Man Reports Encounter with Red-Eyed, Insect-Like Humanoid in Evanston, Illinois

Lon Strickler of Phantoms & Monsters recently received the following report from a man who claims to have encountered a “humanoid spider or other insect …with white flesh” whose “eyes were human-like and had a reddish glow” near a self-storage facility in Evanston, Illinois, in the spring of 2020.

I live in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago. I was asked by my mother’s friend to move some stuff to a storage unit nearby. I had not been working because of Covid, and the pay was decent, so I went ahead and agreed.

It was raining all day off and on, but at times it got so heavy that I couldn’t transfer boxes from my car to the unit. So I just get comfortable inside the unit and listen to some music while I wait for the rain to clear up. It’s cozy in there, to be honest, and the rain just keeps getting worse. It’s not very cold out though.

I’m just chilling when I start hearing this banging noise from nearby. It sounds like something hitting metal at first. I think that maybe there was a car accident on the nearby highway (N. Lincoln Ave – Highway 41). But then I realized it was coming from the other direction and I really don’t want to go outside and get wet. I tell myself that someone probably dropped something, like nothing serious. But I continue hearing various banging noises. I still didn’t bother checking. But as it continues, I decide to check it out since the rain had let up a bit.

I walk outside and turn the corner and see this massive hole in the fence leading to a little wooded area at the North Shore Channel Trail. I see this white thing moving near and under the dumpster by the fence. I’m thinking that it was a large white garbage trash bag, but it just doesn’t look right. I’m confused and I’m trying to get like a closer look at the thing.

I may be about 100 feet or so away from it and I see something sticking out of it and it’s making a clicking sound. I say, “Hello, who’s that?” I immediately regret yelling this out. Something big squeezes out from underneath the dumpster. It looks like a pile of fleshy tissue with spike-like protrusions. It stands four feet tall, but then it extends up to over six feet. It looks like a humanoid spider or other insect but with white flesh! It doesn’t have an exoskeleton, just smooth white flesh. The head is weird, kind of insect-like with no mouth that I could see. The eyes were human-like and had a reddish glow. It had long slits along the side of its head.

It stood there clicking and watching me. I could sense that it didn’t want me there. I was wondering why I was still there and hadn’t run off. But I was frozen in place, and terrified! I had heard about the Chicago Mothman and was wondering if this may have been it. But it didn’t resemble anything that I had ever heard about.

Then I felt a sudden rush of calm come over me and I was able to break the trance I was in. I hauled ass back to the storage unit, locked it up, got into my car, and quickly left. When I looked back in the direction of the creature it was gone.

I returned the next day and finished unloading the boxes from the car as fast as I could.

This happened in the spring of 2020. I haven’t told anyone about this.

Strickler said he was able to speak directly with the witness.

“I talked to the eyewitness and his anxiety was really evident during our conversation,” Strickler said. “I truly believe he encountered ‘something.’ I have no idea what though.”

The Chicago metropolitan area—along with numerous locations within a radius of a few hundred miles surrounding Lake Michigan—has been the site of dozens of flying humanoid sightings resembling the infamous Mothman reported in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, from 1966-67.

The Lake Michigan Mothman sightings ostensibly began in the spring of 2017, but historical sighting reports gathered since then date back to 1957.

These winged humanoid sightings have been accompanied by a variety of encounters with seemingly flightless entities.

In Chicagoland, a woman said she may have seen a mysterious humanoid creature while bicycling with her friend in the Cook County Forest Preserve on the afternoon of December 8th, 2019; a couple said they saw a “large, thin man appear out of [Schiller Woods]” with what “almost looked like a praying mantis’ eyes, just jet black” on December 23rd, 2019; a woman said she saw a “very tall, skinny, all-black figure about seven to eight feet tall” shuffling towards her while walking her roommate’s dog in the Albany Park neighborhood on January 9th, 2020; and a man said he saw an “egg-shaped” object fly over O’Hare International Airport and shine a “brilliant blue light” to the ground, through which a “person” appeared to be taken aboard the craft on January 23rd, 2020. That “egg-shaped” UFO was reportedly seen over Resthaven Cemetery, a little-known cemetery within the boundaries of O’Hare. Also at O’Hare, a trucker said he’d encountered a diminutive, grey-skinned, black-eyed humanoid while picking up air freight on the night of July 31st, 2020.

Additionally, a man in Richmond, Indiana, said he and a friend had seen a “shadowy man” transform into “a big, black shadowy cat-like creature” after suddenly appearing out of a “flash of bright light” in June of 1993.

Because of the sightings’ close geographic proximity to reports of the ‘Lake Michigan Mothman,’ some connection to that case cannot be ruled out.