Beast of Bray Road
North American cryptid
The Beast of Bray Road is the name given to a wolf-like creature reported to have been witnessed in or near Elkhorn, Walworth County, Wisconsin. The creature has become a part of Wisconsin folklore and has been the subject of multiple books, documentaries, and a 2005 horror film.
Named for the rural farm road on which it was first purportedly sighted, reports of the creature in the 1980s and 1990s prompted a local newspaper, the Walworth County Week, to assign reporter Linda Godfrey to cover the story. Godfrey was initially skeptical, but later became convinced of the sincerity of many witnesses. Her series of articles later became a book titled The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf. Skeptics maintain that the creature is likely the result of misidentification of known animals, most likely gray wolves.
Description
The Beast of Bray Road is often described by alleged witnesses as being between 6 feet (1.8 m) and 7 feet (2.1 m) tall, with a humanoid style body, covered in fur or hair, and with a head resembling a wolf and large, glowing red or orange eyes. It is purported to have been seen moving as both a quadruped and a biped, and some reports describe it more closely to resembling a traditional werewolf or Bigfoot.
History
The creature was allegedly first sighted on two consecutive nights in 1936 on the grounds of St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children in rural Jefferson, where a night watchman witnessed it digging on an Indian burial mound located on the property.
“Beast of Bray Road” enters the record as north American cryptid. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Beast, Bray and Road can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Beast of Bray Road” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.