Original subtitles

- Long ago the ancient Greeks

told the tale of Lycian and of Arcadia,

a cruel King and father of many children.

A man with no time for authority figures

and contempt for the Gods.

So it was that one night, in order to test

the omnipotence of the great Zeus

he invited him to dinner and served him a meal

he would never forget, the boiled flesh

of his youngest son, Niktamus.

But Zeus of course was all knowing,

and straight away restored the dead child's life,

and in his rage Zeus cursed Lycian, damning him

to wander the Earth as a savage beast,

the Lycan, a wolf.

- The Beast of Bray Road was not even my first book.

I had one that I'd been researching for six years

about a true crime poison murder in Walworth county

that happened in the 1920's and I really wanted

to get that story out too, so I wrote that one first,

that was my second book, the Beast of Bray Road,

tailing Wisconsin's werewolf, and that really,

again I thought it would settle things

kind of once and for all and it just

brought the whole thing to life again.

Elkhorn is a very pretty nice, little town

right in the center of Walworth county,

it's where the court house and everything is,

it has a beautiful town square

that was the subject of some famous

Christmas cards years ago.

It's just a very nice conservative little town,

it's just a great place to raise my family,

and it doesn't look like a place that would

harbor a werewolf.

- Situated in Walworth County,

the city of Elkhorn is comprised of nearly

eight square miles of land and has a population

of just over 10,000 people.

It was founded in the early 1800's

and acts as the county seat, due in part

to it's location at the geographic center of the county.

Elkhorn has become a thriving little town

thanks to its proximity to the nearby tourist destinations

of Lake Geneva and Delavan Lake, both home to resorts

and considered popular vacation get aways.

Nevertheless the area also has its share

of local legends and lore.

- I'd never considered that it was particularly weird

but when you start looking at all the variety of terrain,

we have hauntings everywhere,

everything about the state is what you don't picture

when you initially here the term Wisconsin.

Also, a very long time and special Native American presence

that isn't necessarily just weird,

you know it just makes Wisconsin a very different

sort of place and maybe sets the stage

for some of the other things that come later that are weird.

- The state is actually one of the hottest states

of paranormal activity, number one.

I don't know if it's the Native American's,

the history there, but there's also a lot of UFO sightings,

just in our state that I've even seen just down here

in South East Wisconsin, as well as a lot of other

crazy things, so I definitely think it is something special.

Wisconsin welcomes you.

- Elkhorn got it's name because someone saw an elk horn

hanging in a tree, but it wasn't from around here,

there weren't elk in this area.

So the theory is that someone coming back

from the west had an elk horn and threw it up in the tree.

I guess that's the rumor I've heard anyway.

- In her books Linda Godfrey

has detailed a number of Wisconsin's more infamous

tall tales, from hair covered forest elves

that roam the northern regions,

to mysterious aberrations that haunt it's numerous

abandoned buildings.

An aquatic monster is said to lurk in the depths

of Lake Winnebago, while hitch hiking phantoms

have been seen by a number of unsuspecting motorists

traveling Highway 12 late at night.

Amongst all the legends and fables

that make up the folk law of the badger state,

you'll also find records of encounters

with ape like creatures that date back to the mid 1800's,

particularly in the wooded sections of a state,

mostly known for it's prairies.

It's also been home to a handful of cults,

most often near the city of Milwaukee

which lies 46 miles north east of Elkhorn.

Strangely the state of Wisconsin has also

found itself embroiled in Satanic

and ritualistic activity over the years,

as recently as 2011 it made national headlines

when two women attempted to murder a man

they'd lured to their Milwaukee apartment.

They stabbed him over 300 times

in what the victim claimed was a Satanic ritual.

Then there's the infamous Slender Man stabbing

which took place in waukesha,

some thirty miles north of Elkhorn.

In this case two 12 year old girls

assaulted and nearly killed one of their peers

while trying to appease what is essentially

a fictional internet character.

Perhaps Elkhorn with its old fashioned city square

and numerous churches has avoided that aspect

of the states tragic side.

- People of Elkhorn run a wide gammit,

we have farmers, a very strong group of merchants,

because the court house is there

we have a lot of lawyers in the town.

So it's a great mix of people, and again,

it doesn't fit that stereotype,

I'm sure there's one guy walking around the square

eating the cheese you know,

but generally it's just nice small town folks.

- Just down Geneva Street

through downtown Elkhorn beyond the Highway 12 overpass

lies an unassuming stretch of blacktop called Bray Road.

Bordered by farmland and the occasional stands of trees

the road runs nearly perpendicular to Highway 12

to the south west and parallel to Highway 43

which lies just to it's north.

Until the 1960's, when the highways were built

Bray Road was rarely traveled by outsiders

and we essentially a driveway for those

that lived along its rough unpainted path.

- The Bray family started moving here

in the late 1890's and at one time

there were four brothers that all lived down here.

My great grandfather bought our farm in 1902

and I believe he was the last one of the brothers

to move in this area.

- It's interesting, Bray Road is nothing scary looking,

it's like going down any farming road or rural road.

Because it's farmers it's all fifth generation farmers,

they all know each other, it's very privately owned,

you can't just stop off on the road and look around

because you know one farmer's gonna notify the other one,

hey somebody's on your land.

- I had discovered already by some overlooked books

that I found in the library that Bray Road

at one time was a Native American trail

that lead out to some other area of lakes

that would have been summer places.

- Just the way the road kind of winds around

down through here, it was probably some sort

of a trading trail at one time.

Out in the middle of one of the fields,

there was a remnants of an old homestead and shack out there

that had been used for trading with the Indians.

- Bray Road is just over four miles long,

within that stretch a handful of country roads

cross it's path, such as Brookwood Lane, Plank Road,

and Hospital Road.

Coming from Elkhorn Bray dead ends into Interstate 11.

Acres of cornfields and patchy woods are intermingled

with farms, residential houses and swampy marshlands.

In the last 20 years the only thing that's changed

are the number of people that visit the road

hoping to catch sight of a creature

that put Elkhorn on the world map

nearly three decades ago.

- It was December of 1991, and I'd been working

for a short time as a newspaper reporter

at a small countywide newspaper

in Walworth County, Wisconsin.

And it came to my attention that there were people

around my own home town of Elkhorn

that were saying they had seen what looked to them,

like a werewolf along this four mile stretch of road

outside of Elkhorn.

And I remember laughing because it just seemed

so ludicrous to me, and I mentioned it

to our county animal control officer.

- My name is John Frederickson,

I believe it was back in 1986,

that's when I first became involved with the whole

animal welfare, I was appointed

the Walworth County humane officer at that time.

Primarily to investigate crimes against animals

and enforce state statutes and county ordinance.

- And I said, have you heard what people are saying

about there being this big canine type thing,

they're calling it a werewolf out on Bray Road?

- There was kind of a freelance reporter,

Linda Kelp.

The one freelance reporter had found out

what Lori Endrezzi had seen,

and from there I believe it went to Linda Godfrey.

And I believe at that time I had invited Lori Endrezzi in

to talk to her about her sightings,

and at that time I made a manila folder

marked werewolf and that's kind of where

the whole werewolf folder comes in there.

- And he opened up his desk drawer,

pulled out a manila file folder that was marker werewolf,

or labeled werewolf and at that moment

is when it became news really

because when you've got a county official

with a file folder marked werewolf that's news.

- There was the one sighting,

when somebody was traveling down I43 right by Delavan here

and they got off at the Delavan exit and some large

creature ran right in front of their car.

And then there were the so called sightings on Bray Road.

- He showed me the contents, it was notes he'd written

from people who were indeed phoning him

and saying I don't know what it was,

I saw this thing, if I had to say it looked like a werewolf

because it had the head of a wolf or German Shepherd,

it was huge, it stood and ran on it's hind legs.

- And I believe there was a story,

a mother walking down the road with her child or children.

Up ahead the road a deer came running across the road

then behind it some creature on two legs

was chasing the deer.

Nothing too elaborate, nothing that could be

confirmed obviously.

- I began to call upon these people and when I went

to interview them in person I discovered

I did not think that they were crazy

or trying to hoax something.

They came from a very wide demographic,

they were older, younger, male, female,

blue collar, white collar.

So it was a diverse group, I thought well,

there's something, they're seeing something.

I didn't know what it was.

- A typical report is a biped walking humanoid dog

with the muzzle, with the ears,

about seven to eight feet tall, hairy,

hands like, I don't want to say like a human,

but humanoid hands with claws.

- It had the head of a wolf or German shepherd,

it was huge, it stood and ran on it's hind legs.

- They said fangs and the red eyes, the pointy ears,

almost like a German shepherd,

but it's standing up on two legs, and it's ginormous,

it's taller than any person.

- Covered with fur, long snout,

and it's legs were bent backwards like a dogs.

- And just ferocious looking, something that people say

is a complete nightmare to see.

- One thing I've noticed is that the closer

in time it is between the sighting

and their reporting it to me the more I still see

that fear response and I will actually sometimes

just see people reliving the fear, they turn white,

they turn red, they start sweating.

I've had one woman even burst into tears

while she's telling me because they still

feel this sort of visceral contact with this creature.

- On Halloween night 1991

Doris Gibson had what would become known

as the first publicly recorded sighting

of the Beast of Bray Road.

Her experience would launch a rash of reported sightings

around Walworth County.

- She was a senior in high school at the time

and was driving down Bray Road,

she felt like this muffled thump,

and she was afraid that she'd hit somebody's dog,

or ran over an animal or something.

She said I saw this thing, I don't know what it was

but it was big,

and it started running for me.

She said I could hear it's feet

on the asphalt boom, boom,

it actually lunged for her car

and scraped its claws on the trunk of the car.

And she showed this to me, I remember examining it

and they were consistent with two sets of claws

clawing their way down the back of the car,

and that was one of the things that scared her so badly.

- Shortly after Gibson's sighting

a Milwaukee teen Tom Brichta would have

his own encounter with the Beast of Bray Road.

- My name is Tom Brichta, I live in Tremaine, Oklahoma

on highway C, it was a Saturday night,

late July, early August and I was coming home

from a wedding reception, I had my friend Scott

and my friend Chris from Hanover Park Illinois

in the car with me, it was very foggy,

we could barely see two car lengths ahead of you.

And we started smelling this funny odor,

this real foul smelling odor

like this skunky kind of smell.

I had noticed a hand sticking out into the road,

and my friend had noticed me looking out

on the side of the road, and he had looked

and he had seen whatever it was,

it was huge, it was really large,

it was whitish, gray and black, streaks in it.

It was hairy, it was reaching out towards my car,

it scratched a small piece of pin striping from my car.

The fingers were either pointed or had

quite the nails on them, I did not get

any facial detail but it was frightening,

it was very frightening.

And now as long as I think about this,

not a day goes by that I don't,

and I know a day won't go by that I won't think about it.

I can remember like it was just yesterday.

- Another one was Lori Endrezzi,

at the time she was a young single mother

and she was a bar manager in town,

and was driving home from work.

She suddenly, her attention was drawn to something

in the ditch.

- From what she had said something was kneeling down,

crouched over on the side of the road,

eating, some type of roadkill.

- She said it was actually kneeling

in a way that she didn't think a canine could kneel.

And the other weird thing is that it was holding

some type of road kill animal.

It frightened her very, very deeply,

and she said that she spent a lot of time

at the library looking for what it might have been,

and it didn't match any natural wolf pictures she had seen.

Now she actually, she was one of the ones

that had called John Frederickson,

and she went to his office to talk to him about it.

- We were discussing different things that it may have been.

It was something of the natural order of nature,

such as some type of animal, being a coyote or wolf,

and there happened random wolf sightings around that time.

If it wasn't something along the natural order of nature

then possibly could have been something along

the supernatural realm of things.

- He had a row of books on the shelf behind him at his desk,

and when they started talking about this,

the books started flying off the shelf.

- Not too long into the conversation some books

that were up on a bookshelf just came flying down,

and there really wasn't any cause for the books

to go flying off the shelf.

So that was the end of that conversation.

- It was just a one off story as far as I knew,

I did this quick drawing because I was also

the illustrator and cartoonist for the newspaper,

and it ran, and that was when it all began.

Within days and even weeks people were contacting

the newspaper office, but the media were starting

to catch on to it, it was just astounding.

Nobody expected that sort of reaction to it.

- It was a pretty good joke up and down the road.

- My family actually struggled with it a little bit

because this kind of popped up

right after my Father had died.

So my mom was just getting used to living on the farm,

in the house, by herself, and all these lights

were flashing around the buildings,

and people walking up and down the road.

So we went from kind of amusement to kind of upset,

to well okay it's just a deal,

just kind of had fun with it after a while.

- I remember my editor and I had talked about it

and said yeah local people will have fun with it

for a couple of weeks and then it will just go away.

And nothing could have been further from the truth.

It had legs, no pun intended.

The story just stuck and grew bigger and bigger.

- Yeah, I believe when the paper came out

and the story came out, that's when I think the more,

I don't want to say the panic, but the fear set in.

- The people that had actual sightings obviously,

I believe a lot of those people did have

an actual fear of what they had seen.

Not knowing quite how to rationalize it.

- Of course there was a lot of ribbing,

and teasing of people who said they had seen it.

The local sheriffs department's talking about

silver bullets and whatnot, and that they were

making silver bullets in case they ran across the beast,

or whatever.

- Some of the witnesses, because they later came forward

with their actual identity said they wish they hadn't

come forward with it.

But on the other hand there were other people

who had secretly seen it, and were then saying,

yeah it's right, it is there I've seen it.

- On December 29th, 1991,

Godfrey's article detailing the initial sightings

of the Beast of Bray Road

ran in The Week a Delavan newspaper.

Almost immediately the story kicked up

a flurry of activity around the area.

Perhaps most notably were a string of calls and letters

to the newspaper from witnesses

who had seen similar creatures.

Many of the witnesses were from other towns,

counties and even states who wished to express to Godfrey

the seriousness in which the story should be handled.

The first inkling of the larger scope of this phenomenon

was beginning to take shape in Linda's mind,

even as the story of the Bray Road Beast

began to take on a life of it's own.

In September of 1991, Scott Bray, a local farmer,

had a sighting of what he referred to

as an abnormally large dog or wolf

in the field behind his house.

Scott described the animal as taller than a German shepherd

with pointed ears, a tail, long gray and black hair,

and a massive muscular build.

Around the same time as the Scott Bray sighting,

another Elkhorn local named Russell Guest,

spotted a creature near Bray Road,

walking briefly on two legs before dropping to all fours

in an aggressive stance.

Guest turned and ran from the creature

which he described as being larger than a german shepherd

with black and grayish hair and around five feet tall

when it was standing on two legs.

On January 8th 1991, Robert Bushman and his wife

spotted a large black animal running on all fours,

chasing a deer just down the road from Elkhorn.

The couple were driving on I43

near Delavan in broad daylight when the sighting occurred.

They described the animal as being far too large

to be a wolf but were unable to give a thorough

description due to the speed which it was running.

As sightings continued Godfrey received other reports

from witnesses who claimed to have seen

the same creature decades earlier.

Strangely the oldest reported sighting

was also the first to hint at a more sinister origin

for the Beast of Bray Road.

- One of the most surprising and interesting

accounts that I received happened right after

the first stories broke,

this happened not in Walworth County

but in the adjacent Jefferson County,

which isn't all that far away.

A newspaper editor called me and said,

my dad saw this thing in 1936,

and his father was the nightwatchman

for St Coletta institute, which was a Catholic institution

for taking care of people with special needs.

They had preserved on the grounds a number of

ancient burial mounds, Mark Shackleman was the name

of the mans father and his job every night

was to walk the whole grounds with this big flashlight,

and this one night he walked up on an area

where there were several mounds, and saw something

large on top of one of the mounds.

When he went and looked more closely

he saw that it was something that reminded him

of a canine head but it was a really large creature,

and it was digging furiously in the top of the mound

as if it was trying to get something out

that it knew was in there.

He was shocked, the creature was shocked and ran off

but the next night he went back

and the creature was there again.

It stood up, faced him, and made what sounded like,

he described as sort of a protohuman language,

and what it sounded like to the man

was the utterance of the word Gadara.

Which if you go to the New Testament in the Christian Bible

you'll find that's the place where there was a man

who was filled with Demons, and he was called the Gadarine

because it was in the region of Gadara,

and that was where Jesus cast the Demons out of this man.

And it's interesting because I found out later

that one of the priests to the Catholic church

that was kind of attached to the St Coletta organization

had very bad problems after he exorcized a demon

from a young person who lived in that Parrish,

and then the Demon attached itself to him.

So you have this whole sort of tradition

of Demonology possession going on,

and then you get this unknown creature standing up

on an old burial mound, and uttering a word

that could have been the Biblical word Gadara,

and it's just very, very strange happenings.

- While Mark Shacklemans 1930's encounter

with a similarly strange beast

may have aroused some suspicions of a more

unearthly genesis for the phenomenon,

it was Lori Endrezzi, the first witness

of the Beast of Bray Road in the modern era

who drew a parallel between the creature she had seen

and an ancient evil.

In an interview with Endrezzi a few years after her sighting

she professed her belief to Godfrey

that the Beast of Bray Road was Satanic in origin.

A Demonic entity, perhaps, the Dark Prince himself.

The correlation between the canid creature

and the black arts may seem ludicrous to some.

It was not as unbelievable to some investigators

and it wouldn't be the last time that a witness felt

instead of an undiscovered animal,

they had come face to face with evil incarnate.

- In my opinion there is a dark side to this world.

So with some of these sightings they're

part of the natural order of nature,

and it was some animal, some type of animal,

that's easily believable.

Or I wouldn't doubt if it could have been something

along the supernatural realm of things also

from what I had experienced during those days.

- With the Beast of Bray Road

making it's presence known around the area

local media were tied up in a story

that went back even further then the first known sightings.

That of a local Satanic cult,

rumored to be holding meetings in the forested

areas of Walworth County.

During the late 80s and early 90s John Frederickson

was called to the scene of multiple animal mutilations

including one in which dozens of mutilated bodies

had been discovered.

While local police insisted the site was nothing more

then a bone yard for local livestock

Frederickson recognized the potential

for more ritualistic causes of death,

when he discovered many of the carcasses

had been subject to gruesome treatment

that involved the removal of organs.

However, the local police bulldozed the location

before a thorough investigation could be completed.

Many ritualistic beliefs revolve around the notion

of conjuring an entity, occasionally a Demon

for nefarious purposes, as John Frederickson discovered,

the link between the Beast of Bray Road and Satanism

might not be as far removed as it may at first appeared.

In the early 1990's John received a phone call

from an anonymous source who stated

that she was aware of illicit, cult like gatherings

taking place in the area.

- At that time there was actually

quite a bit of Satanic information that was coming in.

Some of it was obviously teenager type involvement,

their dabbling into Devil worship,

and there were a couple other places

that were a little more intense, with an older crowd,

adult crowd, that took the whole role of Satanic religion

serious and whatnot.

Anything from teachers to possible law enforcement

people being involved.

Yeah I guess some of their get togethers

at this one location were quite involved.

People from around the world actually would show up

and they would go back into the woods

and have their little ritualistic ceremonies and whatnot.

Walworth County I had found out

from a higher law enforcement department

who one day just showing up out of nowhere,

and introduced himself to me.

Filled me in on some of the Satanic activity

happening around the entire state,

and I think there was three of four counties

that were notorious for occult activity, Satanic activity.

And I was somewhat surprised that Walworth County

just happened to be one of those.

- The wolf is seen as the symbol of greed and consumption,

and probably because it has such a violent nature

it's seen as this chaotic force in society

that kinds of threatens stability in the culture.

And this is often done through the abuse of science

or the abuse of magic or technology.

And it creates what's called the abhuman, which is not human

and it's basically an individual that has

lost the ability to control themselves and their desires,

and in some cases they can't control

whether they change into this creature or not.

- I wouldn't discount, again from my experiences,

and seeing what I've seen and what not.

I wouldn't totally rule out some type of occult activity

if by chance somebody invoked some type

of a occult type beast.

- Throughout history we find

many legends and lore pertaining to canid creatures.

In Egyptian hieroglyphics we learn of Anubis,

God of the dead, a jackal headed creature

who decided which souls should pass on to the afterlife.

In the Bible's old testament,

a king by the name of Neberkenezer was exiled

from his kingdom and forced to wander

the forest and fields as a wild beast,

cursed to live like a wolf.

Norse mythology has it's own representation

of the werewolf in the form of the ancient saga

of the Volsungs, which tells the story

of a father and son who discovered pelts

which gave the wearer the power

to become a wolf for 10 days.

Donning the pelts the duo turned into

blood thirsty savage creatures

and went on a killing rampage.

Engulfed in blood lust the father eventually

attacked his own son pointing to something

which has since become a vital part of werewolf tales,

the loss of control.

Across the world the werewolf has found a home

in nearly every culture.

- In the epic of Gilgamesh, which is written about 2000BC

you had this interesting character called Incadu,

which is sort of a wild man, he's covered in hair,

he's got long hair, and he lives with the animals.

He ends up battling Gilgamesh,

who's the hero of the story and they're equal strength wise.

But Gilgamesh wins because, arguably because

he's educated and part of civilization.

Incadu becomes Gilgamesh's servant

and there's this sort of running theme throughout

Western literature of that sort of animal nature

needing to be sublimated.

- In the very beginning when I wrote the story about it

I was just sort of thinking what would I call this.

It was a thing that was very hard to name.

I didn't want to call it the werewolf

because right away I didn't believe it was a werewolf,

so I titled it the Beast of Bray Road and it just stuck.

But it doesn't mean, I know now,

that there's only one thing out on one road.

The descriptions people gave of the Michigan dog man

were no different then the descriptions

people gave of the Beast of Bray Road.

- I believe that the werewolf lore had to have,

it started somewhere, and every lore or myth

has some truth to it, so I do believe

that anything in the United Kingdom,

I think we're seeing the same thing, personally.

- Well anybody who studied the Middle Ages in Europe

knows that there were alleged werewolves.

There are other accounts of so called werewolves

in those same middle ages that were considered occult

and tied to witchcraft.

If you admitted you were a werewolf,

or somebody could prove that you were a werewolf,

you were dead meat, you would be executed in most cases

for the years that these trials were going on

at their greatest height.

- In Germany for instance, in 1589,

you got what's called the werewolf of Bedburg,

and a guy named Peter Stubb evidently had fangs,

and claimed to have a desire for human blood.

Claimed to have murdered some 16 people,

he was put on trial and found to be guilty.

- There was the Beast of Gevaudan, probably the most famous

and in that case it's very different

from these Bray Road sightings

because the Bray Road beast would duck and run for cover

after it had been seen by people.

But back in the Middle Ages, this thing,

was killing dozens and dozens of people and livestock.

It was some real animal, real killer.

- This is in Southern France,

between June 1764 and June 1767,

there are reports of this giant wolf

over 200 attacks, some half of which were lethal.

The victims tended to be disemboweled,

clothes were taken off, and throats cut and beheaded.

The death of the creature finally came in June 1767,

Jean Duhamel famously shot it with bullets

that were supposedly made from a silver chalice

that had been blessed by a priest.

So that's sort of where the idea of the silver bullet

killing the werewolf comes from.

- So it seems to me like a very different phenomenon

that was happening back then,

where you have lots of predation of both livestock

and human beings, and animals that were able

to be shot and captured and exhibited.

- In America Native Indian lore

involving wolves and man wolves has been ignored

by many paranormal researchers.

The Mohawk Indians believe that some of the tribe

could shift form into other creatures.

They referred to them as the Limakin,

in the Western United States, perhaps it is the Navajo

who are best known for their legends

of shape-shifting men known as skin-walkers.

- Especially the Navajo where you had this evil witch

that's able to change into a wolf,

or some other type of animal.

And typically they acquire this capability

by committing some type of taboo like using magic

to curse someone instead of healing someone.

So they sort of contrast with the healer or the medicine man

so as a result they're sort of a paria to that culture.

- Wisconsin had a great number of different

Native American tribes living here.

When I asked them what they thought

the true nature of these upright canines were,

they said well, we believe that these

are not normal, usual modern animals.

That they're very old, that they were here before we were,

and that that came from the spirit world.

- All of these stories tend to

focus on mankind's either abusing technology,

or going to a place where he should not in the first place,

or investigating beyond where he should be.

Typically this awakes the monster,

or brings the monster about,

or changes the human being into a monster.

We have this facade of being civilized

and cordial to one another,

but there's always that sort of

that inner animal that can surface at any point.

And monsters sort of allow us to experience that

without it actually happening.

- As time passed the local reaction

had exceeded Linda Godfrey's expectations,

placing her at the center of a werewolf whirlwind.

Reporters from no less than four Milwaukee based

television stations appeared in Elkhorn,

looking for Godfrey, as well as any eye witnesses

that would go on record and of course

the Bray Road Beast itself.

Radio and wire services carried the terrifying tales

beyond the Wisconsin border and in no time

a modern legend roared to life.

Curiosity seekers arrived in Lafayette Township

for the express purpose of driving up and down

Bray Road in hopes of seeing a hairy monster.

Nationally televised programs such as Sightings

and Inside Edition devoted segments of their shows

to the Walworth County werewolf,

thrusting the story into even greater prominence.

Linda Godfrey's files began to swell with sighting reports

and she found herself becoming the unlikely spokesperson

for a phenomenon that defied reason.

And then after the major waves of publicity had crested

and the attention given to Elkhorn began to recede

life along Bray Road slowly regained it's quiet composure.

Godfrey however, remained busy,

the sheer volume of reports,

the veracity of the eyewitnesses

and the persistence since that something

significant had occurred, inspired her to write

about the entire experience.

In 2003, she released the Beast of Bray Road,

a book that traced the history

of her involvement in the breaking story,

detailed the most compelling sightings,

and speculated about the true nature of the dog man,

in the wake of the books release

there was a resurgence in sightings

of bipedal wolf like creatures

in the vicinity of Elkhorn and Bray Road.

Almost all of these encounters took place

as people were driving at night.

Sometimes the canid was seen

streaking through the cornfields.

Other times across the road in front

of the startled motorist,

often giving it's distinctive sneer

that terrorizes those unfortunate enough to see it.

In one unforgettable case, a creature,

described as larger than an Irish wolf hound

kept pace with a car for well over a mile.

The vehicle was traveling at a speed of 55 miles per hour.

While the Beast of Bray Road and Godfrey's subsequent

writing opened a door for many witnesses

to discuss their confrontations, often for the first time.

Still others could not being themselves

to talk about what they had seen.

Either they did not want to accept

that such a thing could really exist,

or they were even more fearful of being ridiculed.

- The thing is a lot of people stopped going public

with their sightings because they saw

how the first ones were made fun of,

and they didn't want to lose their jobs

or be made fun of themselves.

- As soon as there came out the Elkhorn in the paper

it went national, now all of a sudden

everybody's looking for this.

So did it die down from the early 90s till now?

I don't think so, I just think that there are a lot

of people that aren't coming forward

saying they saw something in fear of ridicule.

- I'm sure it'd be natural for somebody

to have the wits scared out of them,

maybe just tell some close friends but not

want it to go public or anything like that.

No doubt.

- As the mystery of what was being seen

in Elkhorn began to spread to the rest of the country

theories as to what could explain the existence

of such a creature began to formulate.

While there was a precedence

in the form of myths and legends

relating to upright wolf like beings around the world

no one had postulated on the existence

of such a being within the natural realm.

Until Linda Godfrey's own investigations

lead her to do just that.

- One thing that I was always trying to work with

were the commonalities in the descriptions from people

and I realized that almost everybody

was describing basically the same thing.

Which was something that stood five to seven feet tall,

had that head like a wolf or German shepherd,

I called it the indigenous dog man

because I was reasoning it could have been something

that was just a very minor mutation

of slightly larger paws and maybe some sort

of adjustment in the spinal column.

That perhaps it was advantageous for it

to be able to stand up.

If it's advantageous, and then more of these reproduce,

you know, it's the natural law of adaptation,

that more of them would persist in these grassland areas.

- In the snow we came across this wolf print

that was bigger then my hand,

and there were several of them,

and it is, it's frightening to see

something that giant out there.

- They're generally seen running on all fours

but people recognize them as something different

because they'll say they were as big as a pony,

a Shetland pony, or a calf.

- Residents up here, they know what wolves look like,

dogs look like, coyotes look like.

- Ricky Sanchez has a vested interest

in getting to the bottom of the dog man enigma.

That's because a pack of these creatures

apparently frequents his acreage near the Horicon Marsh

located approximately 100 miles north of Bray Road.

- 2017 is when it all started at my property.

It all started one night around one of the o'clock.

I walked outside with a head lamp,

we don't have, like we're out in the country,

so there's no lights out,

and I saw this large black object in the property

but beside the silhouette which really could focus

with the headlamps were the two eyes.

Didn't really pay much attention to it

because it was really low to the ground,

so I kept walking towards the car.

As I got to the trunk of the car I glanced at again,

and it was slowly walking crouched down to the ground

but towards me.

So I'm trying to figure out what is this?

So I walked towards it a little bit,

and it walked backwards while still looking at me.

That sparked my curiosity because it was

coming towards me, the cat normally doesn't

come towards me, I put the headlamp on brighter

and kind of walked towards it,

and it tried to back in the same position.

So I walked towards it more and it kept on

walking backwards and backwards while still looking at me,

and still looking at me walked back until

it reached one of the trees on the property.

Flipped up, looked at me, now it's eyes shine at my height

and it just stood and stared at me.

I'm still trying to figure out what the hell

because now it's higher up, so my headlamp

can't really focus on what it is.

Brought the water in, brought the dogs inside,

by the time I went back out it was gone.

- For the next few weeks

repeated activity would occur on Ricky's property,

including multiple sightings of strange shapes

moving through the fields and forests

surrounding his house.

On more then one occasion he saw not one,

but multiple pairs of strange glowing eyes

peering at him from the darkness.

As Ricky began to search for answers

as to what was prowling on his farm

he began to investigate other sightings

of upright canids in the surrounding area.

Soon the activity would extend to his neighbors homes

including the house located closest to his.

- So according to my neighbor, which is my nextdoor neighbor

he gets up to work at two o'clock in the morning.

He puts his trash in the back of his pickup truck,

and drives out to the front of the road,

picks up his trash, goes to the corner, puts it down.

But he's hearing something from the truck,

as he turns around to go back towards his truck

he sees this dog like, wolf like creature

in front of his pickup truck pacing back and forth,

looking at him.

He froze, it was in a kind of crouched down position

but not completely on fours, looking at him

as it paced back and forth.

He got into his truck and went to work

after he got his composure back

because he didn't know what it was.

Probably a week after, this was mostly every week,

we were outside with a bonfire me and my neighbor,

and my dad, my dad comes home

from Springfield, Mass for vacation.

My dad had gone inside,

so it was one of those days we decided to just call it quits

because there were too many mosquitoes and go inside.

When we threw water on the fire

it was looking at us from the other side

of our field of our property.

His eye shine was probably at my height,

but you could see a silhouette, it wasn't on all fours,

it wasn't starting erectile, it looked like it was scared.

It looked terrified, it ran.

While it was on the grass it ran on two legs.

When we got to the trail, it's already overgrown,

so you can't see through the treeline, it's already June.

So you know, you have bushes and everything,

you can't see, so I got kind of iffy,

I told him let's head back because if this guy

is either side we don't have

a lot of space between us to react.

So by then I told my neighbor I think

it's time for us to go inside.

- Many people will tell me that they felt

it was giving them a message,

and the messages vary from,

I could jump on your car and get you if I wanted too,

or if you tell anyone about me I'll come and find you,

or I'm better than you are, you puny little human.

That sort of thing.

- I believe it's something new to the environment.

Why it sometimes preferred when it was first seen

to first scavenge instead of hunting.

It has not breed to a specific look,

you have so much variations to it.

Paranormal no, like I said, it eats, it drinks, it breaths.

Can it do certain things that

we might not think is possible?

Yes, but other things that people think that is paranormal,

for me at least, I have been able

to scientifically figure out.

- I've always done field work,

you know gone out followed tracks,

looked for signs, things like that.

But I had the best opportunity ever

several years ago when I was contacted by a gentleman

who bought a 40 some acre hay field, part of an old farm,

that was adjacent to Bray Road.

He was a retired math and physics teacher from Illinois.

- I bought the property in 2007,

my farm is in between Bowers and Bray.

I was new in the area so I had not talked with many people.

I cut hay, and it was ready to be bailed

on a Sunday in September 2013.

So I basically went down the road

to a couple of local farmers, and I said

I need help getting hay up, will you guys come and help,

and they said, sure we'll come and help.

So they did.

And after we got done, the one guys said,

he said well you know the Beast of Bray Road

lives back on your property there.

He said, oh yeah, he said, my wife saw it,

and another farmer saw it,

and then he's telling me another farmer saw it.

The one farmer who had seen it on Bray Road,

eating a raccoon.

And I go okay, sure, you know, so forth.

So a couple days later I was driving down Bowers Road

and there was a raccoon so I took it and threw it outback

on my property line, and go back two days later,

and here the raccoon is cut open,

and the intestines are gone.

- He found a raccoon that was lying there

looking like something had zipped it,

from under it's chin down to the length of its abdomen,

and taken the insides out in one neat scoop,

set them next to the creature.

- So then I, couple days later,

I got a badger, it was dead on the road, roadkill,

put it down in the hole, three days later

it's out of the hole like 10-15 feet away,

and a badger weighs 20-25 pounds.

So I know a birds not picking this thing up,

and there's no path, the grass is all still around this.

So what I do is reach down and take it out.

I said so alright some guys coming back on my property

and doing this, that's crazy.

So then I started setting up cameras.

- As Lee's curiosity

about the happenings on his property began to grow,

the strangeness of what he was dealing with followed suit.

Over the next four years he would document

the disappearance and dismemberment

of dozens of mutilated animal corpses

that defied the rules of nature.

While the trail cameras he set out

were meant to capture evidence on whatever

was behind the mutilations it soon

began capturing mysterious lights and objects in the sky,

along with other unexplainable phenomenon.

When Lee had a sighting of what he believed

to be a set of red eyes belonging to the Beast itself

in a field late one night,

it only served to intensify his search for answers.

Before long Lee had begun filling photo albums

with evidence of unusual occurrences

taking place on his farm.

- I basically had a deer out for three years,

three to four years.

There was things happening with the deer

and the lights, they were very close together.

- He had the idea of bringing a small deer that he found,

it was a 60 pound roadkill deer.

- And then a mist came and like cloaked it,

and then the deer's gone.

- The deer set down in kind of a little nest of grass

on the edge of his property and when he came back

the deer was gone.

He thought aha, it'll be on the trail camera.

He looked at it, and at the time that the deer

would have had to have been taken

this strange mist appeared,

and it was in frame after frame after frame.

In the first beginning you can see the deer's hoofs

lying there and in the last frame

the deer is gone.

- I said let's go look for tracks, so we go look for tracks.

There's these five toed, seven pad tracks

that I have many pictures of and castings off

along the edge of the field.

- And he could see that there were tracks

that looked like large canine prints

deeply embedded in the soil

and there was only the hind set,

and it had to go somehow over a barbed wire fence

and into the next field.

He and a friend of his followed it

all the way through that field to where it ended up

at another road and they had to stop.

- I've gone to the Field Museum,

they sent me to a track expert,

who said these are not tracks, these are not animals.

They said, you can go to home depot

and buy stilts and walk around your field

and make those tracks.

There's nobody walking around my field with stilts.

I tried universities, University of Wisconsin,

I tried to talk to them.

I've tried VNR, they tell me it's an abnormal coyote,

and they've looked at the tracks,

oh that's an abnormal coyote.

- Lee's farm seems to be uniquely positioned

to reveal new information about the mysteries of Bray Road.

The data he's collected thus far implies

that the wolf man or whatever it is,

is only one piece in a much larger puzzle.

If this impression is true, it begs the question,

why does this puzzling phenomenon

appear to recur over and over again in South East Wisconsin?

The phenomenon Lee's witnessed on his property

also seems to connect some of the stranger aspects

of the modern day monster to its ancient ancestors.

Whether the dog man, if it exists,

is merely a mythological figure,

a misplaced, uncataloged animal,

or something far beyond our understanding

its presence continues to challenge

those that seek answers, causing people like Lee

and Linda Godfrey to continually seek new explanations

for a mystery that might never be solved.

- I believe it exists, I've seen it.

I have evidence, I'm past that,

now I want to to know where is it coming from?

Does it really live here?

Why does it need food at all,

does it actually use it for food?

That's my pursuit.

- While Wisconsin is known for its dairy cows,

cheese curds and endless fields,

its town of Elkhorn is known more for it's beast.

Yet in the years since the first sightings

the town has done little to embrace the legend

that has grown around their local monster.

In the 90s at the height of the Bray Road media frenzy,

t-shirts were sold, and today you can still find

the silver bullet special at the local bar.

But aside from the occasional curiosity seeker

asking for directions to the werewolf

Elkhorn is just another small Midwestern town.

- I don't know that it's got a commercial value to it.

There's a little bit of notoriety,

but then there's still a lot of people in the area

that have never actually heard of it.

- I'm gonna say that people still want

to turn their backs on it, for the tourism,

Elkhorn's not a big touristy town.

But you've got to remember the people

that are really interested in this,

it's a small portion of the population,

they're not trying to market it to the mainstream.

- So it's always been a divided reaction in the town

and I think that's to be expected.

- I've had stuff sent to me from magazines

in the back of airline seats about the Beast of Bray Road

from friends that are traveling.

All around the country I'll have people say,

Bray, oh like the Beast of Bray Road?

So it's amazing how far the story has gone.

- In the beginning I thought that the people

were seeing something, I did not know what it was,

and I still don't claim to know for sure what it was.

The newspaper was selling lots of t-shirts

and they asked me to do a poster they could hand out

to people for it.

I was okay with that, I actually have a cartoon

in one of the papers that had a cartoon drawing

of the werewolf being psychoanalyzed,

because all the people were driving me,

you know it was just kind of a fun thing.

Somewhere in there I came to a point

where my curiosity blended with the realization

that people were seeing something

that looked like an upright canine,

and nobody knew why, nobody knew what it was.

And the sightings continued and continued, and continued.

I'm not sure after 26 years that I feel

that comfortable really joking about it

because I've learned that it runs so deep worldwide

in so many channels, so many places

that I think there's a lot more to it

then appeared on the surface back in '91, '92.

And why it popped up in Elkhorn I'll never know.

- In many ways this lonely stretch of road

in Walworth County Wisconsin is completely ordinary.

No different then the thousands of byways

which cut through the heartland of America.

And perhaps that is the most unsettling element

in the flat pastureland of the Midwest,

or the haunted meadows of Europe it can be anywhere.

On quiet back roads late at night,

or in your own backyard in broad daylight.

Whatever this creature is

the Bray Road Beast is an intruder,

a being which forces itself into the lives

of those unlucky enough to see it.

It could happen anywhere, at any time,

it could happen to you.