RAY: Tales of a half-man, half-wolf transforming beneath a full moon to stalk the innocent have terrorized listeners for centuries. Throughout history, this creature has preyed on our fear and awe of the wild, representing the darkest aspects of human nature.
[Sample from The Curse of the Werewolf, 1961] It came from a land of brutality and evil, a land of terror and fear.
RAY: Wisconsin is not usually thought of in relation to werewolf folklore, but in the small town of Elkhorn, strange reports of a humanoid wolf spurred a global media sensation. Headlines proclaimed the story of the terror of the Wisconsin Wolfman. People reported encounters with what sounded like a werewolf near the two-mile stretch known as Bray Road. From a small-town tale that grew into an international media howl, the residents along Bray Road never expected their lives to transform into a strange phenomenon.
[Introduction music]
RAY: Werewolves are not just the creation of Universal monster films. These creatures have roots in ancient history, arguably going back to the Epic of Gilgamesh from 2100 BC. To transform into a werewolf is to surrender to the primal and feral, to relinquish the rules of humanity and return to the natural world.
STEPHEN D. SULLIVAN: It’s not just something that came out of England and Wales or Transylvania. There are werewolf stories in Greece, China, and Japan. There’s a lot of shapeshifting around the world, often into wolves or other animals that are the top predator in the area. There was a big werewolf flap in Europe in the 1600s or 1700s, when the Beast of Gévaudan and other stories were going on. People were obsessed with werewolves almost as much as witches.
RAY: Tucked away in Walworth County lies the quaint town of Elkhorn, between Madison and Milwaukee.
CHAD ROBINSON: Elkhorn is the county seat of Walworth County, with about 10,000 people. It has a classic American small-town feel. And then there’s Bray Road.
RAY: Let’s journey back almost a century to the original grounds of St. Coletta, a Catholic school for children with developmental disabilities. The property included a cemetery, with stretches of swamp and marshland to the east. One evening in 1936, groundskeeper Mark Shackleman noticed movement at the edge of the cemetery. A humanoid figure came into view. With its bare hands, the figure was digging into a grave.
CHAD ROBINSON: He suddenly saw a creature that fit the bill of a beast: bipedal, hairy, with a wolf or dog head moving around a particular gravestone. He freaked out, but decided to come back. The creature looked at him and growled, making a word. I think the word was Garrada.
RAY: The creature stalked off into the night. Mark was so shaken he didn’t speak of the experience for over 20 years. Decades passed before similar sightings were reported.
RAY: In 1991, Linda Godfrey was working as a cartoonist for the Elkhorn newspaper The Week. A few writers had been reporting sightings of what they called a werewolf, but nobody wanted to take the story.
STEVE GODFREY: Linda was a commercial artist, and very talented. She approached the paper about doing cartoons, and eventually an opportunity came up to write articles. Someone had been reporting sightings of what they called a werewolf. Everybody thought it was wacky, and none of the writers wanted the story.
RAY: Linda was not afraid to take it up. After asking around town, she learned the creature had been sighted near a place called Bray Road.
CHAD ROBINSON: If you weren’t aware of the history and it was a bright sunny day, you probably wouldn’t know anything about it. It’s a pleasant country drive with farmhouses, cultivated fields, groves, woods, and low marshlands. At night it can seem spooky.
RAY: Linda’s questioning led her to the Walworth County animal control office. Jon Fredrickson was no stranger to calls about misidentified wildlife, but he had received multiple reports in a short time about a mysterious bipedal canine-like creature near Bray Road.
STEVE GODFREY: Linda reached into a file drawer and pulled out a folder. The label said “Werewolf.” That was the point when she knew there was a story.
RAY: Fredrickson believed the creature might be a misidentified coyote, but he couldn’t ignore the growing number of reports. Linda Godfrey later wrote, “If something out of the ordinary was out there, people should know about it.”
RAY: Two witnesses, Lori Endrezzi and Doris Gipson, described eerily similar experiences. In 1989, Lori was driving Bray Road late in the evening when she encountered a humanoid wolf-like creature crouched by the roadside, gripping a dead animal in its clawed hands. It stared into her headlights instead of fleeing. Linda drew an image of the encounter that became synonymous with the legend.
RAY: On Halloween night in 1991, Doris Gipson was driving down Bray Road when she felt her car hit something. When she got out, she saw a creature running toward her. She could see its massive chest and assumed it was running on two legs. She returned to her car and sped away, later noticing scratch marks she believed were caused by the creature.
RAY: Linda’s reporting cast a national spotlight on Walworth County. Her article, “Tracking down the Beast of Bray Road,” gave the night-stalking monster the name we know today.
LINDA GODFREY: I was never comfortable with the term werewolf. Beast is very generic and can mean almost anything, but it stuck.
STEVE GODFREY: The paper sold more newspapers and had a waiting list for copies. Then the Associated Press picked it up, and the phone never quit ringing for days and weeks. Linda received calls from all over the country and world. She was completely calm about it, even doing interviews from a bubble bath.
RAY: Linda became the keeper of the Wisconsin werewolf.
JAY BACHOCHIN: She was queen of the beast, and she loved it.
RAY: Linda was interviewed by news outlets and television programs, wrote a book on the Beast of Bray Road, developed a film, and went on to write nearly 20 books covering the paranormal.
STEPHEN D. SULLIVAN: She seemed convinced this was a flesh-and-blood creature, an unknown canine species as elusive as Bigfoot. She would say it wasn’t only Wisconsin: the Michigan Dogman and ancient reports from Native American times might describe similar creatures. But without physical proof and good photographs, it can never be solved. She loved digging into the possibilities.
RAY: Linda’s work brought more reports from people who had been afraid of ridicule. She described one account of a large, mangy wolfish creature with broad shoulders, a wolf’s head, pointed ears, and piercing eyes, kneeling beside roadkill as it watched a passing car.
RAY: The Beast brought attention and tourism to Elkhorn. Local businesses sold werewolf cookies and T-shirts, and the Humane Society issued werewolf hunting licenses as a fundraiser.
CHAD ROBINSON: Some monster hunters came to Bray Road without permission. Most of the land is private property, and residents don’t want people tramping around their farms.
RAY: The interest may have died down since Linda’s article, but reports continue. Jay Bachochin described a recent account from a woman who saw a dark, enormous creature crouched in the road. Its eyes glowed green, and when it stood it was taller than her minivan and about three men wide. It trotted away with the head of a dog.
RAY: Lee Hampel, who manages a farm near Bray Road, has experienced a series of strange events. He began setting up trail cameras after hearing that a werewolf lived on his property.
LEE HAMPEL: Both of the people helping me had lived in the area. One told me his wife and mother-in-law saw it in 2010, another neighbor saw it, and a farmer who shared the land saw it on Bray Road.
RAY: Lee found large canine footprints and set out bait. He says deer carcasses were moved or disappeared while the cameras showed nothing. One night he photographed what he believed was a creature materializing from thin air.
LEE HAMPEL: The first picture showed trees and a roasted chicken. The next picture had a partial figure: a head and shoulders, semi-transparent. The third picture, all within one second, showed a solid figure. To me, I have a picture of it materializing.
RAY: Lee says he has seen the creature himself, crouched and drawing circles in the ground before standing, walking away, dropping to all fours, and disappearing into the woods.
LEE HAMPEL: I have very interesting pictures, close-ups and distant images of things that are not coyotes or deer. I have a five-toed, seven-pad canid track. No animal in the world I can find has that particular pad.
RAY: Linda Godfrey joined Lee on stakeouts. Her husband Steve believed Linda was leaning toward a portal explanation.
STEVE GODFREY: She thought the Beast of Bray Road and similar creatures might be some kind of portal. Something appears, disappears, and somehow people can’t get pictures of it. She couldn’t prove that either, but she loved exploring the possibilities.
LINDA GODFREY: I have a whole room of slavering artists that are werewolves. They draw rather well when their hands are normal. They’re in my basement, where it’s dark.
STEPHEN D. SULLIVAN: You don’t have to feed them people food. Dog food works.
RAY: Linda passed away in 2022, but her legacy lives on. Elkhorn organized its first Beast of Bray Road event, culminating in a Beast Feast.
CHAD ROBINSON: Linda kept the flame of the Beast alive. She was the person people turned to when they became interested. We miss her.
RAY: We may never have an answer to the strange occurrences reported by people who encountered something that stands in contrast to our understanding of the natural world. Like Linda, it is important to keep an open and inquisitive mind while using science and taking claims seriously.
STEPHEN D. SULLIVAN: We don’t know what it was. Linda would never claim to know definitively. There are strange things in this world, and even claims that seem wacky should be looked at seriously. If you think you know everything in the universe, you’ll never discover black holes or quantum physics. Keeping an open mind while using science is always useful.