SPOTLIGHT
Encounter with a Taylor ‘Dogman’ sparks books, successful podcast
TAYLOR — Josh Turner’s career in the paranormal realm started with a werewolf.
Without the lycanthrope, Taylor native Turner likely wouldn’t have become fascinated with all things weird. Today, as an author, podcaster and popular YouTube personality, he can talk for hours (and sometimes does) about werewolves, Bigfoot, Dogman, cryptids, alien encounters and a long list of peculiar phenomena. You might say he’s East Wilco’s homegrown version of the late Art Bell, one of America’s most popular radio broadcasters, whose nightly programs often delved deep into the occult, UFOs and all things supernatural.
Now living in Austin, Turner keeps an almost otherworldly pace.
“I’m building a house, and I have a construction and a security company,” he said. “I’m also writing my fifth book, so I don’t have a lot of spare time.”
Somehow, he finds time for his flagship creation, “Paranormal Round Table,” with a podcast and several streaming shows a week on various platforms, including YouTube, Google, Spotify, Soundcloud, iTunes, Facebook and Rumble. Since Turner started in 2017, his shows have garnered almost 7 million views and nearly 40,000 followers.
On most of his shows, Turner and his co-host, Tony “Mushu” Luong, talk to guests and interview people with their own stories of brushes with mysterious beings or forces. Winged werewolves, shapeshifters, Bigfoot, ghostly apparitions and acts, Sasquatch, shadow beings, devil monkeys and vampires are just a few of the topics of discussion.
Turner seemingly can’t hear enough of the tales. He said he’s been hearing them since he was young.
“Growing up in Taylor, Texas, I had heard stories about mysterious black panthers and black dogs, and there were also tales of a hairy monster said to haunt the nearby town of Coupland,” he wrote in his first book, “Werewolves and the Dogman Phenomenon.”
There were rumors of a being that looked like “a cross between a gorilla and a wolf ” and talk of mutilated bodies in the Taylor Rail Yard. Turner’s cousin encountered a creature “about seven or eight feet tall, black and hairy.”
She later told him it looked like “a freaking werewolf with red eyes!” he
“On Halloween night 1990, my young life changed dramatically when I encountered something that I can’t explain to this day.”
— JOSH TURNER AUTHOR reported.
He heard several stories about giant wolf-like creatures in the Hidalgo Park area.
“During the course of my many inquiries through the years, I’ve learned that a lot of other people in Taylor have seen these creatures too.” Turner wrote. “The old-timers have talked about these things being around a long time, since the early days.”
According to Turner, the werewolf incident that sparked his interest occurred as a 15-year-old student at Taylor High School. He tells the tale with relish.
(Cue the spooky music.) “On Halloween night 1990, my young life changed dramatically when I encountered something that I can’t explain to this day. I’ve had recurring nightmares about the incident for years… They come and go. In my dreams, I see this thing—stalking me—over and over,” he wrote.
Turner said he was hanging out with his best friend late that night, and they headed for another friend’s home to borrow a bicycle to get home by his mommandated curfew. On the way, they had to pass a house where they knew the owners had two German shepherds.
“I thought I could see one of their dogs loose and squatting in the ditch in front of their house,” Turner wrote in “Werewolves and the Dogman Phenomenon.” He recalled approaching the animal cautiously.
“Still thinking it was a dog, I called out to it. That’s when it turned its head and looked right at us. As we got closer, the thing rose up into a hunched position, now facing us head on…it possessed a head like a wolf but appeared to be the body of a man,” he recalled.
Initially, Turner said he was frozen with fear but snapped back to his senses and ran to his friend’s nearby home. By then, the creature was in pursuit, but it was stopped by a high chain-link fence in a resident’s yard. It tried to climb the fence toward the house but couldn’t get a foothold with its clawed feet. Turner said his friend’s family saw the beast, too.
The mother called it “some kind of diablo.” The father ran for his shotgun. But by the time he retrieved the weapon, the creature had disappeared.
Turner was eager to tell his story, but he said his parents just sent him to therapy, and his schoolmates mocked him with the nickname “Wolf-boy.”
The name “eventually became ‘Wolf ’ after multiple fistfights,” he wrote. The name stuck, and so did Turner’s obsession with the uncanny.
Over the years, he has had “a multitude of anomalous experiences,” he wrote.
“Seeing that creature opened up an endless world of possibilities for me. I’ve since become somewhat of a well-known investigator of the Dogman phenomenon, and I have interviewed hundreds of witnesses who claim to have encountered these monsters.”
“When people tell their encounters, I try to go deep,” he added.
To support his passion for the paranormal, Turner invites listeners to purchase Patreon memberships at various levels. He also hawks various “merch,” from keychains to T-shirts, hoodies and copies of his books, “Werewolves and the Dogman Phenomenon” and “The Bigfoot Phenomenon.” He said he has three more books in the works. One is tentatively titled “Pondering the Paranormal” and another will explore the “Mandela Effect”— unexplained occurrences of collective misremembering.
“I’m interested in history and science. Not black magic — black science,” Turner said. “Quantum physics is going to play a big role in it. Atomically, there’s nothing there. It’s an agreed-upon illusion from a higher being.”
Turner said he takes even the wildest, most improbable tales seriously. While some may sound made up, he said, many fantasies spring from mysterious sources that have yet to be understood.
“What if all of these different types of entities – Dogman, Bigfoot and other cryptids, ghosts and aliens – are from another dimension?” Turner said. “Physics has demonstrated that it is possible that there could be a fourth dimension, a fourth density that lies beyond our perceivable three dimensions. Perhaps these beings can see us, even when we can’t see them. There may be ways to summon these various entities into our dimension, our reality.”
It may sound unbelievable to some, but Turner’s passion for the paranormal keeps “going deep” into the unknown.
And it keeps fans of “Paranormal Round Table” tuning in.
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