The Night Howl of San Antonio

On a warm October night, a San Antonio jogger cut through a riverside park trail and came face to face with something neither man nor dog. The witness, a lifelong resident and night runner, described the creature as tall, lean, and wolf-like, with yellow eyes that reflected light without blinking. When it stepped from behind the mesquite trees, its movement was too smooth to be human and too deliberate to be animal. The air thickened, silent but charged, and for a few long seconds, predator and witness shared the same breath.

He turned to run, but the figure moved faster, crossing the path in two strides before vanishing into the brush that borders the waterway. Later, when he returned with a flashlight and a friend, they found tracks that looked canine at first glance but stretched nearly fourteen inches from heel to toe. Locals call it the San Antonio Dogman, a southern cousin of the Beast of Bray Road, said to wander near the edges of civilization, watching from just beyond the light of the streetlamps.

Reports like this surface every few years in Bexar County, usually after midnight and often near the same trail network. Wildlife officials have no record of escaped animals that match the description. Believers say the Dogman walks when the season turns, drawn to places where city and wild overlap. Whatever it is, San Antonio keeps one more secret between its shadows and its stars.