In the heart of Wisconsin lurks the Beast of Bray Road
Since the 1930s, Wisconsinites have reported seeing a mysterious, menacing figure lurking in the dark. Here’s what you need to know about The Beast of Bray Road.
In 1936, Mark Shackleman was the night watchman at the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children in Jefferson, Wisconsin. Arriving prior to midnight, Shackleman prepared himself to walk the grounds with his flashlight; it was part of his usual routine to ensure that the school’s buildings, orchards, and fields were secure. He was in his 30s, married with children, and worked the quiet job at rural St. Coletta to provide for his family. Shackleman never anticipated that he would become the first Wisconsinite of many to witness an unexplainable horror out there in the darkness.
As he approached a Native American burial mound on the school’s campus during his standard rounds, he saw a shadow hunched on all fours. Shackleman thought it might have been a wolf or a stray dog because of the way it was digging into the earth. When he got closer, though, the creature looked straight at him and stood up on its hind legs. It looked to be over six feet tall, with a canine face and thick fur across its slender figure—but this wasn’t the body of an animal. Shackleman said that whatever he stumbled across that night looked like a man.
The half-animal, half-human thing growled at the night watchman, and all around them, Shackleman smelled rotting meat. Before he could turn and run from the beast, it quickly jolted off into the trees. Despite the harrowing encounter, Shackleman showed up the next night for his shift at St. Coletta. He began to make his rounds, and as he approached the burial mound, he once again saw the figure hunched over, digging into the dirt. The same sequence of events played out between the two—the creature growled at Shackleman, but this time, he could see a set of fangs hanging down from its angry maw. He said the noise it emitted was an eerie mixture of human and animal sounds, but before he could do anything else, the creature fled. Shackleman never saw it again.
The incident would have likely remained just a story passed down from one generation of his family to the next if it weren’t for the fact that, almost 50 years later, several people claimed to have seen a similar horror on Bray Road in Elkhorn. Every so often, it seems like these occurrences trail off, only to reemerge several years or decades later. 1936. 1980s. 1990s. 2018. 2020. All different residents, each with their own unique experience, and yet they all report seeing the same thing.
Is it simply a figment of their imaginations? Or is there really a werewolf lurking out there in the night?
Elkhorn’s Beast of Bray Road
Mark Shackleman may have been the first to report seeing a werewolf in Wisconsin, but he was certainly not the last. Those who have had brushes with the beast after 1936 claim that some of their experiences involved more than simply staring at the creature before it turned and fled. Perhaps the most terrifying of these occurred in the 1980s, when a young woman accidentally hit the creature as it was crossing Bray Road one evening.
Apparently, when the woman struck the wolflike being with her car, she pulled over to the side of the road to see what she had hit. After climbing out of the vehicle, she saw the red eyes of the beast and immediately became frightened. She got back into her car and started to drive away, but then she heard something leap onto the trunk. She looked in her rearview mirror to see the creature trying to gain purchase on the metal that had become slick in the rain, but it eventually slipped off. After she got to her friend’s house, the two examined her car and saw long claw marks sunk into the metal.
Several other witnesses reported seeing a similar figure in Elkhorn around the same time. Some claimed to have come across it chasing after, or feeding on, deer, whereas others said they saw it stalking through the cornfields on all fours. These periodic reports continued into the 1990s, and eventually the Walworth County Week assigned reporter Linda Godfrey to investigate what was going on. Godfrey herself was skeptical about whether these people were telling the truth, and who can blame her? Werewolves are only supposed to exist in folklore and fairy tales, which Wisconsin is no stranger to. They’re not real creatures that can cause real harm to real people … or are they?
As Godfrey worked on her article, she compiled such an influx of stories that one article turned into a series, which eventually turned into a book, titled “The Beast of Bray Road: Trailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf.” She’s actually the one who gave the Wisconsin werewolf that iconic name, “The Beast of Bray Road,” and it was through her investigation that Godfrey realized these encounters were part of a wider experience of unexplained supernatural phenomenon. Some Wisconsinites thought it might be Bigfoot, rather than a werewolf, since the creature appeared to be anywhere between six and seven feet tall and was largely covered in fur. Everyone described it as having a wolf-like head, with either orange or red eyes, but a body more closely resembling that of a man.
These reports became less frequent after the 1990s, but new witnesses emerged in 2018 and 2020 to say that they had seen a large, hairy, upright beast running around Walworth County. The Beast of Bray Road, it seems, may adhere to an unpredictable hibernation schedule. Or perhaps the simplest explanation is that residents like to occasionally dredge up the past by sharing stories about something that never really happened. All those who shared their experiences with Godfrey, or who have told their tales online, like one person did in Wisconsin Frights’s comment section, believe that what they witnessed is real, though.
Pete Peterson’s comment states that he saw the Wisconsin werewolf in 1983 and that his story ended up in Godfrey’s book. Peterson said, “At first it was on all fours and as I drove up on it I could see his/her yellow eyes glowing in the headlights of my car. As I stopped it stood up on its hind legs. It was well over 6 feet tall, closer to 7 maybe 8 feet tall, to wear [sic] I had to bend down to look up to see its head. We had a staring contest for a good 10 or 15 minutes. Him looking at me and me looking at him. He never made any threatening justures [sic] towards me or I towards him. I did have a large metal rod I kept in the car for emergencys [sic], but I did not need it. After about 20 minutes of our stare off he figured out I was not going to hurt him and he started to walk across the road. On two legs I might add. He would keep glancing at me as he walked to the other side and disappeared into the swamp.”
Peterson believed that the animal didn’t mean anyone any harm, and was probably just something “not known to science as of yet.” Whether it’s science or something altogether more sinister, it’s hard to definitively say. The answer to the question of whether the Beast of Bray Road truly exists will largely be shaped by your own belief system. If you’re not inclined to think that werewolves or vampires or banshees exist, you’re probably going to assume that each of these people simply saw a wolf. Or that they perhaps didn’t see anything at all—that it was a figment of their individual imaginations, or that they were seeking attention from others and so decided to say they saw a creature that realistically shouldn’t exist.
If you believe in the supernatural, though, you might look at this pattern of reports and categorize it as proof that all of these stories pointing toward the existence of an otherworldly entity signifies that it’s really the truth, and not just a myth. Especially when you take into consideration that animal mutilations have periodically been reported near Elkhorn.
Animal remains and possible explanations
Coinciding with the reports of a werewolf have been separate instances where residents have found partially eaten animals close to Bray Road. Livestock and deer have been found with certain organs missing, and this detail seemingly matches up with eyewitness reports of a creature tearing into and feasting on deer. The most likely explanation for the mutilations, as well as the sightings, is that these individuals are misidentifying gray wolves, which retain a healthy population in Wisconsin. Tales about wolflike people can be attributed to Native American folklore, while other theories about Bigfoot are more commonly tied to a general belief in cryptids, AKA creatures whose existence is not supported by scientific evidence.
Ultimately, what you think might be out there and what is genuinely out there may very well be two separate things. There could be a werewolf intermittently terrifying the folks of Walworth County, or there could just be an unusually large gray wolf born every few decades that’s slightly more rabid than the others.
Regardless of what you choose to think, these residents—from Mark Shackleman in 1936 to the individual who reported encountering the beast in 2020—believe in the validity of what they saw. And I don’t know about you, but I personally plan to exercise an added degree of caution the next time I find myself next to the woods, or a corn field, late into the Wisconsin evening, either way.
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