Imagine driving down a dark country road when a man-sized creature flies at your windshield, stares in at you, then swoops into the night sky. This happened to a 53-year-old LaCrosse man, known by his Cherokee name, Wohali, and his 25-year-old son. Their immediate reaction? Intense illness. The son swerved the truck into a ditch to vomit repeatedly, while Wohali also retched. Both remained sick for a week. The son, too frightened to discuss the encounter, prefers to stay anonymous. However, Wohali insists that people “need to know what’s out there.”
Key points
The Man-Bat Encounter
The sighting occurred on Tuesday, September 26, between 9:15 and 9:30 p.m. on Briggs Road near LaCrosse. The creature, estimated to be 6-7 feet tall, almost collided with their windshield. It had bat-like, leathery wings with a span of 10-12 feet, long claws on its feet and hands, and a snarling expression. Both men felt it was angry at being seen.
“When we turned onto Briggs Road,” Wohali wrote, “our truck’s headlights caught a bat-like, man-like creature in mid-air. It was six or seven feet tall with a ten or twelve-foot wingspan.” The creature had a large muzzle, rows of sharp teeth, and “screamed” at them before soaring straight up into the air. The encounter left them physically ill for the rest of the night. Wohali couldn’t determine if the creature had been on the road or flying when it appeared. He believed it was a physical entity, unlike anything he had seen before.
Wohali’s description includes more details than he saw in those few seconds. “The face was hard to see clearly because the mouth and teeth were so prominent. It looked hungry,” he wrote. “Sorry about the cartoonish drawing,” he added, “but it was so unreal that all I remember is what you see.” Wohali further described it as having “distended ribs, long human-like legs with claws, huge bat-like wings with arms sort of attached. I remember the teeth and the terrifying scream.”
Location and Environment
Briggs Road is a mile-long stretch just west of Holmen, north of LaCrosse. It runs north and south between County Highways XX and V, intersected by Highway 53. To the west is a large marsh; to the east is Halfway Creek. The road lies along the Amsterdam Prairie, with the Van Loon State Wildlife area a mile north. The south end is about a mile and a half north of the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge and Lake Onalaska. The sighting occurred near the crest of a hill on the road’s south entrance.
On the west side of the road, just before the sighting area, is a fenced utility location; on the east side, a shooting range and club. Dense vegetation lines the west side of the sighting area.
Investigation
On October 14, eighteen days after the sighting, I visited the site with Wohali and a veteran deer hunter friend of his. We examined the area in daylight for footprints, but the surface was either asphalt or covered with tough, marshy grass. However, we found a mutilated deer carcass twenty-five feet from the road at the sighting spot. The carcass was bloodless, with its back facing the road, and the skin peeled back from the midsection toward the forelimbs. The head and forelimbs remained intact. The hunter estimated the carcass was no older than three days and weighed about 60 pounds. The haunch section, lower abdomen, and rear limbs were gone, with the spine protruding from the midsection. The remains did not appear to be cut with a knife, and there were no tooth or bite marks indicating it was carried in a mouth. An unused, unopened dark garbage bag lay adjacent to the carcass.
Wohali revisited the spot ten days later and found no trace of the carcass. The carcass could have been placed no more than fifteen days after Wohali’s sighting, making a connection to the creature difficult to prove. However, the curious condition of the remains at the exact sighting spot makes it noteworthy.
We returned to the site that evening. Wohali, his friend, and I watched from a car for about an hour. Wohali saw something shadowy in the treetops, and all three saw something large, black, and slinky cross the road. It looked like an inky ribbon unfurling. I saw nothing but perhaps was not looking in the right place. Wohali’s friend urged us to leave the area immediately, and we did.
Correlations
This sighting recalls a mid-90s encounter near the LaCrosse riverbank, where a man and his son saw a “lizard man” with reptilian features. Around the same time, a state DNR warden and highway workers saw a “reptile man” on Highway 13 near Medford. The creature had wings and flew out of sight. The Medford spot is near the Black River, which winds up from LaCrosse. Could a creature be both aerial and aquatic? Some birds manage this feat, but bat-like wings are less suited for swimming.
LaCrosse is also known for many drownings of college-aged males over the past decades. The latest drowning occurred three days after Wohali’s sighting. The drownings and creature sightings both began around 1997. Are these creatures death harbingers, or is it just a coincidence?
In October 2006, Biofort Blogger Scott Maruda reported a huge bird sighting near Stillwater, MN, possibly a “Washington Eagle” documented by John James Audubon in 1840. The eagle had a ten-foot wingspan, similar to the creature Wohali saw. However, it didn’t have teeth or bat-like wings. Stillwater is only about 70 miles north of LaCrosse, along the same river.
The similarities to Mothman of Point Pleasant, W. Virginia, are also notable. Mothman sightings often coincided with sightings of other large birds. Mothman had large eyes that shined red when illuminated, unlike the creature Wohali saw. Mothman also allegedly caused a curse leading to many deaths. However, the creature Wohali saw had a definite head, ears, and fangs with yellowish eyes. Immediate nausea was not reported in Mothman sightings.
Conclusion
Wohali and his son’s encounter with the Man-Bat near LaCrosse remains a compelling mystery. While connections to other sightings and legends are intriguing, the creature’s identity and origin are still unknown. This sighting adds to the lore of strange, man-sized creatures reported in LaCrosse. Whether these creatures are harbingers of death or simply figments of imagination, they continue to captivate and terrify those who encounter them.
