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Have you seen the man wearing an
army fatigue jacket walking a rural
road near the Dells? After first
seeing him, did you see another man
similarly dressed or maybe the same
man further down that road?
Paranormal researcher Chad Lewis
related how people here had seen
that sight of a man walking along
the rural road and then another like
him further down that road. When
they got close to the man, he
vanished. Lewis would not say which
road, and the audience of those who
came to hear about mysterious
creatures in Wisconsin was left to
its own devices for finding the road
and seeing the man, who may be a
ghost.
Lewis, who introduced his talk by
saying that if "it's weird or
strange, I've traveled to find it,"
and he has gone to different parts
of the world looking for creatures,
ghosts, goblins and gnomes. However,
he said he probably could have
stayed home in Wisconsin to find
some of the strangest creatures
described by people.
One creature he refused to talk
about was Rhinelander's Hodag, an
entirely fake creature created to
bring tourists to Rhinelander.
Lewis definitely did not have to
leave Wisconsin to hear about
Bigfoot, although many books and
television shows purport to show the
creature in the Pacific Northwest.
Bigfoot or Bigfoot like creatures
have been seen all over the world,
Lewis said. He related the story of
a Rice Lake woman who smelled a
Bigfoot and saw its footprints. That
smelly Bigfoot may resemble the
Florida skunk ape, a creature
reportedly that smells like a skunk
and looks like an ape. Nobody has
seen or captured one of those
either.
In Cumberland, so many people have
seen a Bigfoot that statues of the
mythical creature have been put
outside bars. One woman there claims
she was plagued and cursed by a
Bigfoot. She first saw it standing
and staring into her daughter's room
in the middle of the night. The
daughter was having a sleep over.
Later she found a large footprint by
the window.
The woman also claimed that the
Bigfoot came and scratched the side
of her house. She believed the
Bigfoot had cursed her that she
moved into a hotel and later sold
her house.
Her son also saw the Bigfoot and
believed he was cursed. He had a
string of tragedies following that
including wrecking his car, losing
his job and accidentally shooting
someone.
Those three are not the only
Wisconsin residents who have seen a
Bigfoot. Lewis also tells stories of
the man who made a plaster cast of a
Bigfoot print, a man who saw one at
night and was "terrified by its
eyes," and a man who saw one while
hunting but did not shoot it fearing
it might be a person in a costume
playing a hoax.
Bigfoot is not the only creature
wandering Wisconsin. Lewis describes
werewolves here and a creature
called the Mexican goat sucker seen
near Eau Claire.
Pumas or mountain lions, according
to the Department of Natural
Resources, are not supposed to be in
Wisconsin, Lewis said. "That is
until the DNR treed one last year by
Spooner," and then the DNR said
maybe some mountain lions are in
Wisconsin, he said.
If Bigfoot, werewolves and mountain
lions don't scare you, Lewis also
warned about the Hell Hounds of
Maridean Island near Stevens Point.
One biker said he and friends drove
out to the landing by the island and
were chased by hounds. The hounds,
which were nearly transparent, kept
up with the cycle until the biker
kicked one and his foot went through
it. The bikers did not slow down
until they were back in Stevens
Point, 40 miles away.
You don't have to go to Ireland to
find gnomes, Lewis said. They
inhabit Wisconsin, too. They can be
found at Devil's Punch Bowl near
Menomonie, where balls of light also
appear.
If instead of gnomes you would
rather have an encounter with a
vampire, try Mineral Point. A police
officer there supposedly chased a
vampire through the Graceland
Cemetery in Mineral Point, which
caused quite a stir among the state
and national media when his report
became public.
UFOs also apparently stop or fly by
Wisconsin in the cities of
Belleville, Dundee and Elmwood,
which bill themselves as UFO
capitals. Lewis, however, told the
story of a woman in Bloomer, who
believed she had been abducted by
aliens in the middle of the night.
Her descriptions of the aliens,
brought out under hypnosis,
corresponds to 85 to 90 percent of
other reports. They are called
grays, have big eyes and
triangular-shaped heads. The woman
also said the UFO, which landed in
her back yard, left a burn mark.
Besides UFOs, Wisconsin has a dragon
buried under a tower, a serpent in
Red Cedar Lake, but reports of
sightings of the serpents stopped in
the 1920s and 1930s, a sea monster
in Lake Pepin similar to the Loch
Ness monster, phantom snowmobiles
near Green Bay and chickens in the
road on Chicken Alley. The chickens
disappear if the driver runs them
over.
Lewis said that although he collects
the stories and looks for evidence
of the strange creatures and
paranormal events, he has had little
personal paranormal experiences. He
does have lots of fun and a career
checking out the reports. He
concluded his remarks in his talk
sponsored by the Kilbourn Library by
saying that audience members should
get a map and find out just how
weird Wisconsin is.
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