On August 5, 2014, Sharon Hill posted this video at Doubtful News, showing a bear walking on its hind-legs, suffering an apparent injury to a fore paw. The bear appears to have taken to life as a biped well. Though we know bears can stand on and walk on their hind-legs, we are much more used to them on all fours. Seeing a bear being so adept at walking upright is a bit unnerving.
In the comments section of the same post, a reader linked to two more videos of bears exhibiting human-like behavior. The first is another bipedal bear. The other shows a bear opening car doors with ease.
Hill goes on to say that bipedal bears may be responsible for some Bigfoot sightings. Other skeptical outlets have followed suit. And there is no doubt they may be right. Encountering such an animal in low-light, or through thick forest, it would be an understandable mistake. However, I believe that misidentified bears may be responsible for reports of another of cryptid, one of more recent popularity, the Beast of Bray Road or Michigan Dogman.
In Linda Godfrey’s The Beast of Bray Road, one witness relates an unnerving tale of a “starved, wolfish creature” peering in her bedroom window. It is not outside the realm of possibility to think the witness saw a bear, made to walk upright due to injury, and emaciated from being unable to feed itself. Other witnesses describe the beast as resembling a bear or having bear-like features.
Though rare, bears are not unknown in Walworth County, Wisconsin, home of the infamous Bray Road. Many of the sightings of the beast came at a time the bear population was exploding in Wisconsin. In 1989, there were nine-thousand bears in the state; in the two decades since, the bear population has more than doubled. Some of these bears show little fear of humans. The Wild Mammals of Wisconsin reports a bear in Walworth Country attacked and attempted to drag away a sleeping Boy Scout. The Beast of Bray Road demonstrates a similar lack of fear. One witness saw it climb into the back of a pick-up to retrieve a roadkill deer. Another claimed it tried to claw open windows of a house. Such behavior is not uncommon in bears, who will try to get in homes, cars, and anywhere their curiosity and stomachs take them.
None of this is to suggest that bipedal bears, or bears of any sort, are responsible for every sighting of the Beast of Bray Road or Michigan Dogman. Much like all reported paranormal phenomenon, it is doubtful there is a grand unified theory that explains every case. More likely, there are innumerable causes and factors responsible. The purpose of this column is to provide an alternative explanation to some of the accounts, nothing more.
