It’s said they prowl through the deep forests of northern Michigan, protecting Native American warriors who sleep in their graves. Are they real? Are they supernatural? Or just a good tale to tell around the campfire? As always, CryptoVille investigates!

So many of these cryptid reports are terribly difficult to track down. In this case, I think I found a few good sources that shed some light on the rather murky tale of the witchy wolves of Michigan, or as they’re more commonly known, the Witchy Wolves of Omer Plains.

Omer Plains is located about 5 miles from Lake Huron in Michigan’s northern tier. It’s a large expanse of wooded plains, some of it more like a meadow. The Rifle River cuts across it on its way down to Saginaw Bay in Lake Huron. According to author Linda S. Godfrey, “it’s a lovely, quaint old town with an historical museum in the old county courthouse, and a real old-fashioned ice cream parlor.”

The Native Americans who lived in the area before settlers arrived around 1860, were of the Chippewa tribe. They are the ones who passed the legend of these creatures down through the decades. They believe these are spirit animals, half dog and half wolf, who protect the souls and resting places of the deceased Chippewa warriors.

There is at least one cemetery in the Omer Plains, and possibly another that, due to decay and natural forest reclamation, has mostly disappeared from sight.

If you’re wondering how they got the name Witchy Wolves when there isn’t a witch in any part of this tale, I may have the answer. It seems the settlers from the 1860s came from Europe and brought their own legends, beliefs, and prejudices with them. Apparently back in Europe, witches were closely associated with werewolves because that was the only way they could explain the transformation of a man into a werewolf, through witchcraft.

There is no mention what the Chippewa name for these spectral wolves is/was, nor what the translation would have been.

Sightings in the 1970s

Godfrey mentions writer David Kulczyk, a native and life-long Michigan resident who went to high school about 20 miles from Omer Plains. He had written an article for Strange Magazine detailing his own experience with the Witchy Wolves back in the 1970s.

Seems that teenagers love to frequent the place and see if they can experience some Witchy Wolves activity. Kulczyk himself went with friends a couple times, but they never got out of their car deciding to play it safe rather than venture into the woods looking for the unknown. However, he does report that he and his friends heard, “…a hideous, high-pitched laughing bark.” He said it was so loud, it seemed to fill the entire forest.

He recounts some tales where teens left their cars, but when they returned, they found scratches on their vehicles and some dents. In another incident, someone claimed they had been knocked to the ground by something they could not see but which they could hear growling.

From his own research, Kulczyk believes the legend started with the Chippewa and continues through today.

Chippewa Shamans

Some in the area of Omer Plains believe that long ago, Chippewa Shamans created the Witchy Wolves to guard the graves of their warriors and protect their spirits. This is interesting because it ties in with a Civil War era story about the Witchy Wolves which I’ll share with you next.

Curse of Scorbutus

This story begins on the battle field during the Battle of Trevilian Station, which is in Virginia. A young soldier was captured and sent to the infamous Andersonville, GA prisoner of war camp. Conditions there were brutal and the soldiers were pretty much starved.

What they called Scorbutus in those days, we now call scurvy. This was a serious disease in those days that was the result of a dramatic deficiency in vitamin C. The young soldier who succumbed to this disease was Corwin Keeney, the son of Marvin and Sally Keeney who lived in Omer Plains for years, raising their family.

What’s great is that Godfrey was able to consult historical records and found the names of Marvin and Sally Keeney and the records of their having lived in the area of Omer Plains. Further, she consulted Civil War records and found Corwin Keeney’s records and confirmed that he had died of Scorbutus. So we know this part of the story is true.

From there, things get a little hazy. It was said that the townsfolk would go every Spring to clean up the local graveyard. After Corwin’s return, they wanted to make the grave of their war hero especially nice.

When they arrived at the grave, they found a she-wolf had turned Corwin’s grave into a dug-out den for her new pups. She got very threatening towards the villagers and her pack apparently heard her and came out of the woods to defend her and the pups. The villagers got away but, not surprisingly, they were very traumatized.

The town gossiped about the incident for a long time and the she-wolf’s role morphed into her being a vampire, a warlock, or a Witchy Wolf. One of the residents, a Mrs. Gorrie (whose name was corroborated in historical records of that era by Godfrey), threw more gas on the flames of this tale with something she’d heard from her relatives in Tennessee.

Mrs. Gorrie said a curse must have been placed on Corwin’s casket by the Confederate soldiers. Apparently they had learned this trick from Native Americans. They placed a curse on the deceased’s remains before returning them to their families. If the casket is ever damaged or deliberately opened, a “supernatural creature” would leap out and start attacking everyone in sight. The Confederates referred to this curse as Scorbutus.

The townsfolk eventually decided that an exorcism was needed to clear Corwin’s grave of its association with the supernatural creature. The undertaker, Fred Menzer was charged with the task. After praying for hours over the grave using prayers of exorcism, he finally declared the demon had been banished.

They reburied Corwin’s body and went back to town. While that may have brought the townspeople a measure of peace in their day, it seems like the stories just won’t die and people will keep going back into those woods to tempt fate and see if they can encounter these paranormal wolves.

Paranormal Investigators Take on Omer Plains

According to Linda Godfrey and an article in the The Arenac Country Independent newspaper, a pair of paranormal investigative groups investigated the Omer Plains woods and cemetery.

In March 2009, The Eerie Temperance Entertainment (ETE) group and the Michigan Paranormal Encounters (MPE) group, investigated the area. They claim to have heard footsteps (I’m not sure if they were human like, or wolf like) and there was a sort of electrical pulsing noise in the woods the entire time they were there. Some of them saw balls of light darting about the woods.

These teams interviewed some other people living in the area and two reported having seen a white, ghostly old man sitting in a rocking chair when they were in the woods.

Another claimed his father was told by a friend they had seen a team of white horses galloping across the plains at night. Other people also reported seeing the ghostly orbs in the woods.

They spoke to another, unnamed man who said he thinks the howling people hear is just the wind howling through the pine trees. He insisted the trees make that noise when the wind blows.

The stories go on, diverting from the Witchy Wolves into creatures like Bigfoot, Dogmen, Werewolves and who knows what else?! It seems a lot is happening in the woods of Omer Plains!

Making Sense of This

Linda Godfrey did a very good job trying to prove that people involved in the origins of this story were historically real. But so much of the rest of it has the unmistakable odor of “Urban Legend.”

Did Confederate soldiers really curse the caskets of Union soldiers before sending them back to their families? I don’t know, but it seems a bit far-fetched.

Let’s look at the account of the she-wolf making a den in  Corwin’s grave. If his was the last grave dug in a while, the dirt would have been easier to dig up there rather than more compacted soil that hadn’t been touched in a very long time over other graves. So it may have been a natural and easy way for the she-wolf to prepare her den for her pups.

Then the other wolves came to her defense. Don’t really think that’s supernatural as much as a natural defense exhibited by wolves for millennia.

What are people hearing in the woods, the growls? It could very well be the wind in the pine trees, or it could be natural creatures living in the woods alarmed by the proximity of humans.

Orbs? I’m almost sick of them. It seems there are a lot of places in nature where they appear, especially when geological conditions are right.  I’ve written about these things before here in CryptoVille, so you can look up those articles and see for yourself.

I’m inclined to think this is just another Urban Legend with little to no proof of anything.

Then There’s This

Lindsey’s tale is interesting and took place within the lifetime of most of us. She grew up in Omer Plains. In her article for michigansotherside.com, she explains that her father told her the story of the Witchy Wolves when she was very young, around 6 or so. Even at that young age, she realized her dad was a tease, so she wasn’t too upset by it.

Her Dad grew up in the 60s and 70s and told her about teenagers who went into the woods of Omer Plains to party at night. The stories go that they somehow encountered “wolf spirits” and were terrified. But it all seemed like an urban legend to her as she got older, so she pretty much discounted the legend.

Lindsey began her encounter story by saying that they had apple trees in their front yard and every Fall it was her job to go collect the fallen apples. Her dad would use those apples to feed deer in their backyard during the cold winter months.

So one day she was picking up the apples when she noticed what she first thought was a pack of dogs at the top of the road overlooking their property. She said they “looked large and appeared to be just shadows.” Naturally, she was very frightened. She said they crossed the area where legend said the Witchy Wolves roamed.

About fifteen years later, she was coming home for a Christmas vacation with her boyfriend. He dropped her at her parent’s house, then left to go to his family’s home. On the way he had a similar experience to the one she had that fateful day when she was apple picking in her front yard. He too was frightened, but unharmed.

Lindsey ends her account saying she can’t prove definitively that she saw the creatures of the Witchy Wolves legend, but she thinks there might be something to the old Chippewa legend after all.

So what do you think about the legend of the Witchy Wolves? Maybe something to it, or just a good old Urban Legend?

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References

https://lostinmichigan.net/search-witchy-wolf/

http://michigansotherside.com/the-witchy-wolves-of-omer-plains/

Godfrey, Linda S. (2019) I Know What I Saw New York: Penguin Random House LLC.