excerpted from "The Beast of Bray Road" by Linda Godfrey
Michigan may be known for its wolverines, but far stranger and more terrifying beasts roam its deep forests. The Dog Man, as he has come to be known, has terrorized all those who have encountered him in the state's northernost logging camps and woods. The Dog Man existed only as backwoods folklore until 1987 when Traverse City radio deejay Steve Cook, wrote a song he called The Legend, with lyrics pulled straight from the tales of dogman encounters.
" I've always been a folklore collector," Cook told me in a 1992 phone interview. He first played his ballad on April Fool's Day, 1987, on WTCM radio in Traverse City and was not prepared for the reaction. People who had had their own close encounters with the dogman got the shakes when they heard Cook's song. Then they picked up their phones. "People were calling in and saying, 'Where did that song come from? My dad saw this thing,' " said Cook. The song began spreading to other Michigan stations, and local newspapers expanded the story.
