Gonzwell

In the 1950s, a mysterious series of encounters with an unusual creature, which residents dubbed the Gonzwell, took place in the Bronx, New York City. An anonymous letter to Dr. Karl Shuker describes his terrifying experiences with this humanoid creature, which appeared on warm, moonless nights.

An anonymous New York resident in a letter to Dr. Karl Shuker describes his experiences with this strange creature as follows:

This happened in the early 1950s, when I lived in the Bronx, New York, before my family moved to the Buttler Houses Complex in 1964. [This is where the information about the author of this letter ends; otherwise, literally nothing is known about him.] Back then, we often saw a creature my younger brother, Ralph, called GONZWELL. It would appear on the roof outside our bedroom window and stare at us. Sometimes it would enter the room. It was dark gray, with smooth feathers or fur, and looked like a cross between an ostrich, a bat, a large bird, and a human. Like an ostrich, it could crane its neck to get close and look us in the eye. I don't know if this actually happened or if this strange creature was just creating this illusion. Sometimes, it wouldn't leave the roof but would simply stick its head into the room, seeking face-to-face contact, but before it could, you had to look it in the eye. It had large, reflective, fish-like eyes that sometimes shone like mother-of-pearl, shimmering with red, yellow, and green. I don't know if it reflected the light this way, or if the eyes themselves emitted the glow, but that gaze mesmerized us. The creature appeared only in warm months, on moonless nights. We don't know if it came at other times (...) when the creature looked into our eyes, we could neither move nor scream. We called it MR. GONZWELL whenever it took on a human appearance, or GONZWELL whenever it appeared in a bird- or bat-like form. However, it never looked human, more like a humanoid (...) It wasn't until the 1970s that I heard of a creature whose description resembled our GONZWELL. I learned about it from a book called The Mothman Prophecies by, if I remember correctly, John Keel [the book is about a series of unusual visits from a "Gonzwell-like" entity in Point Pleassant, Virginia, in the 1960s]. So I still wonder if it was just a nightmare about a being standing outside the window and looking at us like a picture. Dream or reality? Fiction or fact? Think what you will.

There is something we can only see under certain circumstances. However, we never see it as it truly is, but rather what that entity wants us to see, filtered through our minds, consciously or unconsciously guided by our particular belief system.