Dog-like and Upright Creature. Bendon, 2007. He saw Red Reflecting Eyes.

The witness is a prominent person in local government, and wishes to remain anonymous

"The situation started around midnight when he was coming home from a friend's house in Benzonia and taking the back way home to Traverse City. He stated that while traveling down Cinder Road, several miles outside of the town of Bendon, he observed a pair of eyes reflecting off his headlights ahead of him. Thinking that it was probably a deer alongside the road, he began to slow down. As he got closer however, he stated that the object was much larger and much darker than a deer.

"He said that by this time, he had slowed to around thirty miles per hour and was at that point several hundred feet from the creature which still hadn’t moved. As he approached further, he stated that “the only way he could describe the creature was being similar to a very large dark Wolf, however he observed that this thing wasn’t on four legs, but was upright, his back two legs standing near a road killed Deer. He estimated that the creature stood a little over six feet tall and had very dark fur.

"He stated that by now, he was going slow enough to bring his truck to a stop in the road and observe the creature which had not yet moved and was still staring at him. He told me that for a brief second, he believed that the object was a giant stuffed animal put there as some kind of joke due to the fact that he had never seen anything like this in his life, and that he was able to drive up on it as close as he was, without it having moved an inch. He told me however, that before he could finish that thought, the creature then dropped to all four legs and sprinted across the road and disappeared into the woods on the other side of the roadway.

"He told me that he stayed frozen in his seat for a minute wondering in the middle of the road, of what the heck had just happened. I jokingly asked him if he had been drinking that night and with a deadly serious face, he stated, 'No! whatever that was, it was for real.' "As perplexed as he was that night over what he had seen, he was deathly afraid to go wandering into the woods to investigate further.

"He said that in using a flashlight, he observed an animal's tracks leading into the woods on the opposite side of the road and was fortunate enough that night to have his digital camera with him. He showed me a photograph of the paw-print which he said appeared to be about seven or eight inches long. He had another picture of the same paw-print where he placed a shotgun shell in the middle of it for scale.

He felt he was lucky that the side of the road was so soft, because he wasn’t willing to go any farther than two or three steps away from the door to his truck to get a picture. I inquired if the animal had made any sounds before it disappeared and he said that he did not hear it make any noise and were it not for the picture, he would have thought that he had imagined the whole thing. I asked him if it could have been a bear and he stated, 'absolutely not.' He bear hunts every year in the Upper Peninsula, so he obviously knows what bears look like up close.

Deb Hatswell 22/9/20