Waterfowl might not be the only wildlife disturbed by whatever is making the eerie howls, according to Greenhaw.

"I mean we have coyotes across the river and then they stopped and two days later this thing started to happen," he said. "Every night you’d hear the coyotes take something down on the other side of the river, and it’s loud, everybody hears them at night, but lately we haven’t been hearing them at all."

But these most recent incidents aren’t the only unusual encounters that Greenhaw and his friends have had around Rhinelander, he said.

"It’s not our first encounter that we’ve had," he said. "My friends and I, we go have bonfires in the woods and stuff, way out in the middle of nowhere. You’re driving three or four or five miles in the middle of nowhere and we saw something that was, well, none of us want to say what it is because we don’t want to sound like idiots, but it looked pretty damn tall. I mean, it was huge and it was at night—about twelve-thirty at night. I slammed on the brakes of my Toyota—this was out in the Parrish Trails—he grabbed his shotgun and I grabbed my shotgun, and we’re just sitting there while the thing watches us. And then it just slowly turns its head and it’s gone. You can’t hear anything crack or nothing, and it’s just unbelievable how quiet whatever it is can be."

"It was sitting right on the edge of the trail, and it looked like [where the creature was] the pine trees were sitting on a hill, but we walked in and they’re actually in a hole and you could see that the eyes were right next to the trees," he continued. "You could see it, it was something big. We thought it was something sitting in the trees, but it definitely wasn’t something sitting in the trees because when it moved, it moved fast. We stared at it for probably a minute to a minute and twenty seconds. We’re all making eye contact with this thing and it’s just scary as hell when it’s just staring back at you. We locked the doors, grabbed our shotguns, and were like ‘What the hell do we do? What is that?’ It was weird."

"We have bonfires out there all the time, and when it starts to mellow out, you can hear some weird stuff out in those woods. People freak out and end up leaving because they’re afraid to camp out there," he added.

The most recent phenomenon appears to be receding with the influx of colder weather, said Greenhaw.

"My neighbor and I were talking last night while we let our dogs out, and it was snowing, and we were like ‘I don’t think we’re going to hear anything,’" he explained. "It’s starting to snow and we had that cold front blow in the other night and both nights it’s been dead quiet. But it was making all these noises when it was really warm out and nice out at night, with clear skies, but the second the clouds started to move in it just stopped."

Regardless of the reprieve brought by the weather, Greenhaw insisted that people were on edge from the strange experiences.

"Nobody’s walking at night anymore after hearing that stuff in Rhinelander," he said. "They’re freaked out."

And as for himself, Greenhaw isn’t sure what to make of what he’s seen and heard.

"I don’t know what to think of all this, to be honest with you. I don’t know what to believe. Could be some redneck like myself out there doing something stupid to freak people out, but we’re out on the edge of town and nobody in town is really doing anything out there. It all started happening when the coyotes went away, and then during this pandemic there’s no action on the street—there's no cars running around or nothing at night—everybody's hunkered down, and that’s when you hear it. It’s probably close to the city, which is weird," he said. "All the neighbors now, we’ve all got pistols. We’re being careful. We’ve all got guns now, and we’re watching out, walking around with our guns at night. We’re all scared."

Eerie howls similar to those captured by Greenhaw and his neighbors have been recorded relatively recently in Ohio and northern Ontario, Canada.

Skeptical explanations include everything from wolves to elk to moose, while others attribute the sounds to something more paranormal, like Bigfoot or even Dogman. Wolves and elk have seen a resurgence in northern Wisconsin within the last decade, and the occasional moose does wander down from Canada—but that doesn’t explain Greenhaw’s sighting in the forest or the continued activity reported by him and his friends.

For now, the incidents remain unexplained.