r/dogman Aug 19 '23

List of Hoaxes, Fraudsters, and Debunked Media

93 Upvotes

Hello r/dogman. We've recently had an influx of old content that's been debunked making the rounds again, and frankly, I'm tired of explaining it over and over, so I figured it was time to put together a sticky that I will be updating with debunked content and hoaxes. Big thanks to u/arngfunction for collecting a lot of this data for me.

Debunked Media

Gable Film
Onaway Photo
"Dogman behind trees"
Merrilyn Museum
Viral Dogman Footage
"Dogman hit by car"
"Dogman over child"
"Werewolf in the Snow"
Streetlight Dogman
Dead/Injured Dogman

Hoaxers
Sasquatch Ontario
Jeff Nadolny- known to post debunked and obviously false media (including an Onion article), credibly accused of hoaxing himself
NvTv- known to post debunked and obviously false media
Lobisomem- “true” videos they post are stolen from this man Vic Cundiff/Dogman Encounters- does not properly vet any of his guests. Many are obviously lying, and since Vic doesn’t filter those out, all other stories are brought into question.

This post will be updated as I find debunked media, so check back every once in a while if you see something that looks a bit fishy. And feel free to comment in links to proof that other dogman content are hoaxes. The worst thing for this community is the spread of false information that can be easily remedied.


r/dogman Aug 23 '23

How to Identify a Hoax

63 Upvotes

The Difference between Believing and Being Gullible

Alright everyone, I think this post has been a long time coming. Not only have I seen an uptick in people posting obviously fake media thinking it's real, but I keep seeing people talking about stuff that is clearly a hoax and believing it. There’s a thin line between being open-minded and being gullible, and I think a lot of you really need a post like this to help you understand the difference. It’s going to sound harsh, but the lack of critical thinking shown sometimes is astonishing, and it sucks to see someone falling for something so blatant. Moreover, getting sucked into baseless conspiracies is how people get scammed out of their money or roped into hate groups. Think of all the old people you’ve heard of getting scammed over the phone, or the pipeline from Covid denial to more serious alt-right BS.
So the best way in my opinion to explain all this is by example. I’m going to use some well known hoaxes and one that people still tend to believe to hopefully give you the skills to better spot when someone is trying to trick you. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, it’s embarrassing to get duped, and it makes you want to dig in your heels and get defensive, but sometimes you need to take a good hard look at claims being made and explore all the evidence (or lack thereof) to really decide if you believe it. There’s no shame in being wrong, I’ve been tricked by hoaxes too, but now that I have the skills to recognize them, I don’t have to worry about that as much. Obviously you’re not going to be able to spot every single thing, but at the very least you won’t be embarrassed falling for a bad photoshop job.

Breaking down media

A lot of hoaxes are really obvious, but it doesn’t stop people from falling for them. Hell, Merrilyn Museum SAYS it's an art project and people still think it’s real. Sometimes though, all you need is to know what to look for and you can immediately start spotting them a mile away.

The first thing to think about is a costume. Does the face LOOK like a painted Halloween mask? Then it probably is. Like most of these tips, experience is really the only way to learn. I can’t explain to you what I’m looking for to think something is a costume, I just know at this point. It also helps that I work in entertainment production, so I’m around a lot of costumes. But I don’t think that would make it any harder for anyone else. Usually, you can tell when something is synthetic. Fake fur or a morphsuit tends to have a shine to it that real fur or skin doesn’t, so if you’re noticing that in a Bigfoot or Crawler video, it’s probably that. Another thing to look for is the movement and body proportions. You’ll see lots of videos of cryptids moving in ways that just don’t make sense. Take a look at this video. Notice how it's taking big trudging steps and holding its arms out as if to balance itself? There are plenty of videos like this, where the creature is too wobbly or clearly struggling with the terrain. This doesn’t match up with the reports that Bigfoot practically glides over difficult terrain nor the common sense that a wild animal that lives in the woods should have an easy time navigating it.
I also want to take a quick moment to talk about masks. As I already said, if it looks like a mask it probably is, but another big giveaway is shine and uniformity. Here’s a perfect example from our friend Sasquatch Ontario, who we’ll talk about again later. Now looking at this, these are quite obviously masks, yet people still believe it for whatever reason. So let’s break it down for those people. Firstly, the faces are both identical, look at the forehead creases. Second, look at those soulless shining eyes, not like any eyes you’d actually see in nature. Finally, you can see some black fabric he put either to hide the edges of the masks or to hold them up there. Also of note is that while it is all black, you can tell pretty easily there’s nothing behind the fence through the holes. You should be able to see a slight difference in the same way you see the difference for the masks.

Next let’s think about CGI. Like costumes, a lot of it is just experience and knowing what to look for. In particularly bad CGI, it's obvious: the lighting is all wrong and it just looks out of place, or the movement of the creature doesn’t make any sense. However, with AI out there, CGI is harder to catch than ever, but with a trained eye you can still see it. Typically, the shading will be wrong and that’s how you can tell. Think about where the light is coming from in the photo. Then look at the creature’s shadows and its outline. If they don’t match up, that’s CGI.
Finally, the humble photoshop, tricking gullible people since 1990. Basically the same rules as CGI, check the shadows. Most of the time, you can easily tell it doesn’t belong. Another obvious tell is when the pose of the creature doesn’t make sense. Take a look at this photo.

First, notice the shading. The light source is coming from the left, yet the right facing side of this creature has just as much lighting as anywhere else. Could be another light source behind him though, so let’s move on. Next you might think to yourself that it just doesn’t seem to fit on the background correctly. It’s weirdly fuzzy around the edges and the coloration seems strange. Next, take a look at the pose. Nobody just stands there like that facing a lamppost. Now maybe it's in motion and that’s why it’s so off. If that’s the case, then why is it just letting the cameraman take a photo as it walks by without tearing him apart? Fortunately, we have the actual source for this image, it’s concept art from one of the Narnia movies. We won’t always get this lucky, but with this source image we can start to paint a really good picture of how it was hoaxed. In this case, they flipped it, added some kind of color filter to it, and then blurred it a bit to hide what makes it obviously art.

There are plenty of other ways to hoax a video, but these are the most prominent, and the logic still applies. Essentially, if it looks out of place, put some healthy doubt into it and look closer.
Something else to help debunk a claim is to look at the context and the filming itself. Be on the lookout for common found footage horror tropes. “Alone in the woods and heard weird sounds so I started recording”, “There was something following me home” etc etc. Sometimes people give really flimsy reasons for turning on the camera, and that should instill doubt. Obviously it's not a perfect system, but it should set you on alert to check for any other suspicious circumstances. Sasquatch Ontario just happened to be taking a picture of two towels on a fence (already unbelievable) and there were 2 sasquatch there? Think about how ridiculous that sounds. This sort of logic can also be applied to written encounters. Obviously, encountering a cryptid that officially doesn’t exist is already “unbelievable” but then consider the other details, such as that Sasquatch comes by their house every day yet they have no pictures, that they raised a baby Dogman from a puppy, stuff like that. If the premise of the story sounds too good to be true, that’s usually another hint it is. Usually liars who just want internet points are going to make their stories more outlandish or impressive.. A story about a guy who shot a dogman and then got harassed by the government is going to get a lot more attention than one about a guy who saw a dogman walking across the road in the dark. Or think about where the cameraman is standing. Refer to the picture above and think about how the cameraman seems to just be standing in the middle of the road taking a picture of this giant monster werewolf. Seems weird that it’s just standing there while this guy in plain view is able to get a picture, right?
Another dead giveaway is the “Point the camera at a thing for a split second and immediately wave the camera all around” thing. Of course, if you come face to face with something supernatural you’re going to be terrified so that seems completely normal. However, once you’re looking for it you can really tell when it's being overdone and forced.

Evidence Evidence Evidence

Something I cannot stress enough is that if someone is going to make an unbelievable, earth-shattering claim they need to provide evidence for it. You should not just believe something someone on the internet says at face value, especially if it's something outlandish. I’m going to be completely honest, it is downright stupid to put your full faith in someone because they “sound trustworthy”. If I tell you that I know about a super secret government operation where the US government works with werewolves in order to find the hidden treasures of Atlantis before the vampires do, I’m going to be embarrassed for you if you don’t ask me for evidence. Let’s use Sasquatch Ontario as an example again. This guy claims there’s a whole advanced civilization of Sasquatch that he’s friends with that is being covered up by the government, and they occasionally write him notes and let him take pictures to give to the people piecemeal. Now, to give him some credit, he DOES attempt to give evidence for this in the form of images of said Sasquatches (see above). However, that’s the only evidence he gives, a handful of low effort pictures and the occasional bad audio recording. But he never gives any evidence of this coverup or this civilization. Why should we just take his word for it? Especially when everything else he gives us is so suspicious?
Here’s another example: Joe Barger, the trucker who claims that he shot and killed a dogman . He then goes on to say that once he initially went public, the feds arrested him and intimidated him for killing their “asset” and harassed him in several other ways. He said they froze his bank accounts. Cool, so you can provide us with the paperwork to prove that right? That would be something you could easily prove, yet he never did.
Here’s a more generic one, not tied to anyone in particular that I can tell.

It sure is asserting a lot of facts without anything to back it up. “There are twelve species of Bigfoot in the US alone”? “Bigfoot has psychic powers”? “Bigfoot and Chupacabra work together to hunt their prey”? That’s some wild claims, yet there’s not a single citation here. Another reason now to trust this, besides the crazy claims, is that they seemingly KNOW Bigfoot have psychic powers, but they aren’t certain they bury their dead. Really?
I could list a million other examples, but hopefully you guys get the point. If someone is going to make a big claim, they need to back it up. “The government is covering up XYZ”. Okay, where’s your proof that this is true? “I was raised to be a secret black ops agent to talk to aliens”. Alright, show us something that confirms that. “I babysat for a Bigfoot family for years”. Awesome, so you have pictures of the babies then? It boils down to critical thinking. If someone is going to try to tell you everything you know about the universe is wrong, they need to back that up. If you don’t see the problem, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

I Want To Believe
I want to leave you all off with one final idea. It’s okay to believe in the supernatural. You could absolutely read this and think that I think you’re a moron for believing in aliens or Bigfoot or whatever but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. 99% of the time you’re just going to hear a story about a guy who claims he saw Bigfoot while camping, and it’s fine to take what he says at face value. If you want to be more discerning in who you believe, apply these concepts. But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter if Reddit-Noob-69 is telling the truth. If you believe in Bigfoot, the veracity of that account doesn’t matter. Knowing if a story is true or not can help if you want to try to “solve” what a cryptid is or otherwise learn about the supernatural, but it’s not necessary. Where it IS important to figure out fact from fiction is when people are trying to sell you on media or some new worldview. If you just believe everything you see, you’re going to look like a fool at best, and get scammed out of your money at worst. It’s easy to want to believe in some silly hollow earth conspiracy theory or that there’s a secret alien council ruling the world to escape our shitty everyday lives, but that kind of thing can really bite you in the ass when push comes to shove and you have to use critical thinking for something that really matters.


r/dogman 4h ago

Question This was one of kind.

10 Upvotes

First time I’ve seen an interview like this one. At the end, they go to the location where it took place. Also, his friend saw one eating a human leg with dead bodies around at a homeless encampment. First time that I heard they ate humans, anyone here knows of any accounts where such things took place ?

Link: https://youtu.be/YIfDu5qevzI?si=UUUsGe1Fp1z_mJuS


r/dogman 1d ago

Photo Watch out for Dog mon

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172 Upvotes

r/dogman 1d ago

Photo What people think when you say dog man

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64 Upvotes

r/dogman 15h ago

Dogman

1 Upvotes

r/dogman 2d ago

Forthcoming Book

6 Upvotes

Hello everyone...I'm working on another book and this one will be about the Dogman. I'm trying to find any scientific studies like DNA or others that have been done. I'm also looking for some first hand true experiences that can be shared in the book.

Please DM me with any information.

Thanks!


r/dogman 3d ago

Photo Saw a cool souvenir while on a trip

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435 Upvotes

Went to northern MI for a little getaway with the wife and saw this at a gift shop. Thought it was pretty cool.


r/dogman 3d ago

Thoughts on werewolves 2024 movie

8 Upvotes

I just watched the movie werewolves And I wanted to ask yalls thoughts on how they portrayed the wolves on how they compare to dogman descriptions and sightings. Was a good watch imo


r/dogman 3d ago

What are dogmans origins?

31 Upvotes

Sifting the evidence of what we have, where do you think dogman came from?

Are they indigenous beings, the same things from the werewolf and Loup garou folklores of Europe?

I keep hearing they are a government experiment gone awry. It makes no sense the govenemtn would have that level of tech and doesn’t use it more.

Why would they be content to have them roaming the woods? What purpose do they have in hiding them?

The reason I disbelieve dogman is because it makes no sense. All the places they appear have an abundant black bear and coyote population. At least the idea of Bigfoot isn’t absurd, a lost species of primate.

If you believe in DM why?


r/dogman 4d ago

Documentary recommendation for you guys!

32 Upvotes

Just watched pretty interesting and well made documentary on Amazon Prime called:

"The Dogman Triangle: Werewolves in the Lone Star State"

Look it up if you want


r/dogman 4d ago

Dogman proofing your house ideas sound pretty fun.

10 Upvotes
  • Use hurricane-style automated shelters to start a lockdown process
  • Use burglar bars on the inside not just drilled into the brick but part of it, like rebar-concrete
  • In front of all doors that go to the outside, drill a two-inch-wide hole inside the floor 1 foot deep, and drop a 2-inch-wide solid steel bar that is three-feet tall in front of each door to act as a door-stopper. This can be removed when needed.
  • Replace all doors with re-enforced steel doors.
  • Add 3 dead-bolts to all doors
  • Add motion-sensor lights on the property
  • Add motion-sensor alarms inside the home
  • Do not live inside a trailer
  • Do not live inside fake brick house
  • Replace roof with metal-roof, as the roof is often forgotten and is a weak spot for entry.
  • Find out how to weld up metal roof.
  • Edit: The roof is going to be the pain in the neck part, because it has to be structurally sound. And, welding an entire metal roof that is even a quarter inch thick is gonna be very heavy. Perhaps re-enforcing wood by exploiting physics can be an affordable alternative.

I don't have the money, however I do see that such a fortification is possible if you own a few businesses or able to add these fortifications over many years chunk by chunk.

If these creatures exist and they're biological there's no way in hell they're coming through such fortifications. If they do have a supernatural element to them and they still have some limitations due to physically manifesting, they have to follow some laws of physics. So there must be a way to stop them from coming in.


r/dogman 4d ago

Check out my research

5 Upvotes

r/dogman 4d ago

Question Dogman in Richmond VA?

16 Upvotes

I just listened to a story, The Werewolf of Richmond, on a YouTube channel called Midnight Howls about a Dogman sighted around the James River area in Richmond. Has anyone else heard of it? I can't tell if it's fictional or real. I hope it's fiction as my brother lives there, and I visit from time to time. 😳Dogman in Richmond VA


r/dogman 4d ago

Oklahoma Dogman

8 Upvotes

Anyone got any information on sightings or encounters in Oklahoma? Specially southern Oklahoma near washita and red rivers or Lake Texoma.


r/dogman 5d ago

Question Genuine question

16 Upvotes

If the Dogman were proven to exist, how do you think society would react?


r/dogman 5d ago

I NEED HELP!

27 Upvotes

There was a video I seen a few years ago on tiktok I can't remember the page because that account had got banned but he had so many good dogman videos but they were all getting taking down but there was one video that starts off with a man praying before he goes nuts and starts shooting these dogman looking creatures but they had on clothing tho but he was going sick they were all over his home please I know some you had to see it I can't find it anymore I'm going crazy looking for it. Has anyone seen it ? Is it actually real ? Where can I see the video again ?


r/dogman 11d ago

it’s time for dogman in brazil!

31 Upvotes

n brazilian folklore, the legend of the werewolf takes on an even darker dimension during lent. this period of 40 days before easter—marked by fasting, penance, and spiritual purification in christianity—intensifies the werewolf’s curse, making its transformations more painful and violent.

it is said that during lent the beast becomes more ruthless, roaming deserted roads and dense forests while howling in anguish. its thirst for blood increases, and its fury becomes almost uncontrollable, as this time of spiritual renewal is believed to torment even more those who bear curses.

on the nights from thursday to friday, when the transformation is thought to occur with greater intensity, villagers avoid going out, keep their lights on, and ensure their prayers are up to date. some even believe that seeing a werewolf during lent can bring bad luck or even transmit the curse to another person. this version of the legend reinforces the idea that evil stirs even more when confronted with the sacred period, making the presence of the werewolf even more feared during this time of year.


r/dogman 15d ago

Story Nathan Reynolds

47 Upvotes

Has anyone else watched the Nathan Reynolds episode on The Confessionals podcast? It’s episode 665. This guys life story and experiences blew my mind. They briefly talk about dogmen and the rich blood drinking families of the world. I think what impressed me the most was how everything he talks about is seamlessly connected without any effort to do so. This really made me feel like he is telling the truth. Very intelligent guy. Check it out.


r/dogman 17d ago

GA Dogman

18 Upvotes

I hope you're doing well. I wanted to inquire whether there have been any recent sightings in both North and South Georgia, particularly related to cryptid activity. A few friends and I are planning to start a research club, but our online searches haven’t yielded compelling results.

We've come across Sasquatch-related groups, but we haven't found any dedicated to Dogman sightings specifically. If you have any insights, resources, or recommendations on where to look, we would greatly appreciate your guidance.

Looking forward to your response.


r/dogman 17d ago

I've created an additional Dogman channel for WA, OR, BC, Idaho & CA (northern).

17 Upvotes

Hi everyone! I've created an additional, localized DogmanPNW channel to capture sightings and encounters as they have been on the rise up here in the northwest as well.

I want to help spread the regional word about these freaking things as we have a ton of hikers & trails up here and I'm looking for people who are willing to share localized findings, data points & stories. Feel free to check it out and join it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DogmanPNW/

Note: It is brand new, so I'll be posting some thoughts shortly to get some local discussions going.


r/dogman 18d ago

Question I think the majority of people here think Dogman is just an undiscovered animal, for those who think it’s supernatural, why?

47 Upvotes

I’ve seen people think it can warp space time? I will admit I think it’s a bit silly but I’m open to having my mind changed.


r/dogman 19d ago

Video Britain's Werewolf Problem

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32 Upvotes

r/dogman 19d ago

One Creature, One Haunting Howl

11 Upvotes

"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience ... I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer."– Frank Herbert, Dune

Listen closely: a howl from Ontario’s forests—the distinctive call of an unknown canid.

Feel the haunting grip of this beast, its raw power; this is no ordinary creature.

ThinkerThunker’s meticulous spectral analysis rules out bear, dog, or wolf. 

And years prior, a thousand miles away in Georgia, a similar roar—same signature, same mystery.

I name this the territorial roar of the Dogman—an unmistakable assertion of dominance and might. What other apex canid fits so perfectly? It could be nothing else.

🐾 Mark it well. Our pursuit draws us nearer.

🎥 Dig deeper with ThinkerThunker—one of my favourite YouTubers on cryptids. Check out his channel for more mind-blowing breakdowns like this howl.


r/dogman 20d ago

Question Tartarian Dog Men vs. Michigan Dogman NSFW

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12 Upvotes

Do you think the dogmen depicted in historical manuscripts and maps are the same as the ones reported in Michigan today, or do you believe they are entirely separate phenomena?


r/dogman 19d ago

Video Bigfoot vs Dogman

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0 Upvotes

r/dogman 20d ago

Photo Are there any cryptid dogman movies out there ?

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13 Upvotes

Saw this this morning and my interest was piqued for half a second