Wisconsin Werewolf: The Terrifying Legend of the Beast of Bray Road

by Aarosh Subedi, age 14

The Beast of Bray Road, a wolf with human features, is a legend in Wisconsin that has lived on for a very long time and still remains a myth to this day. The creature was named after the street where it was first seen in 1936. Today, the creature is fading from memory, but its legend is still intact.

It all started around 1936 when a watchman at a school in Jefferson County was analyzing reports of animals on the fields at night. On duty, he caught a glimpse of a shadow and tried to get a better look at it. As he squinted, he saw a canine-like creature on four legs that was digging. Even though it may have been a dog or a wolf, he reported that it looked “far too big” to be either animal. After it dug, it unwrapped itself into a six-foot-tall wolf with macho features as it stood up. The watchman got his chance to report the creature to the authorities. After its first sighting on Bray Road, it would not be seen for the next 40 years.

Around the 1980’s and 1990’s, sightings started occurring very frequently in Wisconsin around Walworth County and a small town named Elkhorn. For instance, one sighting involved this same creature bashing into someone's house and maiming one of their horses. The person stated that footprints from this creature were over one foot long. Another sighting involved a very young girl stating that the creature chased her across a forest. At last, in 1999, an 18 year old driving around the same Bray Road where it was first seen in 1936 claimed that her “right tire hit something.” She got out of the car after hearing this, and all of a sudden, a wolf-human hybrid with the same muscular and masculine features appeared right in front of her eyes. This led to her running back into the car and speeding off with the cryptid slipping off the trunk of the car.

Although some people may think these sightings are either folktales or people hallucinating, the sightings were enough to prompt The Week to assign a journalist named Linda Godfrey to write a story about it. At first, when they gave Godfrey the topic, she was very skeptical. She asked the witnesses about the cryptid and, because of their “sincerity,” she became more invested in the topic. Eventually, in 2003, she wrote a book known as “The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf” to summarize what she had been learning from people’s reports in Jefferson and Walworth Counties.

The “Beast of Bray Road” was first claimed to have been seen in the early 1900’s and evolved into something that was reported more and more over time. As the 1990s came to an end, fewer sightings had been reported, but that doesn’t mean there is a zero percent chance you will see it again. So remember, always be on the lookout if you go anywhere the cryptid was once sighted.

[Sources: Milwaukee Magazine, PBS Wisconsin; Legends of America]