Partygoers Claim to Have Encountered Winged Humanoid with Glowing Red Eyes in Elk Grove, Illinois

A sketch of the creature reportedly submitted to investigator Manuel Navarette. *(UFO Clearinghouse)*

Manuel Navarette of UFO Clearinghouse received the following report recently from a witness in Elk Grove, Illinois, who said that she, along with several relatives, saw a winged humanoid perched atop a nearby garage during a family birthday party last April 9th at approximately 11 p.m.

We were at my niece’s birthday party, and I joined some family members outside for a drink and to smoke a cigarette. We were standing behind the garage when my cousin got everyone’s attention and pointed toward the neighbor's garage. There, on top of the garage, was what looked like a really thin man, except he was hunched over and had extremely long arms, freakishly long arms, that he was propping himself up with.
He stood there, hunched over on his knuckles, looking at us with these bright red glowy [sic] eyes that did not blink. He had a pair of large wings that seemed to come out from his back and were slowly moving, they looked like he was slowly moving them up and down while he stood there looking at us.
We were about 50-60 feet away from this thing but we could still see it from where we were standing. He shifted up and down, almost like he was examining us and trying to figure out who or what we were, as curious about us as we were of him.
There were seven of us out there, and all of us had a good view of this thing as it stood there on top of the next door neighbor’s garage. My two younger female cousins were saying they were scared of this, calling it a demon. Their dad, my uncle, kept telling them that they were going to be [okay] as long as they stayed by him and the group.
It stood there looking at us for what seemed like 30 seconds before it started flapping its wings, jumped off the garage, and flew away.
It looked extremely tall and thin, like it was all skin and bones and weighed less than I did. I’m petite, like half the size of my cousins and used to get teased about it growing up, but this creature looked like it was even thinner than I was. It looked like a tall version of those starving children that you see on the news every once in a while. It was greyish black, and had a head that looked like it was shaped kind of like a praying mantis, except it had glowing red eyes that never blinked, not even once.
When it jumped off the garage roof, it made my cousins and even my uncle scream as it flew off and over the trees in the backyard of my grandmother’s house and it was gone. I know we had been drinking during the party but no one was drunk, not even tipsy, and I know we all saw the same thing, which means unless we were all seeing things, this thing was really there.
When we went inside and told the others, my mother and grandmother both thought we were all joking, but when they saw that we were all scared and that we were all saying the same thing, they started to believe us. My grandmother and grandfather both said that it could have been a lechuza and that we were lucky nothing happened to us. I’m not sure that what we saw was a lechuza, but when I got home I did research and then sent my family members screen shots and links to the sightings.

Navarette said he was able to interview the witness who initially reported the sighting.

"I made contact with the reporting witness, who stated that she had joined her uncle and her cousins outside while they were sharing drinks and smoking," he said.

According to Navarette, "The witness said everything seemed [okay] at first and that they were all enjoying the night together and celebrating her niece’s birthday party.”

[She] said her 18-year-old cousin was the first one to see the entity and at first thought it was just a random person, perhaps the neighbor standing on the roof of his garage, which she said seemed strange at 11 o’clock at night. The cousin got everyone’s attention and they all began to look at it.
They described the entity as thin and very tall, which they estimated to be about six to seven feet tall, and had a pair of wings coming out of its back. The witness told me that they were all just standing there watching this when her two younger cousins (ages 10-12) began to get scared and wanted to go inside. The creature then leapt off the garage, spreading its wings, and flew off into the night.

In addition to that witness, Navarette said that he also spoke with a number of the other witnesses involved, including her uncle, 49, and three cousins, 18, 22, and 27, all of whom reportedly told the same story.

"All of the stories were similar in nature and all described the entity as thin, tall, and with a pair of wings coming out of its back," Navarette said. "I also made contact with three other witnesses and they refused to cooperate in the investigation, many of them citing that they were not going to provoke a lechuza for fear of reprisals. This has been a common theme in many Hispanic communities, fear that speaking about or bringing up your experiences would somehow invoke the entity and bring with it retribution for speaking of their encounters."

In Mexican folklore, La Lechuza is an old woman—normally a witch, or 'bruja'—who can turn into a giant, black bird. In most stories, the bird is an owl, but sometimes it is described as an eagle.

Other witnesses have mentioned similar fears to those associated with this sighting, including a woman who reported being afraid that the “flying witch” she saw near Darien, Wisconsin, would seek reprisal if she talked about it too much.

The village of Elk Grove is directly adjacent to O’Hare International Airport, which has been the epicenter of recent winged humanoid sightings in the Lake Michigan Mothman investigation, with over a dozen sighting reports coming from the airport itself since August of 2019, and many more reported in the surrounding communities. Reports from the larger investigation have come from every state bordering Lake Michigan and date back to 1957.

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.

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You can view a timeline of the sightings so far here.

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