they were growing in the field, and she thinks it's going to be corn this year as well, because they've not started the the they would have already planted, like soybean and cotton or sunflowers. Now we've had sunflowers out in that field too, So, oh, you know, that's.
Just as bad. Your son's encounter happened thirteen years after he had your encounter, though you said that you lived in that house just for four years after you had your experience. I was just wondering if sometime in that four year span, even with crop rotations, if they grew corn again, which I would expect that they did.
Oh, they did. I'm sure they did. Within Yeah, within the thirteen years of hours and his experience. Yeah. And the thing my thing is is, and I do think about that, is how many times have we gone to visit my parents or gone over to my sister's house or whatnot, and it's been in the field and we not know it because I would not have known it was there had it not been for Kle, just like I would not have known it was there had it not been for my son.
Well, there's good news and bad news to it. I'd be awfully surprised if on more times than you could shake a stick at it was there in the field watching you. But at the same time, if it was there and it watched you, it never hurt you. So that does count for something after all.
Right, right, and it has you know, I often wonder all the years we had heard the coyote carrying on and sounding like they were fighting. I've often wondered about that, like are they fighting each other or are they fighting something else? Like that's kind of low key, subconsciously kind of gone through my head over the years.
That's one of the funny things about dog men TJ. I Mean, sometimes they'll be running with coyotes and everything seems hunky dory, seems like their best buds, and all of a sudden, without any cause, you'll see the dog men reach out and grab a coyote that's within reach and just rip it apart no reason whatsoever, no rhyme nor reason. So maybe something like that was going on that night and that's why you heard that commotion, But
it's really hard to say. I mean, that could just be normal behavior from the coyotes, because we all know when you have coyotes around like this, they do make some noise on occasion.
Yeah, they do, they do. And the ones we had would come up fairly close to that. They would never come out of the field, but they would come up fairly close to the house. But whenever it was it's funny. It's eerie because they would come up close to the house and you can hear them howling and carrying on, and all the dogs in the neighborhood would stop barking like it was just silence. You wouldn't hear anything other than the coyotes.
Yeah, it's not fun when they do that, but it's a good trade off still for living out in the country. It's nothing like it. You told us about your experience that you and your sister had, But please tell us about your son's encounter. Now give us every last detail that comes to mind.
Okay. It was twenty fifteen. He was about four or five years old. We had dropped him off at my parents' house because my husband and I had gone out for the evening. So I would say this encounter. By the time we picked him up at the house at my parents' house it was probably eleven something like that, ten thirty eleven o'clock, and I had him in the back in his car seat, the car running and the doors closed, and it was kind of chilly outside. I
don't remember. I would say, again, they had corn growing in the field, so I would say it had to have been probably September, because you know, they again, they had the harvesting equipment out there. They were about to harvest the corn, and it was fairly cool outside, and he all of a sudden, I was talking to my mom and dad saying we were saying goodbye, and you know, if you're from the South or know anything about the South, Southerners,
their goodbyes are probably thirty minutes long. And all of a sudden, he rolls down the window and he's like, Mom, we need to go. We need to go now. And even though at four and five, my son has a very big vocabulary, he's very intelligent, very verbal, like he you know, he knows. He's an old soul is what I call him. He's very intelligent for his age. And I said, okay, baby, you know we're saying goodbye to
Mama and Papa. We'll be there in a minute, and He's like, no, we need to go right now, Mom, We need to go right now. And he kept looking like back, turning his head to the rights, looking kind of back at the field, which I didn't notice. He was kind of like turning himself in his car seat to look back. And so we said goodbye, got in the car, told my mom. I was like, Okay, he's tired.
He wants to go home. So we get in the car and we drive off and we're halfway to our house in a Toka, which is about that drive is about fifteen minutes between houses. And he was telling me that he saw something in the field that looks like a big dog that stood up and it was staring at him and it had amber colored eyes. And I think the only reason why he actually saw it was because there was a car that had driven past that I guess the headlights where I guess to where it
was standing. The headlights hit it hit the hit it standing in the field. I don't think he actually I think this one was just standing there. I think it was already on two legs. I don't know that it was actually crouched in the corn like our original original story, are the two thousand and two encounter. But he said,
and he could he knew it was watching us. He could tell it was watching us, and in his head he just had the idea that it was telling us, or telling him, I could kill you all if I wanted to, which, you know, for somebody that's four or five years old, that's kind of a weird thing for
kids to say. And because he was so young, I told him, oh, you know, it's your imagination, you know, there's it's probably it was probably a black bear that had mange, because they look really, really creepy when they have mange, and they can stand up on their hind legs. And I was like, you know, it's just, you know, maybe don't worry about it. It's fine. And and he didn't, I think it. I don't know that he ever actually believed me when I told him that, but it seemed
to calm him down a little bit. I just didn't want him to be scared of going over to seeing his aunt and seeing my grand you know, my parents and all of that. And then it wasn't until he was probably ten maybe that I told him about mine and my sister's experience. And I want to say originally that didn't come from me. It came from his cousin,
his older cousin that he's close with. I think she had mentioned it to him and then he asked me, and that's when I finally told Amyah, we did see something, and it sounds pretty similar to what you saw, only it didn't. I just knew that it was watching us. It didn't Actually I didn't actually hear anything in my head from it or whatever, like he did.
Wow, four or five years old, that's way too young to have a dog encounter. It's not like it's fun and games when you have an encounter when you're an adult. But still at that age, that's really rough. Being so young the way he was, did you have a lot of problems with nightmares?
He did have nightmares, and like I said, he had, I mean he was He would have nightmares and it was a struggle to get him to sleep in his own bed for a long time after that. And even then there were times where you know, my husband and I would wake up and he'd make his little bed on the floor and sleep in our on our floor, you know, in our bedroom or whatever. So yeah, I
mean he's always had nightmares. Now I don't know if it was, if it's directly related to it, if it has a dog, like it's a nightmare about a dog man or whatever. I know some of some of the dreams he's had have been like that, but he's always had very vivid nightmares afterwards.
Him having nightmares like that the way he did, that'd be awfully frustrating for you, because I don't want to put thoughts into your head. But weren't you convinced that these dog mans had a center around that experience?
I mean, I would think so that that's it. Do I think they caused it? Is that what you're asking?
Yes?
Yeah, yeah, I would think so. That's because I mean he's always and it's you have to be kind of careful with kids too, because they have such a big imagination, and he most definitely did. But just him telling me exactly what it was he saw and how it related to so much of what me and my sister saw, you know, I knew, I knew it wasn't his imagination. I knew it wasn't a bear with Mange. I wish it had been, but you know, I knew that in my heart that's not what it was. And but yeah,
I definitely do. I definitely do think they caused it.
I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. Him having nightmare is the way he did, had to be awfully frustrating for you. With that in mind, did you ever try to remedy those nightmares by doing anything special?
A lot of times I would try to. He's sensitive anyways, He's very sensitive to energies and all of that. He's very connected spiritually, in my opinion, But I would try to teach him to listen to I would have sounds of the ocean on and let him concentrate on that and the sounds of the ocean good thoughts. Imagine having a shield around him, blocking all the bad things and all the negative things coming through, and you know, trying
to affect him. And that worked somewhat. I think it worked better as he got older and learned how to build a shield around him, you know, to block certain things. But yeah, that's how I went about it. Was just a lot of music, a lot of nice relaxing music and telling him, you know, you're safe here I met. There's a big bubble around the house, a big shield
around the house. Nothing can penetrate it. We have the dogs we have, you know, and that seemed to give him some comfort, But he'd still end up in our room at night, you know, just because he had had a dream or just scared of the dark.
That is a difficult situation all this put you in. I can only imagine the thoughts it must have been going through your head, and how frustrating all this must have been. If he's a sensitive, that makes them more likely to have encounters than most people. Unfortunately, did you know that.
I did. Yeah, I'm aware. I I didn't know specifically towards like cryptids or dog men or whatnot, but I've heard stories like I'm more of growing up, I'm more of like a ghost person as far as paranormal goes. I've never been. I like the stories of Bigfoot and whatnot, and you know they were I'll always listen to them. But yeah, so I'm always I was always like ghost
and all that type of stuff. But yeah, lately I've heard I've been hearing stories where you're sensitive, you're more likely to have like some sort of a cryptid encounter or or you know whatever.
That's right, Yes, not just ghosts, it's cryptids too. Unfortunately, you said that he's a precocious kid and he's always been that way. Do you think that worked to his advantage or to his detriment what it came to dealing with that experience.
I almost think it was more a detriment because he is so smart and he knew even at that age what he saw was legitimate that it was not a bear with mange. And you're talking about a kid that likes animals anyways, like he would he wants to be a marine biologist after he gets out of school. But he so, he's he's very he was always into animals, and he was always so him being you know, four or five years old, but he knew exactly what he
was seeing. So yeah, I think it was If he had been just a normal, regular kid, I think he would have been more inclined to believe me and just saying, oh, it's nothing to worry about, it's just a bear. They usually mind their business, don't worry about it, and it would have been fine. But not him. And then again that whole sensitive thing, like he picked up on something, he picked up on something negative.
You are his mother, after all, so it's totally understandable that you try to insulate him the way he did from what actually happened. But in hindsight, do you have any misgivings about telling him that it was just a mengi beer and not telling him what it actually was or are you still okay with that?
I'm still okay with it because I think if I had given him validation for that sighting or validated his I think it would have made it worse. I think he would have been even more fearful than he already was.
I'm sure you're right about that. Like I said, you know him better than anyone in the world, so who would know better than you had to handle that the best way. That's all there is to it. Now that he's older, has he tried to learn as much as he can about dog men or does he just try to avoid the subject altogether as much as possible.
He and I both will kind of dive into Like we love Aaron Dese and his documentaries that he's been doing about dog men. We'll sit down together and watch them because we're just it's amazing how many people have these same encounters and all of us we don't go, we don't talk about it. We go for years and years and years without talking to people about it, and then you see something as well made as some of
these documentaries that have come out. You know, it's gotten to a thing where he and I will watch those together and look at each other like, oh, okay, so that explains that, Like, that's I did not know that. I did not know that. You know, the amber eye thing was was a big one because I was like, I didn't know that was an odd thing. But apparently I just thought it was a normal I shine, you know.
So But yeah, now he's not as into it as I am because I'm going through and looking up like historical things like an old Chickasaw Indian Native American tales for that area. He's just like, yeah, I'll watch the documentary and that's about it.
Well, I think it's great that the two of you watched these documentaries together. That's wonderful. That's how it should be. You'd already seen your own dog man, But when you told you about the message you heard in his head, did that mortify you or did you not believe him?
That scared me. That scared me because I kind of took it as a threat even though it said, you know, I could if I wanted to, but it did not. Yeah, that's kind of scared me, and especially a child that's four and five years old, you know, that kind of made that actually made me angry.
To be quite honest, I can understand why that's horrible. As if it isn't bad enough, him being so young and having that experience is so traumatic already by itself, he has to have a message like that in his head. That's horrible. It really is. You waited until he was ten to tell him about your encounter. Was he mad at you for hiding your encounter from him or did he take it in stride.
He wasn't angry, but he was kind of like, I cannot believe you told me it was a bear with mange. After all those years and then you have that encounter and you know, I'm not crazy. I didn't see things, and I was just like, I never said you were crazy. I just you know, I just I did not want you to be because I know you, and I know how you are. When the sun goes down and you're over it your grandparents, you're going to be calling me wanting to come home because you're afraid the thing's going
to be out in the field again. So you know that's why I told you what I told you. But yeah, now he wasn't angry angry, he was just kind of teasing me for not being upfront with him about it.
Well, you only did that to try to protect him. He's still a kid, so it's doubtful he's going to understand that. But as always, you're just looking out for his best interest.
Yeah, yeah, he and he knows that. He knows that now, but he just I think his thing was he whereas me and my sister had each other where we could, you know, if we wanted to talk about it, we could. I think his thing was he really didn't have anybody to talk about it with. And I think that's where my niece comes in. I think maybe he had mentioned something to her and she said and she, you know, had told him, Oh, well, you know, my mom and your mom had something like that walking home one night.
That's what my mom told me. Because she's a few years older than he is.
I'm so glad he's got her to talk with about this. I mean, when you have an experience like that, when you're a kid, it's always better if you have peers you can bounce things off of. But at least he had her or has her to do that, so thank goodness for that.
Yeah. Yeah, they're close. They're very close, like me and my sister are close.
So well, that's really good. Did your dad not believe in you when you told him about your experience strain your relationship with him? Or were you okay with that?
Oh? No, I'm fine with it. I'm fine with it. What's funny about my dad is it kind of depends on his mood when he wakes up, Like one day he'll be I don't believe in any of that, and then the next day he'll be like, have you been watching this new stuff on Bigfoot? So I just kind
of dismiss it. But you know, it's funny because lately, and I talked to my sister about this, the last few times i've called him, he has specifically brought up dog Man and I don't know if he's watching documentaries on it or if he's you know, and he keeps bringing it up to me, and I don't tell him my story anymore. I'm just like, uh huh, uh huh, And he's just like, yeah, I don't really I don't
really believe in all that. I think that's just people are just misidentifying some animals, you know, that they see or whatever. And now it makes me wonder if he's actually seen something and he's kind of trying to bring up the topic because my father, my father is one of those. He's eighty now, he's one of those that he's just he's not going to bring it up, like, he's not going to admit that he's seen something unless I bring up the topic first.
Well, if he's still living there, he just might have seen one. What are you going to do if he does call you aplet one night crying for help because he just saw a dog man? Are you going to rebuff him or listen to him?
Oh? I'll listen to him. I'll absolutely listen to him, you know. And I'll also tell him I told you so.
Oh that's a given you have to do that. He's got that coming. Before I ask you for your closing comments, TJ, I just want to remind everyone that the first four episodes of my new Dogmian podcast are revealed for listening now. I just publish them tonight again. The new podcast is called dog Me Entails And to find out how to listen please go to Dogmanencounters dot com and visit the podcast page. I posted links for the new show there.
Now we have that taken care of, TJ. Do you have any clothes in comments you'd like to share?
No, I don't, other than beware of the corn fields.
Yeah, they definitely do seem to be drawn to them. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on sharing the details of not only your experience, but your son's experience as well. I really appreciate it.
Well, thank you, Thank you for having me. It's been very helpful talking about it.
Well, that's great. I'm glad it's been beneficial. Well, if I can ever help you out in the future, please do let me know. Hopefully there won't be any problems, but if you do have any down the road, I'll be there for you. So please remember that.
Oh I will. I appreciate that.
Oh you're welcome. Thanks again so much, and have a great night.