Lost Tapes Chronicles: The Beast of Bray Road

There are creatures science refuses to recognize. If our eyes see it, if our cameras capture it, doesn't exist. Do you believe, do you? Chris? I do believe what Southerners now, I do believe.

I do believe that this is an episode of Scary Stories We Tell And I am your host, Christashu. I am joined by the other host of this show, your friend of mine Jess fired Hello, and also joined obviously because this is a Lost Tapes episode, Maggie the Odd Hey, we're approaching the end of this Yes, and what a topical episode. We're gonna be talking about the Beast of Bray Road. And it has to do with the werewolf killing Qan honor or militia people the pre QAnon Yeah, yeah, like Ruby Ridge can't say Waco the Ruby Ridge type, I guess, or out in the woods because the government is out to get them. Yeah.

So on this episode of Lost Tapes, Chronicles were going to be talking about the ninth episode of the third season, the penultimate episode of Lost Tapes, Beast of ray Road. So the Beast of Ray Road. Had either of you all heard of the Beast of Bray Road before the episode? New to me I feel like I had like come across it and you know, some various sort of cryptid research at South Waine. But I was ever really sure what it actually was.

Well, I don't know that I really am even now, are you sure? Yeah, that's to be fair, I know, I know what they said it is in this episode, which is a were wolf, an American werewolf. And I laughed so hardly. It's an American London London ode in London. What a bumber?

No, it's it is a seven six to seven foot tall man wolf. And again it can walk on two legs or can walk on four, but it is supposedly a werewolf. It is called the Wisconsin werewolf because it has been witnessed in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, which is a rather rural part of the state. But hey, when you go outside most cities in this country, it's really rural anyway, So this is in southern Wisconsin. In this episode, like we've kind of already mentioned, focuses on some militia guys out in the woods who have a reporter show up to do an interview with them, and then all of a sudden, a ware wolf starts attacking and the wherewolf there are cold opens with this show now, so we actually see the where Wolf show up in the cold open where a guy just gets murdered.

But what a weird episode. And well, I mean, creature makes sense, I guess, but what a weird episode of this show so really aggressive thematically, like with militia and heavy handed government is out to get you. I mean why this is twenty ten yeap which is crazy. Yeah, kind of tracks, though I don't know, it felt like it fit more in so the great of episode we were getting at the very beginning, except for they didn't call the militia the Enigma cork. But I still think it fits that really schlocky like action hero type of vibe that they were going for in a few of these episodes.

Just really bizarre choice though. It's well, what's strange about this episode is, like you mentioned, Maggie, there is this kind of it reminds you of the Bigfoot episode, which I think was you know that was a fucking first season where the woman, the park rangers in the woods, and the poachers are there. But what's what I really just kind of took me out of this episode. Every time they did it was when they were showing like aiming down the sights constantly. It's like, this is such a weirdly aggressive show all of a sudden in like a not cool way.

Again, I'm not like or any shit, Like, it's just it doesn't work very well. Like that's not this show. This is a weird, weirder show than it's ever been. And I think, you know, with the last couple episodes that we've talked about, the Serpent God episode was pretty odd in of itself, but this is just strange at how kind of like normally the people in the episodes aren't painted so negatively like and this is the first time where I'm like, I don't inctually yeah, like I don't care at this point if any of these people make it out of this. Let the guy in the werewolf costume from Spirit kill all of them.

Yeah, let the furry just get his wear. Okay, Yeah, it veriable. It's very strange. And that like the narrative that they choose outside of you know, the just the informational structure that is this set these episodes where you yet, you know, your standard History Channel style interviews, the story like the actual like narrative that they're telling within it kind of feels like it's trying to make a statement, which is really an odd thing to do in a show like Lost Tape, especially around a werewolf episode. Right, Like, it's a strange, strange time in the series to start trying to make stands about things like that are going on in the world or things that you want to speak about that are happening with within a were wolf show.

And it's third season on animals, what we support the Second Amendment around It's like whoa what Like, oh can then, right, yeah, I can't, Like I got no problem with anybody's personal beliefs, but this is it's just a strange show to be having any of that. And again, it's it reminds me also kind of of the first season where remember the vampire vampires in the Afghanistan caves. This kind of feels that same. It feels like they were like, oh, well, we can to be kind of topical and had these militia, these militia guys they're out in the woods, but there's a werewolf. It's like, okay, like could have been interesting, actually interesting setup frankly like a kind of a novel premise, but it and it just evolves very quickly into the exact same thing we've seen before over and over again.

The show has run out of tricks at this point, is what it feels like, right a little bit or they knew that it was closing down, so they're like, all right, we just got to get these two done, so just lay blam done, get it out of here. Yeah, it's weird. There's been a lot of like military and cops this season. Like just almost every episode has had like some sort of gun wielding person involved in the investigation or involved in the ongoing footage that we're seeing in the tape. That wasn't the case last season.

No, last season it was you had like the two people who were going to investigate the the what the hell were those people doing? The ones that end up being on the boat with the centipede like they were soldiers, they're like doctors or science I know, they were doing research. And then like previous to them, we had the environmentalist group that was breaking and entering into that company you with the Big Snake, right, Like it's a start contrast between not only those episodes, but just within the episode you have like this crazy cartoon villain like scenario in start contrast here then when they cut to the facts, like just was saying, where it's like it's a science show, but it really feels so imbalancedant tone.

It doesn't really come off as anything particularly specific. It just seems very generalized, which I feel it's very adequate for the creature of choice, considering there wasn't too much special in particular of this sighting except for the location, which I don't know. Maybe if there were more first hand accounts, I would be able to know, like the difference between this, but the way that they describe and interact with this particular cryptid, it's nothing special, which is it's just a horrible sem Well it couldn't. Again, if we don't even have those shots of the werewolf, how is this episode any different than the Devil Monkey? No?

True, like a creature in forest slash jungle hunting people who are invading its domain. That's the Devil Monkey episode all over it, And yet this is doing the same thing except oh we get to see really kind of quick shots of a guy in a Halloween costume. Yeah, yeah, like I've seen in that werewolf costume that they're wearing at Spirit. It's like the long, stringy hair like. It's not anything unique or exciting, like you both have mentioned, it's it's kind of a shame, I mean, and it's all through like security cam footage and like gun sights and like really just you know, static y looking footage that's unpleasant to look at and does not feel anything.

So you just come away from it feeling like you watched nothing happen, just a lot of people running around yelling at each other. Well, the use of that green, the green that they're using is awful. It just it looks like a mid twenty tens or early twenty tens graphic, like screen graphic for a company that's just like whatever, we're just making make it look like a gun got it. And again, you know the creature at the heart of this, the Beast of Prey Road. There are not a lot of first hand accounts of it.

There are some, but this is another one of these creatures where it was cited a couple times, like three or four times, and it was sighted first in thirty six. But again, this is not like Bigfoot. This is a rather obscure cryptid, which is fine. I'm glad that it is, but they actually never really talk about it in the episode, they more just talk about where again in general, Well, and I mean exactly, it's only obscure in that it hasn't been reported as much as other cryptids. But it's not obscure in and like unique way that would be something that you you know, aren't familiar with, that isn't basically just a were wolf, right you said, like you're just they just talk about were wolves whole time, so it's like that's what it is.

Well, I mean the other thing is there's another cryptid in this same area of the world, the Michigan dog Man also known as the Michigan were wolf, which was cited in eighteen eighty seven. So in this area of the world, you have two were wolf esque creatures running around that are even getting misidentified as one another because if you go and read up about the Beast of Prey Roads, some people are like, well, it could be the Michigan dog Man. And it's like, so are they two separate things? Are they the same thing? Is it just are or is it is it just a bear?

Because again that seems to me what a lot of the first hand accounts are a bear? Right, They're misidentifying a bear like people sing right, it walks on two legs and it walks on four legs. Okay, so it's a bear. Yeah, really, probably a very malnourished bear that is very like if it's not like if you're describing it as kind of like a werewolves, they're usually kind of like sinewy, right, they're very lean, right, So it's in reality, very more than likely just a very malnourished, hungry bear that is how looking for food. Well, and we've talked about this before on this show, where it's creatures being you know, normal creatures being misidentified as stuff.

And this is you know, if you read about the creature, if you read about, you know, the initial stories surrounding it, it has very little information to go off of outside of these people saw something that looked kind of like a dog, a huge walking dog. But again, like bears exist, it's not it's it's it's not like you're seeing something that is so weird and strange and unique, like you mentioned, just that people be like, what is that. It's like, that's you're probably just misidentifying a bear and they have black bears. I mean, the black bears are prolific in that area of the world. So absolutely, it's not like that there's not It's not like there's not something they're already and and then to further add insult to injury.

It has a cool name, but even the episode can't do anything with the information that they're given. The best that they can do is just a creature hunting militia guys in the woods. Right. I was really hoping they would even utilize like one shot that they mentioned in the like stories, being like, yeah, they would see it on four legs and they would stand up and come out of it. It's like, that is such a I mean, you could do a distant shot or something like that with that, but yeah, super close, very tight, green flurry, a lot of yelling, gotcha, a lot of yelling, And it's also again kind of It's what's even stranger is most of these episodes don't have an additional villain in the episode.

Most of the time, the creature is the issue at hand, But in this episode that's not the case. In this episode, the creature is almost secondary. The creature is not even I wouldn't even think you could make the case that the creature is violent. It's violent, but I don't think it's evil. Because it ends up saving us, I guess ostensibly one of the main characters, right, And yeah, yeah, and I mean, and it's not unprovoked, you know, like they are traps are out in the woods shooting guns and shit like that.

So I mean, it's it's not like you said, it's not evil, it's not bad, it's purely just like all the more reasons to think that it's likely just like a bear or something that it's just kind of acting like a wild animal that seales threaten would act, right, And all of the sightings and information out there about these creatures make it seem like, you know, it's just out there walking around, it's not really interaction acting with people. People are claiming that they're seeing you know, animal mutilations and that animals have been killed in the area. But yeah, I mean, if there's animal, if you have domesticated animals, bears are going to going to hunt them out and find them. It's not again, it's it's not a big jump.

I think a lot of these, some of these you know, regionals kind of super regional cryptids. We don't hear about a lot of them because a lot of them are just like this where it's a miss something that's been misidentified the Loveland frog. I don't know how we would explain that, Like, right, what the fuck is that it's a frog man? But this is like it's something that walks on four legs, and then like you mentioned, Maggie walked on two, which they never show that and they should have. It'd be creepy, but that's okay.

Well, I just don't understand the intent of the show anymore. I'm he's kind of lost, yeh facts, I miss the show acting like it is a edutainment show. Yea, Yeah, it feels like it's lost a lot of like it does not feel like an animal Planet show anymore. That it doesn't have any you know, there's no conservation aspect to it anymore, like not of like the narrative like stories follow like you know, environmentalists or scientists or doctors or anything. So there's no like conservationists the aspect to it anymore.

There's no animal facts or anything like that. So there's really no animal aspect to it either. And now it just feels like a really heavy handed kind of you know, weird military show for some reason out of nowhere. Yeah, yeah, I don't I don't understand the tone of this episode. It's it's strange.

I think it's a time capsule of it because I mean those when like really crappy action films were really big and like, I don't know it's from they call it dooty type of crown. Yeah, definitely. Well we've run into that once already with this show, and it didn't work very well that in that zombie episode either. So yeah, it was very resonly. Yeah, not golfish.

And I'm kind of surprised that they didn't do the Michigan dog Man as the creature in this episode because there are more sightings and it's an older creature by you know, like sixty years, seventy years, so it was kind of surprising to you know, doing the research. The Michigan dog Man is a thing that it gets misidentified as the Beast of Bray Road. So it's just it's very weird. It's again this show is making has been making strange choices with the cryptid that cryptids that it's been featuring for a while now. I mean, just when you came back, U asked, is there a Locknest Monster episode?

No, there's not, And you know, yeah, and there's but there have been plenty of these where it's like a creature in the woods just killing people like there have been plenty of them, No plenty of them, to the point where to the point where I'm I'm sad that this show is ending, and that we're coming to an end with this show that we're talking about, but at the same time it's starting to overstay its welcome. Yeah, Sadly. I think a lot of this boils down to what the producers were really hoping for views of a certain demographic. So I think that kind of ended up cutting a lot more corners than necessary, because I mean, you see very vague like inklings left of the original intent of it, because they still give us like not necessarily animal animal effects, but mentions.

I guess it's just they win a different direction than they probably knew by now that they were going to be put. So just using whatever footage that they had and just kind of scrambling to figure something out is probably what it boiled down to you, Or at least that's my optimistic approach to it, because I know there's some good ideas, just poor executions, and I don't think that's anybody's one fault, just a bunch of weird decisions put together. And I mean, by the time that this show is over, it reminds to be a lot of something like The Great British Bake Off, where that show doesn't have any educational value anymore. You sedtill have a fair amount Like they used to set aside a fair amount of time to like talk about the things that they were making and right, like, what was the historical significance to those things.

Now it's like, you know, the yuck yucks and the jokes. Just give us no building please, right, which is perfectly fine, But still there are gonna be people that are not into that. Their expectation is their expectation is different because you weren't already set in expectation with this show and now you're changing it. Yeah, And I'm sure that was indicative of like what people found it just saying and really took away from it. But I don't know.

It's always just the way that popular shows tend to sway for like the grand majority vote as opposed to just sticking with their guns. I mean, it's sometimes just not up to them. But I always appreciated that no matter how weird and wacky. If the creatives have like stuck to their guns, it makes a huge difference for how it holds up over I'm like plenty of cult classics, that's just how they go down, and that's where I love, you know, the very beginning of this show was really great for that it stuck to its weird guns and it made a really distinct like impression on a lot of young people's like memories and mis soldier factors, right, And I don't I don't think anybody remembers this point in the show the way they're remembering the first seasons, because the first two seasons are all I really saw so right, well, and every now and then I'll go through YouTube list things where it's like, uh, nostalgia that like scared the hell out of them, and lost tapes comes up a lot, and all of the episodes that they talk about, like, no, it's definitely not like grand majority third season.

There's a few scattered around, but these weren't necessarily the ones that imprinted on them as something terrifying, And I think it's because they had less show well, and by the point we're at now, it's like they're just showing the same thing. We've seen this two or three times now already done. I mean, this is the if this is the third time they're doing and how many the domin wishing returns are really in full effect, because I think it's got to be at least this third time we've seen something like this, and the second time with this weird like military slant to it, which again I it could have worked, but I just I don't think they could have done it. They would have had to have done it differently for it to really work.

And I don't know, do you guys notice the it's like the weird ad r of the guy, like the the main guy, the reporter. It was very weird, right, Yeah, yeah, that was like they had all of his life. It's what it felt like, because it's very obviously somebody else, not the guy who is the actor is the voice. The voice doesn't sound right. It sounds it sounds very weird for whatever reason.

So yeah, it was I was like, what the fuck is going on with this? This is not Oh it's just eightyr completely all right? Yeah, really interesting. I don't know, uh who makes that one, but yeah, it was it was, it was, it was this this is an odd episode and the Beast of Bray Road like not not an interesting cryptid, just a bear. A bear?

Yeah, like okay, dreaded barrels. I wanted more from this episode because again, the premise is interesting, but the creature itself just doesn't. They don't lean on anything particularly interesting about the creature because again, there's not much to the creature when it's oh, it's probably just a bear. We have modern technology now, like if you saw this, you would know what this is. There's this very few there's there are contemporary sightings, but there are very few and far between.

Oh it was walking away and I you know, it's like okay, like yeah, walking away from you. It's like all right because there's a photo from twenty eighteen and it looks like a bear. I can it's I don't know, yeah, yeah, I was. I always wanted with this show more variety, and the show has what in some variety, but I maybe you shouldn't have asked for because the things that the same situation right there, they give you variety that's fast, will give you on that. It's like, oh, maybe I should have not said anything?

Why not? Yeah so much? Yeah? Yeah, whatever, show all right? I mean at this point, Like, at this point, it feels like anything is up on the table and boy, but yeah, they throw it out there and I give them crops for that.

It's just absolutely bonkers. The execution can vary. Yeah, I know, we talked a bunch of shit about some of the episodes in like first and second, but they had so much charm it was so worth it every time. We don't even remember being that negative about the first season. Towards the end of the second season, we're native about everything, man.

I mean, at this point the show has really just completely give gets given up. And that's fine. But when we get when we get to the final episode, I think we're gonna have oh, Dear Goddard. Yeah, yep, Oh that was festive. That was a sundowt Yeah.

So yeah, on that note, the next time we come to you for lost tapes, we're gonna be talking about reptilians. Exactly you're out, Dear, exactly what you think. We're sending our troops into the wilderness and a hunt of werewolves. Man. So until then, where can people find you on the internet?

Jess? You can find me on Instagram at writer Jess fired. Do you find me on TikTok and same handle. You can find me on some episodes of Culture Cast where you can find Chris. I'm both, and I'm sure there are other places.

Maggie, what about you? Unlike that oar. You can find me at Joelanmuseum dot com for a limited time, And as for me, you can find me at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. We're alone with eighteen other shows or nineteen or whatever the count is at at this point. A lot of shows shows that I'm on, shows that Jess is on, shows that Maggie is on, show that the three of us are on together and separately, and whatever the hell.

Weirdingwaymedia dot com. That's where you can go for all the stuff that I work on. As for this show, scary Stories, we tell dot com Scary Stories WT on all social media for as long as some of them still exist, even looking at you Twitter. As as for the show proper Big Things is always to Maggie and Dustin for the album artwork for the show, and I get to thank Maggie in person, so there you go. And to Alex malinaka Blondo, who's touring the Midwest right now, so hey, yeah, look up Blondo if you want, and you should be, as they put on a good live show, and you can find him on Spotify just search Blondo.

And as always we'll let our good friend, the former host of Sidings, mister Tim White, lead us out. No mystery is closed to an open mind.