The Complete Idiot's Guide to Werewolves (29 page)

 

The French government, however, soon found that they could not maintain enough control over these new werewolf soldiers. The men often went on violent rampages while on missions, going berserk and destroying anything and anyone who got in their way. Sometimes, they would even fight amongst themselves. Plans began to be put in place to eliminate the werewolf soldiers.

 

Before the plans could be executed, the werewolf soldiers were sent on a final mission. Soon, reports came in that seven of the soldiers had been killed when the team members began to fight with each other in their werewolf forms. The government sent human soldiers and a team of scientists to investigate. They never returned alive, each of them killed. Knowing that the government would never allow them to live, the werewolf soldiers went rogue. They went into hiding and used their elite military training to drop off the grid. They now work all over the world as independent mercenaries, completing missions for the highest bidders, while also doing their best to avoid being detected and captured by the same French military authorities who originally turned them into the creatures they have become.

 

Werewolves and Urban Legends

Urban legends and local folklore exist in every society. Sometimes it is but a single misunderstood incident that leads to such tales, which often spread and influence the perceptions of others. In other situations, it may one day prove true that all legends begin with an original historic truth. What follows is a collection of such legends, some of which are believed (by some people, at least) to be true historic accounts of encounters with werewolves over the last few centuries. One of the most enjoyable things about investigating urban legends is that usually one can discover the actual historic events that sparked them. What can be even more entertaining is investigating further and discovering how the word-of-mouth stories that are inevitably created following these actual events continue to grow until they become, metaphorically speaking, “beasts that cannot be fed.”

Local folklore about this Wisconsin creature has been around for nearly a century, though the name “Beast of Bray Road” is a fairly new title. This name comes from the location of the first sighting of the beast where the witness went public with what she’d seen. There is an unusual level of consistency in nearly all accounts of past and present encounters with the creature, which is usually described as a large, seemingly intelligent beast. Some insist that this creature is a Sasquatch, commonly known as Bigfoot. Others believe that this may be some nearly extinct species of North American gorilla or some other large primate that has learned to remain far from humans in order to survive. There are many, however, who hold to the belief that it is a different creature entirely … one that far more resembles the common mental image of a werewolf. Most concede that this animal is likely not a shapeshifter, but they still insist that it may be responsible for the werewolf legends.

 

The so-called Beast of Bray Road is usually said to walk in a bipedal fashion and is described as standing at roughly 7 feet tall. Encounters with this beast when assuming a four-legged stance commonly describe it at an average of over 3 feet high. Size estimates vary greatly, ranging anywhere from 250 to 700 pounds. However, some argue that this may be because it is not one creature but a pack. Some theorize it is a pack of giant prehistoric wolves that are thought to be extinct. Others, however, call the beast the “Werewolf of Wisconsin,” and believe that these people have come face to face with a lycanthrope.

The first sighting to bring nationwide attention to the Beast of Bray Road occurred on Halloween in 1999. Eighteen-year-old Doristine Gipson was driving east along Bray Road, having just left her home-town of Elkhorn, Wisconsin. While slowing down as she approached an intersection, Doristine reached down to adjust the station on her radio. Suddenly, the front right corner of her car jerked up. Believing she had hit something, the girl pulled over. She got out so she could see what she hit. However, she couldn’t see anything in the road to explain what made the car jump. It was dark and cloudy, and the visibility was not ideal.

 

Suddenly, Doristine saw the outline of a hulking figure in the darkness, no more than 50 feet away, but she could not readily identify it. Then the creature charged at her without warning. She heard the heavy pounding of its rushing feet against the surface of the road, and the animal’s hard, heavy breathing. In a panic, she immediately raced back into her car and locked the doors. She felt the entire car shift suddenly as the enormous creature pounced onto the rear hood of the vehicle. She started the engine and began to drive away. The beast held on for a brief moment but soon slid off of the car’s slippery wet surface and onto the road. Shaken but unharmed, Doristine continued on with her plans to take a younger girl out for some trick-or-treating. She tried to tell herself that it must have been a bear that probably grew enraged because she’d hit it with the car. However, Doristine’s encounters with this beast were not yet over.

 

Later that night, Doristine was driving back along Bray Road. The girl she’d promised to take trick-or-treating was in the passenger seat. When she reached the same intersection where she believed she’d hit a bear, she pulled over. This time, however, she stayed in the car (as most thinking people probably would at that point). Soon a tall, massive, and hairy figure stepped out from the side of the road. Seeing this, Dorsitine immediately told the other girl to lock her door. When the beast again began moving toward them, Doristine burned rubber out of there.

 

The next day, Doristine realized that there was some disturbing damage to her vehicle. Unsure what to do, she decided to confide in another woman, her friend and neighbor. She told the woman what had happened and showed her the damage to the vehicle, mainly consisting of deep scratches (as if from claws) in the paint and some wide but shallow dents on the trunk. Both women decided to let fellow locals know what had happened, just in case they encountered the animal (because it appeared to be violent). Talk of the incident was soon all over the area, and Doristine would learn that she was not alone. Several people in the area came forward with their own accounts of close encounters with a large beast (many while driving along Bray Road). Like Doristine, many had just convinced themselves that it had been a bear. Others feared that people would think they were crazy and so kept it to themselves. Doristine realized she was definitely not the first person to encounter this animal … and she certainly would not be the last.

Later that same fall, 24-year-old Lorianne Endrizzi, the manager of a local watering hole, was driving west along Bray Road on her way home to Elkhorn. At a spot less than a half-mile from the site of Doristine Gipson’s encounter, she saw what at first looked to her like a person hunched over. Thinking that perhaps it was an injured person or a bar patron who had just had a few too many, she slowed the vehicle down to a crawl. She approached cautiously.

 

The dark, kneeling figure less than 6 feet from the passenger side of her vehicle, which she now saw was eating something out of its palms, lifted its head and looked her dead in the eyes. Lorianne did not stop the car. Though she passed by the creature relatively slowly (likely from the shock), the smart young woman just kept right on driving (once she felt out of the beast’s reach, of course, she sped up considerably).

 

Lorianne estimated that she had her eyes locked on the beast for roughly three-quarters of a minute. In her eyewitness account, she described the creature she saw as very large and muscular, with gray-brown fur, pointy ears, eyes that reflected yellow against her headlights, and a long wolflike snout, from which protruded a set of fangs. She also added that she’d caught sight of its hands, which she claimed were certainly not claws but long, fur-coated fingers similar to a human’s.

 

Lorianne, when asked what the animal was, could not come up with an answer. She had never seen anything like it. Some time later, however, while flipping through a book, she came upon an illustration of a were- wolf. Thereafter, she claimed that this illustration was the only thing she’d seen that had a close resemblance to the creature she saw. This added the element of lycanthropy to the creature.

Among experts who study such cases, there are those who believe that the two creatures, referred to by residents as the “Michigan Dog-Man” and the “Werewolf of Wisconsin/Beast of Bray Road,” are not actually separate entities but one and the same beast. It is undeniable that the majority of eyewitness descriptions of the Michigan Dog-Man are nearly identical to those from encounters with the Beast of Bray Road.

 

However, there is one issue with the theory that this is the same creature. In order for the animal to be in even half of the primary sighting areas, it would have to travel the roughly 350-mile-long trek (mostly along the southern coast of Lake Michigan) between the Bray Road area of Wisconsin and the most common Michigan sighting locations and do so rather frequently. Not to mention, it would have to do so without being seen since it has never been spotted
between
the two locations. However, it is entirely possible that these are two (or possibly far more) creatures that are simply of the same or similar species.