THE DOG WOMAN OF WATTS

Good Afternoon Fellow Phantoms.

I wanted to take a moment during my research into the paranormal to share with you a little story that I have come across. There is not a lot of information available for this creature that was seen in a densely packed area of Los Angeles to make it a full length episode for the podcast, but that doesn’t mean we can’t share the experience here.

This creature sighting takes place in Watts an impoverished African American neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. In the 1960’s, deep-seated racial inequality, discrimination, and police brutality marred the landscape of Watts.

Much of the racial tension boiled over in August 1965 when a Black motorist, Marquette Frye, was pulled over by a White Highway Patrol officer for suspicion of drunk driving. A struggle ensued during the arrest, and a crowd of onlookers gathered, growing increasingly angry as they witnessed the police action. The frustration of racial inequality, police brutality, and general poverty led to the six day Watts Riots. The riots resulted in 34 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, nearly 4,000 arrests, with an estimated $40 million in property damage.

However, our story takes place four years earlier in 1961. It was at the intersection of 103rd and Grape Street starting around 3:15 PM, a bizarre creature that had the body of a dog and the face of a woman was spotted by multiple concerned citizens. The creature that became to be known as the Dog Woman of Watts ran on all fours, was covered with hair. Police initially thought the first call was a prank call, but as more reports came in over the next couple of hours, their opinions changed. Some people reported that the Police actually spotted the creature and gave chase. Unfortunately, no further evidence or reports can verify that the Police actually spotted or gave chase to the creature. If they did apprehend the creature, there is no known evidence as to what the creature may have been.

My first thoughts about this creature was the 1978 remake of the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. In this movie alien spores infect the Earth and when you slept the spore would spawn a pod. That pod would then create a duplicate human copy of the person sleeping with the same physical traits, personalities and memories. The alien replicas were void of all human emotion and led to the alien invasion of Earth. Well in this movie, sometimes the transformation was incomplete or botched. There is one scene where a botched assimilation caused a dog to have a human face. As a kid of eight when this movie was released, that man face dog creeped the hell out of me. So, I can see the terror that this creature must have had on those people that reported this incident. Imagine coming face to face with a large canine with a human face running through your neighborhood with wild hair and growling.

With so little information about this creature sighting, and the lack of further sightings since the initial report, we have to ask; What was this creature?

It is easy to believe it to be a hoax since the evidence for this sighting is minimal. The names of those who made the initial call, or the names of the reporting police officers are not presented to us in the story. Did someone put a mask on a dog and set it loose on the community? Possibly, but let’s remember that the full rubber masks we are familiar with today were not easily available in 1961, and most Halloween masks of the time were thin preformed polystyrene that had elastic bands to hold onto kid’s heads. So, the possibility of a hoax is there, however, it would be easy for people to recognize that it was a hoax and not be scared enough to call police.

Perhaps the Dog Woman of Watts was a mistaken human and not a dog. It is possible for a homeless or mentally unstable person with poor hygiene to have been mistaken for a creature if they were acting irrationally and running through the neighborhood. It is hard to mistake a human body for that of a dog. But, if the individual was acting irrationally and running hunched over, may have led to mistaken identity of the creature. This would also explain that if the police were involved and found this individual that the individual was most likely taken to a nearby hospital. This would explain the missing police reports about a strange creature terrorizing a Los Angeles neighborhood.

If this was an actual creature, what kind of creature could it be? We hear reports mainly from Michigan and Wisconsin of the Dogman. We have reports from Europe over hundreds of years about Werewolves, so is it possible that a new form of werewolf lives or lived in Watts?

Some have speculated that this might have been a supernatural being, or demon. If it was a supernatural being, was she there to protect the area? Was a demon running the streets causing mayhem and chaos? It is hard to say without being there and being part of that neighborhood. With the riots a few years away, it is easy to believe that a demon was sewing chaos.

The Dog Woman of Watts is a fun little side note in the paranormal history of Los Angeles. We may never find out what exactly happened that day in 1961. Was it a hoax, demon, or a botched pod person take over? We won’t ever know until the Dog Woman of Watts decides to make a new appearance.