Witness Reports Winged Creature with "Human Proportions" Seen While Traveling through Northeastern Illinois
The Singular Fortean Society recently received a report from a witness named Ryan, who said he, his husband, and their friend all saw a winged creature while driving in northeastern Illinois, sometime after 10 p.m., in late July of 2008.
According to the email,
In July 2008, I was picked up from O'Hare [International Airport in Chicago] at night by my husband and a friend of ours. We lived in Dubuque, Iowa at the time. We would usually head back to Iowa via Highway 20 towards Belvidere and Rockford, but we took a different road, I don't remember which one.
I think our Garmin [GPS device] was taking us on an alternate route to avoid some construction, because we saw signs for Beloit, Wisconsin. We tried navigating to get back towards Belvidere and Rockford. We were driving on a two-lane highway outside the suburbs, and there were crop fields on either side of the road, so it was semi rural.
I was looking off to the left and saw a winged creature fly above the crops on the left side, and fly straight across the road several yards in front of us. It disappeared over the field on the right side of the road. It had a wingspan of several feet. I did not see what the body looked like.
The other people in the car saw it but said it was just a large bat. It was much larger than a bat. The way it flew was more like a large bird like an eagle, but it was gray and black. I attached a map with the area we were driving in circled.
Investigator Tobias Wayland was able to interview the man over the phone.
"We were northwest of O’Hare and had driven for a while and I remember we got to a point where we were on a two-lane road—one lane each way," the 41 year old said. "We were going through a semirural area, but it was more like, you’d drive for a mile and there would be a refinery or a little subdivision, and then you’d drive through fields for a while. I remember seeing a mileage sign with three places listed and one of them said Beloit, Wisconsin, and I was like ‘oh no, we’re getting too far north.’ We weren’t in Wisconsin, we were south of the Wisconsin border, north of the expressway, and east of the Belvidere Oasis."
A map sent by Ryan shows a circled area, somewhere within which he believes the sighting took place. This area is home to other reported sightings of winged humanoids in Illinois, including sightings in Woodstock and Wauconda. O’Hare International Airport has also been a hotbed of reported winged humanoid sightings, with at least 10 sighting reports coming from the airport itself since August of 2019, and many more reported in the surrounding communities.
Ryan told the investigator that “there was a field on both sides” of the sighting area, with crops “as high as a human, maybe six feet or more.”
"There weren’t any houses at that spot," he said. "It was pretty dark. [There wasn’t much light] that I can remember, except our headlights."
The winged creature was flying “just a few yards higher” than the crops, which were likely corn, given their height.
According to Ryan, the winged creature was “somewhat well-illuminated” by the car’s headlights, due to its low altitude and it only being “several yards ahead” of their vehicle.
"It wasn’t high in the sky at all. This was something that was very low. I was able to see the basic shape of it and the wings. It was about human-sized, maybe smaller than six feet," he explained. "The wings were maybe the length of a human’s arms, but a bit wider, maybe five to six feet. I could only see the color gray on it, a sort of medium to light gray. I couldn’t see anything reflecting off of it or anything. It was a gray, dull shade. It was over the crops on the left side and then it went over the road and was over the crops on the right side and it was gone."
"I saw a body shape, like a human-type shape, human proportions, basically. Then the wings were the main things I saw. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never seen wings on something flying that big. We’re from Dubuque, and I’ve seen eagles flying and stuff like that, and eagles are pretty big, but this was bigger than an eagle," Ryan continued. "My husband said it was a bat, and I was like there are no bats that large in the Midwest. It was something that just sort of glided, it didn’t fly like a bat, but it had wings that were sort of bat-like."
However, he said, “The wings did look more like a bat’s wings than a bird’s wings. I didn’t see feathers or anything.”
Ryan said that the creature had a "long torso" with no discernible arms separate from its wings.
"It didn’t seem very bulky to me, it just seemed sort of thin," he said. "It was able to move quickly from one side of the road to the other over the crops, and it didn’t have a trajectory like a bat, where they can be flitty and move around quickly, it looked like it was gliding, sort of like you were looking at an eagle or something."
“It was something we saw for just a few seconds,” he added.
When asked to compare his sighting to photos of a great blue heron, Ryan said, "I feel like, there was just more [of it] perpendicular to the wings. There was a long body, and I do not remember seeing a long beak. I would say the wingspan is pretty similar to what I saw, [but the wing shape] was a bit more formidable. There was more width, [and] the wings went farther back."
All three people in the car were surprised by what they'd seen, Ryan said, and although he was "momentarily afraid," he was more "generally shocked" by the sighting—feelings exacerbated by not really knowing where they were.
Ryan went on to explain that, although he had "always known about and read about" unexplained mysteries, it was a recent move to Mineral Point, Wisconsin, that prompted him to report his sighting. He began to see reports associated with the Lake Michigan Mothman investigation shared in local Facebook groups, and decided he should come forward with his own experience.
"I never forgot what I saw twelve years ago," he said. "It was very unusual. It was a strange thing to see."
This report constitutes the latest news in a string of ‘Mothman’ sightings from within a few hundred mile radius surrounding Lake Michigan, including every state bordering the great lake. These sightings ostensibly began in the spring of 2017, but more historical accounts are being reported as more people become aware of the phenomenon. They generally take place in the evening or at night, often in or near a park or natural area, and around water. Witnesses consistently describe a large gray, brown, 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, green, or orange eyes, and humanoid features such as arms and legs are often reported. Some witnesses have reported feeling intense fear and an aura of evil emanating from the creature they encountered. 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 misidentified large bird—such as a heron or crane—or some type of anomalous avian species could explain some, although certainly not all, of the encounters. A number of associated high strangeness incidents have also occurred alongside the creature sightings; these include 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 sightings so far here.
To report your own encounter with the impossible, reach out to us directly at the Singular Fortean Society through our contact page.
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