The following account was posted by Phantoms & Monsters Fortean Research and Singular Fortean Society investigator Tobias Wayland:
21-year-old Rockford, Illinois resident Jonathan Lane contacted the Singular Fortean Society’s lead investigator Tobias Wayland last week to report a sighting of what Lane would later describe as a “giant, shapeless, black thing” with “two very large red eyes.”
According to Lane, the sighting took place between 10:20 and 10:30 pm on an August night in 2016, sometime “before school had started that year.”
It was very late at night—my mother works nights because she’s a nurse—so I walk her to her car every night. I walked her out to her car, and she got in it and left. Then, as I’m walking up to the house, I hear a noise that’s like screeching brakes or something and I instantly look up. There’s a big tree in our yard and I see this giant, shapeless, black thing—and it has two very large red eyes. As soon as I made eye contact with it, it made that sound again. Instantly, it fills me with fear and intimidation, and I run in the house and start freaking out. The sound was so weird. I can still hear it clearly in my head. Like a large bird’s caw. Reminds me of the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park, like the velociraptors.
The next day or so, when it was light, I went outside and I looked where the branch was and tried to see where I’d seen the top of it and where the blackness was compared to the tree. It was pretty substantial. It would have to be nine feet tall. It was a large space. The wingspan just faded into the darkness around it.
It was shapeless, but where the eyes were, I did see a little notch above its head where I could see sky. What really bothered me was the red eyes and how far apart they were. It showed just how large it was.
Like many witnesses, Lane was met with ridicule when he initially shared his story and kept it quiet for years afterward, at least until he saw the Small Town Monsters documentary 'Terror in the Skies.'
"My father was there, and I told him about it and he started laughing and making fun of me," he explained. "So, since then I’ve just kept [my experience] very private, [although] I told my sister about it once. I’ve just never really forgotten about it. I never knew what it was. I saw the documentary [Terror in the Skies] and it was just mind-blowing to see you guys talk about stuff like that. I just wanted to reach out somehow."
Approximately a year after his sighting of the red-eyed entity, Lane said he saw an unidentified flying object in the same area.
I was driving home with a friend of mine from work, and we were almost to my house. [We were] in the same [area as the winged entity sighting]—there are a lot of trees and there’s only a little section of the sky that’s open right by my house, and that’s where the big tree is where the [previous] incident happened. It was the same part of the sky. I'm not claiming it was anything specific, but I saw a very prominent UFO. Very large, very prominent. I had my friend stop the car and we got out. I just don’t know what it was. It was clear enough where I could see panels, like windows. It was very scary. My friend, she’s a bit younger than me, she got very scared, so we had to leave.
Whatever that was, it was not normal. It was shaped like a pear. It had probably a hundred windows all over it. It was lit up. It was very weird how it was lit up. The whole thing was illuminated, but it had lines of light—almost like waves of light going through it. It’s hard to explain. It almost looked like it had white light stripes through it but it was an undulating movement. The very top of it was black, and the very bottom of it was black, but the center was illuminated. I could see where it was being lit up and it was like miniature squares making up the whole object.
Whatever he saw, Lane’s sightings have definitely had an effect on him.
"Both of those things very much bothered me," he said. "We have a huge picture window in our living room and it’s a huge pet peeve of mine to make sure those curtains are closed, overlapping, so nothing shows at night. I had a room in the corner of the house nearby that tree, and eventually I had to move rooms."
He added that, despite his fear of doing so, it felt refreshing to express his experiences to someone, and that his "main motivation for sharing [them was] to add credibility and make it easier for other people to come forward."
Have you had a sighting of a flying humanoid or huge bat-like creature in the Chicago, Illinois metro area / Lake Michigan region? The entity has also been referred to as the 'Chicago Mothman', 'Chicago Owlman' & 'O'Hare Mothman.' Please feel free to contact me at lonstrickler@phantomsandmonsters.com - your anonymity is guaranteed. Our investigative group is conducting a serious examination of his phenomenon. We are merely seeking the truth and wish to determine what eyewitnesses have been encountering. Your cooperation is truly appreciated. You can call me directly at 410-241-5974 as well. Thanks...Lon Strickler
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