Birdman

[im2spooky4u]

Has anyone heard of any stories of seeing a birdman in Wisconsin? The body of a man with the head of a bird with a long yellow beak. The creature is covered with yellowish feathers all over it's body.

When I was about 10 years old we lived in the country on the side of a bluff. It was a very isolated place, lots of trees surrounding the house. My grandparents had a trailer on our property right next to our house. One day my grandma started screaming. When we went to see what was going on she was hysterical and screaming about a birdman looking at her through the window. She said she was sitting in her chair watching her shows and saw something by the window. When she got up to see what it was there was this tall birdman looking in at her. She said it was about 6' tall and covered with yellowish feathers and a very long beak.

A few years before that happened my sister insisted that Big Bird came to visit us one night. She said he took us outside and showed us all kinds of neat stuff and played with us. Then she said the next morning we went outside and found big yellow feathers. I don't remember ever seeing or playing with Big Bird in the middle of the night or ever finding any big yellow feathers. She talked about it for about a year and insisted that it happened. Then she just never talked about it anymore. I asked her about it once when we were teenagers and she didn't remember a thing about it. Not even that she talked about it for about a year.

It was around 1980 in the summer that my grandma saw the birdman at her window and around 1977 in the summer when my sister said we played with big bird. It happened about 5 miles west of Mauston, WI.

I tried a google search for wisconsin birdman and I found these pages,

www.uwm.edu/Dept/ArchLab/cahokia/pictures/birdman.html
It a stone birdman tablet found by the UW Milwaukee while doing research at the Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville, Ill.

www.wisconsinstories.org/2001season/native/nj_journey.html
Scroll down to Sauk County and read the story about Devil's Lake State Park. There's a bird mound that may represent a "Bird-Man".

www.paraview.com/coleman/coleman_excerpt.htm
This page is an excerpt of the book Mysterious America by Loren Coleman. In the 6th paragraph it talks about the strange stuff at Devil's Lake.

[Chad Lewis]

Hey Spooky,

Here is a case that may be very similar to the creature you speak of. Investigator Todd Roll from Wausau received a case of a large 8- foot tall phantom chicken hovering around St Peter’s cemetery in Stevens Point. Rick Hendricks and I went to the cemetery to investigate and we found that the cemetery is near water and a large wooded area, giving rise to Rick’s theory that it may have been a Bigfoot like creature. However, it may also fit into your birdman category.

-Chad Lewis

[Yeti]

Wow, another great story spooky..! I've heard of these bird men.... Pretty weird stuff

[Einstein2]

Hi,I do not know if this will help you ..Have you seen the Mothman Prophecies movie?This is very simular to what you talk about.That movie spooks the hey day out of me.I would love to see this place myself... it is in West Virginia. I also know that reading the walls of caves and such in some parts of the world show of men with wings...Don't know if it is related to this being.Very interesting though.

[Chad Lewis]

Spooky,
Can your grandma draw what she saw, or did she make a drawing?

[im2spooky4u]

Thanks for the replies everyone

Chad- Sorry but no, grandma never drew a picture and she passed away a long time ago. Here's a better description of what she said she saw, it was the body of a man with arms and legs, very human looking with yellowish colored feathers all over the body. They were like big, round feathers, not long and skinny like on most birds. She said the feet looked just like bird feet except really big and thick with claws on the toes. I don't remember if she said how many toes it had or if it had hands. The head was a huge bird head, covered with feathers like on the body and a long yellow beak. She said it was like the bird head came right out of the shoulders. That's what I remember about her describing it.

I have never heard of any other birdman sightings. I always hoped I would hear of at least one other person seeing some type of birdman creature. I searched the bluff for years looking for anything that could possibly be connected to it but I never found anything out of the ordinary.

When I told my husband about all of this he said my sister was dreaming and thought it was real, and grandma probably fell asleep watching her shows and when she started to wake up Sesame Street was on and in her dreamy state of mind she thought she got up and saw this birdman outside when it was really just big bird on TV.

That could very well explain the whole thing, but I'll still keep hoping that some day I'll either see it myself or find another person that saw it.

[weirdwi]

Thanks for the interesting report. I've got a few giant bird sightings in my files beyond the phantom chicken story Chad mentions.

Most of them, though, are of something that perhaps looks more like a giant owl. Weary Road, a spot near Stoughton, supposedly is home to an enormous luminous owl that's occasionally seen -- in this case, the coloration is white. The researcher Mark Hall has collected several large bird sightings -- he posits that the Mothman may be an enormous owl. Again, all speculation.

The yellow coloration is interesting. Do you recall, was it a bright yellow? A muted yellow? Do you remember the "neat stuff" the birdman showed you?

Eyes? Feet? -- Color. Any other distinguishing features?

There are birdmen legends around the world -- but as you found out, pretty rare in Wisconsin.

Thanks!

Richard Hendricks
[e-mail]

Weird Wisconsin
www.weird-wi.com/

[im2spooky4u]

Thanks for the info Richard.

My grandma said the bird was a yellowish color. I don't know if she meant a bright yellow or a dull yellow.

I don't remember seeing, playing with or being shown anything by this thing. My sister said we did and she talked about it for a long time like it really did happen. I don't remember anything specific about the "neat stuff". She always said "Don't you remember all the neat stuff we played with?". And I would tell her no and that it was a dream because I wasn't there.

I'll ask my sister again about it the next time I see her.

I don't mean to change the subject Richard, but I wanted to tell you I just found another meaning for the name Wonewoc. It could also mean "The place of the evil spirit". It just gets better each time I search... LOL! www.rootsweb.com/~wijuneau/Wonewoc.htm

So now I have found "Land of evil howls", "They howl", and "The place of the evil spirit". But I still can't find why it was given the name.