Reports from the Void: 'Footsteps on the Roof'

The Singular Fortean Society received the following email with the subject line “footsteps on the roof” on October 21st, 2020.

I read about the recent Mothman sightings at O’Hare [International Airport in Chicago], and this reminded me of an incident from the late 1980s. I was living in Waukegan [Illinois] at the time, across a field from the airport. One night some classmates and I were in the basement, doing something for school, and we all heard footsteps moving fairly rapidly back and forth above us.
I assumed my father must have come home earlier than expected, but was puzzled by the back and forth movement, so I went upstairs. Once there, it became clear that the sound was coming from the roof. (??) So I went outside, but couldn’t see anything. It only happened that one time and never again.
I reported this once on Reddit, and someone recommended Keel’s Mothman book, which also mentioned footsteps on the roof.

Investigator Tobias Wayland replied to the email and asked the witness if he had experienced “anything else you'd describe as paranormal either before or since that event?”

The witness replied, “No, I don’t recall any paranormal events before or after the ‘footsteps on the roof’ incident. It would have been roughly 1988 or 1989 in my case. But some things that are similar [to more recent ‘Mothman’ reports] are that it was night time, although more like 7 or 8 p.m., and the house bordered a large field across from the Waukegan airport.”

He went on to compare his own experiences to events in Johns Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies.

In the book, Keel describes the experience of Mrs. Lilly, who said she had heard a phantom baby crying in her home.

In addition to the sound of a baby crying, Keel wrote, “Other strange sounds pervaded the house, she claimed. She and her children often heard heavy footsteps on the roof and loud metallic clangs.”

The witness reported hearing similar sounds.

“I once heard a baby crying in the bushes next to that house, right outside the window, or so I thought,” the witness said. “I went out to look and saw nothing. I’ve been told cats can approximate that sound, though. People occasionally report seeing panthers or something similar in Lake County, so it’s vaguely possible one leapt up to a porch overhang and then to the roof, walked back and forth several times, and then disappeared by the time I went outside. Or maybe it was a mothman?"

"But I never saw anything," he added. "Nor did I sense anything 'evil' as the other reports describe."

Waukegan was the site of a reported 1976 encounter of a “black figure” with “glowing red eyes” that swooped down from atop a silo to accost a man and his friend, and a series of encounters with a “large, bat-like creature” which had “glowing red eyes” that reportedly took place in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2002, were also accompanied by the seemingly unrelated sound of a baby crying.

After informing the witness of the Madison, Wisconsin encounters, Wayland did not receive any further response.

The world first heard of the Mothman in November of 1966, when a series of sightings of a large, black, flying creature with glowing red eyes took place in and around Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

More recently, dozens of other reports of similar phenomena have been collected as part of the Lake Michigan Mothman investigation, and a timeline with links to articles describing those sightings is available here.

Reports from the Void is a repository to share those stories for which we do not have enough information to make a full report. This is usually because of little or no communication from the witness following their initial submission. The Singular Fortean Society will always provide as much information as possible regarding any correspondence during our attempts to speak with those involved.

This series is meant only to present you with the full breadth of the information sent to us, and makes no judgments towards the veracity of any stories shared within it.

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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