The Singular Fortean Society was contacted recently by Shana Clippert, 27, who said that she and her mother had seen both a massive, black, winged humanoid and a glowing UFO in Rockford, Illinois, during the early morning hours of June 20th.
Shana said that she had not previously been aware of the other sightings in her area, and only found the Singular Fortean Society after going online following her own encounter to try and find similar reports.
Both of her sightings were either on or near Fork Kent Creek, which Shana referred to as a “canal” in her testimony.
They began at approximately 1 a.m. when Shana and her mother, Barbera, were outside of her apartment.
"There’s my parking lot, we were facing toward my building, and next to that, between me and the canal, there’s a parking lot that has nothing, just like a lot, and then there’s the canal. I could see the overpass bridge that runs down Auburn over the canal. Across from that is a shop that has lights on it and there’s a very, very well-lit, I'm not sure what it is, a hauling business, I think, they have trucks and garage doors and stuff. Then there’s a pretty thin tree line on the canal and there’s nothing on my side of the canal.
It is reasonably well-lit. When [the creature] crawled out [of the canal], I could see the cement guardrail walls of the canal because all the lights on this side from that shop and the light reflecting from the lights that are on the side of my building. The trees are dark.
I heard a screech that made me turn my head in that direction. Then it looked like it crawled from out of the canal because I saw this black silhouette following up and onto the embankment. That’s when you could see the black silhouette against the light on the other side [of the canal]. You could clearly see this black blob moving across.
And when my mom looked over, because she saw something in the corner of her eye, and obviously I was already looking over there, she saw the black blob, and then it took flight within the tree line. We could clearly see the shape of the wings and the size of this thing going through the tree line. Obviously, I can’t say it was through the tree line, it could have been just above the canal, like the water. But we saw it completely pass like we saw it … going through."
Shana told investigator Tobias Wayland that the creature reminded her of the character Marcus from the film Underworld, because of its humanoid appearance and batlike wings.
"It was massive; like hunched over, when it was coming out of the canal, it looked like the size of our dumpster that we have in the back of our apartment building. It was huge. I have no clue what to even compare it to. It was super tall and big. When it walked, when it was on the ground, it was like hunched over and crouched, it looked like this massive blob," she said. "When it initially left the ground, it flapped [its wings], and it wasn’t a super-fast flap, because the wings were so big. The canal goes down into a more vegetative spot, so we lost sight of it there."
Auburn Street where it passes over Fork Kent Creek. (Tobias Wayland / Singular Fortean Society)
Shana estimated the creature’s wingspan to be 12 feet and described the sound it made as a “dinosaur’s screech, like a raptor screech.”
“I didn’t see any glowing red eyes or anything like everybody else is describing, but it flew away from us, and we were looking at its profile most of the time or its back,” she said. “I was freaking out. It was pitch black.”
The winged entity "flew halfway up the trees, so it was directly in the tree line and then stayed steady all the way down," she said. " It couldn’t have been in the trees because of the size of its wingspan, but it could have been over the canal and just followed the canal down. There’s water down there, but it’s a very small like a creek, and then there’s a walkway that runs down it that you can go all the way down into this park that’s in the back neighborhoods. Then there’s these huge storm drains, but they’re huge like you can just walk in there. You might have to duck your head a little bit, but you can walk in there. I don’t know if it crawled out of there, but where else could it be?
All in all, the sighting lasted “maybe two or three minutes,” Shana said.
Soon after the winged humanoid sighting, Shana and her mother saw something else equally inexplicable in the sky.
"We walked to this broken-down fence that separates my area from this lot that’s on the other side, between us and the canal. We were out there walking, and I asked my roommate to come downstairs and bring a flashlight so we can shine it in the tree line and see if we see anything. She came down in 15 minutes, didn’t see anything, and we drove down to the park, but the trees are so dense down there that even if there was something in there, we wouldn’t have seen it.
When we drove back, she went to the gas station for about 10 minutes, but my mom and I were still outside and this light ... almost looked like it was glowing. It looked as if you were to see a sort of stingray, like a glowing stingray in the air. It materialized above the air, like maybe 50 to 60 feet in the air above the empty lot, and then it had wings but they were very fluid moving, very slow moving, and very thin, like if you look on the side of a stingray.
We could see that thing almost glowing against the dark sky. And there was nothing that it could have reflected off of—it was a clear sky—or that could have caused that, like a spotlight, it was an actual physical thing there, in the air.
It didn’t look white, it looked [like] light, almost like a translucent whitish light.
It wasn’t [just a white object], because the sky was pitch black. We saw the whole glowing silhouette and it flew very smoothly and fluidly over to the street—it generally stayed the same height in the air. Then it turned around and came back over and literally disappeared in the same spot it materialized. It didn’t go down, it didn’t go up, it just vanished."
Shana guessed that the object was about six feet in length and “very skinny.”
She elaborated on her description of the glowing object, explaining that although it did not look precisely like a stingray, that was the best way she could describe it.
"It didn’t have a tail. I describe it as a stingray because it was flat. I don’t know how wide it was or if it was just this skinny, long thing, but if you’re looking at the back of a stingray at eye level, it’s flat and it’s got pointed ends where the edges are flat ends and then it’s thicker in the body and thinner in the wings. It was so fluid and smooth and slow-moving," she said. "It was a long, thin object. It didn’t have the jerky movements of the other thing. It was very fluid, like a stingray moving in the water."
Shana was certain the glowing UFO couldn't have had any prosaic explanation, such as a spotlight.
"There was nothing for light to reflect off of. There’re no power cords or anything that run all the way down. It was like seeing electricity or a glowing orb at night, but it was long and skinny. And it moved like it was flapping wings, but it was very fluid, very smooth movement."
Historical weather data confirms that the sky was clear at the time of her sighting, nor was there any wind to blow something that could have been misidentified, like a balloon.
As for the winged creature, when asked if it could have been a known animal indigenous to the area, Shana responded that she had considered that but was sure it was not.
I know what foxes and coyotes sound like, in mating season and fights, stuff like that.
Generally, we hear dogs barking in our neighborhood. I know what it sounds like when dogs are fighting. It didn’t sound like anything. It wasn’t a person screaming, it wasn’t animals or anything, and then for me to hear the screech and look over and see that thing ... I just put two and two together that this creature is the thing that made the noise.
I thought about herons and cranes and stuff like that, the only difference is that the size of it, for one thing, because the wings were huge, and there was no break in the wings, there was no color to it, it was pitch black. Even when it was on the side of the embankment where the lights are, it was completely pitch black. You could see a clear outline of it.
You know how those birds usually have really skinny legs? Well, this was thick, too thick to be a heron or a crane. The thickness of the wings and the whole size of the body itself. When it was hunched over ... I couldn’t clearly see the outline of the head or anything. It was just this hunched over, curled together on all fours sort of thing. It didn’t have any long skinny legs or heads protruding, it was just this huge black mass.
The experience left both Shana and her mother upset and frightened, but they both feel strongly about what they experienced and are willing to go on the record about it.
“I was panicking [when the UFO appeared],” she said. “I jumped behind my mom, and I had this hunting knife. I don’t know what I was going to do with it, it didn’t come near us. It was weird that we were out there looking for whatever that creature was that flew away, and then we see this glowing thing in the sky.”
Although they haven’t seen anything like that since, the experience did lend a new, unsettling perspective to something that had happened just a week prior.
“About a week beforehand, I was walking up my back stairs, again it was late, my mom was sitting downstairs waiting for me to unlock my door, and I heard that screech,” Shana said.
This is one of several sightings of winged humanoids that have come out of Rockford over the past several years.
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