The Beast of Bray Road is a wolf-like creature reported around Elkhorn, in Walworth County, Wisconsin, named after the rural road where some of the best-known sightings happened. Witnesses describe a large, furry, dog-headed animal that kneels or walks on its hind legs. It became famous in 1991, when local reporter Linda Godfrey wrote about the sightings, and it is the best-known example of what is now called the “Dogman.”[1][2]
| Location | Bray Road and surrounding areas, near Elkhorn, Walworth County, Wisconsin |
|---|---|
| Reported since | Late 1980s (with one earlier account from 1936) |
| Typical description | 6–7 feet tall when upright, covered in fur, with a wolf-like head; seen on all fours and on two legs |
| Made famous by | Linda S. Godfrey, The Week (Walworth County), 1991 |
| Book | Linda S. Godfrey, The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf (2003) |
| Physical evidence | None |
How the story began
In the early 1990s, Linda Godfrey, a reporter for the local weekly newspaper The Week, was assigned to look into rumors about a strange animal seen near Elkhorn. Godfrey was skeptical at first, but after interviewing witnesses she became convinced that many of them were sincere. Her articles in 1991 made the “Beast of Bray Road” nationally known. She went on to write several books on the subject before her death in 2022.[1][2][5]
Key sightings
- 1936, Jefferson, Wisconsin. A night watchman named Mark Schackelman reported a hairy, upright creature digging on an Indian burial mound at a school. This account is often included in the Bray Road story, although it predates the other reports by decades.[1][2]
- Autumn 1989. Lori Endrizzi said that at about 1:30 a.m. she saw a creature like a wolf or large dog with human characteristics kneeling by the side of Bray Road, apparently holding roadkill.[2]
- 1990. A witness named Mike Etten described an animal sitting the way a raccoon sits.[2]
- Halloween 1991. Doris Gipson reported that she hit something with her car, and that a large animal then chased her and attacked the back of her car.[2]
- 1992 and later. Further reports followed, including more recent sightings of a large upright animal in nearby Spring Prairie (2018) and Lyons (2020).[1][2]
The 1936 account, examined
The Jefferson story is often presented as proof that the Beast is older than the 1990s publicity, so it is worth looking at how it reached print. Godfrey heard it from Joe Schackelman, who passed on what his father, Mark, had told him in 1958 about an encounter more than twenty years earlier. Mark Schackelman described a hairy, upright creature that uttered a three-syllable word that sounded like “gadarrah,” and a drawing of it was later made.[2]
Darren Naish points out that the drawing is not very dog-like at all. Its flat, heel-down (plantigrade) feet, strongly bent wrists and pad-like projection at the wrist are features of bears, not canids. Whatever Schackelman saw, or remembered seeing, the details passed down through his son fit a bear better than a werewolf, and the story reached Godfrey secondhand, more than half a century after the event.[2]
Explaining the Beast
No body, photograph or other physical evidence has ever been produced. The paleontologist Darren Naish, who has reviewed the Bray Road and Dogman reports, considers the early accounts highly suspicious, noting how many cluster around Halloween, and treats the creature as modern folklore rather than an undiscovered animal.[2] Possible explanations include:
- Bears. American black bears live in southern Wisconsin and can stand and even walk upright for short distances. A bear with mange, which leaves it thin and patchy, can look very strange.[1][2]
- Wolves, coyotes and dogs. Large dogs such as Great Pyrenees or Newfoundlands, wolves or coyotes seen briefly at night can easily be misjudged, especially if one rears up or sits on its haunches.[1]
- Raccoons and other animals seen at close range, at night, in headlights.[2]
- Hoaxes, tall tales and contagion. Once the story was in the newspaper, it encouraged people to interpret what they saw through the lens of a “werewolf.”[1][2]
Bears in Bray Road country
The bear explanation has become more plausible, not less, since the 1990s. Wisconsin’s black bear population has grown from about 9,000 in 1989 to more than 24,000 today, and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources reports that bears are spreading south into areas where they were uncommon before. Local news outlets have reported growing numbers of bear sightings in southern Wisconsin in recent years.[6]
Bears can and do walk upright. The most famous recent example was “Pedals,” a black bear in Oak Ridge, New Jersey, that was filmed repeatedly between 2014 and 2016 walking on its hind legs through suburban yards. Wildlife officials said it was missing part of one front leg and had an injured paw, probably after being hit by a car. Footage of Pedals looks remarkably like a hairy biped strolling down a street.[7]
Naish, building on a suggestion by the biologist Pat Spain, adds that bears with severe mange lose much of their fur. The result is a thin neck, a sharply outlined head and bare patches on the chest, arms and back, which together can create an eerily human silhouette. That does not explain every report, since many describe a narrow, wolf-like muzzle and dog-like legs, but it accounts for some of the most striking ones.[2]
Halloween, storytelling and the press
Naish also notes how many early reports involve young people, late nights and the weeks around Halloween, the classic setting for local legend-tripping and ghost stories. In his view, the early Bray Road wave looks less like a series of independent encounters with an animal and more like a local storytelling event that a newspaper then amplified. Godfrey, he argues, also gathered almost any report of an unusual hairy animal, from bigfoot-like figures to big dogs, which made the overall dossier larger but less coherent.[2]
None of this means witnesses lied. People driving rural roads at night genuinely see startling things in their headlights, from bears and coyotes to raccoons and deer. Once a name like “the Beast of Bray Road” exists, it gives those moments a shape and a story.
Godfrey herself kept an open mind to the end. She never claimed to know what the witnesses saw, and she remained interested in the people as much as the creature. Her persistence turned a handful of local reports into one of the best-documented modern legends in the Midwest, complete with dates, names and drawings that anyone can now examine critically.[3][5]
From Bray Road to “Dogman”
The Beast of Bray Road became the model for a wider modern legend of the “Dogman,” an upright, wolf-headed creature now reported across the Midwest and especially in Michigan. It has inspired films, including The Beast of Bray Road (2005), the documentary The Bray Road Beast (2018) and a 2025 horror comedy.[1] Naish describes it as a real and interesting part of modern American folklore, even if it is not a real animal.[2] See our entry on the Dogman, and for an older European “wolf” panic, the Beast of Gévaudan.
References
- “Beast of Bray Road,” Wikipedia, citing L. Godfrey (2003), A. M. Ames (GazetteXtra, 2010), K. Weiser-Alexander (Legends of America, 2020) and E. Nadolski (MyRacineCounty, 2020).
- Darren Naish, “The Tale of Dogman,” Tetrapod Zoology (30 July 2024).
- Linda S. Godfrey, The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf (Black Earth, WI: Prairie Oak Press, 2003).
- “Werewolves of Elkhorn,” Time Out Chicago.
- “‘Beast of Bray Road’ writer Linda S. Godfrey dies at 71,” WNA News (8 December 2022).
- “Black bear population status and distribution,” Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources; see also “Black bears moving farther south in Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Public Radio.
- “‘Pedals’ the bear reported killed during hunt in New Jersey,” ABC7 New York (14 October 2016).
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was rewritten from documented sources, replacing an earlier general description. The illustration above is an artistic impression.