Is the Michigan Dogman Due in 2027? How a 1987 Prank Set the Clock

If you live in Michigan, you may have noticed the countdown. Within a week this fall, two Flint radio stations ran features with the same hook: the Michigan Dogman – a seven-foot, upright, dog-headed creature of the northwest woods – supposedly shows itself only in years ending in seven, so 2027 is next. Club 93.7 asked on September 24 whether 2027 could “provide more sightings,” and Banana 101.5 followed on October 1 with a list of past encounters from 1887 onward.

The cycle makes a good headline. But the clearest thing about it is where it came from: a song written by a Traverse City disc jockey as an April Fools’ joke. Here is what is documented, what is claimed, and why the Dogman keeps growing anyway.

A joke that took on a life of its own

On April 1, 1987, WTCM-FM in Traverse City aired “The Legend,” a spoken-word song about a dog-man that attacks in the seventh year of every decade. Steve Cook, who worked at the station, wrote and recorded it, crediting the recording to “Bob Farley,” and has said he made the creature up “completely from my own imagination,” according to Wikipedia’s account.

In a 2023 interview with WCMU Public Radio, Cook said he created the character because he had always been fascinated by werewolves, and that the morning host played the song twice before there was any reaction. About an hour later, a man called to say he had seen the creature 50 years earlier, in 1937: while fishing along the Muskegon River, he said, a pack of dogs circled him and one of them stood up on its hind legs and looked at him. In remarks quoted by writer Buddy Moorehouse, Cook named the caller as Robert Fortney, and Banana 101.5 places Fortney’s encounter on the Muskegon River near the village of Paris.

Other calls followed. Central Michigan Life reported in 2017 that Cook was shocked by how many listeners phoned in with sightings of their own, and Wikipedia’s account says the song was the station’s most-requested in the weeks that followed.

The sevens

Today’s articles routinely trace the Dogman to 1887, when lumberjacks in Wexford County are said to have seen a creature with a man’s body and a dog’s head. Wikipedia’s citation for this story is a 2007 travel book, and we found no contemporary record of it. The 1937 encounter, too, surfaced only after the broadcast – and once listeners knew the rule, sightings that fit it were the ones most likely to be remembered and retold, which makes the pattern hard to treat as independent evidence. The skeptical podcast Skeptoid, examining the legend in 2015, traced the ten-year cycle to Cook’s song and argued that the song gave scattered campfire tales a shared name and shape.

The year of the song brought one of the legend’s defining incidents. In July 1987, a vacant cabin near Luther, in Lake County, was found damaged, and some locals and newspapers blamed the Dogman. According to Moorehouse’s account in a March 31, 2026 article for Enjoyer, which cites contemporary coverage, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources concluded from paw prints and bite marks that a dog was responsible.

In 2007 – the next “seven” – a silent, home-movie-style clip known as the Gable Film was presented as footage of a Dogman attack. Skeptoid reports that it was a hoax made by Mike Agrusa, a fan of Cook’s song, and that its fakery was confirmed on the History Channel series MonsterQuest in 2010.

Still growing

None of that has slowed the Dogman down. Michigan Public reported in October 2025 that Vic Cundiff, host of the podcast Dogman Encounters Radio, has interviewed more than 600 people who say they have seen the creature over the past decade. Cundiff told the station his main work is “trying to help traumatized Dogman witnesses,” and that he does not try to prove the creature exists. Rachel Clark of the Archives of Michigan told the same program that people have been “scared to death” by sightings. The state Department of Natural Resources has never identified any such animal.

In December 2025, the documentary company Small Town Monsters released Dawn of the Dogman, directed by Seth Breedlove, on streaming platforms. The film centers on the late author Linda Godfrey, whose books on Wisconsin’s Beast of Bray Road compared that creature to the Michigan reports. And in February, the Great Lakes Loons, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ High-A affiliate in Midland, unveiled a “Michigan Dogmen” alternate identity for select 2026 games, describing the creature as a symbol of “curiosity, wonder, and the thrill of adventuring into the unknown.” As SportsLogos.Net pointed out, by the legend’s own rules the team was a year early.

What to expect in 2027

If the past is any guide, 2027 will bring a wave of Dogman stories – and the song’s 40th anniversary will help. That says more about how legends spread than about what lives in the woods. Skeptics point out that no Dogman photo or video has stood up to scrutiny, and Skeptoid argued that tracks presented as evidence look more like those of wolves or coyotes. Some witnesses may have seen a bear standing on its hind legs, a mangy coyote or a large dog in poor light.

Cook himself has stayed in the middle. He calls himself a skeptic – “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he told WCMU, noting there is never a “really super clear image or video” – but has also said he believes the people who report sightings did see something. In 2017 he described the Dogman as a composite of creatures like Bigfoot and the chupacabra, and said he had not realized he was building on older regional folklore. Whatever turns up in 2027, it will arrive with a soundtrack.