Werewolves! Real or not?

Our belief in werewolves has been around for a long time! Many historians have thought about where the origins of our beliefs in werewolves came from, and that was probably our early European ancestors. Another name for werewolves was Lycanthropes which is not an animal as such but the human ability to change into not only wolves but big cats and other animals of prey.

Of all of these transformations though, man turning into a wolf is the best known. This is largely due to the Old World traditions of wolves being feared by humans. There are many historical accounts of wolves having to prey on humans during hard winters, and although they cannot be verified, there are enough of them to have incited fear. Modern naturalists and wildlife experts would all agree that the wolf has gained an unfair reputation over the years.

Perhaps this fear became part of our genetic make-up, who knows? What we do know is that Lycanthropy is recognized as a serious mental illness and people diagnosed with it take (or took it) very seriously! Their delusions were frighteningly real. Many people who had believed they were werewolves made testimony under torture of murdering people and animals while in their transformed state.

There are plenty of centuries old cases you can look up if you want to dig up some old case files on werewolf sightings. They are interesting, but people were a lot more superstitious then and we really can't be sure what they were seeing. The more recent stories are far more interesting to me. Today's mores famous werewolf stories come from Wisconsin at a place known as Bray Rd.

The first public sighting of the werewolf happened on October 31, 1999 when an 18 year old girl by the name of Doristine Gipson was driving along Bray Road. As she came near the intersection of Hospital Road she felt something under her right front tire for a moment, like she hit something. She stopped the car momentarily and looked out the window to see a big dark hairy thing racing towards her. Horrified, she tried to drive away, but the beast jumped onto her trunk but it was too wet for the it to hang on and it fell off onto the road. Doristine returned to the site later that night with a little girl that she was taking out trick-or-treating and again saw a large form on the side of the road.
She talked about what had happened to her the next day and as word spread, more local people began to step forward with their own stories with the beast, dating back to 1989.

One night in the fall of 1989, Lorianne Endrizzi was coming around a curve on Bray Road and saw what she thought was a person hunched over on the side of the road. When she slowed down, she took a closer look at the figure on the passenger side of the car. She was no more than six feet away from it at the time. Although she only saw the beast for a short time, she stated that she clearly saw a beast with grayish, brown hair, fangs and pointed ears. “His face was … long and snouty, like a wolf with glowing yellow eyes".

Around the same time period, a dairy farmer named Scott Bray reported seeing a “strange looking dog” in his pasture near Bray Road. He said that the beast was larger and taller than a German Shepherd and had pointed ears, a hair tail and long gray and black hair. He added that it was built very heavy in the front, as if it had a strong chest. He followed the “dog” to a large pile of rocks but the creature had vanished. He did find that it had left behind huge footprints though, which disappeared into the grass of the pasture.

This whole story intrigues me and I would love to take a trip to Wisconsin to check this out for myself. Anyone ever been? Would love to hear if anyone has any info.

The information on the sightings for this post was taken from the book "The Beast of Bray Road, Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf" by Linda S. Godfrey. It's a very interesting read, and you can pick it up on Amazon.