Witchy Wolves of Omer Plains
Author Linda Godfrey, known for her work on the Beast of Bray Road, an upright wolfman-like creature sighted in Wisconsin, recently published a book called I Know What I Saw: Modern-Day Encounters With Monsters Of New Urban Legend And Ancient Lore. In this book, in chapter 4, she describes the witchy wolves of Omer Plains, Michigan.
She describes how, in folklore, witches and wolves have largely been associated together. This is largely due to the fact that logic, specifically during the witch trials in Europe, stated that shapeshifting was only possible through witchcraft. In the 1860s, the settlers that began to cluster in the area that became known as Omer, called it Rifle River Mills, but a sawmill owner changed it to Homer to honor a local trading post owner. However, there was another area in Michigan that was being referred to as Homer so they just dropped the H and it has henceforth been known as Omer. Though there were never any witch trials in this area, it has long been the site of “phantom lupine creatures” referred to as the witchy wolves. According to Lindsey Russell for Michigan’s Otherside, the stories started as an old Chippewa legend about a half-dog-half-wolf spirit said to protect the souls and graves of native warriors and attack anyone who disturbs that final resting place. This legend has led to several decades of sightings by local residents. Interestingly, some believe that the sightings are simply rare glimpses of a recovering gray wolf population after the creature was said to be eradicated in Michigan’s lower peninsula in 1935.
An early account of a suspected encounter with the witchy wolves came from an undated newspaper article titled “The Witch Wolves of Omer” sent to Linda Godfrey that described a family named Keeney who settled near a cemetery in a scrubby area near a cemetery called Omer Plains, just a few miles upriver from Omer proper around the time of the Civil War. Godfrey was able to locate records of a contemporary family with the same name and other names that were included in the article, though it is impossible to corroborate if the people named in the article and the people confirmed to have lived in the area at the time are the same or that they had the same experiences.
The story that is recounted in the article describes how the family’s son, Corwin, was killed in 1865 in the POW camp Andersonville (link to another Creepy Americana post) in Georgia. It wasn’t until 30 years later, in 1895, that Corwin’s remains were finally sent back to his family in a shoebox-sized container. The family placed the container inside a full-length coffin and buried that coffin in the nearby cemetery. In May of the following year, after the harsh winter had finally let up, some citizens of Omer started their yearly ritual of tending to the cemetery, they went to pay special attention to their local Civil War hero. However, they found that the grave had been dug up and in its place was a female wolf with several pups. Upon seeing the villagers, the wolf sprang forth and began snarling and snatching at them. They took defensive poses and then saw that there were more wolves coming out from the forest, likely pack mates of the female wolf come to her aid at the sound of the commotion. The citizens then beat a hasty retreat back to town. Sounds relatively normal, but as legends are wont to do, the more the story was told the more it was embellished with villagers claiming that the wolf was no “ordinary” she-wolf but in fact anything from a vampire to a “witchy wolf.”
This legend was very well-known around town with teenagers telling other teenagers to scare each other, to the point that pilgrimages to the Omer Plains Cemetery to try to catch a glimpse of the witchy wolves. The writer, David Kulczyk grew up about 20 miles south of Omer and was in high school in the 70s. He says that he and his friends made the trip a few times to the area, though they never got the courage to leave the car. They also never saw anything, but the witchy wolves were “not silent.” According to Kulczyk, he and his friends heard the “hideous, high-pitched laughing bark” ringing from all around them in the darkness of the forest. And, as urban legends go, Kulczyk also said he knew a few people who had left their vehicles out in the woods which led to their cars being scratched or dented and getting bodily knocked to the ground by something growling and unseen.
It is interesting to see what legends remain and how they transmogrify over the years.
Painting is Moonlight, Wolf by Frederic Remington
