Frightening Encounters with Red-Eyed, Winged Creature in Madison, Wisconsin, Recalled by Witness' Daughter Almost 20 Years Later

The Singular Fortean Society was contacted by a woman last Thursday who said she was looking for “assistance on finding answers to an incident my mom and I had happen about 20 years ago.”

The woman, who agreed to the use of her first name, Selina, was referred to the Singular Fortean Society by Adam Benedict of the Pine Barrens Institute.

According to the email,

Back in December of 2001, our apartment completely burned down and we lost everything. The company my father worked for ended up paying for a fully furnished apartment until ours was rebuilt. At this point in time, we lived in Madison, Wisconsin—more specifically, on Allied Drive. But that place burned down, so we were sent to a place right off of the Seminole Highway exit off of the [Beltline Highway.]
In January of 2002, about two weeks after our fire, my mom got off at our exit, and turned left. As we were coming up to the second set of lights, my mom saw what she believed to be a "large bat-like creature." She said that it was very opaque in color (details were harder to make out because it was evening when this happened), it was very large, and she said that as she turned her head to look at this thing, it turned and looked at her. She believes she made direct eye contact with it. Its eyes were glowing red, and the face was very bat-like from what she could see. It was flying, but it wasn't flapping its wings like a normal bat would, instead it was almost gliding, kind of. I don't know how else to explain it. It had been flying the opposite direction that we were going. She tried to get a better look, but it was gone as soon as it appeared.
I was in the car when this happened. I didn't see what she did, but I do remember my mom screaming and panicking.
A few weeks had gone by and we were back in our original apartment. Our basement had one laundry machine and one dryer that I can remember, and it was directly across from OUR storage unit.
After moving back into the rebuilt apartment, my mom decided she was going to do laundry and went downstairs. As she was doing the laundry though, for whatever reason, she decided to turn around and look into our storage unit. After a minute, she noticed something at the very back wall behind all of our junk. As she focused more on what exactly she was seeing, she *BELIEVES* she saw the very same creature. She saw a large bat-like face, with the same red, glowing eyes. She said it had been staring back at her.
She completely panicked, and ran as fast as she could back upstairs and she NEVER went back down there again. We moved out of there soon after that happened.
About two or three days after her second incident with seeing this creature, she said she saw a few news reports on sightings of a creature very similar to what she had seen.
My mom and I over the years have done our best to do research into this, and we have tried VERY hard to find these articles and reports on these sightings, but for whatever reason, it seems like they were completely removed. Almost as if no one wants these reports going public.
I stumbled across something Adam had posted, and had a feeling he would be able to assist me in finding answers. My mom almost never talks about it because people never believe her. But we KNOW what happened and we know we weren't the only ones. But we can't seem to find anything regarding this.

Investigator Tobias Wayland was able to speak with Selina over the phone regarding the incident. She said that she had previously been given permission to use her mother’s first name, Heather, in the report.

"I was six years old at the time," Selina said of the incidents. "My mom was the one who witnessed everything firsthand, I just remember the fear and the paranoia when she saw what she saw in the basement. I mean, she never set foot in the basement again, she wouldn’t even go and stand on the stairwell. I remember some people in my family would sit there and kind of make fun of her, and some of them didn’t believe her. They’d say ‘Hey, Heather, go grab the sled from the storage unit.’ Mom would just look at them, say ‘No,’ and walk away. Everyone thought it was the funniest thing, but it traumatized my mom to this day. She’ll bring it up occasionally, but she doesn’t talk about it that much because most people don’t believe her."

Although, Selina said, “I think my dad believed her, honestly.”

Wayland asked Selina to recall everything she could about the encounters.

"The first time that she saw it, we were on the bridge by the [Seminole Highway] exit," she said. "If I remember correctly, I had a toy or was drinking a drink or something—my attention was down towards the floor—and I just remember the car kind of slowed down pretty drastically and my mom screamed and she said, 'What the [expletive] was that?' She freaked out, and when I looked up, I saw her head was turned and she looked like she’d seen a ghost. She didn’t tell me what she saw right away, she was just in shock. She was paranoid to drive at night for a bit after that. That happened, when she saw the thing on the bridge, that would have been early to mid-January of 2002—right after our apartment fire."

"A few weeks later was when she saw it in the storage unit in our apartment," Selina continued. "The apartment had been restored and we were able to move back in. My mom had gone downstairs to do the laundry, and I don’t remember if she told me she had this feeling that she had to look or if she just wanted to look, I don’t really know why she looked behind her in the storage unit, but she did, and after a minute, she noticed a face; when she looked closer she said that it looked almost exactly like the face of the thing that she said she had seen on the bridge."

"What really got to her were the red eyes," she added. "She said, to this day, the red eyes that she saw are burned in her memory. She will never forget the look in the eyes and she said that it’s just something she’ll never forget. The eyes are what really terrified her."

When asked if they’d experienced anything that might be considered paranormal in the apartment other than Heather’s encounter, Selina responded that "almost everyone in that building who was open to [the paranormal] really thought the building was haunted."

"I do remember a few instances where we would hear a baby crying. At the time, my brother was an infant, so my parents would go to check on him and he would be dead asleep, and they would still hear a baby crying. It was constant, it was almost nonstop," she said. "Some nights, they would hear all of the dishes flying out of the cabinets and crashing on the floor, and they would think that we had an intruder, and everything was untouched—it was like nothing even happened."

But, she said, "The activity really started getting worse when the basement started getting redone, because they were doing something in the basement. The activity started picking up after that. The apartment fire happened soon after."

The activity continued after the restoration with another concerning incident involving fire.

"I remember, soon after the building itself was rebuilt after the fire, my aunt and uncle had been living in the upstairs unit above us, and I remember being up in their apartment once and my aunt was braiding my hair, and I went downstairs because she was going to jump in the shower," Selina said. "They always had a decorative candle on their table—my family is Mexican so they had those religious decorative candles—and they had one in the center of their coffee table. They didn’t really light them up at that point in time, they never had a reason to, and so like I said, I went downstairs, my aunt was in the shower, my uncle was in the bedroom, and when my aunt got out of the shower, she noticed that the entire apartment was full of smoke. She thought, ‘Oh my God, there’s another fire.’ It was the candle. The candle itself had set on fire—it wasn’t lit, it had just set on fire. It was in the center of the table, and it even left a charred circle where it had been."

The events were very impactful on Selina and her mother, and they still periodically revisit the topic.

"Me and my mom, over the years, whenever we do bring it up we do our best to look into it. We’ve just never really gotten anywhere. This time around, I was really determined to find something. I didn’t know what I was looking for, I just know that to this day it really bothers my mom and I want to try to get her some type of answers," she said.

Wayland sent Selina a link to the current Lake Michigan Mothman sightings timeline, and asked that she please advise her mother to reach out to him directly with any questions or concerns.

Given the description provided by the witness and the sighting location, this encounter could be related to the string of ‘Mothman’ sightings from within a few hundred mile radius surrounding Lake Michigan, including every state bordering the great lake. The sightings ostensibly began in the spring of 2017, but more historical accounts are being reported as more people become aware of the phenomenon. Sightings of weird winged beings around Lake Michigan have been reported at all hours, often in or near a park, and around water. Witnesses consistently describe a large, gray or black bat or bird-like creature—although in a small number of cases the creature was described as insect-like—sometimes with glowing or reflective red, yellow, or orange eyes; humanoid features such as arms and legs are often reported. A feeling of stark fear is commonly reported by witnesses, sometimes beginning prior to the sighting itself. Many of the sightings are also of something seen only briefly or are described only as a flying creature with few details, which leaves open the possibility that a large avian could explain some encounters. Sightings of anomalous avians, including thunderbirds and pterosaurs, are often reported in or near the same locations as those where witnesses have reported winged humanoids. A number of associated high strangeness incidents have also occurred alongside the creature sightings; including reports of UFOs, other anomalous flying creatures and mysterious humanoids, parapsychological phenomena, and bizarre events experienced by those investigating the sightings.

To report a sighting, reach out to us directly at the Singular Fortean Society through our contact page.

You can view a timeline of the Lake Michigan Mothman sightings so far here, and an interactive map here.

To report your own encounter with the impossible, reach out to us directly at the Singular Fortean Society through our contact page.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to support the Singular Fortean Society, please consider becoming an official member by signing up through our Patreon page—membership includes a ton of extra content and behind-the-scenes access to the Society’s inner workings.