Reports from the Void: 'Tall, Black, Batlike Creature'

An image created to illustrate the Cape Girardeau encounter referenced in the submitted report. *(Emily Wayland / Singular Fortean Society)*

The Singular Fortean Society received the following email with “tall, black, batlike creature” in the subject line on February 26th, 2022.

I wanted to report to you a creature that was spotted by my mother. I googled about it and noticed the story of the same creature spotted in Cape Girardeau, [Missouri], which is only 45-60 mins away from us in Dexter, [Missouri].
It was about [5 a.m. on February 26th, 2022], and still dark outside. My mom was up and happened to be looking out the window into our backyard, which is a huge field. She noticed a black figure running on the ground; you could describe it as a gorilla running. At first, she thought it was a deer, but she kept looking and it was definitely not a deer.
It then lifted off the ground and started flying and disappeared into the woods. It was about six feet tall, big batlike wings, dark creature that was definitely not an animal nor human. I would say the sighting was only five seconds or so.

Investigator Tobias Wayland replied to the email in an attempt to interview the mother mentioned in the report, but received no response.

The story referenced in the above report is likely that of a woman who reported her sighting of a “black, humanoid figure with very large wings and legs” in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to the Singular Fortean Society in October of 2020.

Dexter is around 50 miles southwest of Cape Girardeau.

Wayland was able to interview the witness in Cape Girardeau, who said, “Me, my two girls, and my fiancé went to a little street area where the houses have Halloween decorations at nighttime. We went down one way and then came back the other way to look at both sides of the street. We did that, and we were headed back home. We came up over a hill and when we got down almost to the stop sign, that’s when I saw it. It was like a human figure, but with big wings—the feet and toes were pointed to the ground—it had scrawny legs, but muscled at the calf. The feet were long but pointy. It was maybe six feet tall. The wings weren’t open, they were still closed."

The creature's wings, which she said looked like they were made of skin, "were really pointy and they were past its head. [The creature] just looked like somebody getting ready to dive off of something, like they have their hands out. The wings were over top of it, and they were pulled in, like wrapped around it. The wings weren’t as long as the body. They came out over the head, but were shorter than the legs."

Its head, she added, was "was really little and round—kind of pointed but round.”

The creature, which she estimated to have been around 100 feet from the car, looked like it had just "leaped from the trees” to the right of the road.

"About 100 feet from the stop sign to the right is a grove of tall trees," the woman said. "About two to three acres of big, tall trees. That’s where I saw it. [The creature] looked like it had leaped or dove. It was higher than the streetlights, but not real high—midway over the road, but in the sky."

Although the being was black, she was still able to see it because "the light from the softball field lit it some." The dark figure stood out against the sky, as it was “blacker than the night itself.”

She said it didn’t look like the creature had any fur or feathers.

"It was bigger than a bird, it didn’t look like a bird," she explained. "When I saw it, it was kind of like [the monster from] Jeepers Creepers."

Following the publication of that report, Wayland spoke with two sisters in November of 2020 who said that the previous August they’d had an unusual encounter near the same area.

The two women were driving at about 6 o’clock in the evening on Lexington Avenue and had just passed Sprigg Street in Cape Girardeau when they had their encounter, which took place only about a mile from the previously reported sighting.

Beverly Weakley, 67, was behind the wheel while Brenda Elfrink, 60, was in the passenger seat.

Brenda was looking at her phone when she heard her sister exclaim, “What was that?”

"I was on my phone, I heard her and I looked up. I got a good look at it, but I didn’t really know what I was looking at. It seemed like it was just across the road and gone. There was no place for it to land," Brenda said.

She described the creature as being "big and blackish/brownish—more brown than black, but dark" and "shaped like nothing I've ever seen. I saw a lot of movement like wings—I saw more of that than anything else."

"I’d say it was five or six feet tall, maybe bigger. I was kind of rationalizing what I was looking at. There were no feet, I just saw a big brown mass, basically. But it did feel like I saw movement, like wings or something," Brenda said. "I saw a whipping, fluttering motion and it looked like it almost took up the whole road. It probably didn’t, but that’s what it looked like to me. I honestly wondered at first if it was a big throw rug flying across the road and whipping up in the wind or something, but there was no wind. It wasn’t a stormy day or anything. I said ‘Oh my god, we saw Mothman.'"

However, said Brenda, her sister Beverly “saw much more” of the thing than she did.

According to Beverly,

It looked like it might have come from the side of the road, there are some trees there, but it was fully in our vision in the car. It wasn’t high, it was maybe eight feet off of the ground—you could see underneath it, you could see over it. It was probably five to six feet long, and it was brown. It didn’t look like it had feathers to me, it looked like it had membranes. It looked like it had webbed, membranous wings, and there were a lot of wings. Some were flapping. They were ribbed like umbrellas. It didn’t look like a pterodactyl, but it looked like those kind of wings. It was probably 10 to 15 feet ahead of us, and it was flying. I didn’t see a person, like a body shape, but it certainly could have been a thin something that was long.

Beverly said the creature "looked like something was shrouded in this bunch of wings. It got skinnier towards the last two feet, like they were wrapped around. To me, it looked like a body shrouded in wings. It was definitely wings, of some sort, and they looked like they were meat, not feathers. I didn’t see any limbs, I didn’t see a head."

The 67-year-old described the wings moving in an undulating fashion, "like a wave."

"The wings were moving," she explained. "It looked like it had taken off and it had these little wings throughout. The way it flew was weird. It didn’t use all of its wings at one time. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. It rippled, kind of."

Those reports were compared to the Lake Michigan Mothman sightings at the time, despite their distance from the Great Lakes, although winged humanoid sightings appear to be, at the very least, a national phenomenon in terms of the geographic area in which they are reported.

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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