The Beast of Bray Road or Bray Road Beast is a cryptid(cryptozoological) creature first reported in 1936 on a road outside of Elkhorn, WI. This label has been applied to any unknown creature in the State of Wisconsin, outside of the initial location. The paranormal report(s) have described the same characteristics as the reports when it was first sighted.
The road itself, Bray Road, is a quiet country road near the small community of Elkhorn. A lot of the claimed sightings were in the late 1980's and early 90's. This prompted a local newspaper, the Walworth County Week, to assign Linda Godfrey, a reporter, to cover the story. Linda was initially very skeptical, but later she became convinced of the beast through the sincerity of the witnesses. The series of articles she did became a book. The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf.
The beast is described in many ways. As a bear-like creature, as a hairy animal with two legs for walking, that resembles Bigfoot. It is unusually large, 2-4 feet tall on all fours and about 7 feet tall standing. It's an intelligent wolf creature which walks on its back legs and weighs between 400-700 pounds.It is also said that its fur is a brown grey color. Even though it hasn't been seen to transform from human to beast in any sightings, it's been labeled as a werewolf in newspapers.
A number of theories have been proposed. Some included the creature is an undiscovered variety of a wild dog, a wolfdog, a waheela, which was said to be a prehistoric giant dog or a coydog. It's possible that mass hysteria and hoaxes have caused falsehoods of normal creatures to be lumped under the same label. With the sighting in Wisconsin, there has been a rash of similar encounters in the neighbor state of Michigan. There was a song release of The Legend in 1987 about the Michigan Dogman. Steve Cook, an author, received reports which included a photograph and video evidence of the beast. There is not a known link between the sightings in the states apart from the similarities that describe the creature.