Tales from Wisconsin's Darkside: New book shows how weird Wisconsin really is

Published Wednesday, April 27, 2005 12:29:07 PM Central Time

By ERIC LaROSE
EagleHerald staff writer

Growing up in Wisconsin you hear a lot of strange tales.

Have you ever heard the story about Haunchyville, the colony of little people living near Muskego? How about the Lost Pyramids of Atlantis in the southern end of Rock Lake near Aztalan Park? How about the trial of the poison widow?

There are literally thousands of stories like this in Wisconsin alone, all of them appealing to that part of the mind that craves the curious and odd, and all of them certified weird.

But how do you discern fact from fiction? Well a new book, "Weird Wisconsin: Your Travel Guide to Wisconsin's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets" by Linda S. Godfrey and Richard D. Hendricks does it's best to do just that.

Published by Barnes and Noble Books, this travel guide of the offbeat path of Wisconsin few have had the privilege of seeing features stories about the odd, strange, unique and just plain weird things this state has to offer in one nice package: Like a Coney Island freak show.

So step right up, and feast your eyes on the stranger the strange, the unusually bizarre, the weirder than weird Wisconsin.

Bray beasts and ghosts

Based on the popular "Weird U.S." by Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman, creative directors of this book, "Weird Wisconsin" is an interesting journey, a trek that began in different places for both Godfrey and Hendricks.

For Godfrey it began with a werewolf sighting in Walworth County.

"I came to their attention by The Beast of Bray Road," said Godfrey. "When they did the "Weird U.S." book they asked me to write a synopsis on the beast of bray road and then they also wanted to use a couple of other stories from my Web site (www.cnb-scene.com). I've been writing stories that were been too weird for the newspaper for years."

Godfrey was a newspaper reporter at "The Week" in Walworth County for over a decade. It was there were she first came in contact with The Beast of Bray Road story.

According to folks down in Jefferson and Walworth counties, the shaggy, manlike, wolf-headed creature has been haunting the cornfields and woods around Bray Road since the 1930s. Though people whispered about it in private for years, the story came out in 1991, and it wasn't just one person telling it. There were dozens of people who have claimed to see the beast, sometimes called a manimal and sometimes kindly referred to as Eddy.

"There were people that I knew weren't lying and they all said that they saw this thing, which just didn't make any sense. Every reporter shares this certain curiosity. I just felt that I wanted to keep getting to the bottom of it," said Godfrey. "It all began with a story in "The Week" and it's been sort of a non-stop roller coaster since."

Because of that story, and the book that followed, Godfrey became the expert on the Bray Beast, appearing on talk shows and national TV shows. That's how she met co-author Hendricks.

Hendricks got into the Weird business at a young age, but only recently decided to write about it.

"I've always been interested in weird stuff going back to when I was a kid," said Hendricks. "I grew up on a farm up north of Ladysmith so things going on elsewhere always attracted me. The family, like every family, has weird legends and ghost stories and things like that. My mom had gotten a phone call from her mother after she died and my mom witnessed a ghost in the house and other relatives had other odd things happen to them.

In 1998 Hendricks was run over by a car after talking with a friend about compiling a book on strange tales. It was a wake-up call for him to get to work.

"Life can really pass you by," he said. "It would be nice to leave something behind."

Haunchyville, USA

Speaking of strange legacies, one of the most interesting tales in "Weird Wisconsin" is that of Haunchyville.

According to teenagers all over the southern part of the state, Haunchyville is a community of little people, "deadly midgets" as one person in the book refers to them, who live in a secret community in Muskego.

A lone "normal sized" man stands guard on the community, surrounded by corn fields, to make sure no trespassers enter the forbidden zone.

Being from northern Wisconsin, Hendricks found out about Haunchyville from an unsolicited e-mail from a fan of his Web site, www.weird-wi.com.

"The first e-mail I ever got it said "Surely you've heard of Haunchyville." It was like this challenge. I started asking around and before I knew it I was getting other e-mails over time," said Hendricks. "It's one of those typical stories that teenagers tell, it goes back to the old tradition of snipe hunts and things like that. Older brothers and fathers and uncles tell these tales, and the kids want to go and see it for themselves."

Unlike many of the stories in "Weird Wisconsin," Hendricks wasn't able to find any truth about Haunchyville, though there is some truth to the $276 fine you can receive for trespassing in Muskego.

"On the other hand, there were lots of circus enclaves in Wisconsin and when those circuses broke up they had lots of little people that had to go somewhere," said Godfrey, playing devil's advocate. "The whole thing does make sense because I do know of a community on Delavan Lake that had ex-circus people that was quite private."

Haunted houses, poison widows, and a man called Buffalo

Both Godfrey and Hendricks do have day jobs. Godfrey has been a teacher and a reporter, and besides writing (she is currently working on her second book about the Beast of Bray Road) she does freelance illustration.

Hendricks is the news editor at "The Anomalist" (www.anomalist.com), investigates ghosts with the Wisconsin Paranormal Research Center and pays the bills as a legal researcher in Madison.

But at the end of their normal days, they start to look for the strange. They have gone on werewolf watches, they have driving all over the state talking to people about the weird things in their towns, and they have even been teaching people about things in their own backyards.

"I found someone who didn't know their own house was haunted," said Godfrey. "All the neighbors knew about these ghosts that were supposed to appear on the balcony during storms, but when I called the owner about it he had never heard about it. He was pretty shocked but he was very game about it. He took Rick and I on a tour of this fabulous house, took us up in the tower and let us look around."

The both do have their favorite stories.

"One of my favorite stories is this man that calls himself Buffalo in the north woods. He has this entire mythology developed and makes these finely crafted by bizarre effigy figures out of leather jackets he gets from the thrift shop and burns," she said. "He's got a story for every single one and he's got this great saying 'What Buffalo makes comes out of Buffalo's mind.'"

Hendricks has his own favorite weird place.

"The place that moved me is Dr. Evermore's Sculpture Park," said Hendricks. "It's just amazing, there are machines sitting there in the middle of a cleared field with trees growing around it and all these other shapes that he created around it. There's this mythology behind it that he's building this enormous space ship that's going to launch him into outer space and each of these pieces he builds fits into this mythology."

And even though "Weird Wisconsin" is twice as big as other Weird books, which include "Weird Florida," "Weird Illinois," and "Weird New Jersey," both Hendricks and Godfrey said that they have unearthed enough material to have at least one more book.

"To us they left out some of the best things," said Godfrey.

Weird Wisconsin is available in bookstores. For more information, or to read some strange tales, go to www.weird-wi.com or www.cnb-scene.com.