Wisconsin’s Beast Of Bray Road
If you love cryptids and like to read about them, then you have heard of The Beast Of Bray Road. The first sighting of this strange beastie was on Bray Road, Wisconsin – hence the name.
Bray Road is a beautiful country road near the community of Elkhorn. The year is 1949, and witnesses describe the creature as bear-like with a muscular body covered in brown-gray fur and yellow eyes.
Witnesses say the body is muscular but humanoid, while the face looks like a wolf. Although, many of the witnesses think it is a big dog, or maybe even a bigfoot or werewolf.
The strange beastie not only walked like a human on its hind legs, but sometimes it walked on all four like an animal. Witnesses have said they’ve seen it sitting on its haunches or kneeling on the ground like a human. Its unusual physical features earned it the names, Manwolf, Bear wolf, and even the indigenous Dogman.
Then again, other researchers comment on how much the description fits that of the Wisconsin Bigfoot. The locals ‘bluff monster calls the Wisconsin bigfoot,’ but Native Americans call the werewolf-like creature the dreaded Wendigo.
Whatever it is, the first sighting was in 1936 and continued through the 1980s and 1990s. The rash of sightings reported mainly occurred around the Elkhorn, Wisconsin area.
However, the Beast of Bray road description fit numerous sightings outside of Wisconsin. This wolf-like creature has been seen in Illinois and up into Canada. These sightings captured the interest of Linda Godfrey, reporter to the Walworth County Week.
Godfrey wasn’t exactly a believer in the Beast of Bray Road. But after hearing about all the sightings, she began to believe. Her articles led to a book titled, The Beast of Bray Road: Trailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf. Although, witnesses never reported seeing a human transform into a werewolf. That’s the title given to it by Linda Godfrey.
In the 1936 sighting, Mr. Shackleman was a security guard for St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children. His nights were usually uneventful, but not this night. A little after midnight, while patrolling the grounds, he saw a shadow. Shackleman tried to get closer to get a better look. Something furry was digging in one of the Indian burial mounds nearby.
The critter was hunched over on all fours, and Shackleman said it looked canine. He was too far away to determine what it was, but the beastie was too large for either a wolf or dog. It saw Shackleman and stood up. When it stood, the body itself was human, albeit a very muscular body, but with a canine face.
The hair rose on Shackleman’s neck when the beast looked right at him before opening its mouth, revealing fangs when it growled at him. Even scarier was the growl was in a half-human and half-beast voice.
Godfrey is not convinced sightings were by the same creature; she thinks there might be more than just one. That maybe Elkhorn was being haunted by more than one monster running loose in the area.
That would be stretching the odds as witnesses’ descriptions are eerily similar. It isn’t hard to believe that they are the same creatures, especially when you have stories from early Wisconsin settlers about a strange beast. These early settlers tell tales about canine-like creatures attacking unsuspecting victims before vanishing.
Native American myths tell about the same animal, but they call it the ‘Wendigo.’ It is really fascinating that Wendigo tales originate outside Wisconsin, primarily in Algonquian, Canada. It is a spirit rather than a cryptid that possesses people, turning them into cannibals. The Wendigo can transform into a wolf or dog-like creature, which can explain sightings all across America.
Most of the recent sightings in Wisconsin happened in the 1990s. One such sighting occurred in Franklin, Wisconsin, in a brand new subdivision on a warm summer night. The witness states that they were playing hide-n-seek in the woods when he noticed something hunched over in the street light.
He described the beast as having canine-like characteristics with a human body that tapers into a muscular human body. The wolf-like features start at the stomach and moving up to the head.
A more recent sighting happened in 2016 in Texas; the witness’s father lived on 300 acres of vacant land. One night sitting on the porch, they noticed something creeping through the tall grass near where they were sitting.
The body was low to the ground, but its head was facing the witness. It looked as if the critter was stalking them, which is scary by itself. But what terrified them, is when it passed behind a tree and didn’t reappear. Did it disappear into the trees?
The family didn’t wait to find out because the footsteps stopped, and the sudden silence made them uneasy. They immediately went inside, away from whatever was outside stalking them. Although this article is about Wisconsin, sightings on this cryptid fit reports from all across the United States.
Other witnesses think the Beast of Bray Road is nothing but a dog. If that is true, there have been hundreds of sightings about a black dog from all over America. Stories that have the black dog being a spirit that can appear and disappear at will.
Godfrey could be right when commenting there might be two different monsters. Many of the sightings could be about the Beast of Bray Road. The other sightings could be about the Black Dog.
Either way, I wouldn’t want to meet either cryptid, so I would be careful driving down Bray Road at night.
