In 1991, author Linda S. Godfrey, working for a Walworth County newspaper called The Week, began to unravel an unusual story that would change her life. People around her hometown of Elkhorn were spotting what they described as a “werewolf,” that was soon to be known as the Beast of Bray Road. Godfrey interviewed witnesses and her newspaper article eventually became a book, The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf, and she became, in her words, “an accidental werewolf chronicler.”
Godfrey’s desk soon became a clearing house for reports of all sorts of strange creature sightings from around the world, which she began to catalog in books like Real Wolfmen: True Encounters in Modern America, American Monsters and Monsters Among Us.
In Godfrey’s latest book, I Know What I Saw: Modern Day Encounters with Monsters of New Urban Legend and Ancient Lore (Penguin/Random House), she explores sightings of cryptids (as these mystery entities are known) that are familiar—the legendary Bigfoot is discussed, for example, including Godfrey’s own encounter. But the pages are filled with many cryptids that will probably be new to readers, such as creepy encounters with the “Deer People” or the strange case of the “Hawaiian Flying Dogman.” Just when you think things can’t get any weirder, they usually do.
I Know What I Saw explores legends, myths, folklore and how real-life monster sightings blur all of this together. What people are actually seeing out there might be a matter of debate, but as in previous books, Godfrey gives her witnesses the benefit of the doubt while sharing their stories.
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Wisconsinites will be delighted to read reports of monster sightings close to home, including Muskego’s urban legend of Haunchyville (a secret village of angry dwarves, it is said), and a sighting of a Dire Wolf (an extinct species) in Saint Francis, among others. You’ll be able to hear about these in person from Godfrey at Boswell Book Co. on Wednesday, July 17, at 7 p.m. (full disclosure—I’ll be leading the discussion and Q and A at the event).
I Know What I Saw is a fascinating account of eyewitness reports of modern-day monster sightings and will take your mind to an eerie place.
