Nova Scotia Dogman

Nova Scotia is on the eastern coast of Canada. It’s one of the country’s three Maritime Provinces and is the second smallest of Canada’s ten provinces. Nova Scotia is almost completely surrounded by water and lies in a mid-temperate zone.

The name means “New Scotland” and was assigned in 1621. The province was originally home to the Mi’kmaq people and the first European settlement was established by French colonists in 1605. Other Europeans soon followed, bringing their traditions, beliefs and lore including tales of werewolves.

Such tales could be written off as simple superstition, however, there are occasionally puzzling reports of strange creatures in the province. The following account is from a man named Robert MacLean. The incident occurred in the spring of 2015 and was brought to my attention by researcher Albert S. Rosales. The original report states:

Location: Glengarry, Nova Scotia, Canada

Date: March 9, 2015

“Robert MacLean was driving home from a party in town in the morning when a deer ran across the road about 50 yards in front of him.

“It zipped across the road from the left to the right down over a steep embankment, moving as fast as anything I have ever seen.” Stated Robert.

“A second later, a big animal chased after the deer, but just before tumbling into the crevasse, it stood on its back legs and stared into the headlights, its eyes glowing, and then was gone.”

This wasn’t the only evidence that was found. A local farmer, name withheld, found a dead cow in the field behind his barn, completely eviscerated with huge chunks of meat missing, and large bloody tracks leading off into the woods.

It’s important to note that Glengarry does not have a large population, mostly scattered houses surrounded by woods. It is an area where only a few people hunt, as hunters constantly complain about a feeling of ‘being watched.’

A survey of the area around the possible sighting site turned up a few deer tracks and a reddish smear just off the road, down over the bank, but a sample could not be taken due to the steep nature of the area.”

MacLean’s sighting was brief, but fascinating, nonetheless. What exactly did he see? There have been a few bigfoot sightings in the region over the years, and combined with several other odd factors, it should be considered that something strange could be lurking in the wild areas of Nova Scotia.

Theodore Martin sent me his comments regarding the nature of the region. Having grown up in the area in question, he has some interesting insight:

“When I was a kid my father and I used to trap bobcats along Glengarry Road which is somewhere near where this sighting was. Now that I think back on it, whenever we traveled up into the Glengarry area proper, it did have a rather desolate or destitute feeling to it and we never took to the area for deer hunting. We hung around Lansdown mostly as we had a camp there.

I don’t recall ever hearing the old man talk about anything as he lived out there as a kid during the 30s and 40s and that was his family’s traditional family hunting territory as they were MicMac.

But I never asked him and there’s only two things Indians are afraid of and that’s cops and ghosts. He wouldn’t even set foot in a graveyard, not even for his father’s burial. His sister was the same and did not attend the burial either.

The only thing that sticks out in my mind that was odd from my trapping days was a time we were trapping near Perch Lake and we had found a set of tracks that were round like a bobcat but extremely large and the track maker stepped over the snare pole because he was probably too tall for the set.”

Martin speculates that the tracks could possibly have been a cougar, but since they didn’t encounter the animal, there’s no way to be sure.

So, is there a dogman roaming the remote areas of Nova Scotia?

With only a very small number of reports and scant evidence to indicate what if anything is lurking in the region we can’t leap to any conclusions. One would think this particular incident would be a simple footnote of a potential “something” in the wilds of Canada, but for some reason, it generated a lot of response.

Just after my original posting of this account, I received a number of anonymous emails demanding I remove the posting. The big question of course is why? Why would a simple report on a possible anomalous creature so disturb someone that they wanted the post removed?

There were other emails of course. Some said they knew MacLean and that they too were aware that a strange creature was roaming the area. Other communications proclaimed the whole thing was a hoax and should be ignored or noted as such in the posting. Still, each failed to provide solid information on the case.

Around six months after the original posting, I received yet another email, this one from a man with the unusual name of John Smith. Mr. Smith informed me that he and “his team” were actively researching the case and that I should remove the posting. It seems Mr. Smith was worried about the “safety of outside cryptid investigators” since he and his team were “heavily armed.”

Mr. Smith offered to answer my questions and said he would “provide me exclusive information” as soon as his team had uncovered more details about the beast.

I did write back to “Mr. Smith,” but as important as the issue was, he couldn’t find time to respond to my email. Or maybe he was in the wilds of Nova Scotia tracking the creature.

It still wasn’t the end of the saga though. Two months after that, I received yet another flurry of emails. This time from none other than one “Robert MacLean.” At least, that’s who he said he was.

Mr. MacLean informed me that he had been mistaken in his original report and he was now positive that what he saw was simply another normal animal, perhaps another deer.

Before I could even respond to the first email, another one hit my inbox. This time, Mr. MacLean had a confession. He said that on the day of the sighting, he had been drinking heavily and must have hallucinated the entire thing.

I responded to the emails and asked a couple of simple questions about the incident. He reaffirmed that he was in an inebriated state at the time. My next email asked for one simple thing; proof of his identity. He stopped responding at that point.

I wasn’t surprised but the question remained, why was someone so determined to get the story removed?

At this point, the story is even more interesting than it was before the insistence from anonymous sources that it be removed.

Of course, anyone with information about dogman sightings (or any other weirdness) are more than welcome to email me, just check the contact page and send me the details.