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Lair of the Beasts: Monsters in Town

Creature Tales

By Nick Redfern July 17, 2010

The Domain of the Winged Monsters of Wisconsin.
© Nick Redfern

Occasionally, I’m asked: where do you get your information from when it comes to investigating sightings of weird creatures? Well, sometimes, it comes via people who just email me, or phone me, out of the blue. On other occasions it’s via old newspaper archives, colleagues, and ancient books and pamphlets.

But, sometimes, when you’re in a particular area that has a rich history of monstrous strangeness in its midst, the best thing to do is engage the locals in conversation. Indeed, this is an approach that I have found to be very profitable on many occasions. And, I’ll give you a perfect example.

Back in September 2009, I travelled to Wisconsin for a week in search of a large, glowing-eyed, winged beast that could easily have doubled for West Virginia’s famous Mothman, which was, of course, the subject of the 2002 movie The Mothman Prophecies.

In Wisconsin, people had been reporting sightings of a winged fiend at a place called Trempealeau Mountain, which is protected by the Perrot State Park, so named after Nicolas Perrot, an early French explorer. So, with such a beast potentially roaming the area, I had no choice but to seek it out.

The view, at the top of the peak, it must be said, was amazing: all around me was a vast expanse of mountains and hills, flowing rivers and near-impenetrable woods. In terms of the Mothman, certainly the most interesting thing was that near the very top of one of the mountainous peaks I scaled during that week were a considerable number of large trees, pretty much lacking in foliage, but that were dominated by large branches hanging precariously over the side of the mountain. I considered that these would be the perfect take-off points for any large, winged predator wanting to take to the high-skies and make use of the thermals to search the surrounding area for a bit of tasty prey.

On returning to my Winona, Wisconsin hotel after my first day of adventure, something very interesting happened: I was hardly ready for bed on my return, so I elected to hang out in a small restaurant over the road from my place of slumber, where I chatted genially with the bar-staff - about what on earth a Brit was doing in Winona on a Wednesday night - and downed a few very welcome drinks in the process.

Well, when I told them about what was afoot, one of the staff reeled off a very memorable story told to her some years earlier by her mother and which had involved the girl’s grandmother. It had been late one night in the 1960s when the then-forty-something woman had reportedly seen a “giant flying thing” lurking on a rooftop on the fringes of Winona. The beast, I was told, was perched precariously “with its wings out” and “glared” menacingly at the poor woman as she raced by, utterly scared out of her wits by the presence of the terrible monster, which, I was told, reminded the family in later years of the winged-thing made famous in the Jeepers Creepers movies of the 2000s.

And that was about it: no elaborate tale, just a few choice facts that the waitress remembered having been told by her mother seven or eight years earlier. Of course, I had to consider the fact that it seemed highly coincidental that I should just happen to be in the right place at the right time to hear such a tale. Was this just a case of a bit of leg-pulling on the part of the staff? I can never say for sure; however, that wasn’t the impression that developed in my mind, I have to say.

That was not all, however. Just over the road from the hotel was a McDonalds; where after being asked the near-ubiquitous question of: “What’s an Englishman doing way out here?” the staff crowded around me and, again, a story of an intriguing nature was delivered. In this particular case, it involved a truck-driver “who came in here a few years back” saying his vehicle had been buzzed by a “giant eagle” as he approached town. Again, I can never deny the possibility that a bit of leg-pulling was at work; but there were no half-hidden sniggers or similar.

And that’s an important thing to remember when dealing with a subject that is as unpredictable as cryptozoology: the answers to some of the creatures that I seek don’t always come via the method of diligently patrolling shadowy woods, forests, caves and mountains for days on end. Sometimes, notable data comes from bars and fast-food chains!

Nick Redfern’s new book is Monsters of Texas, co-written with Ken Gerhard.