Upright 'Lycan' Encounter Described by Shawano County, Wisconsin Witness

A Wisconsin witness describes an encounter with a bizarre creature seen digging in his mother's garden. After several minutes, it stood upright. He reference drawings of the 'Beast of Bray Road.'

The following account was recently forwarded to me:

"I will caution you that I know I sound crazy when I tell this experience. But this is the "God as my witness, right hand to God" truth. This account takes place a few miles north of a little town called Caroline (Shawano County) in northcentral Wisconsin. It happened during the summer of 2002 when I was 15-years-old.

I lived on a small dairy farm that had about 80 acres behind the farm house. Butted up against our land was a neighbor's property that was mostly wooded, but there was a small pond that went through both our property lines. Now, of course being 15, I was free to move between our property and our neighbors freely as long as I didn't bother his cattle and whatnot. I was usually out there with a little .22LR or a pellet gun just waiting for something to move. The weeks leading up to this story, I have vivid memories finding an unusually large amount of deer and calf carcasses around the pond, maybe about five or six in a three-week period. Normally, I wouldn't think twice about it because we have lots of black bears around there and they usually kill sick deer or can steal off with a calf every now and then. Whatever the case, it didn't raise my suspicion until about the beginning of August.

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'DOGMAN IN OUR YARD!' - AN OHIO FAMILY'S 12-YEAR SAGA WITH CRYPTID CANINES - Lon Strickler (Host)

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'DOGMAN IN OUR YARD!' - AN OHIO FAMILY'S 12-YEAR SAGA WITH CRYPTID CANINES - Lon Strickler (Host)

My bedroom was on the second floor of the house and I had one window facing out back towards our land. Looking from the window, the right plot was most straw and the left plot was corn. The fence dividing the two fields started at the the southern corner of our house so, simply put, you could see both fields clearly from my room. Under my window was a small backyard that was kind of "cut into" the hay field where my mom had a rather large garden. Our house was built around 1920 and didn't have air conditioning or anything. During the summer, I usually slept with my window open and a small fan running in my room.

One night I was woken up by a strange sound outside. It sounded like the rooting of a pig, at least that's how I remembered it. I don't remember the exact time that it happened but I think it was probably between 2300-0100. As I laid in bed listening to this weird "rooting" sound that was not too far outside my window, I started to think that it was odd because my family never dealt with hogs and neither did any of our neighbors. I honestly can't remember a time where I've ever seen a feral hog in our area nor have I heard of anyone else seeing them either. The more I thought about it, the more weirded out I got.

My headboard was just to the right of the window, so the whole time this was happening, my face was only about two feet from the open window. But it was just a little too high for me to simply crane my head out. I didn't turn my light on in my room because the moon was outside my window illuminating the fields and it was enough to see where I was going. I sat up in bed rather quickly and kind of haphazardly flipped my covers off me and put my feet on the floor. Before I could get up, however, the rooting/grunting sound stopped abruptly. I realized that this whatever-it-is can definitely hear me. I remember my heart rate RACING and it becoming harder to breath. I sat up in my bed for what seemed to be an eternity, but was probably more like 30 seconds or so. Slowly, the rooting/grunting sound started again and eventually went back to as much fervor as it had when I woke up initially. Convinced that this thing outside had forgotten about me, I slowly stood up.

What I saw next has literally haunted me for the past 20 years. and the memories are still just as vivid as the day this happened. I remember it with the utmost clarity and detail. I slowly stood up, making sure not to creak any of the floorboards as best I could. I only had to move forward a few feet to gaze upon the spectacle outside. I looked down at my mother's garden, which was about fifty or sixty feet away from the back wall of the house, and on the left side of the garden, I saw this...thing. I had no idea what I was looking at but it sure as hell wasn't a pig, a bear, a fox, coyote, wolf, badger, wolverine, or any other animal that I could think of. I could really only see the silhouette of it because all I had was moonlight outside. What it honestly looked like for a second was Quasimodo from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." That's what I remember thinking briefly. It was a rounded over, hunched figure that seemed to be squatting on its back legs and digging very rapidly through the edge of my mom's garden. It would hop side to side kind of like a monkey, hopping about 8 inches or so in either direction and would keep digging. It was tearing apart the edge of the garden. After a few minutes it rounded the edge of the garden and started digging the long side that runs parallel to my house so its back was now facing me. Again, it was maybe fifty or sixty feet away from me and about 15 feet down from where my window was. It did the same side-hopping thing it was doing while the whole time making this really loud rooting/grunting noise. Again, I can only compare it to the sound of a pig when rooting. But this thing wasn't sticking its head near the ground or anything, or at least not that I could notice. It was just digging like crazy.

Now this is where it goes from really strange to absolutely hair-raising, totally insane and terrifying. After about five minutes or so of this thing just digging around the perimeter of my mom's garden, it just stopped. It stopped the digging, it stopped the rooting/grunting noise, and it just sat there motionless for about 15 seconds. What happens next still gives me goosebumps, as I'm getting them just typing this out. It raised up on its back legs and just stood there as a human does facing our fields towards the woods. It stood for about 10 seconds and then turned and faced to the right briefly and that's when I saw the form of this thing. It was huge. It was probably six and a half or even seven feet tall and had a huge barrel chest. It turned to the right just briefly but that was enough to see how big it was from the side. So, it turns and looks to the right and then starts walking on two legs right through the garden and about 50 feet into the hayfield. I was kind of squinting now because it was kind of disappearing into the darkness, but it dropped down back on all four legs and started running. As I remember it ran much like a dog does. It ran diagonally to the left towards our fence line that divided the hay and corn fields and it leapt right over it. The fence was probably four and a half feet high, it was an old barbed wire fence that we didn't really even maintain. It's behind that field where the pond that is between our property and our neighbors is.

I remember laying back down in bed and started crying. Not like sobbing, but tears just came out and I just stared at the ceiling. I don't know how long it took me to fall back asleep, probably two or three hours. I remember waking up to my mom making breakfast and I ran outside and looked at the garden. It was definitely tore up and I certainly wasn't dreaming. I ran back inside fanatically yelling to my mom and my dad what I had seen and if they didn't believe me to look at the garden. My mom went out there and said that it was "just some animal" had torn through it looking for food. I tried explaining everything that I had seen that night and they just stared at me like I was speaking Chinese and said I was dreaming or I was mistaken. Later on my mom filled in all the holes and straightened out the garden again so there was no visible trace of what was there. I never went back to that pond again because at that point (and to this day) I'm convinced that this thing that I saw was the one responsible for killing those deer and calves. I never went back there the next five years I lived in that house.

When school started again, I cautiously asked some of my friends that lived near the area if they had seen anything "out of the ordinary" and none of them had. I tried telling a few people what I saw but they just laughed, called me an idiot or a looney and that was the end of it. The closes thing that I can compare to what I saw is what a werewolf is depicted as, most notable the Lycans from 'Underworld.' That movie put me into a paralysis the first time I saw it because of how closely it resembled what I saw that night. Long story short, after the first few weeks of school my junior year, I just simply never talked about what I saw that night again. I only told my wife about three years ago what happened (which is about 17 years after I saw it). I know she believes me that I saw "something" out there, but I think she is under the impression that I've dramatized it quite a bit which is not true. After I told my wife about it, she asked me if I'd ever looked it up online or done any research into strange sightings in Wisconsin and I honestly haven't ever done it before. It didn't take long for me to find what is called "The Beast of Bray Road" which has been spotted in central Wisconsin for decades. Reading some of the first hand accounts of other people only solidified that I did see what I saw and some of the artistic renderings are pretty spot on with what I saw.

One of the most obvious questions I'm going to get is "What did the prints look like?" The truth is, I don't really know. When I went outside that morning it wasn't to examine prints, it was to make sure that the garden was indeed ripped apart and I wasn't dreaming. Another question I've gotten is "Why didn't your parents investigate it?" Well, I don't know that either. I think my mom was just so convinced it was "just another animal" that she didn't even bother to look at it. There are all sorts of critters up there to include wild dogs, coyotes, and wolves, so I imagine that any print that thing left would have resembled either of those three things. Another question is "Why didn't you go back out with your mom and look around?" The easy answer is "I lived on an operating dairy farm." After breakfast it was off to the barn. My little "monster fantasy" wasn't enough to keep me from cleaning the stalls and liming the barn." W

NOTE: Many of the upright canine witnesses here in Pennsylvania reference the 'Underworld' Lycans in their descriptions as well. Lon

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PURCHASE NOW

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Have you had a sighting of a winged 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.' - Chicago / Lake Michigan Winged Humanoid Regional Interactive Map - 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.

Thanks. Lon Strickler