This Family Hid a DOGMAN for 67 Years, Then the Feds Found Out. What They Did…

🐺 The Storm Cellar: 67 Years of an Impossible Secret

What would you do if you found something dying in your backyard that the government has been hunting for decades? Something with fangs, claws, and eyes that understood every word you said. I am 84 years old now, and I’ve been carrying the heaviest secret imaginable since I was 17. In my family’s old storm cellar, hidden beneath our farmhouse, we protected a creature that shouldn’t exist, a Dogman. His name was Marcus. At least, that’s what we called him. And for 67 years, three generations of my family kept him safe from a world that would have torn him apart. But in 2019, everything changed. The feds finally found out. And what happened next will make you question everything you thought you knew about what’s really out there in the darkness.

My name is Robert Chun, and I need to tell you this story before it’s too late. Before I die, and this truth dies with me. This is a confession, a warning, and maybe the most important story about family loyalty you’ll ever hear.

The Encounter: October 1952

Let me take you back to where this all started. October 1952, in the mountains of North Carolina. I was 17, living on my family’s tobacco farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We were isolated, which was the only reason what I’m about to tell you could happen at all.

I was checking the fence line when I heard it—not howling, but a low, pained growling mixed with something that sounded almost like crying. I followed the sound deeper into the thick, dark woods until I found him. He was lying in a small clearing, partially hidden under a fallen oak tree.

He looked like something out of a nightmare, but worse because it was real and suffering. His body was humanoid, maybe seven feet tall, but his head was wrong—K9, like a wolf, but larger and more expressive. Dark fur covered most of his body, matted with blood. His hands had fingers with claws at the ends, currently digging into the ground as waves of pain consumed him.

The injury was a bear trap, one of those illegal ones, biting deep through fur and muscle on his right leg. Infection had already set in. What stopped me from running wasn’t the shock; it was his eyes. When he noticed me, he looked at me with eyes that were terrifyingly human, brown and intelligent and filled with fear and pain.

I made a choice that would define the rest of my life. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, my voice shaking. “Let me look at that leg.” I don’t know why I thought he’d understand English, but when I took a step forward, he didn’t growl. He just watched.

I knelt beside him. He lay there, shaking with fever, and let me examine the trap. Using a broken branch for leverage, I pried the jaws open. When the metal finally released his leg, he let out a howl of pure agony.

“We need to get you somewhere safe,” I told him. He tried to stand but collapsed. That’s when I realized the impossible task I’d accepted. I’d found a creature that shouldn’t exist, and I couldn’t leave him to die.

The Agreement: A Handshake in the Woods

“My family’s farm is about a mile that way. We have a storm cellar underground, hidden. If I can get you there, I can try to help. But you have to trust me, and I have to trust you not to eat me. Deal?”

He looked at me for a long moment, then raised one massive, clawed hand and held it out toward me. A handshake. I took his hand. It was hot with fever, rough with calluses. We shook once, and I felt the weight of a promise neither of us fully understood yet.

Getting him back to the farm was a grueling, four-hour ordeal of dragging 300 pounds of muscle and pain through the dense woods. But he understood me. When I encouraged him, he pushed harder.

We reached the hidden storm cellar, and with immense effort, I got him down the steep, narrow stairs and onto an old mattress inside the 12×12 foot room.

“Okay,” I said, looking at the creature lying in my family’s shelter. “Okay, what the hell do I do now?“

I closed the cellar doors. The only way this worked was if no one knew. Not my parents, not my sister, nobody.

I gathered all our medical supplies, antibiotics, and food. When I presented him with the pill bottle, he immediately communicated: two pills, twice a day. He nodded, accepting the impossible medicine. As I cleaned and wrapped his severely infected leg, he watched me with curiosity.

Then, he touched his chest and pointed at me. He made a low, rumbling sound that was his name. After trying several pronunciations, I anglicized it. “Marcus,” I said. “I’m going to call you Marcus. Is that okay?” He nodded. And just like that, a creature became a person with a name.

“Marcus,” I confirmed. “If anyone finds you, they’ll kill you. You have to stay quiet. This is a secret just between us.” He placed his hand over his chest again—a gesture of gratitude and promise.

The Underground Home: 1953

For the next six weeks, I maintained the secret, sneaking out every night to bring Marcus food and medicine. The antibiotics worked, and his leg slowly healed. We developed a basic, beautiful communication through gestures and shared understanding.

Marcus began telling me his story: he was a Dogman, one of maybe 20 individuals spread across the Appalachian Range. They were intelligent, with their own culture, but they hid because humans hunted them, killed them, feared them. He had been running from hunters when he stepped into the trap, and his family—his mate and his child—had to leave him to save themselves.

I’d saved his life, but I’d also trapped him. With a permanent limp, he couldn’t return to the mountains; he’d be a liability.

“What do we do?” I asked him one night.

Marcus began drawing in the dirt floor. He drew the cellar, then drew additions, making it bigger and deeper. He wanted us to expand the space, but quietly, secretly. He drew the two of us working together, and then drew a workshop above the expanded cellar. The workshop would be my cover for the noise and the excavated dirt.

Over the winter of 1952 and into the spring of 1953, I built a workshop with my father’s help, telling him I needed a trade. What he didn’t know was that every night, Marcus and I were digging. Bucket by bucket, we expanded the cellar into a hidden home: a living space, storage, and even a small, sealable panic room. We reinforced the walls, disguised ventilation, and ran an illegal power line.

By the summer of 1953, the cellar had become a sanctuary. The entrance was a false floor panel in my workshop, completely invisible.

Marcus thrived. He regained his strength. He taught me how to move silently, how to read the forest. He taught me the complex understanding of the natural world he possessed.

“Why are you teaching me this? Are you planning to leave?” I asked.

He shook his head, pointed at his limping leg, then pointed at me, at our home, and placed his hand over his chest. He was choosing to stay. He was choosing me.

“Then I promise you,” I said, my voice tight with emotion. “I’ll keep you safe. For as long as I can, I’ll protect you.” We sealed the pact with an awkward, heartfelt hug.

Generations of Secrecy: 1955–1990

Time normalized the impossible. By 1955, Marcus was just part of my life. I taught him to read basic English, and he taught me his dozens of vocalizations. We created a hybrid language. He was fascinated by human culture, particularly Westerns on the TV I rigged up for him—he said the wide-open spaces reminded him of the mountains.

In 1962, I married Susan, and I started the hardest lie of my life—the lie of omission. Marcus understood; he signaled that he would be even more careful, even more hidden.

When my son, David, was born in 1963, I brought a picture down to Marcus. He touched the photo gently, making soft sounds of congratulation and grief for the child he would never see again. “I’ll tell him about you one day,” I promised. “You’re part of this family, Marcus.”

My father died in 1968, and I inherited the farm.

In 1975, when David was 12, he confronted me. “Dad, what are you hiding?” I made the second great choice of my life: to pass the burden of the secret, the loyalty, to my son. I took him to the workshop and opened the hidden entrance.

David’s reaction was perfect. He didn’t scream; he stared, turned pale, and held my hand. “His name is Marcus,” I said, “and he’s been my friend for 23 years.”

David became my apprentice, spending hours with Marcus, learning from him. Marcus became like a grandfather to him, teaching him patience and how to see beyond appearances. In 1990, David brought his own son, my grandson James, into the secret. James was 16, rebellious and…