Post by Graveyardbride on Oct 16, 2021 16:34:59 GMT -5
The Wolf Woman of Mobile
It was Friday, April 2, 1971, and two brothers, ages 9 and 7, were poking about in a vacant lot near their home in Plateau, a black community three miles north of Mobile, Alabama. They didn’t know the time, but it was getting late and the two were about to leave when they heard something moving about in an overgrown area and paused to see what it was. As they watched, what they later described as the biggest dog they’d ever seen made its way slowly out of the bushes and weeds. The animal, which they insisted was the size of a pony, was enough to put the fear of God in the youngsters, who had been warned all their lives to stay away from strange dogs. But the canine itself – despite its enormous size – wasn’t the problem. This particular dog – or whatever it was – had the head and face of a woman!
Scared out of their wits, the boys started running and dared not look back, certain the monster was after them. They bounded into the house, letting the screen door slam and totally out of breath, tried to tell their mother what they had just seen. Of course she didn’t believe for a minute they had seen a giant dog with a woman’s head. Later at supper, they told their father and got a scolding for wandering off and playing in vacant lots.
The brothers didn’t say anything more about the thing that came out of the bushes – except to each other – and by Sunday morning, the two had just about convinced themselves they hadn’t really seen what they thought they’d seen. Then they heard people talking at church: others, it seemed, including some grown folks, had also seen the dog-woman.
The foregoing summarizes a lengthy comment posted on Topix 10 or 12 years ago. While the local newspaper claimed the reports began on April Fool’s Day, implying the entire “Wolf Woman” incident was nothing more than some sort of joke, there is no record of a report prior to April 2.
By the afternoon of Monday, April 5, local law enforcement, as well as newspaper and radio stations, had received numerous calls about a dog – or wolf – with a woman’s head in the Plateau neighborhood and various locations along Davis Avenue (now Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue).
One witness described the creature as “a woman and a wolf, pretty and hairy.” An unnamed youngster is quoted as saying: “My daddy seen it down in the swamp and it chased him home. Now, my mammy keeps all the doors and windows locked.” A man insisted he saw something ungodly: “The top half was a woman and the bottom was a wolf,” he said. “It didn’t seem natural.”
People were locking their doors, closing their windows and keeping their children close to home. Once the sun set, streets in the vicinity of the sightings were deserted and everyone hurried home from work, not wanting to be caught outside after sundown.
There were rumors the wolf-human hybrid had escaped its cage at a traveling circus, although no one could recall ever having seen, or even hearing about, a wolf or dog with a human head in a circus or anywhere else. Another story making the rounds was that some mad scientist or doctor was conducting strange experiments and the half-human, half-animal abomination had somehow gotten loose. Others were convinced it was some sort of demonic entity or possibly someone cursed by a powerful Hoodoo witch.
Within a few days, The Mobile Press-Register had received dozens of phone calls about the creature and a reporter admitted witnesses seemed genuinely frightened. The police department declined to comment, but officers increased their patrols in locations where most of the reports originated and spoke with several witnesses. On April 8, the newspaper published an article in which a reporter wrote: “Listening to as many as 50 phone calls The Press-Register has received, day and night, in approximately a week, you wonder if perhaps there isn’t something out there.”
On the night of Saturday, April 10, several people reported encountering the monstrous hybrid and others claimed to have heard bloodcurdling howls emanating from wooded areas. The police, however, discounted most of these reports because it was the night of the full moon and they had no doubt people were allowing their imaginations to run wild. After all, anyone who had ever seen a werewolf movie knew it was the moon that caused those under the “curse” to shape-shift into wolves. Some officers also suspected local teenagers might be taking advantage of the situation and doing some howling of their own.
Descriptions of the Wolf Woman varied. Some, including the two youngsters who first saw the monster, insisted it was huge, much larger than an ordinary dog, while others estimated it was about the size of a German shepherd. One witness, who had spent time on the west coast while serving in the military, declared the beast was approximately the size of a mountain lion, but more dog- than cat-like.
Then the reports began to dwindle and approximately two weeks after the first sighting, they ceased. The last encounter is believed to have occurred on the night of Saturday, the 17th, when a man and his elderly grandmother were driving home after visiting family members in Plateau. There were no street lights and when they rounded a curve, both saw a large animal, which they initially believed to be a dog, in the middle of the narrow road. Oddly, the creature didn’t seem frightened and although it was looking in their direction as it ambled off into the woods, its eyes did not glow in the headlights. Later, someone suggested what they had seen was just a “big ol’ wild boar” – swine do not have reflective eyes – but the grandmother, who had grown up on a farm, vehemently denied this. “I know a hog when I see one,” she proclaimed, “and that thing had a bushy tail like a dog!”
The two did not contact the authorities, but the story has been passed down in the family. In recounting the incident more than 30 years later, the man who saw the Wolf Woman that night emphasized that unlike some, he didn’t find anything “pretty” about the unholy thing, and admitted that even now, when he’s outside at night, just thinking about what might be lurking in the dark made his “blood run cold.”
Through the ensuing years, several individuals have come forward claiming they saw the Wolf Woman and one such sighting was posted in a Topix Mobile comment in 2012:
Not only do I remember the Wolf Woman, I saw her! It was the Friday before Palm Sunday* and my mother said the church needed some palm fronds. I was 16 and had just got my license and I offered to go cut some that I'd seen along Davis Avenue because I was always looking for an excuse to drive. So a neighbor dude and I grabbed a couple machetes and set off in my dad's truck. We lived just off Hannon Avenue and by the time we found the Sabal palms, it was close to sundown. We started cutting fronds and as we were putting them in the truck, the dude yelled and the first thing I thought was that a snake had bit him. Then I looked where he was pointing and I saw it. A whopping big dog with what looked like the head of a woman with long dark hair hanging down on both sides. We jumped in the truck and got out of there so fast we left our machetes. We hadn't yet heard about the Wolf Woman, but on the way home, we decided to keep what we saw to ourselves because people would have accused us of lying, drinking or being crazy. A few days later, it was all over the news, but by that time, we thought if we said anything, people would accuse us of making it up because we hadn't said anything when it happened.
The Mephisto Waltz. No one has ever been able to explain the terrifying creature that stalked the Plateau area of Mobile that spring a half-century ago, but there’s a possibility it was someone’s idea of a joke. On Friday, April 9, 1971, The Mephisto Waltz, a horror film based on the Fred Mustard Stewart novel of the same name, was shown in theaters throughout the United States. Although this was more than a week after the first Wolf Woman sighting, the film, starring Alan Alda and Jacqueline Bissett, had been advertised extensively during the weeks prior thereto and anyone who attended the movie theater on a regular basis would have seen the previews. The trailer includes a clip from a costume party wherein Roxanne Delancey (Barbara Parkins) leads her big, black, demonic-looking dog through a roomful of elaborately costumed partygoers and the dog is wearing a human head!
Did some teenager or mischievous adult see the previews and decide to play a cruel joke on people? While dogs would normally attempt to remove something stuck over their heads, no one saw the creature for more than a few seconds. Furthermore, a mask would have hidden the animal’s eyes, which would explain why the man and his grandmother who saw a bushy tailed animal cross the road in front of them that night said the beast’s eyes did not glow in the car’s headlights. While there is no proof whatsoever the “werewolf” was actually a masked dog, when compared to the alternative – a wolf-human hybrid – the former seems much more plausible.
Sources: Caroline Thompson, The Bear 95.3, October 29, 2014; Kelly Kazek, Alabama.com, January 14, 2019; Topix; The Mobile Police Department; The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopedia of Shape-Shifting Beings by Brad Steiger; The Paranormal Pastor, August 19, 2009; Cryptozoology; The Mobile Press Register, April 8, 1971; Strange Encounters; The Mephisto Waltz; Theo Paijmans, "The Wolf Woman of Mobile and Other Human-headed Hounds," Fortean Times, August 2018; and Personal Files.
*Palm Sunday that year was April 4, so the boys cutting palm fronds would have encountered the Wolf Woman on Friday, April 2, the same day the children playing in the vacant lot saw it.
The drawing is an artist’s concept based on a description of the Wolf Woman provided by a witness.
