"A certain number of people, good honest working folk, had seen something—something unusual. Something scary. Something hairy that relished pavement patty dinners!" 

That was the caption underneath the cartoon of an upright wolf eating roadkill that ran in the December 29th, 1991 article ofThe Week, the local paper of the small Wisconsin city of Elkhorn. It was an article that they thought would be fun but forgotten soon after. Stories were spreading among the kids of the town that people seeing a huge dog or wolf on two legs along a rural road late at night. The original reporter, Linda Godfrey, had to fight to get the article published. 

We've talked with Linda on the podcast many times, but on this special anniversary, Mike and his sister Allison bring Linda back to talk about how things have changed in the three decades since Linda broke the story. 

It all started with a folder labeled "Werewolf"

Once Linda Godfrey went to the Walworth County Animal Control officer, he already had a stack of reported sightings and unusual occurrences and the manila folder was labeled "Werewolf".

The sightings go back to 1936

Once Linda ran the story, people started contacting her about their own sightings. One man detailed his own father's encounter not far from Bray Road with a strange creature decades before. A story he had only shared with family before. The monster that his father had seen had all the hallmarks of the Beast that people were seeing along Bray Road in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

It's Not Just Upright Wolves or Canines

Linda has also discovered hundreds of sightings of big cats in Wisconsin, sightings that the Department of Natural Resources says are impossible. Those sightings have political implications so sometimes cryptozoology can bleed over into the world of state politics, land zoning, and animal control. 

A never-before reported sighting

While driving home from Lake Geneva (where we have one of our most popular ghost tours!) a couple saw a puzzling creature in a cornfield in the middle of the day. Only after hearing about the Beast of Bray Road for the first time on TV a year later, did they realize that they had seen the same thing!

Listen to a special podcast episode featuring an interview with the original investigator and hear a firsthand never-before revealed encounter with the Beast of Bray Road...

Welcome to See You on the Other Side, where the world of

the mysterious collides with the world of entertainment.

A discussion of art, music, movies, spirituality,

the weird, and self discovery. And

now, your hosts, musicians and entertainers

who have their own weakness for the weird. Mike and

Wendy from the band, Sunspot.

It was 30 years ago this month, journalist Linda Godfrey broke the

story of the Bray Road Beast, the Wisconsin

Werewolf. Now 30 years on, we're just wondering how things have

changed. So we're talking with Linda Godfrey today to get her perspective

on the phenomena. Happy December, Linda.

Happy December, Mike. So glad to hear from you. Yes. Now I've put you

in a good listen. Yeah. Welcome, Linda. Without

you, Linda, we would not have this wonderful story of the Wisconsin

werewolf, the, the person who was brave enough to

bring us the Bray Road Beast in the 1st place. Well, thank you.

You know, and I do think because it took at least 10 years

before people really started looking at it on math, you

know, it was just sort of an oddball thing that most

people, even Super Zoology fans, would just sort

of Map it under the the sofa or wherever,

and I really wasn't doing that much in terms of writing. I was

investigating, but I just had I had a few places where

I felt it was appropriate to do a column for the newspaper on it

in between now and then, but it really didn't take

off, I for about 10 years. So you were working on comic

strips. You were working for a local paper. And,

like, how did how did you first find out about

the Boreal Beast? Well, it was just

that there had were several people who, rode or

drove the same school bus, And they

were chatting about something, and one man, and she saw this this

thing and told the other ones. And, one

of them had some acquaintance with Mike, and she she said you have to check

into this more, because she she knew Doris

Gibson was The woman who had seen it that first

spoke the words, you know, and let the the story come

through. And she's the one that On a Halloween night,

what we have documented is when she's driving along a very

late night, pickup for her relative

had been at a party, and she was going to pick her up and saw

this thing come running out of the car and jumped in front

of her car. She Took off. She didn't even gotten out, kinda

cracked the door open, and started to get out. And then she when

she saw it and became so frightened That she just hopped back in and and

took off again, and she hadn't really told anybody. It

had been, you know, a while since that happened.

So the the woman who knew her, to me, it was kind of a

chain chain reaction sort of thing. And I

happen to be going to talk to the, county,

animal shelter for a different thing. And just I was

sort of humming and hawing within my mind whether I should mention it to him

or not, and I finally did. I said, hey. Have you heard anything about this

strange out in the country on brave road,

and he said, oh, you mean this? And he pulled

out a file folder and it was labeled werewolf.

Now, what was county is a pretty state laced little

town. You don't usually really unusual things,

but, so that kinda caught my attention. And, also, when you've

got an official to me, if you if you've got a file folder and

a label on it and verifying others

who are telling their story, that's a story. The newspaper was

very reluctant at first because they said, oh, people are

gonna laugh, you know. And I said, well, that can be good.

And so we finally decided to do it, and

when after it ran, it was the only it

was the only one of 2 papers that ever

sold out overnight. It had a dramatic effect on the

the sales of the newspaper. It did, and they did not expect that at

all. And they ended up, kinda doing some

fun things with it. I dubbed it the beast of gray road because of the

alliteration, you know, beast of gray. It just kinda went Right. It

rolls off the tongue well. So you're telling me that,

the Animal control officer, was it, in

in Elkhorn, had a file folder? Right. Right. His office was

in Elkhorn, but he covered the whole county. And he

had this file folder. I believe he actually showed it to me.

It was purportedly used by the Elkhon Police

Department of for a photo shoot and nobody saw it

after that. So that's another mystery. It was a

a wide territory. And then I found out there there were other weird things

that were happening at the same time. There was several do

dogs that seemed mutilated were found buried in different of around

the county, which is pee pee pee. There are

people who are seeing a white horse, a white stallion, being ridden

around at night by, a man in some kind

of costume. I don't know if it was described too much, but that was

something that a couple of people of has seen and there were things like that

that seemed to be happening in conjunction with the

creature sightings that people started calling a werewolf because they

would see in their Egyptians, they didn't think that it looked very natural

running and walking on its hind legs. That to them, the only thing

that would fill that bill would be the werewolf. Well and you and you go

into that really well in in your book, the 2003 Beast of Bray Road,

when you mentioned that it took about 10 years For the the rest of the

world, you know, to catch on or at least the, you know, the cryptozoology world.

But, I mean, there's a couple of things that strike me from that that

beginning 30 years ago is that is that number 1, you had the

guts to say, let's do a story about this werewolf thing that

these kids are seeing. And now adults, You know, are have been seeing

it too. And and then number 2 Yeah. Who the the people that I mean,

besides I mean, I remember seeing it on the local news, Like, when when it

first came out. So this is very this is this was very exciting to me

because I was just getting into freshman year of high school. And when the whole

world is opening up, you're like, uh-oh. Like, worlds are real,

man. Mike, so that that was a shocker to me. It's Mike,

as I'm having, like, the awakening into adulthood, you realize, uh-oh,

monsters. Always thought that they you know, dad always told me they were fake, Allison.

He lied. You're you're you're grown up enough

to know, Mike. Right after Monsters are real, Tom.

Real, and and they're 10 miles away. Now you weren't a

person who was particularly looking

for cryptids or anything. Right? No. Not at all. I mean, I had

interest in the the topic. And I actually,

after this happened, I I started going out somewhat. You'll see some

some of these things that have been published have, my

first Trial baiting where I had a

a raw chicken and put that in the ditch. I had

permission to do this. It's not really good to park alongside the road

in the dark at night out there, but, you know, I had

notified everybody. And The newspaper

photographer and I kinda sat out as as long as we could stand. It was

a pretty cold night as I remember. I think this is the

sun. You know, one of the the newspapers that are for sale

internationally with strange topics. Yeah. The UK.

And, they they published a kind of a not a

real long, but very photo rich article on it. And

that, I think, really helped at that at that point because the the

sightings didn't just start then either. The sightings went back

to at least, 10, 12

years or Mike, depending on which which story. So,

there really was a lot more. There were more legs to the story

than one would think, really. You start looking into it, didn't it go go

back to 89? And then the 1936 sighting, And you go through all

those in the book, and and they've explored them in different TV shows and stuff

like that. But how does your life change as somebody who's and and this is

and we're we're talking about the Elkhorn newspaper, Like, it's not

in the New York Times or the Washington Post. It's not Woodward and Bernstein out

there looking for the beast of Bray Road. How does your life change from somebody

who's like, okay. I like doing cartoons, and then they make me write stories every

once in a while. And now I am thrust into

this world, that, you know, were you ready for

it? How did it how did it go? Oh, I had no idea. I remember

the editor of the week, which is the title of the of the

newspaper, and I were kinda, you know, bantering

about it back and forth. And, we concluded

that it would probably be something that local people would have some

fun with, and there'd be, you know, jokes and things for a a couple

of weeks and then it would die down and go into a key

portfolio at the library or something like that. But little

did I know that as soon as it was published, there

were freaking had radio calls from all over the country. And then

every nearly local or nearly local newspaper.

There's the Milwaukee Journal and Madison newspapers. All of them

just made it go a on AP coast to coast. It it

literally was shown coast to coast and was

terribly time consuming, which I hadn't thought would happen. It

just kept going. I think if it had been

the Internet type of of reception that

we can have now, it might Mike gone a lot faster, but people

then were barely you know, the the Internet was just sort of being born

to the main culture. And so Things like that could hide

in the files for a long time before somebody would pick them up, or there

would be a public anniversary to Remember them by such as we

have. Right. And and so I I think if the Internet had been around, you

might have been inundated even with, you know, many more sightings

and and stuff like that and all the people coming in. You know, you have

been clickbait central. Right. So,

Linda, how did this change you personally? Like, did did it Do you feel

it changed your worldview in any way? Well, it's something that

people ask me and I'm sort of pulled in different

directions. There are but what I mainly usually come up with is

that well, I can say for sure, I don't claim to believe

in werewolf, But I don't know what they are, what

these people are seeing. But I believe they're seeing something.

There are enough, relating factors

That it seems like it's often the same thing that people are seeing. And

the biggest thing, and something that's really just starting to

cap it off, was that. It went public in Europe and

in all over the country. And, I've just

started talking with people. They're getting more and more interest

from Europe and different other parts of the globe. And so

that's exciting because then It's really weird,

but almost every country has some form

of acknowledgement or Fear of

or legend about large predators that are in certain

countries seem very much alike. You know, and you talk about this in your book

because you're talking about werewolf legends, of that happened. You

go into, you know, different things around the world where people

have had these stories of of Seeing you know, you talk about the

Michigan dog man and things. And Mhmm. In your further books

too, you go into the different Monsters, you know,

that people have seen around the country. And then, you know, you bring them all

together, and they have those ideas that that this cross crosses cultures,

that people have seen this. But Great way to put it. And you

described that well, in the Beast of Bray Roadbook. And

since that has come out, And so that that's kind of, you know,

where you you now I mean, when people think of you, they think of

you as someone who is a often a a cryptozoological

author. You know, I think if somebody said, well, what does Linda do? Probably before

I met you and stuff like that, I'd be like, well, I, you know, I

wouldn't have said cartoonist or anything like that. I'd been like, well, I read her

books, and I you know, I think she's a cryptozoological author Mike

Lauren Coleman Or, Dan Cohen or all you

know, since that has come out and you've had a chance now to

talk with people all over the world and have been on a 1000000 TV shows,

What as you're going into it and and as you're still

getting people's stories and releasing these books, or the last book you had

was I Know What I Saw that came out in

2018. Right? Right. Exactly. It goes from the idea

that these are just things out horror movies to these are just

things that are way out of the ordinary that we don't

understand. And we tend to fear what we don't understand, Dana, and that's that's a

big one. So all of a sudden, you think it's the thrill of the horror

movie when maybe you're seeing something supernatural that doesn't mean us anything

harmful whatsoever. Yeah. That's really true. It's a different

sort of thing than people will be sometimes somebody I hear

from the audience coming up, you know, was he drunk or something like that.

And alcohol gets blamed a lot, but things that I've checked with

showed that the the people who are seeing this thing

are generally Young kids were outside,

people working good hardworking people working driving home on late

shift, farmers, Just people of all sort

that was another thing that really got me interested because it wasn't

like there was 1 type of person, You know, doing,

bear bear wolf put in a bear suit or something like that.

Right. They are completely unique to As as such as they

did share certain characteristics, that really impressed me that there

were all these people of different lifestyles, ages,

interests that still saw the same same

thing, which they almost all described as a large

wolf like creature that could walk and stand and run and jump

and leap on its hind legs like nothing they'd ever seen

before. The other eerie thing that I still hear too is that

people will tell me, you know, I felt that there was

more to this than just some sort of animal or even some sort

of spirit thing. It's something we haven't yet and and I

I think that that's a definition that a lot of people could go with. I

just say I I don't know what it is, But I know something's there, and

people are all seeing it the same way. You know, one thing that you you

talk about when it comes to these kind of phenomena and people report sightings is

that now there is a There's a narrative around the

Beast of Bray Road. Right? People, like, people have seen the original settings. They have

a story. You know, we see fake pictures

coming through. Yeah. Every once in a while, the people say, oh, this is I

was driving down Bray Road, Wisconsin, and then you you know, and it shows

up. You know, there's a great picture a couple years ago. Somebody said they were

driving down Bray Road, and there's a there's a there's the dog man right

there, and it's next to a it's next to a, a sign that says 40

miles per hour, and yet there are there are no 40 mile per hour

signs on Bray Road. There aren't. There aren't. I know

exactly the one you mean. I I don't think that people

were at all bothered by someone else

kind of deriding this particular one because you could also see,

You know, parts of what it was made of and several different colors of fur

and kinds of fur. And there's another one that's just been going around

for years, And that is where

it's nighttime. It's a farm that's supposed to be in

Kentucky and There is

a path lighted by something or other, and then you see the side

of this creature that looks like a a wolfish kind of

peering at you around the corner, and that one has been

seen by I I have more people come up and ask me about

that one at conferences. Again, you could kind of poke a lot of holes in

it. And I think that it's good to be

careful about what you're is real. This is real. This isn't

Right. You know, and that's what I was wondering. So I as you have gone

on and and the difference in between 1991 and

Wendy. And I'm sure people still send you things all the Mike, and that's where

I know what I saw came from where those reports to you. Do you have

to put on your bullshit detector or something like that, you know,

in in a special way? And do you See, you know, because also the Internet

too, people can send things in anonymously, and it's just emails, and they can write

it out. You never see them in person. You can't, like, size them up or

anything like that. Do you see, like, common traits? You know, do people

just copy other sightings they've seen and send them in? Did you think that

a majority of the things that you get are people who actually

have something that they would just love to get explained? Yeah. I think the

latter one is is both true. I've been criticized for

not believing, you know, and and I don't believe that you're

Some people think that that's going on, and they object to

that, and that's that's fine. There are others who really claim that it's

just nothing to it too, And they'll kinda go off

on taking the the low hanging fruit when they're looking for

things to describe this creature, you know, because Obviously, it's

really easy to take umbrage with such a thing and and laugh about

it. That does happen, and I I'm I'm ready for

that, really. Well, it's it's funny because I was I was one of my, friends,

his, dad had worked on

the he was, in the Elkhorn Police Department for decades.

And so Mhmm. You know, that I was talking to the mother of my friend

who who, you know, after after this guy died, and I'm like, hey. You know,

Elkhorn police department, You know, did he get any particular did he ever see the

beast to hear a story or anything like that? And she's like, well, he heard

stories and stuff, but he never put any credence to it or anything like

that. So he just He had dismissed those things out of hand because he

had because nobody was actually assaulted or anything.

And, you know, so you're gonna have people who are open minded, be like, okay.

Tell me about it. And you're gonna have people also in authority and stuff who

are gonna be like, don't waste my time. Right. Exactly.

And so it's finding that middle area where you're not

entertaining the The crazies, for lack of a better

term, and saying Mike, oh, no. It's, you know, all of I saw all the

fairies fly over Bray Road. I'm not even saying the fairies are not there, but

it's just, You know, it's it's the people that everything happens to at once

versus just saying, you know, to somebody who you had mentioned this before, and I

think this was a this is a great point. Of was all kinds of

unique people who had had this experience. I mean, I'm the kind of person that

goes to a paranormal conference, but I'm also the kind of person out looking for

it. Joe Schmoe sees something who is not looking for it.

That gives us a different sense of,

Okay. Well, if this guy saw something and he

just saw it out of nowhere or whatever. Right. Most people who that

happens to will say it right off. Hey. I didn't think there was any such

possible thing. I thought it was was crazy, but now I know what I

saw. You know? But at the time and then One of our witnesses, he

was an airline official, in this general

area of the Midwest, and he happened to see one At his vacation

home right near Burlington, maybe 10 miles away, something like

that. And he thought not just and this is a man who has

All kinds of tests given to him all all the Mike, and

he saw it once not once, but 4 times. He had

to Drive at a very early hour to to work every

every day. Sure. That is something that when when you have a

person who's seeing the same thing repeatedly. It and,

you know, well, it couldn't have been just a flash in the pan. You know,

it could have been a stroke of moonlight or somebody's headlight For

that, it gives it a lot more credibility when somebody with high

accreditations already is able to add more meat to his

story. Right. We always we hope that airline guy, has his

stuff together because that's the kind of right. We wanna make sure we

get on that plane that we're getting off. Right. Right. You don't want getting on

with showing that he has a a bottle in his in his back ritchets

or something. You know? Right. This guy was very straight, and in fact, he

wouldn't come to me straight off. He sent a relative who also was

was a a very good person to talk to about it. So those kinds of

things make me take

notice. You know, I I I still try to keep digging on the history

and and always finding one thing or another. And

often some of the new the newer things that I find

are rejected in the same way for the 1st several years at

least as the beast of Bay Road was. For instance, there's another

creature. If you don't mind if I mentioned the

the, black cat, There are more than just

plain old kitty cats. Right. There's the

it's talked about in that latest book. I Know What I Saw.

There's a whole Chapter on it, that from a

journalist in small town Wisconsin, in this case, it's

Hillsborough, in the middle of the state, who

has collected well over 150, and he

intimates that it's a lot more than that. Very solid sightings

from very solid people about what appears to be

a black cougar, and cougars are not supposed to be black.

And this many cougars are certainly not intended to be in

this this one circled area of Wisconsin, but they are.

One thing I wanna mention about your that idea about that the black cat and

the cougar people saw, obviously, you know, you've put that together. You

made that movie with your son, Return to Wildcat Mountain. Right. Thank

you. Mhmm. And that goes into it. And I think now this is one

fascinating connection. We talk about how things have changed, how

cryptozoology and stuff like that can actually have, you

know, real beyond the fun of folklore and entertainment

And looking into legends and and sightings and stuff. You

know, Return to Wildcat Mountain actually has a political angle

Because there's a reason that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources would

deny the existence of any of these kind of cougars in that area of the

state. And so I think that's that's an amazing connection there that

if, you know, we take these sightings and reports and stuff like that that might

get dismissed out of hand, now we can connect them into something where

it's like, hey. This is an actual thing, and this might

actually affect how we look at the land. Right. Right. Exactly.

I I made repeated requests to our department of natural

resources about the black cat, And I couldn't get anybody to

even give me 1 comment to put in the book. So you can you can

just tell there's still a lot of opposition admitting this. And,

also, What's interesting to me is there are 2

kinds or 2 colors. 1 is the the black, very dark, and then the other

is the light buff codes that you think of when you think of cougars. And

I actually have seen one of those, eating a house cat. I

live off of a green belt right now where there's a lot of wildlife,

and I actually saw a buff colored

cougar, almost full grown, I think it was, eating

this house cat. And the cat was screaming, and it was there was nobody

around very close, but there were people that I could seeing various

from my from my vantage point, and, I couldn't go any

closer to it or I was afraid it would get me because it noticed it

noticed me there. It immediately picked up his prey

and gave him sort of a death snarl and

then went and hid under the bridge at a certain point.

I didn't get to take pictures of it, but the next day I got up

the nerve to go back with my husband. And it had left

classic cougar sport Right where it should

should be, and it's the exact practices of a a hunting cougar.

So I I I've come back close to it. So you know what you saw

yourself? I so I know what I saw right

now. Well, yeah. And you saw a cannibal cougar,

even worse, killing poor house cat. Like, that is

an act of intra species savagery. That's

what it felt like. It really, really did. I can tell I can tell you

another quick story. I have a physician that tends to some of

my problems that I have, and he lives kind of near the

The other one I mentioned in that whole Burlington

area, and he drove up to his house 1 night

and he saw some kind of light flashing from next to his

barn, and he went over to it, and

it was something that was standing, growling waist high

to him. It's Mike, mouth level with waist waist height

to his, little bigger probably, and it had

glowing red eyes. And

and he immediately had a bad suspicion about what it was.

He and this is a man who Dresses very nicely. He was wearing these nice

Italian shoes, and he took off his shoe and hit it on the head.

It kinda threw it at him, And he just kept backing up and

and got into his car. That same sort of thing happened to my

husband 7 or 8 years ago when we had lived in another place. He

encountered one of the buff ones at the edge of the yard and

had to, and it was night. He had no flashlights with it and he had

to walk backwards all the way up to our deck And then luckily it

ran off and symbolically interesting. I have I never would

have known because I was on the phone with headphones going on,

doing a podcast for somebody. I don't remember exactly what

show, but I never would have found them because what they do is

they Mike the pre and roll them around and Mike, you know, make sure

that they're gonna be around for breakfast the next morning.

So he would, you know, just just gone. This is

something that, I was wondering if your perspective had

changed since the initial story came out in 1991

is, you know, there are people who are very materialist about it

and that like the Lauren Coleman, like, okay, this is gonna be Obviously,

it's just, it's a it's a bipedal canine kind of thing. This is

just an animal that we haven't discovered yet, or it's a it's an extra

large Wolf or something like that, like the beast of Gevaudan

or you know, and talking about the wild cats that you saw and that

are that the people have seen in Hillsborough and Are being denied by the

DNR for reasons of probably not having, you know,

land protection and stuff like that, and corporate interest

versus And it costs them it costs them money too, you know,

to Mike personnel increase their personnel to go and study

these things. This is what we're talking about. That's a very material thing where a

cryptid then becomes, you know, a real thing Mike the coelacanth. There's something under you

know, that's discovered and you're like, oh, it's alive. And it's the thing that we

can study versus something like the Beast of Bray Road, which is

almost a, you know, it's a phantom. It just it

shows up, and it shows up to people who aren't looking for it. You know?

Like like you sitting out there, you talk about this in the book. You sitting

out there with the chicken and hanging out all night, And you even say

it seems like the people who are looking for it are the people least

likely to see it. And so has your perspective

kind of altered it all between the materialist and the

nonmaterialist perspective at least, since you first looked at

it 30 years ago. Well, That's a hard one to answer. I

kind of go back and forth and think there are

again, there are so many things in the universe. We don't even know if it's

called the universe. Right. And and so so many

things in it that, there's

there's room for The unexpected. You

know? There there sort of has to be the unexpected. If everything we

thought of was expected, I I think the world

would be a lot different. We Wendy to have the sense of

curiosity is not only what killed that little

a Kitty cat, in in my view. Right. Well, actually actually, the cougar killed the

cat, but that's okay. Yep. That's right. You're exactly right. Thank

you. I I just Wendy to, think there's

probably plenty of room for speculation on on either

side of the fence. Just so many things that correlate, and If they

were seeing these creatures and there were even there's even a small group of

people who all saw black cougars either standing or sitting,

one of the other, They're probably thinking more positively about

it than they want to admit to themselves or those that they've talked to. You

know, it just kind of Goes all over the map, and there there is a

whole chapter on that in the I know what I saw, but if people are

even more are more interested, it's also available On

Amazon Prime under that title. Now you have seen changes in

media, obviously, from the consolidation of the newspaper

industry, locals getting bought up by conglomerates and that that kind of

thing. The introduction of of the Internet, smartphones, so where

everybody has camera on them all the time. You know, the, the story of

the Beast of Bray Road and how it was brought and the beginning of it

as it's on sightings And a current affair, and it's on the local

news, and and you're doing follow-up stories. You know, you're in

there, you know, at the beginning and you're the one talking to peep you're the

you're the one that people are sharing their stories with and who are is going

out looking for stories in that first while it was just

being established and and becoming to what now is Mike a legend

that about Wisconsin that, you know, anybody in the paranormal field or even

even the normies know about now. Your work is

indistinguishable, I think, from the legend of the beast

itself. And so 30 years from when you first you know,

3 decades on, from when you first shared that story with

everybody and came out and said like, oh, no. No. No. We can do this

and it's gonna be fun. How has the beast

of Bray Road changed you? I think it's made

me just more more able to connect

with people in general and

to look at things from a variety of Back

to What's an example of that? I was with, a group of well,

I hate to say werewolf hunters, but that term coolest

group ever. Yes. And, yeah, just some some gals

that one of them who've been along several times had a bag with a few

apples in it and a sandwich and that kind of thing. And you're not

supposed to throw any paper things down in the park, but I think

maybe the occasional donut half or, you know, plum or something

like that that could be edible. Anyway, she threw this threw it

down in this gully in the Kettle Moraine State Park.

And we were on a trailer with them before. She decided to throw one

of those pieces of that she bought down into the gully just as

a thank you for letting us be here. And within less than a

minute, just a couple of seconds, I think, a shriveled up

dried wild apple came Slinging right up alongside

the the collie, moving not according to gravity,

but according to some other force. We could see where it would have had to

come from and there was nobody down there. Right. And, it landed

right at our feet and rolled in a little. It's just to make

sure it got far enough. So it was the the perfect aim, and whoever was

throwing it couldn't have seen what it what they were aiming at. So you have

something like that, and there's so many levels to Investigate in it.

It becomes everything right away from the shrunken apple to this

object that can tell us all kinds of stories Mike us think of

things. I've had that happen before in that park when the the walker I

was with, we stopped and we were shaking a little tree branch just a little

bit to make a slight ruffle, and something came firing out of the

brush nearby. And the guy the guy that it hit was over

6 feet tall and very usually, occupied

in that place in all his spare Mike, and that had never happened before. But

again, something hide it hidden, And then it just sits in

Linda Godfrey's freezer for however long.

Right. Figure out, you know, what to do with it. A lot of times people

might have something like that happen and wouldn't even

realize it, that it was anything under the usual Until

they started talking with people and finding out, hey. I had a crab

apple, you know, fly at me and hit my head too, and it'll kind

of percolate in people's Mike. And, like all the great things that you've

mentioned, there's so many tales of thought. That's a perfect kinda

answer because it it shows how In in your own

perspective, as as time has gone on, you've now had the

chance even through the, you know, the differing technologies and and

now you've been on podcasts and TV shows and

specials Mhmm. And, you know, all the way from, like, being interviewed by Inside

Edition coming in and those kind of things from when they had tabloid news

programs, and it's 6:30 on channel 18 every day, whatever.

Yep. Perfect. You know, as that time, you know, goes on and

stuff like that. The original thing doesn't change.

It's it's still it's still you threw down an apple

and a, And a desiccated crab apple comes

flying back at you with no possible way, and that can

be that can be seeing encrypted Or that can be the

the little experiences, but it's finding the stories

inside that experience. And it doesn't matter if you're using a computer or a

camera or creating a cartoon that, you know, can kit gets you

inside that experience and and gives people a different perspective on it. It all

goes back to that same thing and that sense of wonder that

you were talking about. I hope so. You know? I hope people can feel it

that way. Not that I'm saying, oh, everybody must believe this, but It's kinda

nice if you just ponder it for a few a minute or 2 minutes or

forever. It's nice to have something to think about that way even if

you don't find what people might construe is evident. So

and and that's another good word to chew on evidence. What is evidence? What isn't

evident? And it it sounds like it can be simple, but it isn't. There's a

lot. You can have A lot of good, campfire experiences can,

you know, ponder about these things. Well, Linda, I I wanna thank you. I

mean, of course, Allison thanks you for the time. Her power went out mysteriously,

in the middle of the interview, so I blame that 1, on the satanic

forces behind the beast of Bray Road trying to stop us from getting the truth

out to the people. But really, I'm gonna you might not have, you know, been

the the syndicated cartoonist you always dreamed of, but what

you did give us in the Beast of Bray Road, and the books and the

research, like, you know what I saw and American Monsters and and all of that

over the years is that it I think it gave us

as definitely as growing up in Wisconsin or, you know, the people from

Northern Illinois and and everything like that. It it

really did give us growing up a sense of wonder

that, these amazing things aren't

limited to the movie screen or the places

where people print things and produce movies and stuff like that, that it

can happen in our own backyard. And and I think that's something exceptional

in its own right. I do too. And and I I'm actually hoping that the

black cougar Discoveries will sort of be the same thing

once people start catching on. Interestingly enough, it also

checks out the mystic aspect Alyssa, and and I found there's a very

rich one. So just have to throw that in because to me, I I feel

like it's another thing that come into my life that I'm supposed to be

Letting people know about it and that there's a reason again. It

might give people another whole perspective that the Native Americans

Had quite a bit to share. And that that's important too, and we're definitely we'll

include all the links to that stuff, in the show notes Of this

episode for our 30th anniversary of, the beast of

Bray Road being unveiled or maybe say unleashed

upon the world.

We wanted to bring you a never before heard sighting of

the creature itself. I'm here, with one of my

friends and somebody who's worked on some Sunspot albums and

made some great music, a a really good recording engineer, my Wendy,

Eric Coddy. And he's here to share his own experience,

and what he saw. So, it was a fall

afternoon. Wendy was the year. Late September, I think it

was the last weekend in September, my wife, Becky, and I had

been married September 29th,

12 years prior. So we were just kind of on a wedding anniversary

weekend trip to Lake Geneva. And we spent,

you know, Friday Saturday in Lake Geneva just doing what you do in Lake

Geneva. And on Sunday, I think they have it every

year. I forget the name of the resort. Maybe the Abbey on sort of the

west or south end of the lake has Marina, and,

they had an old wooden boat show. So we thought, yeah, we'll go down there.

The weather was nice. It was, like, your perfect fall afternoon,

70, sunny. So we go down there. We look at a bunch of boats for

a couple of hours, and then we're gonna head back To, the Madison

area where we were living at the time, and we didn't know that

area of Wisconsin very well. A And I don't know that I even had

GPS at that point. So we were kinda just relying on

what we thought we remembered the last time we looked at a map, And

we kinda got lost a little. So I couldn't even say for sure,

you know, exactly where we were other than Somewhere

kinda northwest of lake the Mike, Lake Geneva.

Sure. On just, you know, your typical Wisconsin

county trunk road driving through farms and farm fields

and trees that are losing their leaves. And, you know, we've been in the

still a daytime. Right? Oh, yeah. It's Pure daylight.

I don't recall what time it was, but I would say

30, 4:30 in the afternoon.

And, we're both kinda wiped out from the weekend

and, you know, spending last few hours in the sun walking

around and Kinda anxious to get back home, just kinda zoning out,

listening to the radio in the car as I'm driving us back

to, Madison. And, Becky's doing the same

thing right beside me in the car. And, you know, I'm looking

back and forth left to right as we're driving, kinda checking out the scenery,

but trying to keep my eyes on the road. And all of a sudden, I

look, to the right, so across Becky where she's

sitting, and, I see something. It

kinda maybe looked like a deer, but not really.

And then I looked back, And Becky saw me

do, like, a double take, and she's like, did you see that too? And

I'm like, well, yeah. What the heck was that? She's like,

I don't know. I'm like, was it a deer? She's

like, no. Not I don't think so. I mean, both

having grown up in Wisconsin. We've seen deer on the roadside,

and, we're out in the fields, and we're pretty confident we know what

a deer light looks like versus something else. But it was across

a farm field that had been cut, you know, or harvested already, a corn

field, Right at the tree line, probably, I don't

know, 400, 300 yards away or something like that.

So we turned on the radio, and we talked about it for a little while.

And she's like, it looked like a kangaroo. Yeah,

maybe a little, but that doesn't seem right. It kinda had

almost deer ears or maybe kangaroo ears, and it was

definitely, like, on its rear haunches

or something like that. Like, it was mostly upright.

And, We're like, well, that

whatever. You know? We'll never know exactly what it is. We're not going back,

and let's keep going home. Yeah. Okay. So a lot of people

say that it's you know, it might be Mike a dog in hind legs or

something like that. Sure. Yeah. There's no way in my mind it was a

dog. That just doesn't add up because normally Wendy see a dog stand on

his hind legs, he'll be standing pretty straight up. They

don't Lean forward. Really, they're, you know, straight up

or they're back down on all fours. This thing was

not straight up. It was Kinda hunched over,

not in any sort of, like, dog or definitely not a domestic

dog or canine that I've ever seen. So So we never really spoke of it

ever again for at least a year, if not longer.

And all of a sudden, 1 night, we're watching watching some show. Becky's

always into watching, you know, Mike, ghost shows or supernatural,

that kind of stuff on cable. We're sitting there, and all of a sudden,

they're talking about the Beast of Brea Road. And we're like, oh,

wow. It's in Wisconsin. And, oh, it's down by Lake Geneva. And all of a

sudden, they show a picture of like, they were showing, like,

artist renditions of what they had seen and some illustrations.

And I to Becky, and we both kinda had, like, this

Scooby Doo Zoinks moment where we grabbed each other on the couch and jumped

straight up. We're like, that's what we saw. I'm like, are

you sure? She's like, yeah. I am sure. I'm like,

I'm sure too. I mean, without a doubt, that is what we saw,

what these people are claiming to have seen. Well, real quick. So just

so it's up on its haunches, so it it looks it's not Mike

on all fours. Definitely not. So it looks like it's up. That's why I think

that the kangaroo is an interesting description that I haven't heard before. That that

idea of, like, up. Sure. It's it's an animal. It's up. Was

that the color then? As far as, like, a kangaroo color? Yeah.

So you think I think the color as a kangaroo is tan or something like

that. Yeah. Right. No. So that's why we definitely knew it wasn't a kangaroo.

It was more and, you know, not, like, deer color

either because that would be a darker tan. It was more Mike

blackish silver and gray or something. You know? More

wolf Mike as far as, you know, coloring goes.

Yeah. So when we we saw the images on TV, that was

Pretty much confirmation of what we had seen. And a little background on myself, I'm,

like, as skeptical as they come. I'd never believe in any of this.

Right. I don't believe, you know, in most ghost stories. I don't

believe in most supernatural stuff. Although, there's been a few things

in my 48 years now that have Led me to

reconsider that, this being one of them. But, I mean, I'm very

skeptical, analytical. If somebody presents me with something like

that, the first thing I try to do is explain it away, you

know, in, you know, a much more logical explanation.

And, honestly, I have nothing. And

the fact that it's really saw, you saw a dark

creature up Mhmm. On its hind legs. Of Yep.

Now some people report the eyes, but this is during the

daytime. So Yeah. There was no glowing were there any glowing eyes or

anything? No. Really wouldn't be able to tell that. I

don't Sure. Recall any sort of eye features or anything like

that Other than I think a kangaroo

kinda has, you know, like an elongated snout. A deer kinda

has an elongated snout, but So do wolves, you know,

just that sort of facial feature, but with

longer flappier ears, you know, longer than what a wolf would

have. Okay. And, you know, I guess maybe a little more

like a deer would have, but they seem like they're bigger than that. Almost, You

know, that's kinda what lend us to believe it was a kangaroo too.

Sure. You know? Because it had longer kind of floppy ears. Now if you were

a couple hundred you're a couple 100 yards away, And so this is this in

a, like, a farm field? Mhmm. Is that? Okay. So Yeah. I

don't know acreage or anything, but it's pretty We see a lot of the

same thing all throughout Wisconsin. You know, there'll be a tree line here. There'll be

a tree line there, and then it's, you know, cornfield. And this was

actually probably a little smaller of a plot

than you might imagine. So but it had been cut. You

know? All the corn was cut, you know, just had, like, the foot tall, what

they leave behind. And then there was a bunch of brush on, you know, the

far side where this creature was emerging

from or just hanging out by or walking into.

And, where would you say would be the nearest farmhouse or

house to where humor. You know,

this is going by memory. Sure. Not

far. Like, Right there across the street

or maybe, you know, a couple 100 yards

away. I mean, it definitely wasn't like this was

far away from any farmhouse or anything is right there. You know,

there's some areas, especially, in when you you get that. I know

that road you're talking about because We have the Lake Geneva ghost

walk. That's another thing for people who looking to do Lake Geneva type

things. There's ghost tours you can take on Fridays and Saturday nights. So I've

driven back and forth there from Madison several times. I know exactly that kind

of some of the places are more remote and some of the places are more,

Next to farm. So when we set the scene, it's not Mike it's

outside of civilization. No. It's definitely farm and

rural, but, you know, Not

20 miles from anywhere. Looking at a map, if I had to

guess, like, what road we're on, because, again, we kinda got lost. We didn't really

know where we where or how to get back. I think we were trying to

get to Highway 14 maybe to take us back up into Madison.

We had left. Oh, it's the Fontana resort. Oh, no. It is the Abbey Resort

down there. There's, Willow Bend Road. My guess

is we went up 67 and got on what was Called Willow Bend

Road, and that took us over to 14. That would be the most

logical way for us to get back home. Sure. So that's probably

where it was. The next logical place, if we would have missed that turn,

would have been North Walworth Road. I

suppose that's a possibility too, or maybe we're still on Highway 67.

Those details, I don't know exactly, but it hasn't been in that

area. Right? So either way, next time you're on North Walworth Road,

Highway 67, or Willow Bend, keep your eyes peeled,

Yeah. Especially for the, dark creature, its hind legs.

Who's taking a look at you?