Monster hunter Linda Godfrey takes us on a tour of Wisconsin’s strangest legends.
IN THE FALL, WHEN THE TREES GO BARE AND THE WIND WHIPS through the hills, Wisconsin’s miles and miles of unassuming dairy farms seem quite capable of hiding some sort of Gothic menace. Those winding country roads, so peaceful during daylight, become downright eerie when the sky turns black.
It’s the perfect setting for a spooky campfire story, and the Badger State has plenty of them: haunted inns, unexplained creatures, UFOs. Many originated centuries ago when various populations—first, Native Americans; later, Germans, Norwegians, Bohemians and Swedes—flocked to this naturally abundant land of glacial plains and more than 8,000 lakes.
Visit Green Bay and you’ll hear loup garou (werewolf) legends that build on traditional French folk tales. Near Door County, where there were Polish populations, shrines were built in farms to keep the devils away. Add to that a rich legacy of Native American mysticism—Wisconsin reputedly has more animal-shaped effigy mounds than anyplace else in the world—and the ground is fertile for weirdness.
THE BEAST OF BRAY ROAD
AMONG THE STATE’S MOST ENDURING legends is that of the Beast of Bray Road, a creature seen along a now-infamous country lane in the small southeastern Wisconsin town of Elkhorn. Reports of a bizarre wolf-like animal roaming this area go back several decades, but it was local resident Linda Godfrey who broke the story wide open in 1991.
Working as a reporter for the community newspaper The Week, she got a tip that the local county humane officer had a file marked “werewolf.” Inside were the names and numbers of a half-dozen eyewitnesses who all told variations of the same story: A hairy, manlike, wolf-headed creature was strolling around like something out of a nightmare.
Godfrey contacted a young woman named Lori Endrizzi, who had reported to Walworth County’s animal control officer that she had seen a brownish-gray animal the size of a man, with pointy ears and long claws, kneeling on the side of Bray Road munching on roadkill. “To this day I believe it was satanic,” Endrizzi told Godfrey in a follow-up interview years later.
More recently, in 2004, a fortysomething nurse from Milwaukee named Marie told Godfrey she saw a hairy, six-foot-plus-tall “thing” with silver fur and a dog-like head on the outskirts of Elkhorn. She was driving with her teenage daughter and a friend on an October night in 2004 and decided to play a prank on the two teens by acting as if the car suddenly stalled out. But as she slowed down, she noticed something along the side of the road among the high corn fields.
At first Marie thought it was an animal, but when she got a closer look and saw the shiny yellow reflection of its eyes, she says she knew it was something otherworldly, beyond the norm of nature. “The legs were all wrong—its knees bent the wrong way,” she said. “We all screamed and drove away like a rocket.”
Godfrey has chronicled scores of other accounts—all detailed, lucid and eerily alike—in her books The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf and Hunting the American Werewolf. But she’s more than a one-monster girl: In Weird Wisconsin and its sequel Strange Wisconsin, the author also describes myths involving zombies, pig-men and murderous midget colonies.
She refers to herself as an “investigator of strange phenomena and unexplained creatures.” And when I asked her for a personal tour of creepy Wisconsin legends, she was happy to oblige.
THE SEA SERPENT OF LAKE GENEVA
WHEN I MEET GODFREY, KNOWN TO MANY as the “Werewolf Lady,” in downtown Lake Geneva, the fiftysomething wife and mother of two is dressed for a long day of monster hunting in her pink baseball hat and black “Werewolf University” T-shirt. Even her car announces her credentials, with a vanity license plate reading “BRAY BST.”
Strolling along a public lakefront trail dotted with impressive mansions, Godfrey tells me of the many monsters that are rumored to have made homes in Wisconsin’s plentiful lakes. In the 1920s, there were frequent “dragon” sightings in Lake Kegonsa, off Williams Point. And Rock Lake in Jefferson County is the supposed lair of a slithery beast known as Rocky, whose local popularity inspired a beer called Rocky’s Revenge. “It’s one of my favorites,” Godfrey says. This doesn’t surprise me.
As we peer out onto the crystalline Geneva Lake, hugely popular with tourists from throughout the Midwest, I learn that it’s not only home to hundreds of pleasure boats, but also to an estimated 65-foot sea serpent named Jenny.
At 142 feet, the lake is Wisconsin’s second-deepest. Its central-most point, known as “The Narrows,” is where most Jenny sightings have occurred. The Chicago Tribune reported that two boys and a man saw a huge scaly reptile with razor sharp teeth while fishing in 1892. In 1902, the Milwaukee Sentinel published a similar article. Some theorize that Jenny may be a surviving plesiosaur, a sea reptile from the Cretaceous period.
In Strange Wisconsin, Godfrey posits a connection with area Native American tribes who told tales of monster serpents. “There used to be a huge water spirit mound in the lakeshore near Flat Iron Park, just beyond the beach over there,” she says, pointing into the distance. “It was demolished to make downtown Lake Geneva, which is very bad juju.”
Considering the rarity of modern-day Jenny appearances, we decide to set our sights elsewhere. Godfrey points out a rolling hill near Highway 12 and County Road H. “There was a sighting right here of the wolf-man,” she says. Despite the notoriety of Bray Road, she says the nearby Kettle Moraine State Forest, a pristine 20,000-acre hiking and recreational area filled with dense pine woods and hardwood forests, is a far better place for aspiring monster hunters.
“There have been many more sightings here than at Bray Road,” she says. “It’s a very logical habitat.”
That might be true, but if there’s one area in southeastern Wisconsin with the greatest concentration of mysterious happenings, it’s where we’re headed next: the town of Whitewater.
MYSTICAL WHITEWATER
HOME TO A BRANCH OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, Whitewater gained a reputation as a paranormal hotbed back in 1889 with the establishment of the Morris Pratt Institute, the nation’s only Spiritualist College.
The founder, Morris Pratt, struck it rich when he discovered iron ore in Wisconsin after a Madison psychic advised him where to dig. “As a spiritual payback, he started the Institute,” Godfrey says. Townspeople called its building “the Spook Temple,” and while it was eventually torn down, the Morris Pratt Institute still offers spiritualism courses in Milwaukee.
“They had an all-white séance room on the third floor. They may have been doing pagan rituals,” Godfrey says. “People would call them witches, because at the time any supernatural doings [were considered the work of] witches. There may have been early witch covens, but there is no evidence.”
Regardless, rumors of witches conducting outdoor ceremonies in the fields around present-day Wells Hall run rampant. A sacrificial altar is said to be buried on the grounds of this drab concrete dorm, which has seen its share of disturbances. “A few years ago a student rolled off his bunk and out one of the eighth-story windows to his death,” says Godfrey, who, somewhat not surprisingly, attended Whitewater herself in the early ’70s. “It’s been reputed to be haunted ever since it was built.”
Walking past Wells Hall, we head up a hill to Starin Park, dominated by an imposing stone tower. Godfrey points out the wrought iron fence around the tower; until recently, a fence surrounded the park, but its spikes were turned inward, as if to keep something in as opposed to keeping trespassers out.
There are also stories about how Whitewater’s three cemeteries, when looked at on a map, form a near-perfect isosceles triangle. “Supposedly, the witches planned that. And everything along the lines [of the triangle] is haunted,” Godfrey says.
Before leaving Whitewater, Godfrey suggests we stop at Indian Mounds Park, once a sacred prayer and burial ground for local Native Americans now located in a generic subdivision. In her opinion, the crude-looking elevated mounds contribute to the overall spiritual ethos of the town.
“They’re weathered, so the shapes are not so delineated,” Godfrey says. “But these were massive earth works. Some were oriented to certain compass and astronomical points; they were very precisely engineered. And no one knows how or why, because the people who did it no longer survive.”
We walk carefully; stepping on them would be a sign of disrespect. The last thing we need is an angry spirit on our trail. We’re about to investigate one of the strangest legends of them all: the mythic colony known as Haunchyville.
SEARCH FOR HAUNCHYVILLE
THE MIDGETS FLED TO THE cornfields of Muskego at the end of the traveling circus era, so the stories go. And indeed, the town of Delavan (about 40 miles away) once served as the winter headquarters for several circuses. But the little people of Muskego are no longer interested in entertaining; they’re rumored to brandish tiny clubs, which they use to beat trespassers.
Godfrey’s never been able to find anyone willing to join her on a search for Haunchyville, and as we turn on Mystic Drive, the street most often associated with sightings, she peers out the car window like an excited teenager. We nearly enter a driveway marked “Private Property,” but considering the city of Muskego is known to issue fines to Haunchy-seekers, we decide to turn around.
Driving back along Mystic Drive, we notice a teenage girl walking her dog. We ask if she’s ever heard of Haunchyville. “Sure,” she says, and points to a horse fence about 50 yards away. “That’s where I was told the Haunchies live, but I’ve never seen them.”
We head in that direction and spy a cluster of three small structures just past a burned-out cornfield. One could be an abandoned child’s playhouse. But the other two don’t look like they were built for children. Particularly strange is a mini stone house with a curved roof and a tiny little doorway the perfect size for someone of diminutive stature. A careful peek inside shows it’s full of beer cans, but they were probably left behind by normal-sized teenagers.
After snapping some pictures for her “Were-blog,” Godfrey acknowledges she can’t be certain we’ve stumbled onto Haunchyville. But the visit provided just enough evidence to keep one more weird Wisconsin legend alive.
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