As promised, I am continuing my series of posts on The Silence with a Manwolf case. The late Linda Godfrey also provided this case, which appears in three of her books: Hunting the American Werewolf, Real Wolfmen: True Encounters in Modern America, and Monsters Among Us. The details of the case are not extensive in any of those sources, but I chose this incident because The Silence is not only present, it is a major factor in the witnesses’ account.
The event occurred in Decatur, Illinois, during the summer in the early 2000s. A couple (who chose to remain anonymous) had been sleeping soundly when “they were awakened not by noise but by the lack of it. All the crickets and frogs had ceased their chirping; there was only a dead, ominous silence.”
Godfrey continues the story, saying, “… the husband got up and looked out the front window, then immediately shouted for his wife to come and see the baffling parade passing their house on the dimly lit street.” The couple reported seeing not just one, but four, bipedal creatures walking along the street outside their home.
The beings all had long muzzles and the oft-described pointed ears (like a wolf or German Shepherd, according to other witnesses) setting up high on their heads and they made their orderly way about one hundred yards down the street to another house.
It is strange enough seeing four Manwolves striding through your neighbourhood, but the behaviour of these beings made this incident even more creepy. According to the witnesses, the creatures swarmed the home’s exterior, peeking in the windows and generally seeming to inspect every inch of the building. One of the Manwolves reportedly leaped onto the roof of the home and strode around it.
After the group of creatures had made their inspection of the other domicile, they departed to the east, walking toward a neighbouring golf course. Godfrey concludes by stating that the “couple returned uneasily to their bed”. I would think that this might be an understatement, although witnesses returning to sleep after seeing something astonishing is not completely unknown in the annals of the paranormal.
Unlike our Bigfoot case from the last post, the major weirdness signal in this case was The Silence, a quiet so profound that it woke two people from a sound sleep and drove the husband to take a look out the window. Clearly, these people felt that something was going on once they were conscious enough to recognize it.
Now, again, we could blame this intense silence on the presence of four apex predators in the area. Were I to look out my window and spy four Manwolves, I think my first action would be to make certain that I and my spouse could observe in relative safety. In other words, I would want cover and I would remain as quiet as I could until I felt that any danger had passed. I imagine animals feel much the same way; however, one detail in this short story makes me wonder if something more than predator presence was involved in this incidence of The Silence.
The quiet that descended over the area was so profound that it woke these witnesses from sleep. Being wakened by quiet is not normal and, in fact, seems to me to be quite unusual. Quiet is one of the things that humans look for as a condition for sleep (unless there are psychological factors that require some background noise for slumber). I suspect that the waking had something to do with one of the Oz Factor’s other signposts: the feeling of something going on or something about to happen. The fact that the witnesses described The Silence as dead and ominous seems to bear this idea out.
There is one other reason that I favour a more paranormal view of this case. In her discussions of the Manwolf, a subject that she became expert on after her research for her book The Beast of Bray Road, Linda Godfrey puts forth several theories about what the Manwolf is. Her ideas ranged from a wolf hybrid that had adapted to bipedal locomotion to a being from another dimension that sometimes manifested in our own realm. In this case, there is one other feature that points hard toward a more paranormal reading of the incident.
The witnesses describe a very thorough perusal of a neighbouring house as the couple watched. The couple said the Manwolves peered into the house windows and, at one point, one sprang onto the roof. As soon as I read this, I was minded of the skinwalkers of (Dine’) Navajo lore.
The skinwalker, amongst the Dine’, is clearly a supernatural being. Anthropological studies tell us that the skinwalker is a “witch” that develops its supernatural powers after sacrificing a family member or close relative. This terrible violation of Dine’ mores grants the skinwalker the ability to shift shape, amongst other powers. The skinwalker generally avails itself of these powers in order to harass and even curse people with whom it has some grudge.
One sign of a skinwalker’s presence is the sound of pacing on the roof of a victim’s hogan (a traditional Dine’ dwelling), often with dirt seeping in through the smoke hole of the small home to make it clear that something really is on the roof. I find it quite interesting that the Manwolves in this incident seemed determined to make their presence known by peeking in windows and jumping to the roof of the house. I have to wonder if a) the home was occupied at the time, b) what, if anything, the residents saw that eerie night, if they were home, c) whether the neighbourhood was near an “Indian” mound, and, d) what the occupants of that home might have done to cause such a visitation.
In several books, Godfrey highlights that the Manwolf is often sighted near indigenous mounds used, among other purposes, as burial sites. Godfrey wonders, on more than one occasion in her excellent books, whether the Manwolf is a guardian of these ancient mounds, left behind by ancient shaman to keep the mounds inviolate. If that is true, then The Silence noted in this case might have come from the presence of a pack of these supernatural guardians making their way into our world. The question would be: if the Manwolf is a guardian of the monds, what provoked such a large response?
As the blog progresses, I will talk more about occult theories on how such a thing might happen. For now, however, we are going to move to another area of the paranormal and talk about The Silence in a UFO case.