The Truth Behind Dog Lady Island
There is actually a movie in the works titled The Legend of Dog Lady Island that chronicles the thirty year old urban legend of Dog Lady Island In the quiet suburb of Monroe, Michigan. It’s truly a tale that’s as grisly as it might sound, and it’s a tale that actually has truth running through its roots.
The True Story
Right before you hop on the expressway, there is a tiny little street off of E. Dunbar rd. that houses not only some cozy little houses but a tiny private island that’s completely surrounded by lake and marsh. That island has now come to be known as Dog Lady Island.
Our story begins in 1943 with a female hitchhiker who was picked up by a group of sick and twisted 20something year old men. After picking her up, they decided that they wanted to keep her all for themselves and proceeded to take her to a shed in the middle of what is now Dog Lady Island that no one knew about besides them. The four individuals kept her chained in the shed repeatedly raping her. She was also starved and went without water much of the time. They had left her there in the summer heat for two weeks of no food or water. When they finally returned to the shed to have their way with her again, it was much to their unpleasant surprise that she was missing.
The four men were fearful that she would report them to the police, so they hunted night and day. They ended up finding her hiding out in the marsh on the opposite side of the island and her punishment for running away was even worse than the treatment she had previously been subjected to.
Again, they chained her up inside of the shed, reinforcing each limb four times over so that way, they could be assured that her escape would be impossible. As another terrible type of constraint reinforcement, they had cut out her tongue and smashed her ankles so she couldn’t talk or walk ever again.
The abuse she endured is almost unspeakable. The men continued to sexually abuse her and began bringing in different breeds of dogs that they had given breeding hormones to and also had the dogs sexually take her over.
This un-named woman eventually became pregnant. This was something that ended up being too much for the men to take, so they disappeared completely, leaving the woman and her baby for dead. However, a week later, one of the men secretly brought her clothes, a generous food supply, and built her a type of shelter for when she birthed her child.
The woman finally gave birth to a daughter, but she was extremely disfigured. The woman, unable to care for her daughter properly because of the terrible abuse that she endured, ended up starving to death. The daughter ventured out into the wilderness and became feral. It is said that she was raised by coyotes and wild dogs in the area.
This woman is still alive, in fact. She gained her title of Dog Lady because some folks who did see her claimed that her feral nature and appearance reminded them of a dog. She still continues to live in the wild swamp areas surrounding the areas. Some have claimed to have seen her, but only few know how to communicate with her and even fewer that she will let see her.
The island now has a building on it that is rentable for private parties or boat launching events. However, many teenagers still venture down E. Dunbar rd. late at night to try and see her.
The Legend
The legend is actually incredibly different from the verified true story. In the legend, it’s the story of an elderly woman whose husband had recently died, and as an attempt to fill the hole in her heart, she adopted an entire litter of Doberman Pinscher puppies. She raised them for four years until they mysteriously turned on her one day and attacked her, leaving her without a tongue. The woman, as it’s told, has since died, but there used to be a fake phone number that you could call and it was said that something which sounds like an elderly woman trying to say “hello”, but couldn’t because of her lack of tongue, would answer.
While this is the version that Hollywood is running with, it couldn’t be further from the atrocity that is the actual truth.