Across the American Southeast, isolated forests and forgotten backroads have long carried stories of things that move just beyond the reach of headlights. In recent years, however, residents from Florida’s Panhandle to the Everglades—and now extending northward into Kentucky’s Land Between the Lakes—have reported encounters so similar that they form a continuous narrative along one of the largest natural wilderness corridors east of the Mississippi. These sightings describe a towering, canine-headed figure capable of moving on two legs with extraordinary speed and stealth. What began as localized folklore has expanded into a multistate pattern that is drawing attention from hunters, park workers, and rural residents who typically dismiss sensational claims. Florida’s accounts form the foundation of this narrative. Mid-twentieth-century timber crews working deep within the Panhandle reported being shadowed along logging roads by something large moving upright in dense brush. Lante...