Farewell

Don't you worry, I'm not going anywhere. However, it seems that "America's Wolfman" was the last episode ever of "MonsterQuest", a series investigating reports of purported paranormal and unknown creatures. In a sense, "MonsterQuest" really did went out with a bang!

The monster in the series finale is usually known as the Michigan Dogman. As usual, the producers have hired a team of investigators to collect evidence of the creature's existence, and interviewed both eye-witnesses and sceptics. Interestingly, the investigators have a paranormal explanation for the dogman, one of them claiming that it's multi-dimensional. Their Native guide believes it's a powerful spirit!

The most sensational part of "America's Wolfman" shows the so-called Gable films, which for about three years were considered good evidence for the existence of an unknown, aggressive beast in the wilds of Michigan. The Gable films seem to be taped about 40 years ago during the hippie era, and show a bizarre, dog-like creature attacking, mauling and eating a poor photographer.

During the making of the "MonsterQuest" episode, a local film-maker named Mike Agrusa revealed that the films were carefully staged hoaxes. Agrusa has several cars and snowmobiles from the 1970's in his private collection, including one that looks like a police car from the period in question. These were used to make the films look substantially older than they actually are. The "monster" is Mike himself in a ghillie suite, and the "mauled" photographer is also Mike. The hoax is real good - I was fooled myself, thinking the "monster" might be a real animal, perhaps a really large dog?

It's ironic that the last episode of "MonsterQuest", a series notorious for never actually finding any monsters, ends with a revelation that a popular piece of crypto-zoological evidence is actually fake. Unsurprisingly, poor Mike has been accused of being Illuminati by the die-hards on the web.

As for the rest of us, I suppose we just have to go out wood-knocking again... ;-)