Witnesses come forward to describe a rapidly hopping tall, skinny black hooded being or creature observed in Coles County, Illinois. One witness states that there may have been folded wings on the back.

On Saturday, I received the following account:

"Last night, I heard the most amazing strange story that happened in Coles County, Illinois. It was a creature / being I've never heard anything of before. Have you ever heard of some sort of being / creature that is like 8 to 9 foot tall, very skinny, wearing a black hooded cloak and instead of walking, it hops very high and very fast to move?

I talked to a woman who saw one cross a road in 2012 down by Mattoon / Charleston, IL.

Another friend said she and her husband saw the same thing in 1989 about 8 to 10 miles from the area she called Airtight Bridge. She said the damn thing jumped about 3 feet in the air each time, was upright, and it jumped so fast that it was humanly impossible. It moved forward slowly though because it had to jump so many times to cross the road she said it must have jumped a few hundred times so fast it was almost just a blur. She saw no knees bent while jumping. It eventually made its way across and disappeared into trees. She said it had very high shoulders, almost as if there were wings underneath the cloak. It was very early morning around 5 am and still relatively dark, and she was headed to work. It never turned to look at her, so she didn't see a face, but there was a hood over it's head anyway. It was illuminated by her headlights. Very strange indeed." CJ

NOTE: I'm not sure what to make of these sightings, but I believe that one could draw a possible connection to the winged humanoid phenomenon being reported throughout Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. As you may know, there have been a number of other humanoid sightings in some of the forest preserve areas throughout northern and eastern Illinois.

CJ also stated "I talked to the witness, and several others who confirm that the story is exactly as she told them in 2012. It was seen on North County Rd. 1200 E. about a mile south of Illinois Rt. 16. She is still terrified and baffled by this incident."

Coles County is located in east central Illinois, between Springfield and the Indiana border.

The Airtight Bridge is a steel bridge spanning the Embarras River approximately 8 miles north of Charleston, Illinois. The bridge was built in 1914 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. It reportedly got its name from the unnatural stillness encountered when crossing it.

 

In 1980, a dismembered corpse was found on the east bank of the river 30 yards downstream from the bridge, causing quite a stir in the local media. Police investigated for years, but were unable to determine the identity of the victim until 1992, when DNA testing produced a match to a missing person from Kankakee, Illinois. Once a cold case investigated by the Illinois State Police, the victim's husband was charged with the murder on March 2, 2017.

If you have more information on this phenomena, please contact me. Lon