Oz Park, Chicago, Illinois, April 7, 2017 — A witness walking a dog encounters a seven-foot winged humanoid with ruby red eyes near the baseball fields. First documented sighting in the 2017 Chicago Mothman flap. Source: Manuel Navarette, UFO Clearinghouse.
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP SIGHTING REPORT
2017: Oz Park, Chicago, Illinois Mothman Sighting
On the night of April 7, 2017, a resident of the Lincoln Park neighborhood in Chicago took a dog for an evening walk through Oz Park — the same route taken dozens of times before. The dog refused to enter the park. When the witness finally coaxed the animal through, the birds were silent. Near the baseball fields, standing on the ground, was a solid black figure roughly seven feet tall with a pair of enormous wings folded behind it, jutting a foot and a half above its head. When it turned and faced the witness, its eyes glowed ruby red from within. The creature stared at the witness for fifteen seconds — then unfurled bat-like wings spanning at least ten feet, screeched, and launched vertically into the night sky like a bullet. The witness did not scream. Did not react. Stood frozen and numb from head to toe. This was the first documented sighting in what would become the 2017 Chicago Mothman flap — a wave of at least forty-three reported encounters with a winged humanoid across the Chicago metropolitan area, investigated by a three-organization collaborative team and eventually chronicled in Lon Strickler’s Mothman Dynasty: Chicago’s Winged Humanoids.
⚠ UNASSOCIATED HUMANOID SIGHTING:
No craft was observed in this encounter. The entity was not associated with a UFO, structured object, or aerial vehicle of any kind. The original page classification of CE-III has been corrected. This is an unassociated humanoid/entity sighting documented in the UAP archive for its connection to the broader 2017 Chicago winged humanoid flap.
Date: April 7, 2017
Sighting Time: Evening — exact time not specified
Day/Night: Night
Location: Oz Park, Lincoln Park neighborhood, Chicago, Illinois — near the intersection of Burling Street and Webster Avenue, in the area of the baseball fields adjacent to the Oz Garden
Urban or Rural: Urban — dense residential neighborhood approximately 3 miles north of the Chicago Loop
No. of Entity(‘s): 1
Entity Type: Winged humanoid — described as a giant half man, half bird
Entity Description: Approximately 7 feet tall. Solid black. Large wings folded behind the body, standing taller than the figure by at least a foot and a half. When unfurled, bat-like wings spanned at least 10 feet tip to tip. Eyes glowed ruby red, appearing to emit light from within. No clothing discernible — the entire form appeared to be a single organic structure. Departed vertically with a loud screech and a whoosh of displaced air.
Hynek Classification: Unassociated Humanoid Sighting — CE-III does not apply; no craft was observed. Entity was encountered on the ground without any associated aerial object.
Duration: Approximately 15 seconds of direct eye contact; total encounter including approach and departure somewhat longer
No. of Object(s): 0 — no craft or aerial object observed
Description of the Object(s): N/A — no object present
Shape of Object(s): N/A
Size of Object(s): N/A
Color of Object(s): N/A
Distance to Object(s): N/A
Height & Speed: Entity departed vertically at high speed — described as rising into the air like a bullet
Number of Witnesses: 1
Special Features/Characteristics: Animal behavioral anomaly — the witness’s dog exhibited extreme reluctance to enter the park, requiring physical coaxing. Environmental anomaly — the witness noted that the normal bird sounds in the park were absent, replaced by silence. Psychological effect — the witness described a sensation that the entity could see through him, read his thoughts, and stare into his very soul. Post-encounter numbness from head to toe.
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Source: Manuel Navarette, UFO Clearinghouse — original report published April 10, 2017. Investigated collaboratively by Phantoms and Monsters (Lon Strickler), Singular Fortean Society (Tobias Wayland), and UFO Clearinghouse (Navarette).
Summary/Description: A resident of the Lincoln Park neighborhood in Chicago, while walking a dog through Oz Park on the night of April 7, 2017, encountered a seven-foot-tall solid black winged humanoid standing on the ground near the baseball fields. The entity had bat-like wings spanning at least 10 feet and glowing ruby red eyes. After approximately 15 seconds of eye contact, the entity screeched, unfurled its wings, and launched vertically into the sky. No craft or aerial object was observed. The encounter was the first documented sighting in the 2017 Chicago Mothman flap, a wave of at least 43 winged humanoid reports across the Chicago metropolitan area.
Related Cases: 2006 O’Hare Airport Disc (same metro area, different phenomenon) | 2017 Chicago Mothman flap — 43+ sightings documented by UFO Clearinghouse/Phantoms and Monsters/Singular Fortean Society
Detailed Report
The Oz Park encounter of April 7, 2017 holds a foundational position in the 2017 Chicago Mothman flap — a sustained wave of winged humanoid sightings that would eventually produce at least forty-three documented reports across the Chicago metropolitan area between spring and fall of 2017. This was the first. It was reported to Manuel Navarette at UFO Clearinghouse and published on April 10, three days after the event.
The witness, who requested anonymity, describes a routine evening. The weather had turned mild after a long winter and the witness decided to take the dog to Oz Park — a 13-acre park in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, roughly a block and a half from the witness’s home. The route was familiar, the activity habitual. What was not habitual was the dog’s behavior. At the corner of Burling Street and Webster Avenue, the animal refused to cross the street and enter the park — highly unusual for a dog that normally became ecstatic at the prospect of the park. After considerable effort, the witness coaxed the dog in.
The environmental cues continued to accumulate. The witness noted that the normal bird sounds — a constant in Oz Park — were completely absent. The only audible sounds were ambient city noise from the surrounding neighborhood. Walking east toward the Oz Garden on the standard route, the witness heard what sounded like the flapping of large wings but assumed it was Canadian Geese, which had been present in the park recently.
Near the baseball fields, the witness saw what was standing on the ground: a large, solid black figure, approximately seven feet tall, with enormous wings folded behind it. The wings stood taller than the figure by at least a foot and a half. The entity initially had its face turned away. When it turned and noticed the witness, the ruby red eyes were immediately visible — glowing, the witness emphasized, from within, not reflecting external light. The entity faced the witness fully. The body appeared to be a single organic structure — no clothing was discernible, and the overall impression was of a half man, half bird. The witness compared its appearance to the character Bird Person from the animated show Rick and Morty, but far more frightening.
The entity stared at the witness for approximately fifteen seconds. The witness described a powerful subjective impression that the creature could see through him, read his thoughts, and stare into his very soul. Then, with a loud whoosh, the entity unfurled bat-like wings spanning at least ten feet from tip to tip, screeched loudly, and launched vertically into the air at extreme speed — described as rising like a bullet. The witness heard one additional screech before losing sight of the entity above the trees and buildings.
The witness’s own reaction was delayed. He realized he had neither screamed nor reacted in any physical way during the encounter. He was numb from head to toe. He finished his walk early, returned home, and scanned the sky for any further sign of the entity. Over the following days he researched online, eventually finding reports of similar sightings and the UFO Clearinghouse reporting portal.
The report was filed with Manuel Navarette at UFO Clearinghouse and published on April 10, 2017. It was subsequently investigated by a three-organization collaborative team: Navarette’s UFO Clearinghouse, Lon Strickler’s Phantoms and Monsters, and Tobias Wayland’s Singular Fortean Society. The Oz Park sighting was confirmed as the first report in what became the 2017 flap. Strickler later published a full-length book on the phenomenon: Mothman Dynasty: Chicago’s Winged Humanoids. The Chicago Tribune’s Daily Southtown also covered the flap, noting that the Oz Park report on April 7 was the earliest of twenty-one sightings chronicled by Strickler as of mid-2017.
Researcher’s Notes
The Oz Park Entity — Chicago 2017 and the Opening of the Winged Humanoid Flap
- Classification Correction — CE-III to Unassociated Humanoid Sighting: The original page carried a CE-III classification. This is incorrect. CE-III requires the observation of animate beings associated with a craft or aerial object. No craft was observed in this encounter. The entity was standing on the ground. It departed vertically under its own apparent power, not in or from a vehicle. This is an unassociated humanoid sighting — a high-strangeness entity encounter without a craft component. The archive retains it in the Illinois sightings collection for its connection to the broader 2017 Chicago winged humanoid phenomenon, which included reports near O’Hare International Airport and other aviation-adjacent locations.
- Source Chain and Investigation Quality: The source chain is stronger than most single-witness entity reports. The witness filed with UFO Clearinghouse within three days. The report was published in its original first-person form by Manuel Navarette on April 10, 2017 — an established investigator who has been the primary intake point for the Chicago winged humanoid database. The case was subsequently investigated by a three-organization team with a track record of systematic documentation: Phantoms and Monsters, Singular Fortean Society, and UFO Clearinghouse. The Daily Southtown (a Chicago Tribune property) covered the flap and confirmed the Oz Park report as the earliest in the 2017 sequence. The witness remains anonymous and no corroborating witnesses have come forward, but the investigative infrastructure around this case is substantially more developed than a typical anonymous web submission.
- Animal Behavioral and Environmental Precursors: The dog’s extreme reluctance to enter the park and the total silence of the normally active bird population are the most analytically interesting elements of this report. Animal behavioral anomalies preceding high-strangeness events are well-documented across the literature — dogs refusing to enter areas, livestock agitation, bird silence — and are difficult to attribute to witness confabulation because they occur before the witness is aware of anything unusual. The dog’s behavior in this case began at the park boundary, before the witness entered the park or observed the entity. If the account is accurate, something in or near the park was producing a stimulus detectable by the dog but not by the human witness at that distance. Whether this constitutes evidence of anything beyond the dog detecting a large unfamiliar animal — such as a great blue heron or large owl — cannot be determined from the testimony alone.
- Flap Context and Pattern Significance: The Oz Park sighting was the first of at least forty-three winged humanoid reports in the Chicago area in 2017, with additional reports from 2011 (three sightings near UIC), 2014, 2016, and continued sightings through 2019 and 2020 concentrated around O’Hare International Airport. The consistency of physical descriptions across independent witnesses — seven to eight feet tall, solid black, bat-like wings eight to ten feet in span, glowing red eyes, vertical high-speed departure — is the strongest feature of the flap as a whole. Individual reports like the Oz Park encounter are Insufficient Data standing alone. Their analytical weight increases when viewed as part of the documented pattern.
The first report in a flap always carries a particular weight — it is either the genuine beginning of a real phenomenon or the seed from which subsequent reports grow by social contagion. The Oz Park encounter sits at that exact fulcrum. A single witness, a silent park, a creature on the ground, and forty-two more reports to follow. The archive marks the beginning.
