Is the Lake Michigan Mothman back in Chicago?

According to one Chicagoan woman, it’s possible. Kel, as she requested to be called, took her roommate’s dog for a walk around midnight on January 9, 2020, and soon felt the presence of a mysterious creature down the street. She tried to settle her imagination, telling herself it must just be a person, but the figure stood at nearly eight feet tall.

“My roommate got a dog, and I was helping by taking him out to go to the bathroom in the Albany Park neighborhood in Chicago,” Kel told Tobias Wayland of Singular Fortean. “I was also going to go for a long walk because the dog was restless. As I started to walk down the sidewalk, I looked down ahead of me. Then, I saw a very tall, skinny, all-black figure about seven to eight feet tall.”

“It was shuffling towards me very slowly. I stopped and stared, trying to convince myself it was a person, but I couldn’t make out any arms, or if it had long arms tucked behind itself,” she went on. “I couldn’t make out a round head shape either. I instantly got scared. I didn’t have a good feeling. I got creeped out and fled back to my apartment, looking over my shoulder to see if it was still there. I just wanted to tell someone. I am not sure what I just saw but it was unsettling.”

Kel revealed the exact location of the encounter.

“The figure was under the street lamp on St. Louis [Avenue] and Sunnyside [Avenue], on the northwest side of the St. Louis sidewalk just across Sunnyside,” she continued. “I was on the southwest side of the St. Louis sidewalk on the other side of Sunnyside.”

When questioned about the possibility of it being a figment of her overactive imagination, Kel insisted on the irregularities of the creature.

“[It was] definitely a humanoid solid shadow figure,” she explained. “It wasn’t transparent or anything. Just black, skinny, and very tall, and it had weight to it as it shuffled. I could not see eyes or a face. The head was not a round silhouette. I saw two legs, but couldn’t make out any pants or shoes. No clothes. No arms dangling at the torso sides, but there appeared to be something being tucked away behind them. Just a dark, black, solid figure.”

“I was very confused why I could not see clothes or features besides a missized head and two legs and no arms, or some arms or something tucked behind the figure, just black,” she admitted. “I feel like the figure should have been better illuminated because it was right underneath the street lamp light.”

The description does sound eerily familiar to that of the Lake Michigan Mothman, a cryptid that pays homage to the Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The misshapen head is common, and the lack of arms, but something coming out from behind the shadow’s back could’ve been wings.

Lake Michigan Mothman sightings have been increasing in Chicago since 2017. Whatever the figure actually was, it upset Kel and made her feel crazy.