The Beast of Bray Road

When

since c. 1989 date reconstructed from later accounts · first known record: 1991

Where

Bray Road near Elkhorn, Walworth County, Wisconsin, United States

Verdict

Unexplained

Drivers on a rural Wisconsin road described a tall, hairy creature with a wolf's head that ran on two legs and lunged at their cars.

What happened

Bray Road is a quiet road through cornfields north of the small town of Elkhorn, Wisconsin. In the late 1980s several drivers began to tell of meeting a creature nearly two metres tall, covered in fur, with a wolf's head and eyes glowing red or orange. It was seen on four legs as well as on two. One woman said that after she hit something on the road and got out of her car, the creature chased her, leaving claw marks on the door. Others saw it eating roadkill on the verge or running across a field. The local weekly “Walworth County Week” assigned the story to reporter Linda Godfrey. Her series of articles in the early 1990s turned the “Wisconsin werewolf” into a national sensation. New reports from Walworth County were still coming in 2018 and 2020.

Witnesses

Local drivers and residents of Walworth County (anonymously or named in the local press); the accounts were collected by journalist Linda Godfrey, author of “The Beast of Bray Road.”

Explanations and hypotheses

Godfrey was sceptical at first but came to consider the witnesses sincere. Sceptics point to misidentification: grey wolves, large dogs and black bears occasionally turn up in the area – and a bear with mange can look very strange, especially in headlights and when it rears up on its hind legs. There is also a media effect: after publicity the number of reports rises, and every unusual sighting is attributed to the same creature. No physical evidence has ever been found.

Unexplained There is no convincing explanation.

Sources

More: Wikipedia (en)