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Friday, June 18, 2021

La Crosse Man-Bat

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
Anomalien “Monster Hunt In Wisconsin: The Bat-Man Of Briggs Road”. Anomalien. October 22, 2018. https://anomalien.com/monster-hunt-in-wisconsin-the-bat-man-of-briggs-road/. Accessed May 31, 2021.
Benedict, Adam “The Wisconsin Man-Bat”. The Pine Barrens Institute. August 18, 2018. https://pinebarrensinstitute.com/cryptids/2018/8/18/cryptid-profile-the-wisconsin-man-bat. Accessed May 31, 2021.
Erickson, Randy "Random Eruptions: Man-Bat Tale Tops 2006 For Weirdness" La Crosse Tribune. January 3, 2007. https://lacrossetribune.com/community/couleecourier/opinion/random-eruptions-man-bat-tale-tops-2006-for-weirdness/article_3b07f852-2d04-5101-b593-36e2c67f8724.html. Accessed May 31, 2021.
Strickler, Lon “The LaCrosse, Wisconsin Man-Bat” Phantoms and Monsters. April 13, 2011. https://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2011/04/lacrosse-wisconsin-man-bat.html. Accessed May 31, 2021.
Swancer, Brent "“The Bizarre Man Bat of the Mississippi” Mysterious Universe. June 4, 2019. https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/06/the-bizarre-man-bat-of-the-mississippi/. Accessed May 31, 2021.
MonsterQuest “Mothman” Season Four, Episode Five. History 2010.

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