Tag Archives: weird wisconsin

253 – Haunchyville: Wisconsin’s Miniature Murderers

I grew up in a tiny town called Big Bend on the outskirts of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While we could get to the city in less than a half an hour, it was also incredibly rural with half my fellow classmates living on farms and the rest families who had left Milwaukee proper in the migration out of the Rust Belt cities that happened in the 60s and 70s.

One of my favorite things to do was to go our for what we used to call “Fright Nights”, which is find abandoned places that had urban legends associated with them and check them out. One of my friends who often came out on Fright Nights worked in the little hamlet of Muskego, Wisconsin at a Supper Club. Muskego was only a few minutes away from Big Bend towards Milwaukee, we passed through it all the time just to go get groceries. So when he told me about a supposed village of little people that are bent on revenge, I was like “how have I never heard this story before?!” and “When are we going?!”

His workmates who went to Muskego High School told him about the legend of Haunchyville. And here’s the story as it was told to me:

Near the end of Mystic Drive in Muskego is a barn where a farmer hanged himself. Underneath the body, in the dirt, you could see many child-sized footprints all around where he was hanging. On the wall there was a message written in his own blood that said “The Haunchies made me do it. The Haunchies made me do it.” If you go down to the end of Mystic Drive, you can still see the barn and sometimes people report the phantom of a hanging body at night. And as you go down the road, you’ll see houses with small doorways and the stop signs are at a much smaller height.

The Legend of The Haunchies

What?! Of course, I wanted to check that out, so we picked a night and went out to Haunchyville to find out what we could see. It was a hot night and we parked our car before we got to the No Trespassing sign and just started walking down the road and it was mostly just an empty field. We did see a few signs that maybe were lower than normal, but nothing special and some backyard shacks, but no hanging ghost body!

As we got farther down the road, we heard a powerful scream that sounded like a gigantic bird. And that was it for me, I ran back, abandoning my friends and being a gigantic wussy for which I was mercilessly ridiculed by my friends for awhile afterwards (sigh, I deserved it!)

But we weren’t the only people who ventured down Mystic Road to Haunchyville, on the hunt for a paranormal experience (I really wanted to see the hanging body more than I wanted to see any murderous little people!) In fact, it was a popular Milwaukee area legend that started in the 1950s. And it was more than the colony of little people, there was the idea that:

  • They were former circus sideshow dwarves that murdered the ringmaster
  • They would attack you with burning torches
  • They would saw off your legs at the knees and make you live with them
  • They had a full-size protector who was an albino(!) that would fire off shotgun warnings to make you leave the land
  • The legend was invented as a front for a distillery/liquor operation during the 1920s

In this episode, we discuss the various aspects of the urban legend, as well as similiar legends throughout the United States (we tackled San Antonio’s Midget Mansion in a previous episode on location in Texas!) as well as some other Wisconsin cases with witnesses who actually claim they’ve seen groups of little people doing mysterious things.

For the song this week, what else could we call it? Let Sunspot take you to “Haunchyville”!

Going down the old farm road
and you’re not alone
there’s something in the cornfield
Are you fast enough to outrun
an albino with a shotgun
He’s got a secret he ain’t gonna reveal

watch out for the little guys
they’ll cut you down to size
you don’t want to pursue it
the haunchies made me do it
Trespass on Mystic Drive
now you’re playing with your life
no one will hear your cries
When they drag you straight to Hell
don’t go down to Haunchyville

You should have stayed away
and now their debt has been repaid
a trail of tiny footprints left in the mud
You might hear their evil laughter
when you’re hanging from the rafters
there’s a message for you written in blood

watch out for the little guys
they’ll cut you down to size
you don’t want to pursue it
the haunchies made me do it
Trespass on Mystic Drive
now you’re playing with your life
no one will hear your cries
When they drag you straight to Hell
watch out for the little guys
they’ll cut you down to size
you don’t want to pursue it
the haunchies made me do it
Trespass on Mystic Drive
now you’re playing with your life
no one will hear your cries
When they drag you straight to Hell
don’t go down to Haunchyville
don’t go down to Haunchyville
don’t go down to Haunchyville
When they drag you straight to Hell
don’t go down to Haunchyville

210 – The Bray Road Beast: Hunting Small Town Monsters with Seth Breedlove

Back when we talked to Lyle Blackburn in episode 180, he mentioned that the next Small Town Monsters project would be filming in Wisconsin (yes, little old Wisconsin!) and would be featuring the strange bipedal canine sightings in the southeastern part of our state in the early 90s, made popular by our friend Linda Godfrey‘s book, The Beast of Bray Road. Fast forward to now and the first trailer for the movie. The Bray Road Beast is out!

Filmmaker Seth Breedlove is the creative powerhouse behind the Small Town Monsters film series. Small Town Monsters is an independent film series exploring lost and bizarre history around the United States. They’ve covered everything from The Mothman of Point Pleasant to the Boggy Creek Monster, and now they’re tackling our hometown werewolf, a story that I remember fondly from the the local news when I was in high school. (Hey, and check it out, the story even made it to Inside Edition!)

In this episode, Seth talks to us about:

  • His inspiration to start the Small Town Monsters series
  • Why he thinks that Bigfoot is a lost species of ape (if Bigfoot exists…)
  • The most interesting thing he uncovered about the Mothman of Point Pleasant
  • Treating the Beast of Bray Road like a Hammer Horror Movie (we miss you, Christopher Lee!)
  • The weirdest (paranormal?) thing that happened to him on location while they were filming
  • Possible relationships of the beast to Skinwalker Ranch and Native American legends
  • How the themes of the Bray Road Beast turned darker after on particular interview changed his initial perspective into something a lot scarier

You can find all of Seth Breedlove’s Small Town Monsters series on their website, www.smalltownmonsters.com. If you’ve got Amazon Prime, you can watch some of the films right now! But why don’t you get psyched up by listening to our interview with Seth Breedlove first!

Wendy and I made a pilgrimage to Bray Road in episode 52 and we recorded our trip!

For this week’s song, we were inspired by the patience of monster and ghost hunters. You travel and stay out all night and usually wind up coming home without a shred of evidence. But no matter what, it’s fun to explore the mysteries of the universe, even if you don’t bring home a trophy very often.  In this track, “Hunting Monsters”, a woman thinks that her man might be up to no good because he says he’s looking for cryptids, but always comes home empty-handed.

When you go fishing
you get wet
when you go drinking
you get drunk
When my man comes back
from where he’s been
it’s like he ain’t got nothing done.
it’s like he ain’t had any fun

I keep looking out my window
and I lay on the bed alone
Because my baby says he’s hunting monsters
but he ain’t never brought one home.

I’ve looked for lipstick
on his lapel
I looked for perfume
on his shirt
but he ain’t been to the gin mill
I know he ain’t out chasing skirts
He looks at footprints in the dirt

I keep looking out my window
and I lay on the bed alone
Because my baby says he’s hunting monsters
but he ain’t never brought one home.
Oh my old man says he’s hunting monsters
but he ain’t never
he ain’t never brought one home.


157 – Monsters Among Us: Cryptids and More with Linda Godfrey

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Linda Godfrey, the author who first brought the world’s attention to the Beast of Bray Road in the early 1990s.  We interviewed her all the way back in Episode 51, brought her to our cryptid round table in Episode 67, and couldn’t wait to get her back to discuss her latest book, Monsters Among Us. I mean, of course we’re going to love Linda!

linda godfrey
Linda Godfrey

  1. She’s from right down the road from where we all grew up.
  2. She co-authored the book Weird Wisconsin which is sadly out-of-print but it was the Fortean Bible of America’s Dairyland in the 90s.
  3. She is a great storyteller who keeps things believable. I don’t have to mention that there’s a trend in this field to just jump and exaggerate outrageous details to juice up a paranormal story. Linda das managed to keep a good deal of her journalistic integrity for over a quarter of a century, now that’s something to be proud of!

To kick off the show, Wendy and I use our trashed voices to talk a little about our musical weekend, including a show at a haunted club in Middleton, Wisconsin, the Wisconsin State Fair, and an afternoon show on the Sugar River (which has its own UFO sightings and ghost stories) and then Wendy also tells a couple highlights from her trip to the Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas at the beginning of August. Including her two favorite cosplayers as Captain Kirk and Mister Spock!

Then, Allison from Milwaukee Ghosts joins Linda and I for a discussion about the latest news about the Beast of Bray Road, her favorite new cryptid stories,  a little Native American lore from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and even a cryptic preview of what she’s working on right now!

YOu’re going to want to get more info on Linda by checking out her blog and get the latest on the Chicago Mothman, dogmen, werewolves, skin walkers, bipedal canines, and more at her Twitter feed (@lindasgodfrey).

Considering that our first interview with Linda about her book, American Monsters, inspired our EP of the same name, we knew that another conversation with her would spark some musical creativity.  Her titles just lend very well to tracks laden with symbolism. When we thought about “Monsters Among Us”, we thought about our neighbors. Your neighbors seem like they’re great people and you have fun with them, you have them over for a barbecue, and you really like them.  But then you see what they write about on Facebook. You see what kind of beliefs they have and in today’s Internet and political climate, it seemed that writing a song about how people that usually like each other as neighbors who connect through their locations or families or sports teams, might hate each other if they knew all about each other’s political beliefs.

Are other people’s differing beliefs in this world of outrage, forces for and against political correctness, and fake clickbait so offensive that we discount how they are when you’re hanging out with them in person. So we thought that lent itself to an interesting song idea, “The Psychopath Next Door”.

Watching through the windows
Peeking through the cracks
Waiting for their moment
So don’t you turn your back.

They act like they’re your friends,
But don’t you be a cuck,
They’re worshipping the Devil,
And it’s your soul they’ll suck

Sometimes the truth
Is just a metaphor
To think I barbecued with
The psychopath next door

The monsters live among us,
I see plenty everyday.
I don’t know who I can trust.
So I’ll send you all away.

So I don’t want no bumperstickers,
And I don’t want no big red hats.
I’m so sick of disagreeing,
So I’ll just hang out with my cats.

Sometimes the truth
Is just a metaphor
To think I barbecued with
The psychopath next door

Sometimes the truth
Is just a metaphor
To think I barbecued with
The psychopath next door