Spooky on the Road | Michigan Cryptids and Paranormal Lore with Ashley Hilt

Conversation transcript, edited from an automatic transcription. Minor transcription errors may remain; not checked word for word against the audio. Advertising and separate introductory promotional material omitted. Speaker changes are not individually labeled.

Well, hello, my spookies. You know, we can't keep meeting like this. People are going to talk. I'm your host here, still in frigid northern Michigan. I was just watching people ice fish out front, and I did not punch my foot through the frozen lake, And whoever told you that is a liar. But side note, my socks have not dried yet, and I'm not sure if they'll be able to. But I have a very special guest I'm bringing on today, someone who I've wanted to bring on the podcast for a while, but we never had the perfect excuse.

But now with Weekly Spooky on the Road, I feel like we do. And that is Ashley Hilt. Ashley, how are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. Ashley is a Fortean investigator, which do you want to define that real quick for the audience? Yeah. Yeah, it's actually a common question. So in Fortean studies, it's basically an umbrella statement for cryptozoology, ufology, the paranormal. It's anything and everything that includes anomalous phenomena or things that happen without legitimate scientific backing yet. and that includes cryptids the paranormal all kinds of things it's a very big blanket right oh yeah anything and everything weird that's me that's my job i'm i'm the expert and you also host well you host several podcasts but the one that i'm most familiar with is on wednesdays we talk weird i do i do um on wednesdays we talk weird covers um the 40 and topics and then some will break apart conspiracy theories and also delve into some true crime cases.

So it is a very broad spectrum, but there is something for everybody. And it's it's fun. We're funny. We think we're funny. Other people think we're funny. You guys will probably think we're funny. You should check it out. Yeah, definitely check out on Wednesdays. We talk weird. It's the perfect show to listen to after you listen to Weekly Spooky. See, It works great because we both come out on Wednesdays. Exactly. It's like peanut butter and jelly.

So it is. So as I sit here in the great white north of Michigan, have you ever been to the far north in Michigan? I've not been to the far north of Michigan, but I have been to Michigan. I've been to the far south of Michigan, but I've not been in the upper peninsula yet. I definitely want to. There is a lot going on up there. Right in between the two big old lakes you got up there, there's a ton of high strangeness.

So you're in the spookiest part of probably the whole country, to be honest with you. Well, I'm not in the UP. I'm actually 15 minutes from the bridge, and then I'm in the— Oh, gotcha. So I'm at the tip of the mitten, like all the way at the top of the glove. and I was actually driving to a Walmart yesterday and when I was coming back it was the the sun had went down and I looked over and I saw a search not a searchlight but a lighthouse and I was like what the and then I looked at the GPS map and I went oh the Great Lake is right there like like you can't quite see it past the trees but it's right there it's like not even a mile away which was pretty cool.

So, but I am going to the UP in the next couple of days. So I would love nothing more as I sit in this cozy cabin in the dead of winter. And I do mean dead of winter than to have you just scare the ever loving crap out of me with some of your favorite terrifying folklore and encounters that you've heard about and things like that, about this very rich, very rich area for cryptids in the paranormal.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I don't want to start with everybody's favorite. I already know what you guys want to hear. And it's coming, but you're going to have to wait. I promise it's here. First, I'm going to talk about the dog man. That's a big one. The dog man, the Michigan dog man is basically, I mean, it's more of a bipedal canine. So it doesn't necessarily have human characteristics aside from the fact that it stands up on two legs and is very, very large.

Reports are anywhere from, actually from four feet all the way up to eight feet. And sometimes I've heard of bigger. But the dogman kind of started becoming popular after the 1880s. We had a couple of lumberjacks that were out doing their job and they ended up encountering one of these creatures and didn't stop talking about it. we also had the tale in the 60s of a gentleman who was out fishing and had actually been attacked by a pack of dogs and so he had the fortune of owning a firearm and he fired it off in the direction of the dogs and they all scattered except for one who proceeded to grin at him and stand up on his back legs and the dog did eventually retreat but the story picked up more so in the 80s.

So in 1987, a disc jockey by the name of Steve Cook wrote a song for April Fool's Day called The Legend. And it's a fun song. Go listen to it. He's redone it a couple of times, but it's like it has stories of this werewolf creature in it. And after he put the song out there again as an April Fool's Day joke, calls started flooding in from presidents of Michigan saying, I've seen this thing.

This thing is real. It ended up becoming the most requested song on the radio station. So, I mean, you know, there's likely something to it. In Michigan alone, there are more sightings of the Dogman than there are of Bigfoot. That's a big deal because there's about 150 sightings of Bigfoot per year in Michigan. Wow. So the Dogman, are there legends of the Dogman? Now, I forgot to mention this for the audience.

We're both Ohioans. We are. So we're both used to living with Michigan as our hat. It's just right up there. So we're not far apart at all. Are there dogmen in Ohio? oh absolutely um well i have actually a big um a big hot spot for dogman so we have um more local to you to you and i is actually in germantown you have the beast of butter street and uh i have a terrifying tale i didn't put this in my notes but i think i can remember it of a gentleman who would go out to the germantown area and kind of investigate and he's found all kinds of weird stuff um he's found deer that have been like half mutilated that he leaves that you know he leaves it there and he comes back weeks later and nobody else has touched it no no scavengers will touch it um which is very odd because typically if you leave a dead deer in the middle of the woods and you come back it's gone um that's kind of a kind of a trait of the dogmen is that once they like sink their claws into something uh nothing else touches it but he actually had a very disturbing encounter um and i'll go ahead and plug away here you can find this whole story in a small town monsters documentary american werewolves but he had a horrifying encounter where he was out there one day and he found clothes and just thinking that maybe it was some type of garbage you know he starts looking through the clothes they're obviously clothes of a woman um he starts looking at them and they're very bloody there was a sweater the sweater had claw marks in it He said it looked like Freddy Krueger had a hold of this thing and just blood everywhere.

He calls the police. The police just said, we're not worrying about it. It's just garbage. And then he believes that a couple of years later, he may have actually located or located the family of a missing young woman who would frequently jog that area. So very disturbing. You know, and this is a grown man in his 50s. And if you talk to him about this story, I mean, he's in tears. He's got real genuine fear about some dog-like creature living in Germantown, Ohio, of all places.

You know, so, yeah, there's lots and lots of dog man stories, you know, in Ohio, in this region in general. Michigan's kind of part of this weird series of window areas with Ohio kind of being the central point of it. Because you've got Michigan. That's weird. You've got Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania all have very, very similar legends and lore. So maybe there's something to that. Huh. Yeah, because I was talking with a friend of mine on the last episode of this this spooky on the road, and he wasn't so much an expert, but he was a lifelong Miss Michigan and a Boy Scout as a child.

So he knew a lot of interesting things. And he had mentioned the melon heads. oh yeah and i had heard of the melon heads in ohio yeah yeah we have we have melon heads here um melon heads was one of my thing that you know that i had here um so yeah we'll talk about that for a minute uh the melon heads are like children with gigantic heads but they're huge you know and um you know but but but the story to them varies from area to area but a lot of folks believe that the legend of the melon heads originate in michigan um as a matter of fact there is a location um in michigan that they have let me cool that up here where are my melon heads here we go that way you can tell me it's right near where i am where is it i'm sorry lake town township lake town township while you're talking i'm gonna see how far i am from there you you absolutely should well there's a place there called Felt Mansion.

And Felt Mansion used to be, well, I think it's been a couple of things, but it's been like a Catholic school, you know, for one. But as the story goes, in relation to the Melonheads, they lived not right at Felt Mansion, but on the same property that Felt Mansion was. There was also, as the story goes, an asylum or a hospital or something. And there was a doctor who either had these children who had hydrocephalus and experimented on them or experimented on them to the point to where they ended up developing hydrocephalus.

And eventually the melon heads, the kids, they rebelled and they killed the doctor and cannibalized him and then ran off to go live in the woods of Lake Town Township. And actually they move around via underground tunnels within that area, sometimes attacking people and cannibalizing them because they're hungry, inbreeding amongst themselves, creating a little colony, but not quite large enough for us to catch a glimpse of. Well, good news. I'm over 200 miles away from them.

They're toward Grand Rapids. So I should be okay on that one. Of course, the further I get into the cold, the more dangerous it gets in many ways. But we'll talk about that later because I know you don't want to keep... This is the foreplay, the 40 and foreplay, if you will. Yeah. So to get back to the dog man in Michigan, is there are there more of them in the Upper Peninsula or do they tend to just be scattered?

Or is there like a kind of a place that they that they have been seen more or that they've been seen as more aggressive or anything like that? I really wouldn't say that there is one area that's more heavily populated populated than the other. a theory with a lot of these creatures is that the way that they evade us to begin with why we can't prove that they exist is because they migrate a lot they don't stay in one place and that's why we can't find them if you have a collection of sightings in one area quote unquote a flap is what we call them you have a flap in one area then you're not going to you know once you start investigating it it seems to disappear entirely you know and it's because they tend to live in that area and then move along.

However, the border between Michigan and Wisconsin seems to be highly active. So I would say that if you're going to try to catch a glimpse of one, that's kind of the area that you would want to be. I believe it. The further north you go in Michigan, and I've only been so far north, but this is my second time going way up the mitten, it gets very sparse very quickly to the point where when I got to Carp Lake, Michigan, which is, like I said, almost to the total tip of the mitten, when I got here, the traffic lights are not currently on because it's winter.

So why bother? And yeah, nobody's out and about. I went to the marina store to get some supplies and I asked the lady, do you have any milk? And she said, oh no, we don't get milk this time of year. Oh, wow. Yeah, she was like, there might be some at the general store, but otherwise you got to go 30 minutes to the Walmart South because it's just different here. I needed a supply in a kind of a hurry, and I put the address of my cabin into Amazon.

Amazon said they could get me something in six days with Prime. Nice. So that's how it gets, though. The more you go north, the more it feels like you're getting to the end of the world in a way. When I got about an hour from here, it was five o'clock in the afternoon and there were only two other cars on the highway with me. There's no rush hour here. There's nothing like that.

I find it charming as well as ominous. I find it both simultaneously. Charminous, if you will. but i'm in this perfect charming that's gonna be that's every vacation i go and i'm always like yeah i'm gonna go into a nice cabin in the middle of nowhere no one can hear you scream it's very pretty though yeah you know that's it's it's very charming i can relate so that's yeah so that's why i the more i think about out here the more i'm like i wouldn't be surprised you know that there was something out there unexpected things because you know you get a lot of a lot of elements because as you know as when we've talked i'm not a huge necessarily believer in the paranormal and cryptids sure i love the storytelling aspect very very much i find it very interesting to learn about it to hear what people are saying to hear what people are experiencing and i'm not really concerned with the on my end with the arguing you know what i mean like i just want to hear what people have experienced and learn about it and hopefully get some goosebumps, you know, and have a fun time because that's the great thing about human stories.

Let me give you a great piece of advice while you're up there. Talk to the locals about their weird encounters. You know, sometimes when we were doing an investigation on the Beast of Butter Street, the Germantown dogman, I walked into a bar because I had to go to pee really bad and the only place that was open was one little tiny bar in this tiny town. I walk in there and I do my thing, I come back out, I go up to the bartender, there's like three other people sitting at the bar and I'm like, hey you ever heard about the beast's butter street and i just throw it out i threw it out there and he's like what i'm like well allegedly you guys have this like it's like a werewolf werewolf is the easiest way to explain dog maybe say dog man it sounds ridiculous but if you say werewolf it sounds cool um i like the dog man's crazy werewolf sure yeah werewolf yeah but dog man you know um so just like yeah you guys have a werewolf he's like we have a big eagle thing which is the first time i'd ever heard about the big eagle thing so i was like what does that mean what's that is that a thunderbird you know but uh he didn't know he had no idea what i was talking about but the lady sitting at the bar she did she knew exactly what i was talking about and um you know she started sharing some kind of information my research partner was waiting for me in the choir she was getting worried so she was like you do to get out here we're in we are not in friendly territory we're always nervous going into small towns because they know everybody they don't know us you know um but she kind of started talking but you know you can go I mean you can go almost any small town almost any small town and you know getting over the fear of just asking them hey what's your weird story um you'd be surprised how many people are more than happy to share with you that either something happened to them or they grew up within their family and they had this report of thing that had happened um if you're able to really get out there I always tell people go talk to the bush people go talk to the people that live off the grid because they'll just tell you that these things are very real.

It's not a matter of are they or aren't they. They are. And this is how they live their life, according to the fact that they know these things exist around their home. So, yeah, talk to the people up there, though. I'm sure they would give you some really great stuff. Oh, and so far, they've been incredibly polite. I walked into a kind of a biker bar place. It was like kind of a, you know, kind of a working class bar and a biker bar combined because you could really see the delineation when you walked in of who were the bikers and who were the folk oh yeah the town folk and when i walked in it was awesome it was like a movie except in a good way everybody stopped and looked at me and then one guy just went dude i love it and then they all just kind of went back to their thing i i mean my audience knows i dress like a maniac so yeah everywhere i go um i i remember i was like after after my experience chatting with people there and getting my food i was like i think i'm the mayor of carp lake now i think that's how that works that's how i thought when i went to arkansas yeah yeah i definitely had that see it everywhere i went everybody was complimenting everything about me um just because i i also have a very um loud demeanor about myself physically and uh yeah no it was great everybody was so nice though i was like a celebrity i was like, oh my gosh, I'm famous here.

In the last six or seven years, I have not traveled anywhere and gotten hassled. It's just not happening anymore. Now people are just kind of like, hey, you're doing your own thing. I like that. And I'm like, thank you. I like you too. Boom. Yeah. Because my friends will always be like, oh man, you're going to the South. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to go have everybody call me Sugar and Sweetie.

I'm not worried about this place at all. You know, there are still some places that you can end up at. We ended up in, this is a little off topic, but we ended up in a town in West Virginia. And on the way in, there's no cell phone service at all. There's no cell phone service going into the town or out. On the way in, we passed by a house that had a noose freely hanging out in the front yard.

It does happen, but you know, read the room. If you're in a town where there's a noose, probably go somewhere else you know yeah no i would i would have to unless it's halloween you know then i'd be like i wonder i wonder well it was september so maybe they're just early decorators we did stay we did opt to stay and we had a great time um but uh you know i'll probably never go back again well you know probably not but uh but that is not the norm that's one time out of all of the times of every small town that i've been to and i've been to a lot typically everybody is super friendly.

The locals are very welcoming of you and your person. Just talk to people. Yeah. And I recommend that going anywhere for any purpose. Talk to folks as much as you can about anything. Just enjoy that interaction. I love being places that are out of the way because the people are very interesting. They've chosen to live in a very Different way, even if they're just in a town that's like 45 minutes from a city.

Like, that's a different way of living. So, yeah. So get back to the dog man. Do you have any accounts? Oh, it's all good. People know how I ramble. Are there any accounts of highly aggressive dog men besides that one you were telling me about with the one that kind of grinned at the man? Yeah, actually, Dogman is typically revered as being extremely aggressive. You know, as far as specific stories of Michigan, I don't think, I mean, if you're talking the most aggressive, well-known story about the Dogman, that's definitely the beast at the Land Between the Lakes, which is the area between Kentucky and Tennessee. okay it's a national park and allegedly in the 1980s um there was an entire family that was slaughtered while camping out in the land between the lakes and um when they arrived on the scene i mean the the people there was a mom and a dad and a son and later discovered a daughter the uh mom and the dad and the son were all clawed up and bitten into um and there really isn't any land between the lakes is a big nature reserve but there really isn't anything that causes that type of injury to people um they didn't know there was a daughter initially until they found blood dripping from tree um and that's when they found the little girl's body dangling up in the tree there um so that's the most in the tree dangling up in the tree that's some predator stuff right there i mean man hanging from the tree yeah so pretty horrifying story i know it that's mortifying See, that's what I'm talking about.

See, now I'm like looking, I'm looking to my left and I'm looking to my right. That's what I want. I want you to make me so afraid to enjoy my time here. So, so one question for you as an expert and you are an expert. What would you recommend if you, if you believed you were encountering the dog man, like what would be your instructions to survive the encounter? um well first and foremost don't engage um you know don't um try to like when you encounter a bear right what they tell you is to make yourself look big right that's going to scare the bear away don't do that this is a dog you have to keep that in mind canines will then take that as a challenge and they will maul you um you would just kind of slowly get out of that area you definitely want to come armed um that's i mean anytime i i'm i have mixed feelings about about guns and that's neither here nor there but if you're out in the middle of the woods you need to be able to be protected not just from potential dogmen but from things like bears and coogers oh yeah i will tell you i have i have a firearm i'm not ashamed to admit it i have a firearm that i literally named my walkabout gun it's for when you're in the middle of nowhere in the woods yes yes yeah because there's many many dangers and even other people are very dangerous in the woods so oh yeah um you know but if if you have a firearm with you um you could potentially try to um engage the firearm i wouldn't shoot directly at it i would just shoot near it to let it know hey i'm armed um and then i would get out of there i wouldn't run but i would definitely do a brisk walk away from the area one thing that you want to avoid if you're out in the woods is uh tobacco tobacco usage if you smoke um there's it's it's tough but a lot of people say that tobacco actually draws these things and so i guess if you want to see one then smoke but it's like offensive tobacco is very offensive to these creatures you say that as i'm like the first thing i want the first thing i want to do ashley when i get into a beautiful forest is smoke a cigar for an hour and a half i'm not even joking you are ruining my dog man i mean that's how you do it you know um but yeah that's that is you know that's that's what they say um i am a regular smoker and as a matter of fact when i go i have some spiritualness to myself when i go to a lot of these places i will take loose leaf tobacco and i'll leave it in certain spots so i'm i guess i'm not very smart either i'm asking for it um But but that is something if you want to avoid these things that don't bring don't bring tobacco with you.

So one more question about the dog man before we move on. So the dog man, is this a like, is it believed to be like a type of canine that has human characteristics or is this believed to be some kind of a lycanthrope type deal where it's a person who's become a dog man? Well, that really depends on the story. you know in in New Orleans they've got the Rougarou okay which is more of a of a lycanthropy case so it's somebody who is cursed I can't remember exactly how that happens but they're only cursed for a certain amount of time before the Rougarou curse you know goes off with it itself but they do actually change from human to canine back and forth but the dog man itself is different and that it doesn't have these it's it's not human uh never was human and it has you know it was born a dog man and it lived the dog man know whether or not that thing is a terrestrial undiscovered species of animal or something demonic or supernatural i mean i've got people that are convinced that this is not like something of this earth um i had another gentleman actually in in new orleans and he says it's a werewolf um has always said it's a werewolf he him and a group of buddies about five of them were attacked by one of these things and uh it was the most i mean it gave this man ptsd for the rest of his life um he thought for a long time that at night every time it was nighttime that this thing was going to come after him for like 10 years would sleep with a shotgun on his lap on his couch uh with the house boarded up because he was so scared of this thing um but now again he's convinced that this is some type of supernatural being and again when you have these encounters with this thing across the board it's much more terrifying than say like seeing a bigfoot a lot of people see bigfoot and they're like oh my gosh it's bigfoot people see dogman and they're instantly overcome with this fear with this intense fear some people have even reported these things telepathically communicating with them Actually, there was a report out of Michigan where a guy said that he had seen this dog man as a young child out in the woods, but it didn't attack.

And then again, as an adult, he saw this thing again on his property and he happened to have a machete with him and he was going to go after it. And the thing before it darted off into the woods, turned around, stood up on his back legs and told him, don't, and then went on its way, which is wild. That's crazy to me. Yeah, I know that's wild. So to bring it all to a boil, boil it all down.

Bigfoot, misunderstood creature. Dog man, don't mess with him. No, just leave him alone. He's a criminal. Yeah, leave him alone. Plenty of stuff about dog man out there. You could do a whole entire episode just on it if people are interested. I think there's a whole podcast just on dog man stories. Just sit out there. Google dog man. You'll find it. Well, we're going to take a quick break to hear from our commercial sponsors, but we'll be right back with Spooky on the Road after this.

All right, we're back. We just got done dogging around. That's not a saying. I don't know why I said that. I might be going crazy. I've been in this cabin alone for like five days, but that's fine so we've covered the dog man and i am i am a little creeped out especially because you mentioned that tobacco bring it tracks him and literally the first thing i was gonna do when i got to the national park and the up was light up a cigar because that's what i do when i'm in the woods yeah you should do that totally yeah oh yeah and wear a body camera uh yeah yeah just live stream it to me at least and that's fine yeah so you're like listen i'll write the book about about what happened to your body thanks no you know what you have the you have the rights if i get murdered by a cryptid ashley hilt you have the rights to the story of what happened to me that's a contract i said it out loud and it was recorded that's true legally bindings legally binding so we've gotten through the dog man what else is there for me to keep an eye out for in michigan well why don't we talk about uh some things in the water oh yeah there's i mean i'm literally next to a big lake right now and i'm near the biggest lake ever as well um yeah there is definitely a lot of uh interesting interesting stories surrounding the big lakes.

I mean, like I said, up there in the Upper Peninsula, you're right in between two of the largest lakes. Well, one of them is the largest lakes, you know, of the Great Lakes, which are steeped in lots of history. But one creature I want to talk about is Pressy. Pressy happens to be the Lake Superior monster. The creature is said to have a serpent's body, horse-type head, the tail of a whale, a long neck, it's blackish green in color, and it's up to 75 feet long, depending on the report.

Lake Superior is absolutely massive. So, I mean, it's no surprise there that something equally as massive could live there. But what was really interesting to me about this is that, you know, it does have an encounter that i just i really wanted to bring up um as recently as the 1990s there was a witness that was out there on a boat who actually saw this creature get out of the water jumped out of the water and chomped onto a buck standing near the water and pulled it in like an alligator like like a crocodile yes like a crocodile with its big horse like head and um it chomped down with such force on the entire body of this thing the head had popped off the the buck and laid there on the shore where the rest of the body was was eaten i guess taken and eaten wow i've i've i don't think i don't think i mean i've heard some stories of like lake monsters but I've never heard of one hunting on the shore.

Yeah. Well, there is a lot of reports of things like that. One of the first Nessie sightings, which of course is across the pond there, was a veterinarian student that saw Nessie walking across the road. But the stories of these things coming up out of the water are really fascinating to me because you think you're safe just because you're not in the water clearly that's not the case um even standing next to the water has its risks and uh i'd hate to be that if you stand next to the water smoking a cigar you're fucking dead that's what you're telling me i get it i get where you're going exactly yeah you can't do it right outside the tree line by the water now either so basically the only safe place to smoke ironically is on an airplane where you're not allowed to smoke.

Exactly. Yeah, pretty much. Well, I mean, even then, there are Thunderbirds and... I knew it. I knew the Thunderbirds. I knew they were coming into this to cause me to just be terrified of everything. As if flying isn't scary. You just shouldn't smoke. Ah! Now you sound like my mother. It's okay. I'm guilty, too. I get it. But, yeah, it's, you know, it's just one of those things, you know. But, yeah, this thing was horrifying. horrifying it hasn't really been seen very often as of late it doesn't seem like it needs to it seems like it would have a very good food source uh lake superior is home to sturgeon which sturgeon are um honestly probably responsible for a lot of these sightings sometimes because they're huge and they're intimidating they get up to like 25 feet long um but that doesn't explain the horse head and the whale tail and 75 feet.

But it obviously, again, it has a dedicated food source. It doesn't need to hunt outside of the water unless it's craving something besides seafood. Oh, no. Now you're saying it's even worse because I'll be near the water and it'll be like, I'm craving Hispanic food. And I'll be like, ay, ay, ay. Everything's killing me. Everything wants to kill me yeah yeah everything does um it's gonna slurp me down and go mucho caliente yeah no nature is a serial killer in case you didn't know um it wants to kill you you know so uh don't be mistaken you know you're not special it'll kill you too um but and i know those those giant sturgeons by the way are i mean the science completely believes that there are gargantuan sturgeons in the great lakes like based on everything that you know science understands about the size creatures grow and the kinds of food they have access to they have no doubt that there are gargantuan sturgeon in the water so that's definitely a part of it yeah we know that they're there um you know again some people you might see a video where a picture pop up every once in a while and you see this odd shape and you know to somebody who doesn't know or isn't familiar with the sturgeon which is horrifying in and of itself because it is so large and ugly um but you know you wouldn't know and you'd be like oh that's something um it's not exactly the sturgeon you need to be afraid of it it is what eats the sturgeon and you know we do think that there are things that are big enough to take those guys down and that's scary um so So, Preci very well could be one of them.

I mean, my cryptid interest is somewhat casual. I've always loved the story of the Loch Ness Monster. I've always thought Bigfoot was really fascinating. But I've never heard of such a creature leaping out and grabbing a buck. That scares me. Yeah, that is something else. There's always something. Even in your own backyard, there's always something. And I recommend people who aren't from Michigan listening to this kind of take a look at what you got because you'd be surprised of some of the stories.

But I do I do have other water stories for the Michigan area. You want me to continue with the next one? Absolutely. This one's kind of more of a ghost story, really. But it has ties to Native American lore, and that is the sand on Beatty Greene. so uh bay degree beach is in the upper peninsula and the sand there makes a singing sound when you press down on it with your palm okay so if you press them in the sand it'll sing and then if you strike it really hard it makes it barks um which is really fascinating now the sand they've actually taken the sand and moved it to other beaches to see if they can replicate the phenomena and nobody's been able to yet.

The legend behind it is that, you know, the sand is the voice of a Native American maid crying out to her lost lover who died at sea in Lake Superior. And, you know, scientists can't really, I mean, they just kind of, they're like, okay, that's a good enough explanation for us. There isn't an explanation for why the sand sings, but it does. So if you are close enough to that area and it's not too frozen, you should definitely go take your cigar and press your hand down on the sand.

That's wild. Yeah, that's an interesting one. Have you heard anything about anything in frozen waters, like under frozen lakes or anything like that? I'm just curious. No, not anything in particular. But, you know, fish in particular are interesting creatures. freshwater fish a lot of them you can actually i mean you go to pet string by goldfish and uh freeze it pop it in your freezer alive and when you take it out and unthaw it it's still alive um this is not us saying you should do that we're just saying you know no no no you could right no no yeah don't do this that's animal cruelty but um but you can't i mean a lot of freshwater fish species can freeze completely and live through it, which is, that's just the hate.

That's a scientific fun fact right there. That's interesting. Yeah, no, that's fascinating. I was out yesterday on the lake when I didn't punch my foot through any ice and get water in my socks, which then turned ice, which did not happen. When I was on the frozen lake, I was talking with one of the fisherman and he had just caught a walleye that was about a foot long in this frozen water it's wild yeah yeah it is it is very interesting how hardy these things are and how they don't really need particular conditions to to exist whereas like if that were us in the water we'd freeze to death and we die and we'd be dead and that's that well did you know kind of perfected chirogenics way better than we could.

They've perfected so much because saltwater creatures and freshwater creatures, saltwater creatures live in a very ideal environment compared to freshwater fish. Freshwater fish have to deal with bacteria. They have to deal with predators on land and in the water. They have to deal with cold. They have to deal with all of these different things. if you ever want to be mortified look at a photo of a crab and then look at a photo of a freshwater crab right next to it the freshwater crab looks like it's seen some shit it definitely has yeah and that's why i i first learned this i was reading an army field survival guide because i'm weird and i read things like that and it and it was breaking down like what kinds of fish you can catch and it showed the saltwater version next to the freshwater version and the freshwater version was always so much more terrifying than the saltwater version.

And of course you can eat saltwater fish. Just you could pull them out of the water and just eat them. Um, I mean, you'd want some soy sauce, but you could, um, as to where a freshwater fish, you need to cook it unless you're a bear. Yeah. Like, cause it's going to be full of bacteria. Yeah. It's just not going to be a good time freshwater fish are i mean they give me a run for my money man they're badass like kudos to them for surviving um because i couldn't do half the stuff that they do if i were a fish so i don't like to be called portuguese i like to be called freshwater spanish let's just continue past that joke wow but you gotta leave it in um now oh no i'm leaving that no for sure okay well we'll move on to um you know uh by a state lake michigan um lake michigan has what has been dubbed as well you've heard of the bermuda triangle um now get ready for the lake michigan triangle um basically the same concept uh lots of people have been lost at sea in lake michigan um let me see there was actually um a series of there's like a flap there where pretty much anybody and everybody that sailed across it was not coming back um some people claim that there is a portal in the middle of the lake and that it either slows time or speeds up time sometimes.

Other people report seeing UFOs over the lake quite a bit or just strange bright lights in the sky. And one thing that I know a little bit about in my field is, you know, recently we've had these strange reports of a winged humanoid around Lake Michigan that's now been dubbed the Lake Michigan Mothman. And there is a theory that it comes from a portal in the middle of Lake Michigan and that's why it's there.

So don't go out on the lake. I'm starting to see a pattern of don't go out. You just don't go anywhere ever. Or be in Michigan. Because I'd heard that there was a Michigan triangle, but I hadn't learned anything about it. I learned about the Alaska triangle recently, but I haven't done a deep dive into the Michigan one yet. So there are a bunch of triangles everywhere uh i don't know if the triangle is just the the holy symbol of weird or what the deal is there you've got the lake michigan triangle you've got the bridgewater triangle um you've got the texas dog man triangle i mean there's there's a ton of them um if you are within a triangle formation anywhere at all you need to leave as soon as possible um because get the f out take your cigars and get out of there you know we're gonna take a real quick break to hear a word from our sponsors but we'll be right back with spooky on the road All right, we're back, and we were just talking about the deadliness of triangles, the most dangerous shape.

It does look, I mean, of all the shapes you see, it looks the most like one that could stab you so well that has to mean something that's a good point yeah it's never rhombus you know it's never the square it's always the triangle always the damned triangle so so what else you got for me to scare the ever-loving crap out of me and ruin my vacation i got you a couple more things and then i'm gonna i'm saving the best for last and you already know what that is i know you know i is i have a feeling i do you know we started kind of talking about um the mothman a little bit um i do actually have a personal account not for me but from an eyewitness of what they reported as a man bat that they saw in flint michigan that i'd like to read okay um so as per the anonymous user they said i was looking out my window about 4 a.m one night and saw a man-like bat, large with black leather-like skin and bat wings, very muscular, gliding over the power lines.

I felt very threatened by its presence and I stayed quiet and watched it glide by. I then shut and locked my window for the night. I have heard it flying around at night, landing on roofs and watching me and my husband out in our backyard at night. Even my dogs were afraid and wanted to go inside and they never do that, so we all went in because it felt not safe. They are real and scary and I'm afraid to be outside at night alone now. that's horrifying yeah no thank you um you know i can't imagine you know this person with a lot of these uh flying weird creatures they do tend to like reoccur so like if you see it once it's not gonna be the last time you'll ever see it i don't know if they follow you i don't know if they also tend to live in one area at a time and then move along um you know what the case is there um but this certainly isn't an isolated incident out of michigan just a very personal one um where people are seeing these things and they maintain that that's what i saw it's a weird man bat type creature okay so now i've got to fear the man bat all bodies of water yeah the woods if i'm enjoying a cigar triangles and probably some other shapes i'm forgetting and also not freeze to death but that's pish posh that's that's you just being paranoid i don't need to wear long underwear shut your mouth exactly well right exactly no you'll be fine you can uh you're a freshwater um spanish so you can oh man i'll be totally fine total totally fine totally fine so yes that was a horrifying encounter of the man bat in michigan um well i should say ghosts and folklore and creatures aren't your style um maybe you're afraid of visitors from another world well i've got something for you oh okay 1994 um west michigan had the one of the biggest uh documented ufo encounters ever over 300 witnesses saw lights in the sky that actually people um said looked like christmas lights uh they were red and white and green and blue lights that were kind of oscillating from these shapes that were cylindrical um this wasn't just residents that were seeing it as a Matter of fact, these were reported to 911.

They were observed by police officers. And the National Weather Service saw this phenomena happening. And to date, there is no worldly explanation for what everybody saw. It was seen across 42 counties in Michigan. Wow. Because the only thing I can think of is the Aurora Borealis, which does show itself sometimes in parts of Michigan. But that's not exactly the way an Aurora Borealis looks. No. So, yeah. I think the National Weather Service would have known that that's what it was.

You know, they could have been like, oh, that's easy. You know, this was solved. But they didn't. Nobody knew. Nobody knew what this was. So, of course, the only logical explanation to go from here is aliens. Of course. Of course. Of course. But it's also the most fun explanation. No abductions reported that night. yeah no no abductions reported but that doesn't mean there were any um probably we could date back and look at missing persons reports and people that just never came back i mean but then you have to wonder were these lights attractive to the dogmen and it all becomes so clear wake up people the dogman is in the sky of note the lights were not in the shape of a triangle So they're not as threatening as we think, right?

Because we know that. Oh, there would have been no survivors if it had been a triangle of light in the sky. The most deadly shape known to man. But yes, it was not triangular. So I guess they just, I don't know. The UFOs decided that they hated Michigan and they never came back again. I mean, a lot of my friends in Ohio would be like, good for them because they're sports fans.

So they got a hate on Michigan. that's what i tell people about michigan because i love michigan i do and i tell people you know what's great about it is that when i tell people in ohio i'm going to michigan they're like oh michigan when i go to michigan and i tell people i'm from ohio they're like oh really what part it varies but mostly yeah that's what it is it's funny too because like in ohio it'll be like oh i'm going to michigan and you either get somebody who either there's like two kinds of people people who like football and people who like sport this uh outdoor sporting like because if they hunt or fish or anything they're like oh yeah man michigan's the best like that's the way it goes yeah because if you live in ohio and you like doing sporting things outside you go to michigan at least once a year because it's no that's true that's very true that's I really like Michigan.

I recommend it. I do too. Especially once you can outrun the dog man. You're set. He chases your car when you cross the border. But you just get right past it. The good thing about the dog man is he chases your car, but you know if he caught it, he wouldn't know what to do with it. No. He'd probably shake it around in his teeth a little bit. Throw it around. No. no no yeah yeah you gotta get the newspaper out you know tell let them know i'm gonna give you a nice whopping if you don't cut it out right on the tip of the nose so yeah we've got so we've had aliens now what else could there possibly be to the land of michigan i got one more and it's a big one okay i know people have been wanting me to talk about this so I'm excited to get into it.

Are you ready for it? I am. Okay, so within colder areas, Michigan being one of the absolute coldest at the tip there, there is a creature that lurks around the woods, very horrifying. It typically is extremely, extremely skinny. Usually you can see every bone within its little horrible disfigured body. It's usually gray in color, except the mouth, which typically has blood consistently and constantly dripping from it with razor sharp teeth. This creature is known as the Wendigo.

Yes. People love this thing. You know, I think it is the perfect ghost story that has been for centuries. We know that. um so within michigan the the origins of michigan is that it's very um heavily steeped with algonquin lore and legend most notably in michigan you have the the chippewa tribe and what happens to be my my favorite part of the story is that the chippewa don't just talk about the wendigo a lot of their lore that they talk about um also includes the wendigo and i'll kind of get into that in a moment so what what is the wendigo it has kind of two meanings you kind of have two ways to be disrupted by a wendigo you can actually be disrupted by the creature itself which will lure you into the woods oftentimes with shrieks or it may even imitate or mimic the cry of somebody within a tribe or somebody you know whistling that's that's a very popular superstition in that area is if you're whistling in the woods you do not whistle back um and you don't go searching for it you definitely don't go searching for it um but another way that you can encounter a wendigo is actually these creatures walking around uh don't come from some other realms they're actually bred from people so let's just play pretend that it is the 1600s and you are a chippewa tribesman and you have your family there and you guys have just got done with your final hunt before the winter hits and you know you're not going to have enough food this season.

You know that already. And so as the cold winter months come and food becomes scarce and you start starving, the starvation tends to drive you a little bit nuts and desperate. It's been particularly tough to make a fire lately because it won't stop snowing. You're cold. You're hungry. You're probably going to die. Your oldest son has already died. And you're looking at the rest of your family, trying to find a solution.

Well, what's your solution? You're going to eat them. But once you do so, that changes you. It changes you entirely. And then slowly you start pushing the limits more and more amongst your tribesmen. You start exhibiting huge acts of greed and gluttony. You start suggesting to the rest of the tribe that, hey, let's just eat all the dead people. We'll be okay. Your physical appearance starts changing. Eventually, you're becoming more and more emaciated, regardless of the fact that you've now also become insatiable and you can't stop eating your local tribesmen.

The hair starts falling out. The skin starts turning gray because you're not really getting much nutrients off of people. We don't make good eating. Until eventually the tribe either kicks you out entirely or you eat them all. And then you are left to, guess what, roam the woods forever looking for something to eat. So that's essentially how Wendigo comes to be. It's people. They're people. I've always connected with the Wendigo story as being just truly terrifying.

Because you eat people? I'm just kidding. Not now I don't. There's this concept I heard about years and years ago that in the early, early days of the Wendigo legend and lore, it was actually basically a way to cope with the concept of cannibalism being necessary sometimes. yeah so what would happen is somebody would die in the tribe they would eat the meat and then they would all just agree that what happened to that person is the wendigo got them and then as time progressed the the this that went from being um a creature that gets you to being the punishment for cannibalism as you know obviously you would not want to encourage cannibalism especially once things got a little bit better with your tribe it would be a bad idea to uh to encourage it and just that concept the idea that that is one of the ways that the wendigo concept started is truly chilling oh yeah it is very much a cautionary tell yes um you know because it's it you know it deterred you from you know human life is cheap and especially when you're talking about it's between me or them or, you know, you had to have some kind of litmus test for morality for these things.

So the Wendigo spirit is still very much alive today. It's just that it is now shifted into something entirely. It's not so much cannibalism because it's not just cannibalism. That's just where it started because that's what we had. It's gluttony and greed and selfishness. And the people, you know, especially the Chippewa, They're one of the largest, you know, North American tribes that we still have. And, you know, they still very much believe in it, just manifesting in a different form.

But I mentioned a lot of the Algonquin lore has stories that include a creature known as the Wendigo, actually. One of these, this is a wholesome story. I'll give you a wholesome story, is about how the first dog came to be, the first man's best friend. and uh so you had two members of the chippewa tribe that were they they were out on a lake in their canoe and the canoe sprung a hole so they want they came up ashore and a giant which may or may not be bigfoot um actually came along and offered to help the gentleman they said oh wow you look very cold let me go ahead let me take you back to my home we'll take your canoe we'll get you fixed up we'll get you some food they go back to the giant's home and a knock happens on the door and he opens up the door and it's a wendigo and the wendigo looks at the tribesmen and he goes oh my gosh you guys can't be here this is a giant he's gonna he's gonna eat you the reason why he's invited you in he's nice is because he's gonna eat you um and the giant's like hey now wait a minute no that wendigo he's a bad guy i'm the good guy and it becomes uh kind of a battle there who's better um so the giant says you know what i will settle this right now he has a bowl sitting on the floor face downwards and he flips that bowl up and a tiny creature is underneath the bowl resting and as soon as he flips that bowl up the creature grows to large large size and attacks the wendigo and drives it away and the men were just fascinated what is this creature he just saved our lives and he's like oh it's a dog you can have it and as well as feeding the men and taking care of their boats lets the men take his dog as well so very generous gentleman very generous bigfoot or whatever he is um but yeah the story of the first dog includes a wendigo in it so wow you know there's conflicting reports of whether or not there was a physical creature at any point in time and um i think there is i think there is but i don't think it's what we think it is i think it's a mix of lore um but you have reports of people seeing these pale humanoids in the woods a lot I had actually gotten I tried to find it I couldn't find I'd gotten a report of somebody in Michigan who saw a weird skinny person and you know out in the woods was it a crackhead I don't know was it a Wendigo I don't know they didn't really stick around to find out but you do have these reports of these creatures out there and I think that being a Native American at the time and having that story I think the Wendigo story came first the spirit of the Wendigo came burst.

Then they started encountering these creatures, and they just assumed, well, that must be the Wendigo. Who knows? Well, we're going to take a quick break, listen to our sponsors, and we'll be right back. and we're back and after all this wendigo talk i don't know about you but i'm getting hungry oh natal i know and and and i can see the fishermen from my window all alone in their tents he was licking me one of the best uh cannibalism movies ever um have you seen uh uh wendigo the the movie from i think it was 2002 i have not uh the only wendigo movie that i watched was antlers i probably should check out the others antlers was pretty good the only gripe that i had with it was there was too many white people fair they had some natives in there too so one but But I guess it was, I think it was about, you know, fighting the unknown.

So it was kind of fish out of water for them to have to fight the Wendigo. But I have not seen the film Wendigo yet, but I have it with me on the trip. So you better believe tonight I'm going to watch it and regret it later. Hell yeah. Oh, Wendigo. go so well did you know the uh spirit and uh pet cemetery um is is a windigo um really you know if you it is and they they they showcase that in the book more um but if you watch the movie with that perspective um because guess what when you're taking your loved ones and you're burying them guess what you're doing uh you're committing a very selfish act you're not doing it for you And so you have immediate repercussions in the form of zombie, demonic family members and children or whatever.

But yeah, the Pet Sematary is a Wendigo. That's what the spirit is. That's really cool. I mean, because, you know, obviously Native Americans, so that would make sense. So one Michigan thing that my buddy Stu brought up, being a Michigander, he said that when he was a child, they constantly and the scouts brought up the Manitou. Okay. Are you familiar at all with the Manitou? I'm familiar with the Manitou as a concept.

Sure. The Wendigo is considered a type of Manitou. Manitou is just basically any and every negative spirit. It's kind of like how Christians have God and the devil. So within the Algonquin tradition, Manitou is the devil. And so underneath the devil, you've got demons and possession and all this bad stuff. that's at least my understanding of what the manitou is that's what it is okay i mean yeah because that's what i was told i was told the manitou was a benevolent spirit that um when he was a kid he was taught that they had a deer skull and kind of a bizarre body um that was what he was told i mean who knows where that what that's based off of other than you know hearsay among uh scout leaders.

But I found that to be a really striking image of this creature with just a skull for a head, almost the opposite of some of the depictions of the Wendigo, because some of them, it's like a gaunt man and some of them have antlers, some of them don't. It can vary quite a bit. Yeah, the antlers, you know, the depiction of the Wendigo, a lot of people, when they think of it, they think of like the the stag-headed um creature and you know that kind of comes from a little bit of um a little bit of fantasy by a book written by i think his name's algernon black well black something i didn't write this down i should have um but he had described it as being stag-headed and then um i think it's just because of mistranslation because sometimes the windigo again it's a very it's a it's a master of mimicry um it could potentially wear coverings over it to try to mask itself from what it actually is to try to lure you in um and then there's also some tribes very specific tribes have a dance that they'll do in which they don the stag head themselves to keep the wendigo away before the seasons hit um but i could see this all kind of culminating in its own beast and its own creature roaming the woods with the horrifying stag head.

Interesting. And are you aware there is a Windigo, Michigan? I did not know that. So there is a Windigo. It's spelled W-I-N-D-I-G-O, but that's just another spelling for Windigo. But Windigo, Michigan is not only in the Upper Peninsula, it's on an island, a little tiny island i believe it's the farthest west northwestern point of michigan there's this little island and i want to say it's on like isle royale i think is what it's called and it's only accessible by boat or airplane that can land on water and there's a resort there believe it or not okay it's a it's a vacation spot but it is closed from the moment it gets cold until the moment it gets warm you cannot get there there's no way to get there the power is shut off there's no people there the uh the fuel tanks are empty literally it is completely you are you you can't be there like getting there would be damn near impossible wow i've always i've always enjoyed these stories about um how if you go to these islands like up in michigan you know you go to these uh little tiny islands near the up that there's all kinds of weird stuff that happens there because uh hunters will you know get on like a little bush plane and go all the way out there just to get to untouched land tons well because again it's untouched you're correct and so there's tons of lore to be had there.

So what I'm hearing, what I'm hearing is this. You have to go there, okay? Oh God, I want to. You have to take a triangle, you know, the instrument, the triangle, and a cigar. And a cigar, of course, yes. And right in the middle of it, okay? While you're hungry, you have to be hungry. Oh, I'm always hungry. That's no problem. And play your triangle and smoke your cigar and let's just see what happens.

Let's just see. Take a squeaky toy too, just in case of course squeaky toy with you oh it's funny too because you know the first reaction i have when people say um you know oh it's a place that you just can't access in the winter because there's no way in or out and my first thought is but could i go there like for a week during that sure couldn't we make that happen like i just want to know probably i'm sure there's a way i don't think maybe we should i don't think you should maybe talk about it on air but yeah i'm sure there's way what i'm saying is if there are any um charter pilots of ill repute who would like to take me to windigo on isle royale let's talk homie i can pay you in unimaginable horrors beyond all human comprehension i mean it is this is about a 99 percent chance um that this is only a one-way trip so you only have to drop them off and then you can leave yeah that's true too just land drop me off and then take off and then enjoy your cigarette as soon as you're out of the water and away from the land so and they're also across the country and in canada there are some wendigo rivers and wendigo lakes there's a wendigo lake in Wisconsin.

And I find it fascinating. Yeah, I find it fascinating that, I mean, I get it. It's like a major part of their culture. And as far as I could tell from the research I did, and I am not an expert at researching this stuff like you, I couldn't find any evidence that it was like believed to be a Wendigo hotspot so much as it was just kind of a name given to it for reasons.

Sure. So if you do find out why these places are called Wendigo and it's bizarre and scary, you hit me up and we'll do another episode. Well, one thing that I can tell you, here's a little bit of knowledge that I can lay down. When people think of Native American, okay, they think of just like, oh, they're all the same. You know, they're not. They're not all the same. No. tribes and areas have way different beliefs.

Wendigo in the Pacific Northwest is Bigfoot. It is a Bigfoot. The name Wendigo is a type of Bigfoot. And it's also spelled W-I-N-D, you know, Wendigo. And yeah, it's a type of Bigfoot. One thing that is consistent across every single Native American tribe that we have is that water is a natural cleanser for negative energy and holds and carries bad energy. So when a lot of these tribes settled, they would settle not right on the water at all because they thought that that was a bad omen.

Water's bad. Not that water's terrible. It can also be a life source. But because you take your things to cleanse your negative energy in the water and then the water holds it and it's kind of like a barrier. So I probably, yes, if there's a Wendigo River, it probably is named after that creature. I could very much believe that because that, again, that's a belief across the board. They all believe it, which is endlessly interesting to me, especially when we have so many stories of high strangeness happening in and around bodies of water.

Yes, bodies of water are definitely a hotbed for strange happenings, which makes sense, too, because bodies of water are a hotbed for life. You know, things need water to live. so one more for you before I let you go before I free your spirit so that you may not be spiritually in upper Michigan with me as the dog men are approaching so I just want to bring up one of my favorite Native American folklore pieces I have no idea if it has anything to do with Michigan necessarily but I just wanted to throw it out there I love the story of the deer woman very very much so I don't know if you knew much about the deer woman yourself um a little bit um but it it is interesting i don't remember if she she just is a deer right like she just is like an anthropomorphic deer she she's a beautiful woman with deer legs that the men never notice because they're too busy looking at how beautiful she is that's what i yeah that's right yes totally i a thousand percent believe that story that is that is a very um that is a very yeah that's a very good story it is actually loosely tied to the dancing dancing devil i think it's san antonio in texas huh okay very kind of a kind of a similar concept but more of an event that people are still swear to this day happened a very handsome man showed up at a dance a club a dance party one night in san antonio and um people were just so impressed by his dance moves i mean they had no idea who this handsome stranger was and uh somebody at some point eventually happened to look down on his feet and he had hoops instead of feet uh sometimes he doesn't have hoops sometimes he has chicken feet which i think is hilarious um but uh you know because i love to imagine a big man on little chicken feet um but Yeah, Hoobes is like more the number one and people swear by it.

And then, of course, as soon as they noticed, everybody freaked out and he left and he was never seen from again. So there are stories. And that's a modern day. I think that happened in like the 70s. I mean, that's a modern day story. There are accounts of these things using some type of distraction, but still having a piece of themselves. And they know that you as a human, you're too dumb to just look down. yeah um but that is a good one that is a good one um yeah that's a really good one well i thank you so very much ashley for being on the show today i think it was uh incredibly informative and also i'm creep the hell out now so that's what the goal was all along so good um would you please tell my listeners where they can find out more about your work and listen to your shows.

Yeah, absolutely. You can find me on social media if you'd like. I have a Facebook page. It's under Ashley Hiltz. I'm the one with the red hair. You can find me on Twitter or Instagram at it's Ashers with a Z. And you can listen to on Wednesdays We Talk Weird anywhere you listen to podcasts. There's a new episode bright and early every Wednesday. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. and please don't smoke in the woods.