Urban legends or urban wildlife? Creepy creature sightings might just be thriving Chicago animals

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Over the last decade, hundreds of reports have cropped up across the Chicago area of people's horrifying encounters with a large, winged creature with glowing red eyes. Last month, Park Ridge residents looked out their windows to the creepy sight of a hairless, dog-sized creature crawling around the suburb. Earlier in the summer, visitors flocked to Lincoln Park's North Pond trying to find a mysterious creature lurking under the water.

Some may think these were sightings of the Mothman, a chupacabra and maybe a Nessie-like monster—which like Bigfoot—are mythic, improbable creatures at the center of urban legends and folklore. In most cases, Chicago's urban wildlife might offer a simpler explanation.

But residents might not be familiar with the variety of animals that thrive in the region. And humans tend to want to make sense of what they don't readily understand.

"A lot of people just may be completely unaware of how much mammalian diversity we have throughout Chicago," said Mason Fidino, a quantitative ecologist at the Lincoln Park Zoo's Urban Wildlife Institute. "But also some species that people may not think of as adaptable to urban environments."

The legend of the Mothman originated in Point Pleasant, Virginia, in the mid-1960s and has since spread across the country and around the world. Witnesses describe terrifying encounters with a human-like creature more than 6 feet tall, with large wings and bright red eyes, that many believe to be a bad omen.

In Latin American folklore, the chupacabra—a name that means "goat sucker" in Spanish—has fangs and lizard-like skin, and terrorizes livestock. Across the pond, in Scotland, the mythical Loch Ness monster, with its long neck and back humps, has drawn adventurers and visitors to the lake many believe it inhabits.

In Chicago, misconceptions about what animals belong in the city can easily lead to misidentifications, especially as viewers try to find recognizable traits in something strange and unknown. For instance, the creature in Park Ridge wasn't looking for goats to sink its teeth into; rather, it was a scraggly coyote sick with mange, a skin disease caused by parasitic mites, experts say. It's a common misunderstanding.

"Human beings are primed to see faces, and our brains tell us a story about the information we process with our eyes," said Lisa Brown, an anthropology and sociology professor at Florida International University. "So we might see a mangy coyote and say, 'Oh, that's a chupacabra.' Because we've seen lots of pictures of chupacabras before, as far as like, drawings and images. … But we might not have ever seen a picture of a mangy coyote."

Hidden just under the murky surface of the pond by the zoo was likely a big turtle, or possibly an alligator. And large birds—such as barred owls, sandhill cranes or great blue herons—can be misidentified as the Mothman, which urban legends say is a harbinger of doom.

"If you actually spent (time) walking around the city and just took a second to look up more often, it's actually pretty surprising, the diversity, especially of large birds, that you'll actually encounter," Fidino said.

One such case of mistaken identity was featured in an episode revisiting local Mothman sightings, part of the latest season of the documentary series "Unsolved Mysteries." A cyclist captured a GoPro video of a big, dark creature flying in broad daylight over a Pilsen street, thinking it could be unique photographic evidence of the winged humanoid.

Paranormal investigator Tobias Wayland, from Wisconsin, examined the video and determined with the witness that it was more likely than not the silhouette of a great blue heron. The thin, tall birds with long legs and a wide wingspan of up to 7 feet are the largest herons native to North America.

Wayland and another longtime investigator, Lon Strickler, began looking into Mothman sightings around Chicago in 2017. The pair have mapped over 175 credible area sightings of what Strickler initially called the "Chicago Phantom"—beginning in 2011, spiking in 2017 and 2018, and as recently as summer 2024.

Most non-credible reports from densely populated areas, Wayland said, are probably of large bird species—especially as urbanization encroaches in their habitat and climate change affects their roosting patterns. In fact, Strickler said, their first question for people who report having seen the Mothman is, "Are you sure it wasn't a bird?"

"There are so many people who live in Chicago, and many of them are probably not used to seeing, just for the sake of argument, a great blue heron flying," Wayland said.

"Probably most of them are going to figure it out and be like, 'That's a bird.' But there's a percentage of them who are just profoundly baffled by what they're seeing because it is outside of their experience. And in all earnestness, they will report this sighting of some unexplained phenomenon."

He said it is still helpful to investigate sightings that end up being misidentifications because it allows him to compare reports. For instance, the video of the great blue heron flying over Pilsen provided him a point of reference for other cases of daytime observations that lack "all of the paranormal elements" as opposed to other strange, vividly paranormal encounters.

"Everybody's got their own perception of what they're looking at," said Strickler. "And you kind of got to separate the wheat from the chaff."

They try to validate people's experiences regardless.

"It is not necessarily invalidating to hear a prosaic explanation for your sighting, as long as it is presented in a way that doesn't invalidate the experience itself," Wayland said.

"At no point did I imply that he had not experienced something that he couldn't explain. I firmly believe that he did. I don't think he was lying. I think he saw something, he didn't know what it was and the narrative that he created for this mystery was of this flying humanoid."

While urbanization and gentrification have certainly disturbed animal habitats and lifestyles, many have adapted to new environments—and, for the most part, have gotten good at keeping their distance from humans.

Fidino recalled going on a lunchtime walk with some co-workers on the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park a few years ago when they came across a coyote under some brush.

"There were hundreds of people out, enjoying the park, walking dogs, things like that," he said, "and absolutely none the wiser that there was a coyote within 20 meters of them."

Thousands of coyotes live in and around Chicago, and people have likely walked past one without noticing. When one of them gets infected with mange, it's more likely to be drawn to human food, which leads to increased sightings and interactions. This, in turn, generates more confusion among curious bystanders who think it might be a chupacabra or an undiscovered species.

"More often than not, people have not seen a coyote with no hair. So I could see where the people might make that jump," Fidino said. "But there is, of course, a much more logical explanation."

Brown said humans have a basic understanding of animals, but they either don't encounter them as often or don't pay attention when they do.

"So part of it is just not having this familiarity," Brown said. "We're natural storytellers, so why not lean on the funner story, the more exciting story that we can't prove it's not true?"

Fidino studies animals, not people, but he has a theory as to why humans might be more open to the idea of elusive monsters living, mostly hidden, among them.

"Isn't it kind of fun for there to be a bit of magic around, to let there be a little bit of mystery in the world?" he said.

But there is something more special to Fidino about the creatures he studies, which others can also delight in if they, too, look more closely.

"They'd be absolutely amazed by how much wildlife they share Chicago with," he said.

2024 Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.