The Defiance Wolfman railyard attacks (Werewolf of Defiance)

Defiance is a small city in northwest Ohio. In the summer of 1972 the Norfolk & Western railroad tracks ran near Fifth Street and the Swift and Co. plant on South Jackson Avenue. That is where the trouble started. Every attack came in the dead hours, between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m.

About 4:00 a.m., 25 July 1972. Ted Davis, a railroad crewman, was coupling the air hoses between two rail cars. He saw a pair of feet beside him. "I saw these two hairy feet. Then I looked up and he was standing there with a big stick over his shoulder. When I started to say something, he took off for the woods."

Later write-ups describe the figure as about six feet tall, hunched over and hairy. The Toledo Blade reported that a train crewman was approached from behind and struck on the shoulder. The Crescent-News said the blow came from a 2- by 4-inch board, and that the attacker was "very tall with some kind of animal head."

Sunday, 30 July. Tom Jones, a brakeman and Davis's co-worker, saw the figure at the edge of the railyard. It was "hairy and woolly." Then it was gone. "The creature disappeared into the brush." Around the same time a grocer was driving home late at night. In his account, "a large dog-like creature ran across the road in front of him."

More reports came in. A man followed on foot at 1:24 a.m. reached police "near hysteria." A woman's friend arrived "almost in hysterics" after something rattled her door and tried to get in. Accounts mention blue jeans and a dark shirt. Later retellings added fangs and claws.

Police Chief Don Brecker, spelled Breckler in some accounts, held the story back at first. "We didn't release it to the news immediately when we got the first report about a week ago. But now we're taking it seriously." The Crescent-News printed the first report on 2 August. Three assaults or attempted assaults in two weeks. The chief warned residents: "don't attempt to apprehend the subject but call police immediately if seen."

The press had its fun. Crescent-News reporter Ellen Armstrong wrote that police, "possibly armed with silver bullets and sharpened stakes, are on the lookout for 'a wolfman.'" In the Toledo Blade, James Stegall's headline read "Werewolf Case In Defiance Not Viewed Lightly By Police."

The police view was simple. A local man in a disguise, such as a mask. The reports came only from Defiance, they clustered in one area, and the victims were not wealthy enough for robbery to make sense. The Blade's 4 August subhead read "'Creature' Believed Human In Disguise." Many locals thought it was a hoax, or "just some nut running loose." The 1972 paper also noted that none of the attacks "happened during a full moon."

Others disagree. Later writers argue that convincing masks were hard to come by in 1972, and that the witnesses described a creature, not a costume. No one confessed. Nobody was arrested. Nobody was ever identified.

The sightings stopped as quickly as they began. By 2013 the police files were gone, and former dispatcher JoAnne Barton said she didn't "really recall it." The story outlived the paperwork. In 2016 Defiance hosted a Dogman Symposium at VFW Post 3360, with Lyle Blackburn as master of ceremonies and speakers including Linda Godfrey and Nick Redfern. Blackburn called it "a fascinating case." Today the Werewolf of Defiance is often compared with the Beast of Bray Road and folded into the Michigan Dogman legend of upright, wolf-like dogmen.