Witness Reports Harrowing Encounter with Winged Humanoid near Kaneville, Illinois

The Singular Fortean Society was contacted last Monday by Mat Sexton, 33, who said he’d encountered a winged humanoid while driving to work early that morning in northern Illinois.

Prior to the events of Monday, Sexton said he had seen the creature twice in 2023.

"I've had three different encounters that started around the same time last year in April or May," he told investigator Tobias Wayland in a phone interview.

Both of his prior encounters took place in the early morning hours, sometime between 1:30 and 3:30 a.m.

The first time Sexton said he saw the creature was on US Highway 30 near a town called Hinckley in Illinois.

"I was driving my truck at the time because I'm a semi driver, so I kind of do later night runs," he said. "And going down that road, I saw a huge branch fall off of a tree and kind of like hit [the road] a little way ahead of me. So, I looked up and there was this maybe 12-foot creature. I'm not sure really how to describe it other than it was covered in like a mouse-brown, short-hair fur. It didn't look leathery."

The creature, he said, "was humanoid."

"It had legs and arms separate from wings, and it came down and went right in front of my truck. It was kind of like when those eagles fall and then they unfurl their wings at the last minute and fly off," Sexton said. "That's what it did."

At first the startled truck driver wondered if maybe what he had seen was simply a large bird, but that explanation didn't exactly seem to fit.

"It freaked me out, but I was like, there has to be something I'm missing here," he explained. "And then I just kind of dismissed it."

It became more difficult to dismiss when he saw the same thing only three weeks later, this time on I-39 off of US Highway 30, just 10 miles or so from his first sighting.

"Again, it went real low in front of my truck," Sexton said. "It was the same sort of creature, and I got a better look at it this time."

He described the creature as having a sort of webbing between its legs, almost like a flying squirrel or wingsuit. Its feet had three big claws in front and a talon in the back, and its face had an elongated snout.

"The closest thing I can think of is a gerbal snout or face," Sexton said. "It was elongated like that."

The creature's wings were membranous and appeared to be separate from its arms, he added.

Sexton estimated the creature to be at least 10 feet tall based on its size relative to nearby reference points.

"I was able to get a real good gauge of its size, because I saw the fog line on the right-hand side [of the road] and the middle line of the highway and its feet crossed, the fog line and its head was touching the middle line, so [it had to be] at least 10 feet," he said.

The being's wingspan was similarly huge, Sexton said, estimating it to be between 20 and 25 feet.

Just as before, the winged humanoid swooped down and then flew back up before disappearing into the darkness.

Again, Sexton tried to rationalize his experience, thinking, "Maybe I'm just tired, maybe I'm not seeing right."

He wondered if he had simply seen an owl or even just garbage blowing in the wind.

"I kind of went through everything it could have been," he said. "And I just kind of wrote it off because as much as I'm open to paranormal and cryptid things, I'm a fairly skeptical person."

But then he saw it again a year later.

Sexton’s third encounter took place on McGirr Road about three or four miles west of Kaneville at approximately 2:15 a.m.

As he drove his truck onto a small bridge spanning a creek, the creature suddenly appeared.

"I don't know if it came out from under the bridge," Sexton said. "It just swooped down real close, almost touching the windshield. And that made me swerve because [the creature] took up so much of [the windshield], and it was so huge. I swerved into the oncoming lane, hit the gravel, and I got my composure back. After that, I was wondering what the hell was going on, just still going. It came down again from the right side to the left over my hood, buzzing over my hood. And then it was 30, 40 yards to the left and up in the sky."

"My bumper was pushed out. Like I may have clipped it the first time that it went under over my hood on the right-hand side when it first appeared," Sexton said. *(Mat Sexton)*

The winged humanoid appeared to Sexton as a "well-defined black silhouette" while it flew. The sky was cloudy, and the lights of nearby Sugar Grove helped illuminate the area just enough to see it silhouetted against the cloud cover.

"At that point, I started to speed up and now I hit the gas just trying to get away from whatever it was. And it went over the roof of my truck and then back over the hood again. And it was keeping up with me. I was going about 110 miles an hour, just trying to get as far away as possible."

That's when Sexton went for the Taurus 9mm pistol he had with him.

"At this point, I've had too many good looks [at the creature]. I don't know what it is. It's not anything I've seen before, and I'm genuinely fearing for my life. It kept coming down at my vehicle, and when I saw it was keeping up with me, I started firing at it," he said.

Sexton was in fight-or-flight mode and thought, "If it's a bird, and I overreacted and killed a bird, then I can deal with that. But if it's something that I need to defend myself from then, I'll do what I have to."

Honestly, I'd rather not lose my life or possibly get into a really bad accident over whatever the hell this thing wants to do. I'm not really proud of that necessarily. I'm not like super happy about it, but that's the level of seriousness that it was. I like to think of myself as a somewhat levelheaded person, not [someone who would] start firing at any shadow that I see coming out of the woods or whatever. It was genuinely terrifying. It was genuinely something large and completely unseen before that was coming down at my vehicle.

He fired seven or eight rounds at the winged being but doesn't know if he actually hit it.

"It wrapped itself into its wings and started to descend. I followed it down firing, and it was gone after that," Sexton said. "I haven't seen it since."

The creature had once again disappeared into the darkness.

"There was an indentation [on my truck], like something was dropped onto the roof," Sexton said. *(Mat Sexton)*

"I still go by the same places," Sexton added. "I try to keep an open ear for any weird sounds or anything, and I'm trying to figure out or even process what it was that I saw and what it was that I went through and ultimately had to defend myself from."

The identity of what exactly Sexton encountered remains a mystery.

He described the being as seeming to be a “biological entity,” not exhibiting the glowing red eyes or other potentially paranormal qualities sometimes described in winged humanoid encounters.

However, in what could be seen as one of the synchronicities thought to follow these sightings, Sexton mentioned that he had installed a dashcam in the semi-truck he had been driving during his first two encounters, only to have the sightings stop after he did so. Furthermore, the dashcam he had installed in his personal vehicle, the truck he had been driving last Monday, had malfunctioned and been removed just two weeks prior to his most recent experience.

"I don't really dismiss any of this just offhandedly," Sexton said of any potential paranormal hypotheses. "I'm super skeptical and need to see a lot of evidence. But I absolutely don't just cast any of the paranormal stuff aside. Who knows, right?"

Besides, he noted, "Thinking about a biological entity, I don't think something that big with that kind of wingspan and humanoid build would naturally evolve or would even really be able to fly like it does in the first place."

It should be noted that Sexton was also interviewed by Lon Strickler of Phantoms & Monsters, during which he recounted events similarly with no embellishment.

Because of its proximity to other sighting locations, the creature described in the above report could be related to the larger Lake Michigan Mothman phenomenon. Those sightings are commonly reported 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. 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, sometimes with glowing or reflective red, yellow, or orange eyes, and humanoid features such as an upright, bipedal posture 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.

A map of the sightings, compiled by Strickler, is available here.