A listener writes “I’ve gone back and forth about writing to you because I’m not sure how relevant my experience really is but after hearing witnesses on your show describe encounters with dogman-type creatures, I can’t help wondering if what we saw might fit into that category.
My boyfriend, Brian, and I live full-time in a truck camper, traveling around the U.S. This happened in mid-July, when we were camped on BLM land past the Delta-09 Missile Silo, just outside Badlands National Park. It was a full-moon night, but we set up camp while there was still daylight. We made a fire, Brian cooked dinner and almost immediately after we arrived, I noticed something odd. A herd of cows in the distance suddenly came running over a hill, almost as if they were spooked.
For the next several hours, as we ate and the sun went down, those cows made nonstop distressed sounds. We couldn’t see them, but we could hear them, and it was eerie. One of my dogs refused to get out of the truck as well, which was extremely unusual for her. Eventually, once the moon rose, the cows went silent. The night was beautiful, so we decided to take a moonlit walk along the dirt road with our other dog. We walked maybe half a mile and then laid down to look at the stars.
We’d been on the ground less than a minute when my dog gave an alert bark. We sat up, and about 60 yards ahead of us, we saw a large black figure. My first thought was that it was a cow until my eyes adjusted and I realized it had canine features. I tried to convince myself it was a coyote, even though it was far too big.
We aimed our flashlights at it, and that’s when everything turned strange. It had no eye shine at all. I’ve lived in the woods most of my life; every animal I’ve ever seen at night reflects light. But this thing’s eyes were just… black holes. The entire body almost seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. No matter how many times we shone our beams on it, no more detail appeared. It just stayed this pitch-black shape, panting loudly far louder than you’d expect from that distance.
I had the unsettling feeling that it was staring directly into my eyes and that it was intelligent, more so than any wild animal I’ve encountered. We yelled at it, but it didn’t flinch or move. A normal coyote would’ve bolted. I told Brian, “I don’t want that thing behind me,” which is not how I react to coyotes at all. We started heading back to camp me walking forward, Brian walking backward to keep an eye on it.
Later, when we talked it through, things got even stranger. There were two of them. I had been so fixated on the one in front of us that I completely missed a second creature off to our right closer, and according to Brian, noticeably larger. Brian isn’t someone who believes in Bigfoot, dogmen, skinwalkers, or anything of that nature, but he said it felt like the one farther away the one I was staring at was in control of the closer one, almost like an owner and a dog. He also said its legs looked blurry or formless when the light hit them, which matched what I felt but didn’t say out loud.
As he kept watch, both creatures followed us for about a quarter mile, staying just far enough back, until they finally slipped into the hills. Almost immediately after they disappeared, the cows started up again with the same panicked cries from earlier.
We’ve gone over this experience so many times, and we always land in the same place: those were not coyotes. They were something neither of us can explain.
So I’m reaching out to ask have you heard other reports of canine-like creatures with jet-black eyes and no eye shine? Does this sound more like something people attribute to a skinwalker, or is a dogman encounter a possibility? I know humans lack eye shine, but these things were absolutely not human. I haven’t been able to find anything online that matches, other than a general trend of strange reports from the Badlands.
I’d really love to hear your thoughts on what we might’ve seen.”