The Story of The Mysterious Loop Garou.
While cleaning out my great aunt’s attic we came across a trunk that had something wrapped up in an old rug. On the rug was a note that said “Shot North of Ishpeming by Mud Lake, 1941.” We slowly unrolled the rug and found what looked like a deer hide bundled up in the center. Upon unrolling the hide what we found, attached to the hide was a head unlike anything we had ever seen before! The facial features were very human-like but its face was completely covered in coarse fur. the small mouth which was frozen in a snarl had thin sharp teeth like a wolf. The eyes were two flaming red orbs that pierced through you and turned your blood cold whenever you looked at it. We were horrified by this strange creature but fascinated with it at the same time—how did our great aunt end up with this? Was it real? Did she or our uncle shoot it? Why had we never heard stories about it from our grandparents? We had to know what it was!
We called up our friend Arto Millimaki who was an amateur taxidermist who had done a bunch of work on our deer displays at The Tourist Trap. We figured that he had seen everything come through his little shop, so if anyone would be able to identify this creature it was him. Arto was completely stumped and had never seen anything like it before but he had a friend who worked with the DNR and she might be able to identify it. Her eyes became huge when she took one look at it and without hesitation she said we needed to bring it to her grandfather who lived not too far from here. It turns out, her grandfather, who was in his 90s, was a half French Canadian, half Native American Medicine Man, who looked over our pelt and head and calmly told us in his soothing voice that it was a Loop Garou, a french word that translates loosely to “Wolf-Man.” Tales of the Loop Garou were similar to European legends of a Werewolf, a half man/half wolf creature who terrorizes the night!
After our enlightening conversation with the medicine man, we had Arto reconstruct the Loop Garou’s body based on the head dimensions and the size of the pelt. -Arny "Gumballs" Pennala
It can be seen at Da Yoopers Tourist Trap in Ishpeming in their Deer Camp display from May - October. |
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