The Lawton Wolfman

Friday, 26 February 1971. About 10:45 pm. Passersby in the 2000 block of Lake Avenue, in west Lawton, Oklahoma, called the police. A figure was running down the street, dodging cars. It hid behind bushes in yards. Then it ran again.

About five blocks away, on B Avenue, C. Edward Green and his wife Reba lived in a second-floor apartment. Earlier that night Green had seen something "crouched in bushes and ambling through yards and walking like a gorilla." Then it was on their walkway, "perched on the railing like some monkey or ape," as Patrolman Harry Ezell recorded it.

"He turned in a crouched position and looked at me," Green said. "Then he leaped off the railing to the ground below." It ran off on all fours.

It was a "good sized man," Green said, "definitely not just some kid." Very hairy, with more beard than an average person. The face was "something out of a low-budget horror movie" and "jutted out at the jaw." The eyes looked frightened and scared. "There was no mask that I could see." About fifteen minutes later, a group of GIs at a grocery store on Gore Boulevard reported it too.

Saturday, 27 February. About 11 pm. At 1212 H Avenue, Donald Childs, 36, found it kneeling on all fours at a concrete pond, about 15 feet from his front door. "I was only about 15 feet from him and he leaped from a crouched position clear into the driveway south of us," he said. It ran toward the alley on its feet but hunched over. Childs put the leap at about 16 feet and the figure at over six feet tall. It wore a red-and-black checkered jacket. "I could not see the face distinctly." Childs, who had heart trouble before, suffered a heart seizure.

The name Wolfman came from the police, not the witnesses. Maj. Clarence Hill, head of the patrol division, told all patrolmen to watch for the "wolfman." "We know someone is out there," he said. On Monday, 1 March, Police Cadet Mark McFarland saw a human form near two vacant houses. It was "like a man and right now I'd say it was a prowler, but I can't definitely identify it." The next day the Lawton Constitution asked on its front page: "'Wolfman' A Human Who Believes He's An Animal?"

Tuesday night, 2 March. An anonymous phone call led Traffic Officer Delous Allen back to the 2000 block of Lake. There he found a rubber mask "that resembles that of an ape." Police said they had solved the case after questioning three teenagers. Chief Alford Hennessee said there "isn't any wolfman. It's either some kids pulling pranks or an off-beat window peeker." According to Gary Reddin, the teenagers admitted "playing as apes" on Lake Avenue that Friday. They denied being at the other three sites. No charges were filed.

Not everything fit. Green had seen no mask. Green and Childs both stressed the size and the leaps. Childs thought it was "someone mentally sick who thinks he's an animal." Reddin, a former Lawton Constitution journalist, finds the first sighting consistent with the prank. He suggests reconstructive memory and police questioning may account for the rest. Others have proposed a werewolf, an escaped patient, or a Bigfoot linked to the El Reno "Chicken Man" prints of December 1970.

Later retellings added a dog-like muzzle and bright, beady eyes, details absent from the 1971 papers. Radio station websites still tell the legend of the Oklahoma werewolf. For Reddin, the Wolfman exists "as a story."