Reading · Kaney's Weird Files

Greeting Monster Hunters,

While I was - and still am - recovering, I had a lot of downtime laying around. Long ago, I had watched the old series MonsterQuest and remembered it was eerily a soothing show. I found it again on Amazon Prime and watched it through about 3 times. It helped me rest and relax often.

It was nice in a few aspects: real scientists going on expedition to see what they find, not necessarily cherry-pick evidence to prove a point; well-thought-out plans and no one jumping and screaming at shadows; entertaining reenactments; fun illustrations; some flamboyant characters; and ‘sophisticated’ 3d rendering models of creatures for the time.

In that light, I thought I would prepare an entire post as an homage to that show and ones like it.

Often, the team would assume a natural reason for the stories or events they investigate. So, they look for those known animals or natural explanations. Sometimes, they would find small elements that were not aligned with known explanations or could not find evidence to disprove a story.

What was neat is that it reinforced the vicious nature of some of the wolds most fearsome animals, large and small. At the very least, I learned a lot. It really put in perspective that at many times humans are at the mercy of nature’s creations.

The world of unknown and fringe that I typically explore includes exploring the truth behind mythological creatures and stories of aberrant known animals that deviate from their natural tendencies and venture into human territory.

Wait, wasn’t there an old Fox show: When Animals Attack?

In this post I’ll try to cover lots of territory in this realm. Hopefully I can do the topic some justice.

As always, a quick ‘Thank You’ to all those who just joined this space, the loyal readers, and sorry to see those leave who disabled email delivery of this substack. We are sorry to see you go.

Stay a while and listen.

- Tim

Tracked and Captured by Tim Kaney | Zoological Archive & Witness Perspectives

(I looked back at my old format and decided I preferred that method of sharing news articles. I liked being able to share more links in less space with less influence of my own thinking. It is facts of the stories that are important, not my interpretation.)

MonsterQuest (which I stream on PrimeVideo) is an American TV show which aired on the History Channel from 2007 to 2010.

It was produced by Whitewolf Entertainment and was focused on cryptozoological topics and mythological or paranormal entities reported to be seen by witnesses around the world.

I like how the Wiki for MonsterQuest states this:

The purpose of the show is best described by the narrator, Stan Bernard, in the introduction:

Witnesses (”People” for Season 4) around the world report seeing monsters. Are they real or imaginary? Science searches for answers...on MonsterQuest.

It ran for 5 seasons (one short one in 2026) and produced 74 episodes, running 45 minutes each. The show had producers Doug Hajicek and Will Yates attached with Dale Bosch as Executive Producer. According to the WIKI, it was cancelled only due to History Channel choosing another direction, not because of the show’s own merits or possible content in the future.

MonsterQuest investigations covered everything from Super Rats to Killer Crocs and everything in between, including many variations of Bigfoot and, even, Killer Bees.

It featured notable scientists, cryptozoologists, journalists, and researchers including the the likes of Ken Gerhard, Nick Redfern, and Lorne Coleman and, also, elite divers like Scott Cassell and Dale Pearson.

As a side note, most of the content in the ‘Cryptid’ news above are inspired by different themed episodes of the show.

Note: if you are familiar with this topic, skip this portion.

Made famous in the 1950s by zoologists Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson, this area of research is the study of animals or creatures that are not proven to exist, often thought to not use the scientific method, and one that lacks physical evidence for the establishment of the existence of reported legendary beasts. Most mainstream scientist regard it is a pseudoscience and a subculture, as such.

This label of certain groups who disseminate largely unsubstantiated claims through social and mass media have led to this area of study being stigmatized - along with ghost hunting and ufology. As with most things in life, the bad actors ruin it for the remainder of well-intentioned, level-headed, reasonable individuals.

Famous creatures of this type are ones you most likely heard of: Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster (Nessy), Jersey Devil, etc.

Numerous are the ways for people to get involved in this field of study and many are not requiring degrees of any kind. That makes it appealing for many with an interest, time, and money to do the work. One can research online, in libraries, or anywhere historical records of these types of reports are kept. Others can focus on collecting eyewitness testimonies. Beyond that is the option of expeditions into the field to observe and report. While the extreme path is to go out to hunt or capture said ‘monsters’.

In fact, I was so interested a few years ago, I went out and took an online course complete with certificate of graduation from the online, UK-Based school known as “The Center of Excellence". You can find a link to the program here.

In this show, techniques like thermal imaging, night vision goggles, baited trail cams, motion trap cameras, e-DNA, print casting, trapping and tagging, and so much more. I do think the show employs many modern scientific field research methods that are recognized tools of mainstream science.

Where I find it interesting is the gray area between what is known and unknown in the field of biology and zoology. Again, a theme I explore often - ‘liminality’. A good example of this is the existence of super-large, man-eating crocodiles being more of an unknown until more recently, where indisputable evidence has been gathered of these killer beasts (e.g. first story above and various episodes of this show). While there are hundreds of anecdotal reports of people who have gone missing in less developed areas of the world said to have been eaten by monster crocodiles, there was scant physical proof of them. Now, with that story I shared, and the images and reports of the beast having human remains in its belly, there is no doubt about what occurred. There is now a recorded specimen that takes these reports and events from a fringe report to mainstream based on verifiable data. That is the transition and process we all hope to achieve.

I understand there are less than scientific approaches to this area of study, which, understandably, draw criticism. Confirmation bias is a real problem where ‘belief’ overshadows the scientific method. Again, though, as with the UFO phenomenon, sometimes, what can’t be replicated or measured can only be assessed based on first-hand, eye-witness accounts where the similarities, despite geographic variations and disconnections between witnesses, prove too powerful for coincidence.

Where I like this show is that it established a baseline once a handful of witness testimonies are gathered. They usually go out to investigate the nature of the catalysts for these witness reports and convey the facts as found. If not, they often hypothesize on the possibility of the existence of one of their creatures given the data gathered.

More or less a ‘let’s go see what we can find’ methodology.

Exploration and discovery. Pure and simple.

Yes, even Wisconsin, where I am from, has its cadre of curious creatures from days past and present. Some were later to be revealed as true hoaxes while others remain true mysteries. Here is a short list of some of the more renowned and infamous we have to offer:

The Hodag

A mythological creature living in and around the Northwoods of Wisconsin, later proven to be a hoax. Papers back in the day claimed it had "the head of a frog, the grinning face of a giant elephant, thick short legs set off by huge claws, the back of a dinosaur, and a long tail with spears at the end". There was a rather well known prankster behind the myth and creature.

The Beast of Bray Road

This beast is described as a hairy, bipedal canine seen roaming the farmland near Lake Geneva Wisconsin, specifically on or around Bray Road just outside of Elkhorn. It is often known as the “Wisconsin Werewolf” with sightings going back to 1930. It is said to have dark fur, glowing yellow eyes, stands up to 7 feet tall, and comes with a nasty disposition. Journalist Linda Godfrey authored and published a book on the creature in the 1990s: The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf.

One thing that made this case more famous is that the local sheriff’s department had such an influx of sightings that they collected reports into a single folder. If I recall, it was labeled ‘werewolf’.

The Wendigo

Not constrained to Wisconsin this Native American myth appears in folklore of the area. It is described as a large, bipedal monster with long, sharp claws, an animal skull for a head with many antlers, and an emaciated, gaunt physique. The creature was used as a cautionary myth to warn people against selfishness, greed, and the like. It was considered to be a cannibalistic entity that consumed humans and its hunger grew the more it fed. Some even said it would possess humans who grew too greedy in the tribes.

Its story comes with an historically documented illness where an afflicted person suffers from a type of psychosis where they develop an insatiable taste for human flesh.

It is rooted heavily mythological and ancestral concepts with less outright sightings in modern times as compared to the Beast of Bray Road. Yet, people do report sightings or encounters to this day.

The Manbat (Wisconsin Mothman)

man bat.jpg — *Image Credit: Wohali (Witness Drawing)

No, not ‘Batman’. This cryptid is of another flavor and isn’t into saving people from the likes of The Joker. According to the first witness report, it is “a winged humanoid spotted near Lake Michigan, known for glowing red eyes and terrifying screeches”. This first account is more modern in that it comes from a witness in 2006 where the Wohalis (Father and Son), had an encounter both terrifying and debilitating. They were overcome with an illness that lasted for sometime after. The Pine Barren’s Institute has an interesting article on this creature here.

The Kettle Moraine Goatman

Another beast rooted more in campfire is the Goatman. There are still many reports of people seeing a bipedal humanoid with a goat-like head with fangs and horns, yet revealing a man-like upper-torso and a pair of goat legs with hooves. The legend is that there was a man that died on the Hogsback Road in Richfield, WI and now haunts it, delivering dastardly deeds to passing tourists destined to dangerous drives while under moonlight. More on the ‘para’ side of normal than ‘crypto’, this tall tale entails the attaching of evil or negative energy which is reported to hitchhike back to visitors’ homes, causing all kinds of chaos.

Here’s a fun page on the Richfield Historical Society website on this topic.

Devil’s Lake Monster

I’m including this one because it is from where I grew up - Devil’s Lake is located in Baraboo in Sauk County, Wisconsin. There are Native American stories of a creature with serpentine or octopus-like features going back generations. But, also, 19th century settlers reported seeing a serpentine beast in the lake’s waters. What is interesting is that it has drawn parallels to the blue hole dweller known as the LUSCA.

What I know from frequenting the lake often, is there are snapping and leather-back turtles aplenty. Their ridged backs could be similar to what was reported seeing. Also, while not known to be present, if there are lake sturgeon that could breach the surface and show their ridged backs, these could be responsible for sightings as well. Finally, we know there are water snakes that live there as well. What if some grew to enormous sizes and were seen by natives?

Devil’s Lake is known to be between 35 and 45 feet deep. That, mixed with it’s turbid water and vast amount of towering seaweed could provide ample hiding places for reclusive water beasts.

If you don’t know, MUFON is one of the oldest non-profit UFO reporting and investigating organizations in the world. MUFON stands for Mutual UFO Network. You can visit their site here.

According to their website:

MUFON officially began on May 31, 1969. At that time it was known as the Midwest UFO Network. As it outgrew the Midwestern state boundaries to become a world class UFO organization, the name was changed to Mutual UFO Network. That allowed the acronym MUFON to remain as the organization matured. Allen Utke, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Wisconsin State University was selected as the first MUFON Director. A year later Walter H. Andrus, Jr., replaced Dr. Utke as the MUFON Director, a position he held until 2000 when he retired and John F. Schuessler took over as International Director. John retired in November 2006 and James Carrion became the International Director. James Carrion resigned at the end of 2009 and Clifford Clift became the International Director. He resigned in January 2012 and David MacDonald took over. At the 2013 MUFON Symposium in Las Vegas, the leadership of MUFON changed again. Seven years later in July 2020, David MacDonald was chosen for a second time to lead MUFON as its Executive Director.

Several years ago, I worked as a Field Investigator for MUFON Wisconsin. I handled many cases of reports of lights seen in the sky, videos of tictac-like objects, and more. On the rare occasion I was given cases of non-human entity encounters from different parts of the state. I am relying on personal logs and memory for these summaries, so please be patient.

There are three that have always stuck out to me:

One was from far up north in the deep woods of Wisconsin. I want to say it was near Ironwood or Iron Mountain? A family experienced a loud sound from the roof of their cabin. They clearly made out the sound of something large crashing across their roof. It was reported to sound like claws scraping on metal. One of the family members went to look outside at what was making it and came face to face with a terrifying creature. It was humanoid with glowing eyes. After giving this poor family a great scare, it then took off into the woods. They lacked more details, but I could tell they were shook up about it.

Another case was a short report given, with no follow-up or response from the witness, of a day-time encounter with what was described as a reptilian humanoid being in downtown La Crosse. The only remaining data I have from that case is a Google Street View of where the encounter was reported to have happened.

Google street view of location of reported reptilian encounter

One of the more involved was a case in Northwestern Wisconsin around the Superior area (Poplar, WI). Two boys had been terrorized by an unseen horror while camping in one of the boys’ grandparents’ yard. It shook their tent. Made horrendous, guttural noises, then thrashed back into the woods, clearing trees from their roots with ghastly ease. The creature was described as 10 feet tall with long limbs, a featureless face, no hair, and gray skin.

[Read the italicized text in your best narrator voice…]

For years, residents of the Yahara neighborhood in DeForest, Wisconsin have been plagued by a mysterious killer. One that preys on small rodents, yet seems to not eat them. Squirrels and rabbits have been found with removed heads, torn throats, missing eyes, and eviscerated bodies. Yet no one has seen the animal responsible for these gruesome killings. There are no pools of blood, little signs of struggle, nor are are these prey animals being eaten. Residents claim the size of their prey are growing increasingly large and residents are getting anxious. What animal is responsible for these types of killings? Now, The Kaney’s Weird File Team investigates…

[The following is a true account…]

On May 24th, 2020, we came out to the front and I noticed something incredible and horrifying on our front stoop. I had to stop the kids from opening the door and leaving it was so gross. I went out to investigate. It was about 7 in the morning.

There was a dead rabbit on the right side of our concrete stoop. It was a big one, about 12 inches in length. It was in pieces and folded back on itself. The head was in tact. The rib cage was busted open and the entrails were missing. A glance up located the pile of missing innards about 2 feet away. The front, left foot was gone and the other folded back under its head. Further down the sidewalk was a smaller piece of the guts of the rabbit. Down to the right was a smattering of fur. No blood was present anywhere.

Warning: Graphic Image Ahead (It’s nature, though)

Rabbit body with entrails missing on stoop

We have a doorbell camera and we immediately reviewed the footage. There was no record of an animal attack in the review. Only that the rabbit shows up already dead sometime in the early morning.

Inquiries to the local DNR wildlife biologist indicated the types of typical predators that live in the area and which type most likely matched this type of killing behavior. Their best guess was either an owl or a hawk and that maybe a scavenger moved the kill to the stoop. That said, these were guesses and they could not answer definitively without something more to go on.

I set to work sporadically looking into this more. Using motion-activated, infrared trail cameras, I tried to capture the wildlife of our yard. While we did not have it out all the time, over the years, I did capture all kinds of wildlife, including ample food supply for any type of major predators.

We had two stray cats that roamed our yard at night that we saw with our own eyes. A male black cat that was of decent size and a likely female cat that liked to terrorize our indoor cats. On our trail cams, we also recorded a large-bodied racoon, a set of deer, song birds, the two cats, a fox, a third cat, and lots of squirrels and rabbits.

I lost count of the pieces of rabbit we found while mowing over the years. Whether it be feet or fur, they often just blew around with no trace of the rest of the animal. Then we started finding whole baby rabbits. One we found that was headless. When we lifted it, its head was underneath it. Nothing bitten, chewed, or anything. The animal left where it was decapitated. Another we found with a huge chunk of skin missing and a bit of the stomach gone. Again, just left there.

Warning: Graphic Content Ahead (It’s nature, though)

At one time, we found what looked like a squirrel skull under one of our bushes. There was two squirrels I found dead due to predators. One that looked fresher but had been completely flattened. I wondered if it had been dropped from a higher altitude. Some of the ribs looked to have been cracked from the bottom side up. The most recent was one with a chunk of it’s throat missing with a section of skin removed from its face, revealing its skull, bone, and teeth. It reminded me of the markings of animal mutilations.

Warning: Graphic Content Ahead (it’s nature, though)

To this day, other than the evidence of the type of animals in the area, we have not caught one in the act of killing. To me, they seem odd. Not that I don’t believe any of the mentioned animals couldn’t do it, but I just wonder.

Our backyard, where we have found many of the animals, is completely fenced in. I know the stray cats come in to the yard as we have seen them do it and we see their prints in the winter. I know cats are capable of killing just for play or practice or the act of surplus killing but the cats are not that much bigger than these rodents being slain.

I often wonder about avian predators. We know we’ve heard Great Horned Owls at night, but never could capture them on camera in our yard. I do have their hoots recorded on a sound file and videos of them several streets over and in a city park. I have seen and recorded Bald Eagles in the skies over our neighborhood, but have not seen them come in close yet. There are turkey vultures overhead, but the kills are fresh and not disturbed when I find them. We also have seen many Cooper’s Hawks in the neighborhood.

A summer or two ago we did try baiting the cameras with no luck at at all. We placed chunks of meat on upturned buckets, but nothing came for it, except bugs. It is now my theory the culprit may be attracted to movement, not just the smell of flesh.

Something that may lend credence to the avian predator (particularly the owl) theory is that one time that our cat got out in the backyard and we didn’t know he did until morning. We heard him meowing, but couldn’t see him. In a few minutes we found him underneath our deck and I had to remove a few boards to get him out. I immediately thought that he wouldn’t be under there unless he was frightened of something coming from above him, would he?

As for me, I am still curious as to what does all the killings. It’s been 6 years. This rabbit was big. I really want to capture on camera or witness with my own eyes the predator-on-prey event. The killings have been less the last month. Will there be more?

While I am no stranger to seeing dead animals, on houses, in yards, etc. over the years, it always stuck out to me that this small property has the highest concentration and frequency of kills out of any and all places I have ever lived. So, let it be known, the fact that animals are killed here is not what gets me. It’s the number and nature of them.

Current Status of Investigation: I have a motion-activated trail camera active. I had it in the backyard for a week or two and got no hits on it at night. I even put some salami out on a branch on the ground to see if what it attracts. Nothing touched it. We looked all over and found what looked like a large bedding area in our cat mint bush out front. Now it is propped there to watch the area.

Cat mint plant either growing naturally or used as bedding

Several nights watched what is out at night in our back yard. Nothing yet. It is weird because I don’t hear anything other than frogs a mile way most nights. The wind is usually dead still. And even with the mobile phone thermal imaging attachment I do not see anything nor with the IR cameras I have. There is no signs of life at all at night.

To be continued.

People who have first hand encounters of animals that should not exist are cousins to us who have had experiences in the UFO and paranormal ghost-type arenas. Yet, they are often relegated even further into the stigma of woo-woo and wackos.

Whether a result of the remote, often rural locations from which these encounters occur, or just how outlandish the descriptions of the creatures can be, mainstream scientific and media communities rarely regard these reports with little credence and so they are often left just as they are - faint whispers adrift in the ether of mysterious places, home to the unknown. No further investigations. No truth sought. No exploration.

While I certainly don’t intend to over-hype it, I do feel that shows like MonsterQuest help bear authentic witness to and offer respectful regard for the emotional toll these encounters bore on the witnesses. So often experiencers remain alone, silent in their transformational sightings, never feeling safe to come forward. They suffer in isolation from an unbearable weight of forbidden knowledge. No one asks for these events to happen to them, but they do happen. And getting ridiculed in addition to their lives crumbling around them after coming forward is no real reward, either. Why would they risk that for a hoax?

The witness of the impossible biologically, zoologically, and otherwise weird natural events deserve the same consideration and respect that we experiencers of the paranormal, UFOS, alien contact, and the like demand.

The ontological shock is no different for those folks that have genuine face-to-face meetings with the likes of Sasquatch than those of us who take the hand of a 4-foot-tall grey alien and calmly walk out of our home at 3 in the morning to a great big disc parked in our yards.

Let’s remember that as the world scrambles to cope with the chaos that is unfolding over Alien Disclosure right now.

If you like this type of content, please let me know. I had a thought to have a cryptid themed issue once every few months. There is also the possibility of breaking out the investigations and such with findings into their own series or separate posts.

If nothing else, think on this topic, and maybe give that show a chance.

May 2026 - An Homage to MonsterQuest

(I looked back at my old format and decided I preferred that method of sharing news articles. I liked being able to share more links in less space with less influence of my own thinking. It is facts of the stories that are important, not my interpretation.)

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