The Beast of Bray Road
Reports of an upright, wolf-like animal on a farm road in Walworth County, Wisconsin. When a reporter went to the county animal control officer in 1991, he already had a stack of them in a folder labeled Werewolf.
Field Guide Entry
The folder
Linda Godfrey was a reporter at Walworth County Week, a weekly supplement to the Janesville Gazette, when she was handed the story in 1991: people outside Elkhorn were talking about something on Bray Road. She went to the county animal control officer expecting to put it to bed.
He had a stack of reports waiting. The folder holding them was labeled Werewolf.
December 29, 1991
Godfrey's piece ran that day, illustrated with a cartoon of an upright wolf eating roadkill, which shows what the paper thought it was printing. The descriptions in it were consistent in a way that cartoon was not: an animal the size of a large man, heavily furred, with a long muzzle, seen upright at the roadside over carrion or crossing in front of headlights.
Syndicated television arrived within weeks. Crews came to Delavan to interview her, and reports came in from across Racine, Walworth, and Jefferson counties as the story traveled.
The reporter's position
Godfrey stayed on it for 30 years and wrote The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf along with a shelf of books after it. She never said what the animal was. Her method was to take witnesses seriously, record what they described, and decline to supply the conclusion they had not reached themselves.
Godfrey died in 2022, aged 71. Bray Road is a two-lane road through farmland with nothing on it to mark any of this.
Visiting Information
Bray Road is a public road southeast of Elkhorn and there is nothing to see on it. No sign, no pull-off, no marker. It runs past working farms and private houses, so driving it slowly at night with a spotlight is the surest way to have a conversation with a landowner or a sheriff's deputy.
Elkhorn is the practical base and treats the legend lightly rather than commercially. Nearby Lake Geneva has the lodging and the food, and a handful of local operators run seasonal tours that take in Bray Road along with other Walworth County stories.
Godfrey's books are the best preparation. They carry the witness accounts in full, which is the whole substance of the case.
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