The Dogman Blog

Okay, one final statement, then it’s time to move on. Mike created the Gable Film and I embellished it to create a compelling, interesting story; which it certainly became. Neither of us ever said it was real, or that it was a dogman. The imaginations of people and the anarchy of the internet did the rest.

While I have previously hinted at the following, it’s probably valuable to give you the full story.

Monster Quest investigated nothing and exposed nothing. What you all watched on March 24th was essentially a soap opera constructed on top of a hoax. Long before the first camera rolled, they were informed (by me) that the Gable Film was fake. I showed them the obvious flaws in it before they took it to their film expert for analysis. Not shockingly, he found something suspicious right where I told them to look.

Sometime before the final edit of the show was complete, someone decided it was too dry to simply have me reveal the true source of The Gable Film. They decided it would be really cool to make you believe  they did an in-depth investigation, then sent a high profile werewolf expert in with the damning evidence to grill me until I cracked, like an episode of CSI. I know this is true because I did two sets of interviews with Monster Quest. In the first set, Linda Godfrey was not present. I revealed that the film was not real, explained how and why it became an internet phenomenon, then gave them Mike’s name and told them where he lived. A few weeks later, the crew returned with Linda, and the “confrontational” interview was shot, which is what you saw. Why would a respected TV show like Monster Quest fabricate something like that? Simple, controversy and conflict creates powerful television. That sells ads. Ads pay for production of future shows. And the cycle repeats.

The big ‘caught you’ moment between Linda and I was fully staged. She knew the film was fake weeks before she ‘confronted’ me on camera, because I called her and told her myself. We had to shoot the scene numerous times until the director was satisfied that it was dramatic enough. After the first take I knew the questions she was going to ask, so it was easy to answer eloquently. The crew laughed with delight when I said, “The film is not what it appears to be.” One of the camera operators called it the “Boom! Cut to commercial!” moment, which is exactly what it became.

The real pivotal moment was when the narrator said “Steve Cook has changed his story,” as if I had changed it while the show was being filmed. I publicly stated that the Gable Film was a hoax three years ago and hardly anyone would listen. I told Monster Quest the complete story several weeks before the first interview.

But that’s okay, because it’s the same process everyone in the entertainment business uses. It’s called stagecraft. Monster Quest led you through an unfolding sequence of events that never took place. They fictionalized the discovery of the hoax, and led you to believe something shocking and dramatic occurred, but it never did. Not unlike the way a creative backstory drove the Gable Film into worldwide prominence.

None of this is intended to impugn Linda Godfrey or the Monster Quest crew. Linda is an unshakeable rock of ethics and honesty. I’ve known her for nearly 20 years, and besides being a truly gifted writer, she is above reproach. Most likely she was not even aware she was participating in an outright fabrication of the facts. If she was aware, apparently the prize of exposing two hoaxers on national TV was sweet enough to make the end justify the means. Similarly, the Monster Quest director and crew are some of the most exacting and professional artists I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. Everyone concerned with the production of this show came into it with a job to do, and everyone did their job well.

In addition, do not take my sharp comments in the previous post  as demeaning to witnesses or people who enjoy the study of cryptozoology as a hobby. Many of them have been fans of The Legend for decades. I’ve met scores of fine, upstanding, reasonable people who truly believe they saw something they cannot explain, and I have no reason to doubt them.  My point is that cryptozoology is not a science, it’s a novelty that taps into our unique human capacity for curiosity. As long as we keep it there, it can be intriguing, fun, and entertaining. As soon as it crosses the line into obsession, it becomes unhealthy and dangerous. If you think I’m kidding, I’ll let you read some of my hate mail.

And that will be my last word on The Gable Film. Whether you’re angry with me as a hoaxer or supportive of our charitable work, I thought it important that you knew the whole story before you pass final judgement on anyone concerned. The Cryptozoology gatekeepers are not tolerant of heretics walking among the faithful. That’s okay. I never joined that church, and until the dogman or bigfoot crosses my path, I’ll remain a contented agnostic.

In 1862, The Territorial Enterprise, a newspaper based in Virginia City, Nevada, printed a  story about the discovery of an ancient petrified man with a wooden leg in the mountains outside of town. Despite blatant geographical inaccuracies and clues to its dubious origin, the story caught the attention of the public, and was reprinted in newspapers around the world. Scientists and universities clamored to claim and study the find. It was one of the most celebrated pranks of the 19th century.

The author of the story was a cub reporter named Mark Twain.

Twain never apologized for creating the hoax. Instead he expressed incredulity at the public’s willingness to blindly accept superstition and pseudo-science, and admonished newspaper editors for encouraging such beliefs.

In 2007, when I first saw the 8mm film that would later become known as The Gable Film, I had the same reaction as most people seeing it for the first time: “What the heck is that thing?” Mike explained that he had created the film as a tribute to my song, The Legend. He described how he, with an antique film camera and a few simple props, had created something Hollywood pays millions to accomplish: a convincing special effect. Even he was surprised at how good it had turned out.

“Aaron Gable” waves to the camera. One of many scenes cut from the original film.

The film was just fuzzy enough to be believable, and creepy enough to be one wheel of a large promotional vehicle for The Legend Legacy Edition CD/DVD set. To make it compelling, an urban legend back story was created to give the film an untraceable source. My wife came up with the name “Gable Film,” because her favorite vintage movie actor is Clark Gable. The back story’s original purchaser of the film, Ellen Erlacher, was loosely named after Brian Urlacher of the Chicago Bears. I edited out several scenes, such as the faces of the people, and several short scenes that were dead giveaways that the film was faked.

The original intent was to test the film on a group of people interested in crypto-creatures to see how it played. A Yahoo discussion group named The Unknown Creature Spot was chosen. I slapped together a quick documentary piece with spooky music and tossed it on YouTube, then invited the group to have a look.

The reaction was instantaneous and explosive. Even though the original documentary was on YouTube for just three days, it was downloaded hundreds of times, and started popping up all over the internet. In the modern parlance, the Gable Film had gone viral. I scrambled to get the scores of rebroadcasts removed from YouTube, citing a ludicrous copyright claim. Eventually, it became simply overwhelming to chase all the pirates down, so I gave up.

A few weeks later an internationally renowned cryptozoologist contacted me. He hinted that with his endorsement the Gable Film could become “a permanant part of supposedly real werewolf lore.”  I only needed to answer the hard question: Was this merely a “piece of creative narrative fiction perfomance art?” When he found my reply equivocal, he published his belief that the film was a fake and that I was a fraud. Across the internet, the chorus turned increasingly hostile, even threatening. It was time to end the charade.

On September 30th, 2007, we published a web page entitled “The Gable Film – Anatomy of an Unintentional Hoax,” in which I attempted to dispense with the film by revealing an obvious clue that everyone had missed. Certainly this clear evidence of fakery would remove all doubt about the film’s validity.

“The Dogman” stands on two legs. This scene didn’t make to the public either.

Or so I thought. Within days of publishing that page, I started receiving e-mails and phone calls from people insisting that we had rushed to judgment. Within two weeks, there were hundreds of requests that we take a second look. In one of the e-mails, the head of the science department of a well-known university asked if he could build a course around the film to study the bio-mechanic movement of the creature. Virus #2 had struck.

At this point, I simply shrugged my shoulders and decided to follow one of the primary principles of stagecraft: Give the audience what they want.

In the ensuing years, the Gable Film was broken down and analyzed by hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, and seen by an uncountable number of others. Every single one of them formed an opinion about what it was. The Gable Film is one of those things you could not watch and be ambivalent about it.

“Aaron” takes the camera from his son to pursue the creature.

For much of that time, the ratio of believers to skeptics ran at roughly 50-50, just slightly better than the ratio of people who believe that the Patterson-Gimlin film shows an actual Bigfoot, or that photographs of the Loch Ness monster show a living pliosaur. We did our own in-depth but inconclusive analysis of the film and included it on The Legend Legacy Edition DVD.

Throughout the entire Gable Film saga, I kept an arm’s length distance. I never claimed it was real and never said it showed a dogman. We placed a disclaimer on the website and on our DVD stating that we took no position on any evidence, preferring to leave it to the viewer to decide. My only public statement about the Gable Film was that it was “interesting,” and that people should see it.

The “teeth shot,” accomplished with a Halloween mask and stop-motion animation. Note the Ghillie suit webbing.

Then in 2009, it  happened again. The producers of the FOX NEWS program Sean Hannity’s America asked for permission to include The Gable Film in their broadcast, and I agreed. They even offered to bring me to New York to be interviewed by Sean Hannity, which I declined. It aired nationwide on July 20th.

A couple of days after the FOX broadcast, Mike (using the pseudonym QuinlanOUR12) surprised me by uploading a second film – Gable Film 2 – to YouTube. In this graphic and disturbing film, two policemen display the half-eaten corpse of the same person who appears splitting wood in the original Gable Film. It was another remarkably convincing low-budget special effect.

GF2: The police cruiser was a junkyard Oldsmobile that did not run, brush painted and topped by a red Kool-Aid pitcher.

The internet community went bonkers. Blogs and forums lit up with debate about the new film, and interest in the entire story soared once again. For the third time in as many years, the Gable Film again went viral. Downloads of the original film from Michigan-Dogman.com surged past 50 thousand in a matter of days. My website hosting company sent me a warning that I was using too much bandwidth and they would shut the site down if it didn’t stop.

Mike and I had an emergency meeting to plan the next move. We knew that both films had to go away, so we created another convenient back story. A certain unnamed ‘authority’ would request that the films be removed from circulation pending an investigation. With that, we expected the films would quickly fade from public interest.

Again we were wrong. In the fall of 2009 the producers of the History Channel’s Monster Quest telephoned, indicating an interest in producing a segment about the Michigan Dogman, centered on the Gable Film. They told me they wanted to send the original 8mm film to a world-renowned expert for study. I couldn’t let them go to that expense, the result of which could only reveal what I already knew. It was time to pull the plug once and for all.

I assumed after revealing the true source of the film to Monster Quest, the producers would move on to some other creature. Wrong again. They were more excited than ever to produce the show. They felt the story was so compelling they made it their season finale. Do you get what that means? Monster Quest, and everyone involved knew the Gable film was fake weeks before  production began. The entire episode was scripted and staged to look like they exposed it. More stagecraft, designed for entertainment and profit.

So there you have it, the abridged history of the now infamous Gable Film. Was it a hoax? Of course. Was it intended to insult people or motivated by profit? Absolutely not. Neither Mike or I ever made a dime from the Gable Film. He gave the film to me, and I give the profits from the sales of Legend products to charity. Neither FOXNEWS or MonsterQuest paid us for the film or our appearances. So why did we do it? Simple – it was great entertainment; for us, and for the thousands of people who analyzed, debated, and defended their opinions about the film. There hasn’t been this much excitement or controversy in the crypto-creature world in decades.

“Aaron Gable” inside the famous Ford Truck, wearing the thick glasses that would later appear in GF2.

In conclusion, let me state for the record a simple fact: I am not a cryptozoologist, and have no desire to become one. Truth be told, there’s no definitive answer as to exactly what a cryptozoologist is. There is no accreditation required, no university degree, no license. All you really need to become a cryptozoologist is to say you are.  It’s a profession created from thin air, very much like The Legend of Michigan’s Dogman.

I am an entertainer. The Legend was created as an April Fool’s Day prank in 1987 for the enjoyment of a limited radio audience in northern Michigan. Something about it stirred the imaginations of people, and suddenly strange things they had seen or heard in the woods seemed to have a possible explanation. They shared and continue to share their stories with me, and that aspect has captured the attention of the world. But at no time in the near quarter-century history of The Legend have I ever claimed it to be anything more than entertainment.

There is, however, one characteristic shared by entertainers and cryptozoologists: we both have an audience with a set of expectations. How we meet those expectations differs only slightly. Cryptozoologists want (but never seem to get) substantive proof. To me, if a story, photograph, or film is interesting, that’s good enough.

As a final word, a statement I think Mark Twain would approve of: If you are one of the people mortified by these revelations, and feel that the “science” of cryptozoology has forever been tarnished by charlatans and hoaxers, perhaps you should choose a hobby that wasn’t invented by them.

The History Channel has posted a premiere date for “American Wolfman,” which is the final title for the Michigan Dogman episode. The show will air on Wednesday, March 24th, at 9pm EST.

Here’s the History Channel synopsis:

“History says that a large and wolf-like beast is the stuff of legend, but recently uncovered film footage and new witnesses say something frightening is out there. MonsterQuest heads into the dark, isolated forests of the Midwest to search for this creature and analyzes the evidence to finally end this mystery.”

Get ready for some big surprises!