5-27-06

To the sound of me crunching my own words, add the racket of Bray Road paradigms falling:

After spending an evening with two of the witnesses to the most recent Bray Road sighting (which turned out to be 2004 rather than 2003 after the older woman checked her journal), I not only have to amend my statement that no sightings have been reported on Bray Road for ten years or so, but must also change mycontention that as far as I have known, no one who has ever set out intentionally to see the beast has managed to do so. This woman, her teenage daughter and daughter's male teen friend were driving down Bray Road on October 30, 2004, with precisely that aim. And they were well-rewarded, plus scared out of their wits. Read the full story on the sightingslog. Complete with witness sketches. The woman is a registered nurse but has had some art training so the sketches are quite good.

Just goes to show how hard it is to theorize or draw any conclusions at all on a phenemenon like these creature sightings until all the facts and reports are finally in...and how can anyone know when that has been accomplished? I estimate that at best, I might have ten percent of all sightings that have actually occurred; I'm sure most people just keep what they see to themselves. This woman and her daughter did for two years and that is very typical.

And I have a feeling that this sort of witness reticence is just what the Beast, whatever he or she or it may be, is counting on.

(Important: One final plea; if you must drive down Bray Road late at night, please be courteous and quiet, do not trespass on private land or driveways and don't shine spotlights or flashlights at houses. The residents of that area have a right not to be disturbed...at least not by humans.)

5-26-05

Eating my Words: Did I say the beast hasn't been seen on Bray Road in 10 years? I'll have that sentence with some fava beans and a nice Chianti, thanks.

Well, to be fair to myself, I'm usually careful to say there haven't been any reported sightings on Bray Road in ten years or so. Then I got an email the other day from a young Milwaukee-arean woman who had a definite Manwolf encounter on Bray Road in 2003. Her mother and another friend in the car also saw it. But, she told me, she felt dumb reporting it because the sighting happened on Halloween. And while she was positive this was no person in a wolf suit, she felt others would make fun of her for the timing of her incident. Seeing a story on my new book finally convinced her she had enough other company to take the risk. I'm going to interview her and her mom this evening in person, and hope to be adding their account to the sightings log very soon. Although it was three years ago, that's still a fairly recent sighting in relation to the decades this creature has been spotted gallivanting around the state. And she's not the only person to see the creature on Halloween. Doristine Gipson, who experienced the fright of having the creature chase her car, was also a Halloween witness.

Too coincidental? Maybe not. If this is a natural animal, the fact that humans celebrate Halloween is surely of no consequence to it. It happens that October is one of the heaviest sightings months, with a fair number of cornfields still up to create the monster highway. After all, deer and other animals are seen on Halloween, Christmas, and every other holiday. And a Manwolf's gotta eat, pumpkins or no pumpkins.

Some may feel that Halloween sightings point to the theory that the creature is some sort of shapeshifter or thought form entity created by magic rituals, All Hallows Eve being one of the most propitious times for such ceremonies. But then, how to account for all the other sightings that occur almost year round? (Still none listed for January.) I'm very interested in this case, regardless, and will be reporting on it soon. Also, watch for a drawing of the Erectus Hominid type creature spotted last fall in southeastern Walworth County (Pioneer Cemetery Guardian story). I spent part of the day with Matt Wakely, working on a sketch as he directed me. All I can say is, this hominid is wild!

5/13/06

True White Deer Appears in Latest Manwolf Hotspot

What would a white deer...not an albino, but a true white deer with black feet and eyes, have to do with reported Manwolf sightings? Maybe nothing, but I do find it interesting that this is exactly what has shown up near the latest sightings east of Lake Geneva. A rural Burlington, WI couple who wish to remain anonymous because they don't want their property trampled with curiosity seekers has been receiving regular backyard visits from a white doe they've nicknamed Bianca. The photos here are all taken by this couple and used by their permission. They began seeing her in January 2006 after moving to a new home south of Burlington and east of Lake Geneva. They live within six miles of the latest Manwolf sighting east of Lake Geneva (actually east of Powers Lake near the Walworth Co./Kenosha Co. line).

The deer is not a phantom, it has been seen at other Burlington area homes and appears comfortable with the couple's family dog. It has reportedly been spotted in the area for several years and makes its way between feeding stations. It's even been seen at an elementary school on the south side of Burlington by a teacher and her whole class.

White fur variations do occur in nature in mammals of all types, but it is still quite unusual for an animal that is not albino to show up white. One intrepid reader has noted, correctly I think, that this is probably not a whitetail but an escaped fallow deer, or one that is raised for meat. (See reader comments) Still, no matter what the exact species, many of our indigenous people see the appearance of white animals as a sacred sign, particularly in species like buffalo and deer that are traditionally of spiritual import to them. Chief Arvol Looking Horse of the Lakota Sioux and 19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Bundle made this statement just last week: "The animals are showing their sacred color of white to tell us we are in a time we will either be witness of tears from our relative¹s eyes or unite spiritually to create a global healing for our future generations to live in health and happiness."

This statement is very poignant, but still doesn't provide a link between the white deer and other creature sightings. As I have often replied to people who ask if there is a Manwolf/UFO connection, just because UFOs are reported in the same area as a Manwolf, unless a witness sees one departing from or beaming into the UFO, we can't assume any correlation. Same with sacred white deer. And yet, I bring it up because In Hunting the American Werewolf and The Beast of Bray Road, I've already pointed out a number of possible connections between the Manwolf figure and Native American traditions. The White Buffalo Calf, Miracle, was born in southern Wisconsin, too (in Janesville).What I like to look for are not hit-and-miss single correlations, but patterns. Here is the pattern I see. In southern Wisconsin, we have most of the known ancient animal effigy mounds in the world. We have the epicenter of bipedal, wolf-headed and canid-legged creature sightings, and we have some of the most important fulfillments of Native American prophecies in modern times. I see patterns emerging, and am intrigued by that. In the end, they may prove to be no more than coincidence, or they could be a clue to something very meaningful. I just keep collecting data.

In fact, noting all anomalous happenings, sightings (yes, including UFOS), and even geographical features in the near vicinities of Manwolf sightings is something I've started to focus on in hope of finding even more patterns.

Here is one other strange thing; one member of the couple who took these photos is a very credible Manwolf witness!

One final note I hate to mention but of course will anyway.... since the Manwolf has been observed both chasing live deer and carrying and eating dead ones, let's hope this proximity of the dark Beast and the white deer (how is that for a classic contrast of icons of good and evil?) doesn't result in Bianca ending up as werewolf chow! The implications are both horrible and almost overwhelmingly mythic.

PLEASE NOTE: ALL PHOTOS ARE COPYRIGHT OF THE OWNERS AND MAY NOT BE POSTED ELSEWHERE.

5/06-06--

Dancing with the Devil - Urban Legends? And Demon Cat-Chickens!

I so love it when callers tell their own stories on radio shows. But my mention of "Goatmen" on coasttocoast.am brought in one tale about a woman who was sure she had danced with the devil in California because he left hoof prints on the floor. Two listeners later wrote me with their own versions of the story. I knew I had heard it before, but with a Wisconsin twist. And looking it up on Snopes.com just for starters, I found it listed as an urban legend just as I had suspected. In each of the letters I received, the writer was sincerely certain the event had really happened. One read, "This was in Fresno Ca. at the Rainbow Ballroom and was investigated by The FPD and the Catholic Church." The other started, "Here is a story from we believe sometime in the late 1890s, and dance hall called "La Salita" ( later called La Sala ) in a town called San Luis, Colorado." The devil does get around.

I posted both the stories on the readers comment page rather than sightings log because while they are interesting, they do not qualify as creature sightings. The "devil" in these cases had the appearance of a truly handsome human being, dressed in the finest clothing, but with plug-ugly goat feet. Goat-man sightings, on the other hand, tend to feature a bipedal furred creature with a head resembling a goat. And yes, people do occasionally claim to spot such a thing.

Goat creatures are also often associated with devil worship and malign witches, but demon literature in general is replete with tales of genetically blenderized animals and humans. A local radio host told me after a recent show that his grandparents had a henhouse that appeared to be haunted by a very nasty spirit. They had a priest come to exorcise the chickens, and when he looked into the building before he started throwing holy water, all the hens stared back at him from their nests... with the heads of cats!

What do any of these stories have to do with Manwolves? Very little, I think, although some people do believe the Beast of Bray Road is a "demon straight from hell" just like 1936 witness Mark Schackelman said.

While I still don't claim to know precisely what the "Beast" might be - spirit, flesh, or weird chimera - I still enjoy hearing strange tales. And I'm sure I'll eventually get a story about a woman who danced with a handsome stranger, only to later find her floor all covered with the paw prints of a wolf. Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, the pairings of the innocent maiden and lurking beast are imprinted in our ancestral blood. And perhaps to ponder this sort of thing to excess is to dance with the devil, ourselves.

5/03/06

A Were-Nation Responds and a Recent Stakeout

As if I needed any proof that Ian Punnett's Saturday night show on coasttocoastam.com has a huge audience, my jammed e-mail box provides plenty of evidence. I've been amazed at the number and variety of messages I've received from literally coast to coast, with stories ranging from very flesh-and-blood sounding sightings to vague but chilling dreams of interactions with Man Dogs. A woman who dreamed she was cuddled by a black, furry "Dog Man" while undergoing what sounded exactly like a standard alien abduction otherwise was one of the most befuddling (see readers page).

A few were a little too incoherent to post, some just asked questions or were otherwise unsuitable, but I tried to put those that detailed actual sightings on the sightingslog and those that described dreams or other reactions on the readers page. And I do appreciate them all. My overarching goal in keep track of the sightings, writing the books and maintaining this web site is to try to figure out just what all these good people are seeing, and we need as much data as possible if there is ever any hope of doing that. I'm sure the vast majority of sightings still go unreported. So keep those cards and letters coming, and I thank all who take time to write.

Just to make sure I keep my hand in the field side of things, friend Kim del Rio and I spent several hours ...wee morning hours...driving around western Kenosha County where the most recent sighting of a definite Manwolf (last week Tuesday) took place. The witness, a Mitchell Airport employee with high security clearance, is very trustworthy in my judgement and was referred by a relative he had confided in. It was another case of seeing the creature operate easily on both two legs and four, something I've come to recognize as a strange hallmark of the manwolf. Although we drove on the exact same roads at the same time this man has seen the creature three times (the first two sightings were in mid-Feb), we failed to scare up anything more than a few deer, a fox, and several cats.

The most valuable thing we learned was how hard it is to really capture the image of something on the road at night while driving. Kim had brought a special night-recording camera she borrowed for the occasion, and although at the time, we could plainly see the deer and fox which were probably twenty yards off the road, nothing showed up on the film at all. Most of the time, she couldn't get the camera turned on and running in time to capture critters that suddenly appeared, even though she was holding it up at window level with her finger on the button. Imagine someone traveling alone, not expecting to see a weird creature. Animals running across roads at night just don't hang around for the close up. This is, I fear, a big reason why there are no definitive photos of the Manwolf or Sasquatch. Road photography is a tough skill for the creature sleuth, and I think the creatures know it.

4/25/06

Wolverine theory rears its ugly head again and Stevens Point Conference

First, a big thanks to any readers who also showed up at the Stevens Point Unexplained Conference to hear me, Chad Lewis, and Noah Voss and Kevin Nelson speak our investigative pieces. We had a wonderful, standing-room-only crowd of 241, and apologize to those who arrived too late for a chair. I think eventually everyone who wanted to find a place to sit down, did so. But what I like best about conferences like this one is meeting people who have had experiences to relate. I received several fascinating emails later, including the tale of a woman who observed a window-peeping fairy covered in golden suede, and a very good Manwolf sighting story from last fall near Lake Geneva. Watch the sightingslog page for that one. Coincidentally, someone from Michigan also sent me the first known sighting of a UFO that looked like a cow in the sky in that same batch of emails. Talk about pearls cast among the spam...

Moving on, an email correspondent recently dragged up one of the more shopworn and, I believe, unworkable "explanations" for wolflike, bipedal, creature sightings; the irascible but very un-canid wolverine, or Gulo gulo as it is known in zoological parlance. True, the Gulo is larger than a bunny or weasel, but it's nowhere near Manwolf size...or shape. At right is a photo copyright and courtesy of Jeff Ford, the Michigan man who recently made history by documenting the first confirmed wolverine in the Wolverine State in 200 years. With its short legs, small, pointed snout, distinctively shaped body, giveaway white back marking, tiny ears and relatively small size, it would take a very visually handicapped witness to mistake this critter for a six-foot, narrow-waisted, pointy-eared, long-muzzled, dark-furred, bidpedal Manwolf. As I told my friend, I can buy that some quadrupedal sightings may be mistaken timber wolves or wolf/dog hybrids, but not a wolverine. Besides, there have been many more reported Manwolf sightings in both Wisconsin and Michigan in the past 50 years or so than there have been wolverine sightings! Now that is something to contemplate. Below is an excerpt from the piece I wrote on Ford for the upcoming (June) Weird Michigan book.

Move over, ³Wolverine² of the X-Men superhero comics fame. There¹s a new ³Wolverine Guy² in town, hailing from Michigan¹s Thumb. He may not grow giant claws when rankled, but that¹s what people are calling Deckerville high school science teacher Jeffrey Ford of Ubly. Ford has pulled off an achievement near to the hearts of every loyal MichiganderŠactually sighting a live specimen of Michigan¹s state animal, the wolverine. Despite its official status, the feisty, brown-haired mammal has been officially absent from Michigan for at least 200 years. Which has been a tad embarrassing for state athletic teams and others using it for their mascot. All of this has made the hunt for a genuine Gulo gulo the Michigander¹s version of the quest for the Holy Grail. Ford has changed all that, however, vindicating claims of the animal¹s official state residency. Ford started on the wolverine trail after hearing back in February 2004 that some local coyote hunters had flushed a Gulo from the woods near Ubly. He found his first evidence of the animal Native Americans called Carcajou, or ³mountain devil,² not long after that, and was later able to capture video footage using cameras set to detect heat and motion near a site he and fellow woodsmen Jason Rosser, Sandusky, and Steve Noble, Deckerville, baited with chicken and venison. Although many have claimed to have seen wolverines, Ford¹s film was the first official documented sighting of the animal in the state of Michigan. Besides the film, Ford cast footprints for evidence, prints that measured five inches long and about three and a half inches wide. He also found hair samples to submit for DNA analysis to prove the gender, although its size indicates this is probably a guy Gulo. Full-grown wolverines weight around 35-40 pounds. --excerpted from Weird Michigan, Your Travel Guide to Michigan's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets

4/12/06

God bless newspaper reporters who can find it in their hearts to report on monsters and other weird things at times other than Halloween. After all, it isn't as if strange things don't appear to people 365 days of the year. And Patrick Thornton of the Stevens Point Journal did a very nice write up yesterday on the Stevens Point Conference of the Unexplained coming up Sat. April 22 (I'll be doing a book signing at the Stevens Point Book World that afternoon from 1-3 as well). But I must point out that one of my quotes was quite mangled, leaving the impression that I believe all Manwolves are actually part bear, part wolf. That doesn't even make sense. I think I mentioned the Bearwolves, a slightly chunkier version of the Manwolf that has been spotted between Wausau and Green Bay. But his version of my words was, "I am not sure we are dealing with the Lon Chaney character changing by the moonlight," she said. "From what I've been told the most logical answer is that it is a part bear part wolf creature."

I would never have said that.

Still, it's nice that he wrote the article, click here to read the whole thing. And do come if you're within driving distance; Chad always puts on a whiz-bang show.

And interestingly enough, I got a lead on another Bearwolf sighting yesterday when I was a guest speaker for a UW-Oshkosh fantasy writing class. One of the students said her husband saw what he insisted was a combination wolf/bear walking upright by the road, and she said that he is an avid hunter and is sure this was nothing he'd ever seen before. I'll post that on the sightings log after I've interviewed him.

Anyway, two things about bearwolves on the same day counts as some nice synchronicity in my book, even if one of them was an error. Maybe I'd better alert Todd "Bearwolf" Roll in Wausau to do a little extra recon work.

4/7/06

DO I NEED A SIDEKICK?

Everyone wants a Tonto, right? Well, I'm really no Lone Ranger but for some reason I get letters almost weekly from people volunteering to come here and help me "solve the puzzle" once and for all. They ask me to call them when I hear anything new, send them "all files" on the creature, and go on hunts with them. While I do like to get letters on any topic, this is one area I can't really respond to individually. For one thing, there are no secret files. Everything I know is either on the books or this website, unless it's too new to be posted or published or is something I'm actively investigating.

And I do understand the urge to come here and find the creature. No one would like to do that more than I. People have to understand, though, that the Beast has not been reported on Bray Road for at least a decade, and that it has a tendency to pop up where least expected, at times of its own choosing. There are no trails to follow, no certain lairs to stake out. Its territory appears to be widening. You'd be as likely now to encounter it in northwest lower Michigan as in southern Wisconsin.

Finally, when sightings are reported quickly enough to be investigated, I already am lucky enough to be friends with a team of pros (at right are Kevin Nelson, myself and Todd Roll) who go with me (and also mount their own expeditions) to search for footprints and other evidence, equipped with everything from the latest in motion sensors and cameras to magic wands. (See werewolf hunt on History page) But even with the best of equipment and technique, efforts to catch a glimpse of this very elusive and intelligent creature have all been fruitless. That doesn't mean I won't keep trying. And anyone is welcome to come to Wisconsin or any other sightings state and lurk in whatever bushes you may obtain permission to lurk in. (This is not virgin wilderness...lots of people live around here) I'm waiting anxiously to see the first photo!

But please, don't ask me to send you all my files. All the info is out there...and so is the Manwolf. Just drop me a line when you find him! ;-)

Linda

4/3/06

SOMEONE ELSE''S BOOK - IT ROCKS!

Greetings and thanks for stopping by to read this. April 4 is the release date of "Hunting the American Werewolf," so it's an exciting week for me. But I wanted to start by telling you about someone else's book, a self-published tome by UK friend Neil Arnold, who recently interviewed me for the British publication "Animals and Men." It's called "Alien Zoo, The A-Z of Zooform Phenomena; A Unique Phantom Menagerie of Paranormal Animals, Manimals, Winged Entities and Semi-Mythical Creatures." The title pretty much says it all; Arnold explains zooform animals as "paranormal entities which only appear to be animals." I think that is a very possible explanation for the Beast of Bray Road phenomenon, although I keep the door open yet to all theories.

But the book is a treasure trove listing of every strange creature sighted around the world in recent and not so recent times, from the Arkan Sonney Fairy Pigs to Portland Oregon's Mole Man to Romania's werewolfish Varcolac. If you want one, and who wouldn't, email Neil to inquire about price and shipping arrangements at neilthemod1@blueyonder.co.uk With 190 large pages of entries, it's a must-have resource.

By the way, the weather in Walworth County, Wisconsin, the apparent world epicenter of Manwolf sightings, is cloudy and around 50 degrees F. Why should you care? I mention it only because, while some winter sightings have been reported, the bulk of sightings occur from about this level of warmth on up. Time to bring the binoculars and cameras back out of storage and trek a few trails around here!

Howls, Linda Godfrey