The Enfield Case and Unnerving Encounters with Monstrous Creatures from the Prairie State

The American Midwest has an abundance of reports of strange cryptid creatures on record, but there is little doubt that some of the most captivating and thought-provoking can be found in the state of Illinois, otherwise known as the Prairie State. Indeed, from north to south and east to west, claims of encounters with beast-like monsters await, some of which go back decades and some that have only surfaced in more recent times.

One of the most intriguing of these monstrous entities terrorized the small town of Enfield for several weeks in the early 1970s before disappearing back into obscurity, not to be heard from again. Many of the witnesses were not only apparent upstanding citizens of their community, but they also gave almost identical descriptions of this strange cryptid being separately and without knowing of the other’s encounter.

The bizarre events began at around 9 pm on the evening of April 25th, 1973, when 10-year-old Greg Garrett watched stars in the night sky from his backyard, occasionally attempting to catch one of the many fireflies moving around him. It was as he was focused on one of these fireflies that his attention was captured by something altogether more monstrous. In fact, Greg would later say that he had seen a “monster” standing a short distance away from him, one that had slimy, grey skin, glowing red eyes, and was between four and five feet tall. Moreover, this beastly creature had three legs as well as two tiny arms with razor-sharp claws. After a moment or two, the creature stepped toward Greg, one of its legs even touching his foot and tearing his tennis shoe, causing the young boy to turn and run as fast as he could.

Within moments, he crashed through the front door of the house and blurted out what he had seen to his perplexed and shocked parents. Although they were more than aware of the bizarre nature of their son’s claims, he wasn’t one to indulge in wild stories, so they decided to make a report to the local police. A unit was sent to the house, and the officers searched the perimeter of the property. They didn’t, however, find anything untoward or any signs of an intruder, and so they left the Garretts a short time later.

Not long after, and initially not known to them, the Garretts’ neighbors – the McDaniels, or more to the point, their children – had their own encounter with what would appear to be the same creature. Henry McDaniel and his wife returned home to find their children insisting that a bizarre and disturbing creature had tried to enter the property – once through the door and another time through the window. Even more unsettling, as they were telling them, Henry noticed an ominous scratching sound coming from the front door. As he was still listening to his children, he made his way to the front door, thinking he would find a neighborhood dog on the other side of it. When he opened it, though, he found himself looking at the creature his children had just been describing to him. He stared at it for a moment before slamming the door shut and moving away from it.

He took a moment to collect his thoughts before reaching for a flashlight and grabbing his .22 pistol. He then rushed to the back door to check if the menacing creature had made its way there, and he quickly found that it had. He immediately raised the pistol, aimed at the monstrosity in front of him, and opened fire. However, despite hitting the creature square on, the bullets appeared to have no effect whatsoever. The creature then “hissed like a wildcat” before moving away from the door and taking cover in the shadows. Henry later stated that the figure moved with a “hopping” motion, with one particular jump covering around 75 feet.

Very much like Greg next door, Henry described the creature as having three legs and a “short body (with) two little short arms” and “two pink eyes (that were) as big as flashlights!” He further offered that it had “greyish colored” skin and was around four to five feet tall.

Following the creature disappearing, Henry went straight to the telephone and made a report to the police, telling them that he had just had an encounter with a “monster from outer space!” Not long after making his report, two Illinois State Troopers arrived at the home and performed an immediate search around the outside of the property. Much to everyone’s surprise, they discovered several strange footprints in the yard that were similar to a dog’s paw print, only they had six toe pads instead of four. Furthermore, just as Henry had described, the way the prints were positioned suggested the creature had three legs.

Even more remarkable, when officers searched the exterior of the property, they discovered strange scratch marks near the doors and windows, obvious attempts from the creature to gain entry. Despite these enthralling discoveries, though, there was little the troopers could do other than take a report and before getting on their way.

There were no further sightings that night or for the next several days. However, a little over a week later, the unnerving creature returned to the McDaniel house.

At around 3 am in the early hours of May 6th, Henry McDaniel was awoken by the sounds of the agitated barking of the neighbor’s dogs. He immediately sensed that something was wrong.  He jumped out of bed, scrambling for his gun as he did so before making his way to the front door. Cautiously, he opened it and was more than shocked and surprised to see the very same creature he had seen several nights earlier. He watched it quietly as it made its way along the rail tracks that were a short distance from the property. He contemplated taking a shot at it but recalled how ineffective the bullets had been previously and so remained still. After several moments, the creature disappeared into the distance.

Although there were no further sightings in the days that followed, news of the encounters was beginning to spread - at first around the town and then into neighboring towns and cities. In no time at all, many people – both paranormal investigators, enthusiasts, and general thrill seekers – descended on Enfield. Perhaps more of a surprise was that several news reporters and even scientists eager to catalog a new (to science) creature also arrived in the town. During this influx of people to Enfield, Henry was happy to speak to anyone who would listen about the encounter, eager for someone to offer an explanation as to what it was.

The town became so busy with new arrivals, including some who were looking to hunt the creature down, that the Sheriff of White County even threatened to arrest Henry if he didn’t stop granting interviews, which were (to him) inflaming the situation. Tensions in Enfield increased further when several hunters were arrested for opening fire on what they thought was the creature (they were charged with being a threat to public safety). Before long, local law enforcement became as concerned about the behavior of the general public as they were about any further sightings of the beastly creature.

There were several sightings of the creature reported by some of those who arrived from out of town, and perhaps one of the best of these was by the news director of WWKI Radio, Rick Rainbow, who claimed to have witnessed the curious entity close to the McDaniels’ home near an abandoned property. He described the monster-like figure as being “ape-like” and grey, standing around five feet tall. Initial reports even suggested that Rainbow had captured the sound of the creature on tape, and while this recording was never made available to the general public, several reporters and researchers confirmed that they had heard the recording. The sounds were described as being akin to screams or shrieks. Over the next several days, many people around Enfield reported hearing almost identical sounds.

Then, just like that, the sounds and sightings suddenly came to a stop. Whatever the creature might have been and why it suddenly started terrorizing the population of Enfield remained a complete mystery. The figure, though, at least officially, was never seen or heard from again.

Five years later, in 1978, several researchers returned to Enfield to reexamine the sightings of the beastly creature in the early summer of 1973. What they found interesting during the course of their investigation was that despite the many recorded sightings at the time, they could only find three people who recalled seeing the Enfield Monster themselves. Stranger still, each of the three people who said they had seen the creature offered that their accounts had been blown out of proportion and sensationalized by the media. The investigators began to question whether many of the alleged reports were more hearsay and overblown gossip from around the community than solid sightings.

With this in mind, the investigators also began to question why there were so few photographs of the footprints discovered by police, as well as of the scratches on the exterior of the McDaniels’ property. They had similar considerations about Gerg’s tennis show, which he claimed the creature had torn at as it stepped toward him.

Could the events that engulfed Enfield during the early summer of 1973 have begun honestly enough but then descended into mis-sightings and then outright fabrications? Could the reason for this have been nothing more than widespread public hysteria? Or might some people – perhaps those with local businesses, for example – have encouraged the reports in order to gain financially from the increased number of people descending on the area? While such suggestions are certainly possible, they are, we have to say, rather unlikely.

We might recall that both the Garrett and McDaniel families described the exact same creature to police officers in separate reports (and both were considered reliable and credible witnesses). Furthermore, one of the best sightings (in that it resulted in a tape recording of the sounds of the creature, albeit one not made public) was that of Rick Rainbow, who also claimed to have seen the creature near the McDaniel house. Was there something about this location that attracted the creature? Was it nothing more than the fact that the rail track ran close to their home, which perhaps provided a convenient route for the strange beast? Perhaps the biggest question mark hovering over the accusation that the Enfield Monster was, at least for the most part, nothing but a hoax is the fact that the sightings stopped so suddenly and have not occurred since. We might suspect that if they were designed to attract tourism they would have continued, at least for a time.

One of the investigators to arrive in Enfield during the sightings was Loren Coleman, who wrote of his findings in an article titled Swamp Slobs Invade Illinois in the July 1974 edition of Fate Magazine. In the article, Coleman offered that whatever the creatures might have been, they were “so far beyond our understanding that it’s no wonder stories about them excite incredulity!” He then went on to state that there were multiple sightings of these “abominable swamp slobs” through the state of Illinois and that there was a real possibility that “something awfully strange is going on in the backwaters of America!”

In the same article, Coleman relayed several of these similar sightings around the Prairie State. At a little after midnight on the evening of June 25th, 1973, for example, near the Muddy River in the Murphysboro region of the state, Randy Needham and Judy Johnson were parked on a boat ramp near the water when they heard an unsettling shriek pierce the previously quiet night – a shriek that they later stated was “about three times as loud as a bobcat, only deeper!” The next thing the pair realized, some kind of creature was heading in their direction out of the darkness.

They later described the creature as being around seven feet tall and covered in white hair. When the beast was no more than 20 feet away from them, they finally fired up the car’s engine and left the area as fast as they could. They made an immediate report at the local police station. Two police officers accompanied the pair back to the location of the sighting. When they investigated the area, they discovered several large footprints in the mud that were “erratic,” with no two being “the same distance apart!” This is an interesting detail. While the witnesses didn’t offer that the creature had three legs like the creature in Enfield, might the bizarre appearance of the footprints have suggested so? It is certainly worth keeping in mind.

One of the officers in attendance at the scene, Meryl Lindsey, left to retrieve a camera so that the footprints could be photographed. The other – Jimmie Nash – along with Randy and Judy, began following the footprints to see where they might lead. As they did so, “the most incredible shriek” cut through the night, causing all three of them to stop in their tracks. All three agreed that the creature – judging from the shriek they had just heard – was nearby, possibly as close as 100 yards away. With this in mind, they quickly made their way back to the police car. It is also worth noting that several hours later, with a stronger police presence in the area, several officers heard a strange splashing sound in the same area. Although they were unable to locate exactly where the sound was coming from and what was responsible for it, it is perhaps likely that this was further evidence of this strange creature’s presence.

The following evening, at around 10 pm, four-year-old Christian Baril claimed to his parents that he had seen a “big white ghost in the yard” outside their home. Thinking their young son had just been spooked by something that could easily be explained, his parents dismissed his claims. However, only half an hour later, their next-door neighbors – Randy Creath and Cheryl Ray – reported seeing an almost identical creature. The pair were sitting on their back porch when they noticed something moving in the trees around their yard, with Cheryl even offering that she could distinctly see a pair of “glowing pink eyes” looking back at her. Moreover, this glow was not a reflection of light but rather a result of the eyes somehow glowing from their own power. The pair looked helplessly at the creature before it retreated into the trees and disappeared.

Several police officers attended the scene. Not only did they find several footprints in the ground, but they also found depressed vegetation, seemingly made by the creature. After a moment or two, the officers decided to follow the trail and see where it led. By pure chance, Officer Nash was once again at the scene of this most recent sighting, and it was he, along with Officer Ronald Manwarin, who found the makeshift pathway. Before venturing down it, however, they placed a call to Officer Jerry Nellis to see if his police dog could “track the creature!”

To begin with, the German Shepherd did indeed begin following the track and appeared to be leading the officers to the creature. As they went on, however, Nash noticed what appeared to be some kind of slime on the pathway. Stranger still, he noticed that the police dog appeared to hesitate before passing by these patches of slime. Nellis eventually picked a piece up to examine it closer, noting that when he rubbed it between his fingers, it “left a black coloring” behind. They eventually arrived at a heavily wooded area that essentially blocked their path. While the other two officers searched this area, Nellis returned the police dog to the police car.

After the search revealed nothing of consequence, they decided to retrieve the police dog and venture to the area near the small pond. This time, the dog led them to an abandoned barn. After a moment or two, the officers decided to send the dog inside to investigate. Initially, the dog entered the barn exactly as it was trained to do. However, only moments later, it “immediately ran out” and then refused to reenter the building, something that was highly strange, to say the least. As perplexed as they were, the officers decided to investigate the barn themselves. They didn’t, however, find anything of consequence.

Coleman documented several other sightings in the same article in Fate Magazine. On the evening of July 4th, for example, during the Independence Day celebrations, several carnival workers reported seeing a bizarre, hairy creature watching their Shetland ponies from a short distance away., In the same area, several nights later, a local woman claimed to have heard a sudden “piercing scream” that seemed to come from one of her outbuildings.

Despite the sightings seemingly increasing, when the police were asked to comment on them, they admitted that they had little to go on. Police Chief Toby Berber stated that they “didn’t know what the creature is, but we do believe what these people saw was real!”

Whatever the truth, the sightings seemingly continued several months later. According to Coleman, on the evening of October 16th, in the small town of St. Joseph, four teenagers were driving around the town when they spotted what looked like a campfire near an upcoming bridge. Intrigued, they brought the car to a stop and went to take a look. As they began from the car, one of them struck a match to see better in front of them. When they did, though, they were confronted with the sight of a “gorilla-like” creature only a short distance in front of them. All four of the teenagers immediately turned and ran back to their vehicle and left the area. One of them – Bill Duncan – later told the Champaign-Urbana Courier that he thought he was going “nuts” when first seeing the monstrous figure, and although he wasn’t sure what it was, he was certain it was something out of the ordinary. Incidentally, the light that first got the witnesses’ attention remains unexplained.

It is also worth our time exploring several other sightings from the state of Illinois that unfolded around the same time as the Enfield incident. In mid-May 1972, in the town of Pekin, a teenage boy, Randy Emmert, along with several friends, were on Cohomo Street when they witnessed a “large, white-haired creature” a short distance away. Referred to as the Cole Hollow Road Monster (sometimes as the Cohomo Monster), this beast-like creature made unsettling shrieking sounds at the youngsters before it rushed off. The witnesses later told police that they believed the creature had taken cover in an abandoned house further down the street.

Initially, the police took a report from the boys and expected to hear nothing more about it. However, by May 25th, only several days later, they had over 200 reports from multiple members of the public of an almost identical creature seen in the woodlands, near various riverbanks, and even in people’s backyards. By July, sightings of this strange creature were happening so often that members of the public had organized themselves into a 100-strong search party who ventured into the woodland to hunt down this menacing entity. Their searches, however, proved fruitless, and the sightings continued.

On the evening of July 25th, for example, a resident claimed to have seen a large hairy man swimming in the Illinois River. Only three days later, on the afternoon of July 28th, a woman picking berries saw a similar creature close to an abandoned mine. She stared at it for only a few seconds before running away from the area, not even stopping to collect her things. On the same day, several hours after that, “two reliable witnesses” made a detailed report to the police of what would appear to be the same creature. They offered that the creature was covered in white hair, had definite human-like hands, and stood between eight and nine feet tall. Of particular interest, they offered that this creature had a “putrid smell” about it, something which is often reported with close-contact encounters with Bigfoot. When the location where the two witnesses claimed the encounter unfolded was investigated, several three-toes footprints were discovered.

Whatever the creature that was allegedly seen all around Pekin during the summer of 1972 might have been, the tale took a strange turn just short of two decades later, in 1991, when Randy Emmert suddenly contacted the Peoria Journal-Star out of the blue. He claimed that he had “made the whole thing up” and that the Cole Hollow Road Monster didn’t exist. Whatever his motivations might have been for such an apparent admission, many people dismissed it as some kind of hoax or perhaps even an attempt to gain financially from such a claim. Whatever the truth of the matter might be, the sightings remain of interest to researchers and enthusiasts of cryptid creatures today.  

An incident that occurred in another Illinois town – Harrisburg – is also of interest to us here. During the 1960s, several reports were made of a “strange beast” that would be seen by motorists, often along the main road leading in or out of Harrisburg that has trees and woodland on either side of it. Compounding these reports and making them all the more concerning were the regular discoveries of strange tracks near the road in a region known as Tuttle Bottoms, as well as rumors that the bizarre activity was somehow connected to devil worshippers. One witness in more recent times even claimed in an online post that they had witnessed what looked like a “prehistoric pterodactyl” that swooped down out of nowhere toward the roof of his car. Moreover, this menacing creature followed his vehicle for several miles.

It is widely agreed that the first reported sighting of the Tuttle Bottoms Monster (as it became known) appeared in the August 6th, 1963 edition of the Harrisburg Daily Register, reporting on events that unfolded the previous evening, August 5th. According to the report, at around 11 pm, Saline County Sheriff James L. Thompson happened upon a young man at Tuttle Bottoms in a state of distress armed with a rifle. Although he didn’t appear to present a danger to Thompson or himself, he stated to Thompson that there was “a monster loose” nearby. His description of this monster was that it was around four feet high and around eight feet long, with “a nose like an anteater!”

Thompson eventually managed to calm the youth down and he eventually returned the rifle to the trunk of his car before leaving. A short time later, however, several hours after midnight, he found several other teenagers, all of whom were also armed and who claimed they were hunting the “monster” that had been witnessed earlier. The sheriff ordered the youths to return home, which they duly did.

Although there were no further reported sightings that evening, several residents were more than happy to offer their opinions on what the creature might be for the following day's newspapers. Virgil Smith, for example, stated he believed that the creature was not of the supernatural world but was, in fact, a flesh-and-blood animal-like being that had been “released by the federal government” following some kind of bizarre experiment. He claimed to have seen the creature, offering that it stood on two legs and was a “hairy primate!” He further offered that he had a source who once worked in the United States Department of Agriculture and that this source had told him the department had discreetly investigated reports of the monster.

Whatever the creature might have been remains very much open to debate. However, the sightings continued right into our contemporary era. One Harrisburg Police Chief, Gary Crabtree, stated that when he retired in 1999, there were at least 50 reports of “some kind of beast” lurking along the road out of Harrisburg, specifically, the Tuttle Bottom region.

It is also interesting to note that sightings of this strange creature likely go back much further than the sixties, with many reports from hunters of large, white bears being made as far back as the nineteenth century likely being of the same creature (or more specifically, the same kind of creature).

Arguably, one of the strangest monstrous creatures of Illinois is the apparent Thunderbird – a huge prehistoric-like bird that has more reports of sightings of it than many of us might think, leading some to suggest this aerial creature has somehow survived, largely undetected and certainly unclassified from the prehistoric age.

Without a doubt, the most unsettling alleged encounters with the Illinois Thunderbird unfolded during the evening of July 25th, 1977, in the town of Lawndale. On the night in question – a particularly hot evening - the Lowe family had enjoyed a mixture of barbecued beef and grilled vegetables outside in their backyard. It was a little after 8 pm when Ruth Lowe and her husband began cleaning up the dishes from the meal, leaving the children to play outside and enjoy the warm summer night. However, as Ruth was in the kitchen tackling the washing up, she heard the sudden screams of her 10-year-old son, Marlon. She immediately left the dishes and ran back to the yard.

Once there, she was shocked and perplexed in equal measure by the sight of two huge birds flying low over the yard. Moreover, as opposed to just passing over, they were “flying in a tight wingtip to wingtip formation,” chasing Marlon, even pecking at his head and shoulders. Ruth snapped herself back to her senses and immediately rushed over to her son. At the same time, however, one of the birds reached down once more with their claws, this time lifting the 10-year-old completely off the ground. Ruth instinctively reached for her son’s legs and pulled him downward, the huge bird eventually relinquishing its grip and allowing him to drop into his mother’s arms. Both of the huge birds then flew off, disappearing into the night sky. By the time Ruth had collected herself, she realized the bird had carried Marlon over 30 feet before letting go.

Although she was mocked by them, Ruth immediately drove to the local police precinct to make a report. She stated that the bird had a “white ring around its half-foot long neck,” while the rest of the body was black. The bill was hooked, and the claws were arranged with three at the front and one at the back. She further estimated that the bird would have stood four feet tall and that each wing, when outstretched, was at least four feet across.

What the creature might have been remains a mystery. However, it is worth noting that in the same year, in July, Chief AJ Huffer, a former combat photographer, was tasked with hunting down and photographing the alleged Illinois Thunderbird. Much to his surprise, he not only spotted this huge creature but managed to record several seconds of video of it. The footage is authentic and definitely shows a large bird of some kind. However, skeptics have suggested that he likely filmed a turkey vulture. One person who viewed the footage on an online platform offered that they lived in Central Illinois at the time, and recalled the rampant rumors and genuine panic among the public due to the claims of the Thunderbird.    

Yet another apparent monstrous creature of Illinois can be found in the woodlands of Mount Vernon (which is only 40 miles from Enfield, incidentally), with reports dating back to the early 1940s. According to the March 1946 edition of Hoosier Folklore, in the summer of 1941, a local preacher was hunting for squirrels in the woodland along Gum Creek in a particularly remote region around the mountain. As he made his way through the forest, “a large animal that looked something like a baboon jumped out of a tree” and startled him. After a moment, however, he came to his senses and “struck at the beast with his gun barrel,” which caused it to walk off in an upright position. After it lingered for several moments, he fired his gun into the air, which caused it to flee into the trees.

Sightings and reports of the beast continued over the following months, with many hunters claiming to have found strange tracks in the woodland, while multiple residents of the town claimed to have heard “terrorizing screams” coming from the forests at night. By the spring of 1942, after the brutal slaughter of one of the town’s farmer’s dogs, residents were organizing hunting groups to track down the beast.

Interestingly or not, it was around this time that reports began reaching the residents of apparent sightings of the strange beast from other locations around the state, some as far as 50 miles away. One particularly unsettling account occurred near the Big Muddy River in Jackson County when a man driving his car saw the mysterious being leap onto the road out of nowhere a short distance ahead of him. As it crossed the road, it did so by jumping, covering between 20 and 40 feet per jump.  

If we move to the north of the state, near the town of Galena, we will find multiple encounters with the so-called Wolfman of Chestnut Mountain, the first known encounter with which was as recently as 2010. On the night in question, under a full moon, no less, a psychologist from Chicago – Rachel Gendreau - who was vacationing in the region with her fiancé, was driving along a quiet road close to Chestnut Mountain. Seemingly, out of nowhere, a short distance ahead of them, they noticed a large figure moving across the road. Thinking it might be a bear, they slowed the car slightly but continued to approach. As they got closer, both realized they were looking at something completely out of the ordinary and certainly not a bear.

They later described this curious creature as standing upright, around five feet in height, and covered from head-to-toe in “shaggy, dark fur!” The wolf-like figure remained in sight for several moments before disappearing into the woods near the roadside, moving at a speed that was beyond anything either of the witnesses had seen before. Following this, more and more sightings of the Wolfman were reported, with some people even claiming that it had attacked their vehicles, leaving deep claw marks on the exterior.

There are also reports of almost identical creatures in other parts of the Prairie State. Perhaps one of the most intriguing of these is the Dogman of Hawk Hollow Preserve. One particularly thought-provoking encounter occurred in Bartlett just outside of Streamwood in December 2019. The witness was a passenger while his wife drove from his parents’ house. By the time it was 8:30 pm, they were close to the Hawk Hollow woodland, where he was more than aware of the legends of the Dogman, and as such, he was “looking around for anything weird!”

As he was doing so, his wife suddenly asked, “Did you see that?” He responded by asking if she had seen something strange, to which she replied, “I think so. It looked like a shadow that ran across the road!” Attempting to remain calm, the witness then asked his wife if the figure looked like a dog, to which she replied that it had, elaborating that it appeared transparent and dog-like, but she was now more interested in how he knew such a thing. It was at this point that the witness told his wife of the legends of the area.

Although the exact date is not known, a recent report from a resident of Woodford County is particularly interesting. The witness claims that they were woken at around 4 am one night by the sound of their dog wanting to go outside. The anonymous man got out of bed and made his way to the back door in order to let the dog out. Before opening it, though, and for reasons he can’t explain other than he had a strange feeling, he turned on the lights over the backyard and peeked outside. He was more than shocked to see a “wolf-dogman-like thing” standing on two legs just under 100 feet away from the property. Even more chilling, this menacing-looking creature was staring directly at the witness.  

In his report, he described the creature as having a “proportionally huge head with pointed ears” and amber-colored eyes. He elaborated that its head looked most similar to a German Shepherd or a wolf and was so large that it gave the appearance of the creature leaning forward. Its shoulders were broad and strong, while its torso appeared to shrink somewhat toward the waist. He continued that the legs appeared distinctly dog-like and gave him the impression that the creature could leap or jump, as well as “run very well!” After several moments, the creature turned away from the witness and calmly walked into the cornfield next to the yard. It eventually disappeared into the distance, but before it did, its head remained visible above the wheat, which the witness claimed was at least eight feet high.

Another encounter with this apparent wolfman occurred in Springfield several decades earlier, in 1991. On the night in question, the witness drove to Springfield bus station to meet and pick up his friend, whose bus was arriving at 1:30 am. Despite the late hour, his friend said that he was “starving” and had not had a chance to eat before traveling, so the pair agreed to call in at a Steak and Shake restaurant a short distance away. The pair ended up staying there for several hours, with the time approaching 5 am by the time they left. By this time, the witness’s friend asked him if he would drive past an ex-girlfriend’s house in Assumption, as he wanted to visit her before she left for work. As the witness had no work the following day, he agreed to do so. They drove along the semi-rural road, each completely unaware that their night was about to take a drastic turn.

As the vehicle approached a small bridge, a huge “canine-type thing” rushed out of the woods on the right-hand side of the road. The figure then leaped into the air and “cleared the highway” before landing on the other side of the road. It then ran off into the woods and disappeared. Over the years, people have offered that the pair likely just saw a dog. However, they are adamant that the creature they saw was much bigger than a dog. Moreover, the height and distance it covered with one leap was unlike any action a dog could undertake.

Even more interesting, the witness has carried out considerable research into the sighting during the years since. With the rollout of the Internet, he eventually discovered two other encounters that occurred around the same time and in locations extremely close to where his sightings unfolded. Each of those other encounters occurred close to “where Highway 48 crosses the south fork of the Sangamon River!” To the east of this is the Lincoln Trail Road, which is close to the bridge where the two friends saw the bizarre wolf-like creature. The witness continued in his report that it “seems like it uses the river bottom to stay hidden!” In a further twist to the tale, the witness claimed to have returned to the region recently, noting that a housing development has sprung up on the land there now. He spoke to many of the residents of this development during a community garage sale. What he discovered was that “a lot of cats and dogs go missing in that area!”

Interestingly or not, our final encounter with an apparent wolfman in Illinois occurred in the summer of 1973 – the same year that the Enfield incident unfolded, where we started this journey into beast-like creatures of the Prairie State. According to the report, the anonymous woman was only 11 years old at the time and was living with her parents in inner-city Chicago. On this particular evening, her cousins were staying at their home, with the three girls spending the evening in the basement bedroom at the bottom of the house. The evening itself passed without incident. In the early hours, however, that changed.

The witness recalled that it was around 4 am when the three girls were woken by the agitated noises of the family dog, suggesting to them that there was something outside. A moment later, the witness happened to look toward the windows of the room, immediately noticing that there was “something looking in!” All three of the girls screamed out loud, and moments later, two other cousins who were staying in another room (two older boys) burst in to see what the matter was. The girls told them they had seen something outside, and the two boys, already dressed, ventured out into the night to investigate.

They later stated that they saw “someone” running from the property. Despite chasing this figure for some time, it eventually proved too fast. Strangest of all, though, was the description of the figure. The two boys insisted that it appeared like a “large werewolf!” Although they contemplated that the figure could be nothing more than a person in a costume, the way it moved and the appearance itself was more than authentic – so authentic that they seriously considered that it might be real. They eventually decided that the werewolf was likely nothing more than a prankster. However, the main witness (the 11-year-old girl) is not so certain, especially when armed with the many reports of this and other strange, menacing creatures around Illinois in the years that followed.  

Concerning the sightings of dog or wolfmen creatures specifically in mind, it is interesting to note that despite no wolves officially existing in Illinois (at least according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources - IDNR), sightings of large wolves appear to be on the rise there. According to the IDNR, wolves have not resided in Illinois since 1860, and they put down sightings of the animals to wolves simply “passing through” the state. However, according to a March 2013 article in the Chicago Tribune, one of their readers informed them they had not only seen a wolf close to the state border with Indiana but that it was much larger than an ordinary wolf.

Even more remarkable, in 2015, a farmer from Central Illinois, Jay Smith, claimed to have witnessed at least 40 wolves that he too said were “bigger and darker” than average wolves. Smith went on to set up a trail camera and has managed to capture footage of several of these wolves, even telling one media platform that his land was “Grand Central Station for wolves!” The fact that so many wolves have been spotted would suggest they have a permanent residency in the state and are not merely passing through.

We might question why the IDNR appears to be hesitant (at best) to officially declare the return of the wolf to Illinois. As unlikely as it might be, are these larger, darker wolves somehow connected to the reports of wolfmen-like figures around the state?

Interestingly, and as we mentioned in our opening, Michigan and Wisconsin have many recorded encounters with similar wolfman-like creatures (often referred to as Dogmen). Could it be that there is a connection between those sightings and the encounters recorded in Illinois? And are these sightings and reports of wolfmen-like creatures connected to such bizarre encounters as the Enfield Monster that we explored earlier? Is there something special about Illinois and the Midwest, in general, or are these creatures awaiting discovery all across America and even the world? Are they flesh-and-blood creatures, perhaps an animal or even animal-human-type hybrid unknown to science, or might there be a more supernatural explanation for their existence?

With this last point in mind, we might question whether some kind of portal exists in the region, perhaps a naturally occurring one that relies on the electromagnetic conditions of the environment that are unintentionally transporting all manner of creatures, perhaps even temporarily, from thousands of years ago to our modern era. While the strange beastly creatures are unknown, the legends of the Thunderbird and the descriptions of it are decisively prehistoric and just might be a testament to such a possibility.

Ultimately, the entire state of Illinois is awash with reports of encounters with strange, beastly humanoid creatures that have seemingly lived in the region for decades and almost certainly for much longer. Indeed, we might imagine that the rich forests, open plains, and varied terrain that have since been curtailed somewhat by the ever-growing human presence of the last several hundred years were once perfect for such creatures to exist. We might imagine that as humanity continues to expand and encroach onto such land, whether these creatures are flesh-and-blood entities or supernatural beings, encounters with them will most likely continue to increase.