by Cole Herrold
Flying cryptids are by far one of the most
bizarre and interesting categories of unknown creatures. They are creatures
that defy evolutionary logic and oft times seem to teeter on the verge of being
full-blown paranormal entities. The most common variation of this is the
thunderbirds, both the saurian and avian varieties, and they are often closely
followed by giant bats in commonality, but the most unique and ever-growingly
sighted variety is the flying humanoids. Flying humanoids is a lump term for
any figure that bears the slightest resemblance to a human being. Some, like
the Mothman or Owlman, are giant man-sized birds with human-like legs. Tech-savvy
flying humanoids which venture more into the field of Ufology are also included
in this lump group. Yet the most difficult to categorize is a category that
includes creatures like the Butler County Gargoyle or the Nasa Gargoyle; these
bat-winged monstrosities are just some of the slew of bizarre creatures
reported throughout the world, and their features differ from one to the other.
Yet with every encounter, each is surprisingly similar in some features, almost
always that being the fact that the creatures are bipedal and having leathery
bat-like wings. One of the hub stations for sightings of these creatures is the
Midwest, with an extreme focus on Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois.
Unsurprisingly one of the most frightening encounters with one of these
creatures would occur on a backroad in Wisconsin during 2006 and since has
gained some fame in recent years for being discussed rather erroneously on the MonsterQuest
Mothman episode.
The winged weirdie known as the La Crosse
Man-Bat, Beast of Briggs Road, Wisconsin Man-Bat, Holmen Man-Bat, and the
Briggs Road Man-Bat was first reported on Tuesday, September 26th,
2006, when a 53-year-old musician and Cherokee father Wohali or Awohali as it
sometimes appears on some sources was being driven by his 25-year-old son. The
pair were driving home on Briggs Road from their band practice around 9:15-9:30
pm. The pair noticed a strange, winged form near the road. The form soon seemed
to move upwards from the ground, and there, is a moment of absolute horror, the
two were plunged into an almost seamless recreation of an infamous scene in the
Mothman Prophecies film. The creature picked up speed and was coming
right at them. It
was in this flight that Wohali would get the best view of this avian anomaly.
"First thing I saw were the eyes and maybe the teeth", he would say
in an interview on MonsterQuest. The eyes of the creature he would
describe as being the size of road sign reflectors and were yellow whether this
is naturally yellow or a glowing yellow is not elaborated on. The creature’s
canine-like face was in a snarling expression with a wide mouth with rows of
sharp teeth. The creatures head was also topped with large, pointed bat-like
ears. The creature had a pair of leathery wings with a wingspan of about
10-14ft. The wingspan was so large that it covered half of the road. The wings
were connected to the body, and extremely interesting, the arms and hands of
this creature were fused to the wings. The hands-on the wings bore sharp claws.
The creature was about 6-7ft tall, and its body was sparsely covered in
gray/dark brown hair and had extremely pronounced ribs that jutted out. The
creature's man like legs ended in feet with claw-like toes. Wohali would say the following about the creature: "It (had) distended ribs, long sort of human legs with claws, huge
bat-like wings with 'arms' sort of attached, I remember the teeth and the
scream we heard was terrifying. I've been living in this valley all my life and
have seen some strange things, after all the Mississippi Upper Wildlife Refuge
is the largest in the country and right out my back door. It hides lots of
strange creatures. But I've NEVER seen anything like this. Rent the movie Bram
Stoker, Dracula, the Dracula creature looks like it or better yet like the one
in Van Helsing".The creature seemed
hungry and angry. The pair were more terrified about the bizarre beast than the
fact that more than likely, this creature and the two musicians would end up in
a mechanical head on cryptid head-on collision. Yet this would not be the case;
the creature, as it was windshield height slowed in midair and within mere
seconds of the collision, the creature proceeded to flex its wings in a way
that seemed unlike any other animal and shot straight up into the air and away
from the vehicle. The creature left a reminder, however, as it unfurled a
high-pitched scream. The pair continued to drive a short distance until a
feeling of nausea overtook the two, which ultimately ended in the son pulling
over and throwing up no less than seven times. Wohali as well got out of the
vehicle, and he too tossed his cookies on the side of the road.
A few days later, Wohali returned to the
area where the creature began to fly off the ground. While searching the area,
he found the body of a dead deer; the deer seemed to be slit down the middle,
and Wohali felt that this was, in fact, the dinner of the creature that seemed
so aggravated by their presence. Throughout this time, Wohali was still very
ill from his encounter, which continued for a full week, experiencing the same
nausea and almost sense of vertigo that occurred after his sighting. After the
illness passed, he felt compelled to tell and potentially warn others of this
bizarre creature. He reached out appropriately to one of the best researchers
of the strange in the state of Wisconsin that being the ever-incredible Fortean
researcher Linda Godfrey. Godfrey who reached international fame after her
breakthrough research on the Beast of Bray Road as well as other Dogman
cryptids. He proceeded to tell Godfrey the full account; however, his son who
was so shaken by the encounter that he would not talk about his encounter. Godfrey would later meet up with Wohali and a hunter friend of his at the location of the sighting to search for clues and godfrey would state the following: "Godfrey actually followed up on this report by visiting the scene of the
encounter and speaking with Wohali, and while she was visiting the area with
the witness and a hunter friend of his they made a rather macabre discovery
that may or may not be tied to it all. There, sprawled out in the brush just
off the road, was a deer carcass which was in quite a strange state. Godfrey
has said of the finding:There were no visible drag marks and a complete absence
of blood on the ground. The deer carcass lay on its right side with its back
facing the road, and the white area we saw was its exposed layer of winter fat,
the skin having been peeled back from the midsection toward the forelimbs,
which remained intact along with the head. No bullet wounds or bite marks were
visible. There was no odor, probably because temperatures had ranged near
freezing at night and only in the 50s daytime. The hunter with us estimated the
carcass to be no older than three days, and its weight at about 60 pounds. The
low weight estimate was due to the fact that the entire haunch section, lower
abdomen and rear limbs WERE GONE! The spine still protruded from the
midsection, which by the way still retained the prized ribs and tenderloin that
a hunter would certainly have taken, but the haunches appeared to have been
ripped off. The remains did not appear to have been cut with a knife, said Wohali's
Native American hunter friend. And the fact that the carcass was nearly
bloodless and that there was no blood on the road or in the vicinity would
indicate that the haunches were ripped off in another place where the carcass
immediately bled out, and then it was carried to this spot and deposited. There
were no APPARENTLY VISIBLE tooth or bite marks that would have been left by
something carrying it in its mouth. We were not in a position to conduct a
complete forensic examination of the animal. Oddly, an unused, unopened dark
garbage bag lay adjacent to the carcass, toward the road". Wohali would reflect that he felt the creature was something of the
supernatural, and Godfrey would mention in other interviews and articles that
"He believes the more he talks about it, the more power he gives the
creature."
Wohali's sketch of the creature
All of the supernatural aspects were then
exacerbated as just as suddenly, the father and son were besieged by a variety
of bizarre poltergeist activity in their home. Their doorknobs would shake and
rattle as if almost opened by an invisible hand, and there would be pounding on
the doors and the walls when no one was around. The family's dogs would stare
out the window and hide under the furniture shaking in fright, but when Wohali
would look out the window, nothing was there to cause this reaction in the
dogs. It is unclear whether these occurrences are still going on or if, like
classic poltergeist phenomena, they start and stop in a short duration. Godfrey
would later add to the supernatural lore connected to the flying humanoid
sightings by comparing this supernatural assault to those that witnesses of the
Mothman endured during the 60s. Godfrey also compares the alleged omen quality
to this phenomena in her book Monsters of Wisconsin by saying how many
believe Mothman was the herald of doom for the Silver Bridge Collapse, so to
was the La Crosse Man-Bat, a possible herald in regard to the drowning of a
male college student who died three days after the sighting in the Mississippi
River in La Crosse.
The tale of the La Crosse Man-Bat comes to
a close after this encounter, for no other direct connection to this creature
in the area are reported. Other websites and researchers have attempted to draw
connections to other bizarre flying humanoid type creatures to the La Crosse
Man-Bat, but the problem is the creatures they connect it to, most famously
being the Medford Lizard Man, which outside of both creatures having wings
there is no real connection as one is a reptile with the gargoyle style wing
arm combo seen in other flying humanoid cases, and the La Crosse Man-Bat is an
arm wing connected semi hairy bat-eared beast.
I've discussed various flying humanoids in
my articles on the Greene County Winged Humanoid, Butler County Gargoyle,
Butler County Faerie, and Freeport Owlman articles, and of course, in them,
I've broken down what the possibilities could be. I've always been a flesh and
blood guy, and with these creatures, they often teeter in and out of being
biologically plausible and being upright supernatural beings. This creature is
no exception to this rule, for the La Crosse Man Bat's appearance alone does
have earmarks of being a completely biological entity, but then when you look
at the complete story, you see earmarks of other paranormal phenomena that may
be simply a coincidence but needs to be included because if connected it
changes the entire makeup of what this entity is.
Viewing the La Crosse Man-Bat
biologically, it is more plausible than a lot of other flying humanoids. Its
form is very much like a giant bat which, while an unknown in our official
zoological books, is not out of the realm of possibilities. The big problem
with the giant bat hypothesis for this flying humanoid, however, is really
three big points the first and the one I constantly point out is the wings. While
these wings are more plausible than the other variations seen, it still has
both hands and wings. In the eyewitness sketch, the arms are connected to what
appears to be a fleshy, almost manta ray style wings. This is not how bats
wings are so clearly this creature unless the eyewitness sketch rendition just
wasn't as anatomically correct as it should be is not a bat-like creature. Interestingly
the wings bear a strong resemblance to the Fayette County Dragon in style but
other than that, it bears no other features to the La Crosse Man-Bat. The next
issue is that in the eyewitness sketch, there is an extremely significant and
pronounced tail. This feature rarely appears in other flying humanoid
encounters, and even though it does not take away from the biological veracity
of the creature, it does make the bat hypothesis more difficult as while bats
do have tails, they are diminutive and not in the length that the La Crosse
Man-Bat is supposed to be. The final problem is, of course, the alleged
supernatural quality or effect from encountering this creature as the illness
and poltergeist ensemble are very much rooted in Keelian lore with
Ultraterrestrials and more supernatural cases. While the illness can be
attributed to fear and that nausea feeling is something that does occur in
times of distress, one cannot dismiss the poltergeist outbreak if it is
connected to this creature.
With this case, we are left with more
questions than answers, but this is almost always the case with reports of
flying humanoids, for they defy even the typical rationale of the
Crytozoologically minded. While the 2006 sighting of the LaCrosse Man-Bat is
the only confirmed sighting of this kind of creature, at least out to the
public, this creature is not the only one of its ilk. In recent years, a major
flap of such accounts in the Lake Michigan area occurred throughout 2016 to
2020. These sightings, while varied from everything from gargoyles, giant bats,
and giant owls, did feature a few sightings that do sound as possible candidates
as the same flying freak or at least a similar one, for example, one particular
sighting in 2019 occurred where a witness claimed to see a giant toddler-sized
bat that ran like a gorilla. While these accounts are interesting, there is
very little evidence for the existence of flying humanoids in general. Outside
of the Kent Bat Beast, where bizarre footprints were found, there has never
been any truly definitive evidence for them outside of the fear and terror that
those who encounter these enigmatic entities feel for decades in some cases
verifying that they saw something and it scared them then, and it scares them
now.
Quick Facts:
Species/Potential Species: Mammal
Location: Briggs Road, Holmen, La Crosse, Wisconsin
Sighted: Tuesday, September 26th, 2006
Works Cited
American Monsters: A History of Monster Lore, Legends, and Sightings in America By Linda S. Godfrey
Encounters With Flying Humanoids: Mothman, Manbirds, Gargoyles, and Other Winged Beasts By Ken Gerhard
Humanoid Encounters- The Others Amongst Us: 2000-2009 By Albert S. Rosales
Hunting the American Werewolf By Linda Godfrey
Monsters of Wisconsin: Mysterious Creatures of the Badger State By Linda S. Godfrey
Mothman and other Flying Creatures of the Midwest By Shetan Noir
MonsterQuest “Mothman” Season Four, Episode Five. History 2010.
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