The Amarillo Anomaly
Dogmen, Wolfmen, and UAOs…
Smack in the middle of the dusty Texas Panhandle lies the city of Amarillo, an eclectic sort of Plains metropolis with a little bit of something for everyone.
Situated near the famous “Staked Plains” or Llano Estocado—the immense tableland that sprawls across northeastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas—the “Yellow City” grew up along the tracks of the Forth Worth and Denver City Railroad in the nineteenth century, and it has flourished ever since.
Amarillo has a lot going for it, including the dubious distinction of being one of the world’s most prolific helium producers, as well as hosting both an extensive meat-packing plant and the nation’s primary nuclear weapons assembly facility. It’s also the gateway to the scenic Palo Duro Canyon State Park, and for those more artistically inclined, Amarillo is home to some of the most famed Art Deco architecture in the Lone Star State.
But overshadowing all of this—at least for the purposes of this Substack—is an episode of more recent vintage, one that has secured Amarillo’s place in the storied pantheon of Southwestern cryptozoological hotspots. I’m referring, of course, to the so-called “Amarillo Anomaly,” a rather sinister-looking cryptid of unknown antecedents and pedigree that paid a visit to the Amarillo Zoo in late spring of last year.
The Anomaly made itself known in the early morning hours of May 21, when it was captured in a single photo snapped by the zoo’s security camera. The cryptid—which the city government cheekily dubbed the “Unidentified Amarillo Object” (UAO)—honestly resembles nothing so much as a bipedal dogman, of the kind more likely to be found along Wisconsin’s notorious Bray Road. It can be seen just without the zoo’s perimeter fencing, and seems to be gazing—in a rather startled fashion—in the camera’s direction, as if caught in the act…whatever that act might be.
On June 8, the City of Amarillo posted the still image of the creature to their website, along with an appeal for the public’s help in identifying it:
“In the dark and early morning hours of May 21 (around 1:25 a.m.), security cameras inside a perimeter fence at the Amarillo Zoo captured a strange image outside the zoo.
“Was it a person with a strange hat who likes to walk at night? A large coyote on its hind legs? A Chupacabra? It is a mystery—for Amarillo to help solve.
“For now, the strange visitor is a UAO—Unidentified Amarillo Object. However, perhaps Amarillo has a better explanation.
“In the spirit of fun if not curiosity, the City of Amarillo is letting the public offer ideas on the identity of the UAO. (Video footage is not available.)
“‘We just want to let the Amarillo community have some fun with this,’ said City of Amarillo (COA) Director of Parks and Recreation Michael Kashuba. ‘It is important to note that this entity was outside the Amarillo Zoo. There were no signs of attempted entry into the zoo. No animals or individuals were harmed. There were no signs of criminal activity or vandalism.
“‘It is definitely a strange and interesting image. Maybe Amarillo can help solve the mystery of our UAO.’”
So just what is the Anomaly…or “UAO,” as the Amarilloans would have it? Perhaps it was only a foolish prankster, or even a hoax engineered by the zoo itself, in order to generate a little buzz and notoriety during the early summer “silly season.”
Or maybe there’s a better explanation. After all, the Anomaly does uncannily resemble the sort of nightmare cryptid that occasionally crops up in stories of dogmen or wolfmen—a creature, we should note, that isn’t only to be found in the states bordering the Great Lakes.
As it happens, the Southwest is no stranger to dogmen sightings, as a perusal of the aptly-named website “Dogman Encounters” readily attests. One incident occurred near remote Lakewood, NM—about halfway between Artesia and Carlsbad in the southeastern corner of the state—in the spring of 1999. The witness and some friends were watching TV late one night in a rural trailer home, when they were alerted by the barking of dogs to the ominous presence of a late-night prowler.
They all went to see what it was…but what they discovered was not your typical skulking coyote or stumbling wino:
“We all ran out of the bedroom, down the hall, and into the kitchen, to see what the heck was up. Peering out the kitchen window was pointless, as it was late, there was cloud-cover and the moon wasn’t even out. We heard the scuffling noise again, from further down the house, and went into the living room to see what was up. We were all really confused at this point. The next few moments seemed to happen in slow motion. Appearing in the living room window from the left and looking right in on us from the glass was…I don’t know what. From the shoulders up was what I can only describe as a man-dog. Its shoulders were quite human, with short sleek hair, but it had the head of what looked to be a Rottweiler. And the teeth…Oh my GOD! The teeth on this thing! All four of us screamed at about the same time and I guess that scared it off, because it just disappeared. That image is forever seared into my head! Also of note, this was a trailer house, so the bottom of that window was easily six foot off the ground, meaning this thing was seven-foot something! No matter how big of a dog or wolf it was, it could not have stood up and looked at us like that, in that window. The guys (being guys) immediately grabbed their shotguns and headed out the door, even though I told them it was a bad idea…I guess they were out there looking around for it for some 20 minutes before they came back inside and said they couldn’t see anything…
“The next morning, I got up early and decided to go have a look around, to see if there were any tracks to identify what the heck it was. The grass and weeds that were right beside the house pretty much hid any tracks it made there. Although, I did find where it looked as if something had clawed at the siding, along the bottom of the house, in a couple of places, making the thump and scuffling sounds, the night before. I then decided to follow the tracks the guys had made and that was when I made a second, very unnerving discovery. The guys made clear tracks in the sandy dirt and whatever it was out there did as well, because it was pretty much circling them the entire time they were out there, at a distance of about forty feet. The tracks were HUGE, canine, and switched back and forth from four tracks to two, meaning it was walking bipedally for at least half the time it circled them.
“Just freaking creepy!”
Another story of an upright mystery canid was published on the site “Phantoms & Monsters,” and recounts an event that occurred in northern Arizona (probably along the Mogollon Rim) in June of 2021, while the witness and his sister were driving to Phoenix from Utah:
“My sister and I were having a conversation as she was driving. We entered into a clearing in the trees. As we came to the clearing there was a very large rock on the right side of the road that caught my eye. Upon seeing the rock, I saw movement to the left of it. There was a very large distinctly canid shaped figure in the clearing next to the rock.
“As I stared, trying to make out what it was, we had both gone silent mid-sentence. I clearly saw eyeshine that was almost a reddish-orange in hue. Whatever it was was locked in a stare with me and tracked the vehicle with its eyes. My blood ran cold and I felt a feeling of utter helplessness sink over me. The feeling was accompanied by the thought that whatever this was could do serious harm and I would have no way to stop it. The creature only stood and stared at us as we passed.
“When the initial shock wore off a few seconds later, I quickly asked if my sister had seen anything. Her voice was very shaky as she confirmed exactly what I had seen. A very large canid-like creature staring directly at us as we passed through the clearing. I have seen black bears up close and personal within 20 yards and whatever this was was clearly not a black bear. It was quite a bit larger with more of a slender build and a very dog-like head and snout.
“My sister was very shaken by the experience and had tears in her eyes due to the fear she was feeling. She continued driving as we both felt completely unsafe to stop or even have a window down. She does not like to talk about it to this day. I believe what we saw to be consistent to other reports seen in the area which I later researched after we got to Phoenix.”
As the above stories suggest, these sightings are almost uniformly accompanied by a distinct feeling of dread—of utter terror and helplessness. That is not always the case with other cryptid sightings, such as of Bigfoot, which more often elicit feelings of curiosity or just plain wonder; but the dogmen sightings are quite different, and maybe that’s not so surprising after all.
Perhaps that feeling of dread wells up from our primal fear of the wolf in the woods, something crystallized in all those tales of werewolves and fairy stories of the Big Bad Wolf.
The staff of the Amarillo Zoo ought to thank their lucky stars that none of them have yet encountered their nameless visitant in the flesh.
In any case, there are—it probably goes without saying—many more such stories hailing from all over the desert Southwest. Dogman sightings are particularly prevalent in that part of northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona that coincides with the Navajo Nation and environs, and there seems to be a great deal of very natural overlap with tales of the notorious “skinwalker.”
Verdict: So what exactly is the “Amarillo Anomaly?”
Was it a Chupacabras, as the nameless city functionary who released the original story suggested? Perhaps. After all, Texas is no stranger to sightings of this infamous Latin American cryptid, as the so-called “Cuero Chupacabra” amply attests.
Still, the manifestly bipedal stance of the Amarillo Anomaly militates against that theory. On the other hand, the Texas Panhandle is rather too far away from the Four Corners territory of the skinwalker of Navajo legend…unless that sinister paranormal entity has expanded its range of late, which is entirely within the realm of possibility. After all, Amarillo does lie along I-40, which runs all the way to Gallup and cuts through the southeast corner of the Navajo Nation.
So who knows?
Whatever the case, it seems that every culture, in every place, and in every period of history, has preserved legends of dogmen, wolfmen, werewolves, or whatever else you might wish to call them.
And the American West, it seems, is no different.