Which Weird Wisconsin Town Should You Live In?

Want to interact with beings from another world? Then this is your place. Attend UFO Daze, hang out at Benson's Hideaway, or sleep in the woods while waiting for your alien encounter. But that's not the only fun and weird thing about Campbellsport. Area geography is named in Irish Gaelic terms: drummers, moraines, eskers, etc. There's an Ice Age visitors center, an otherworldly landscape, and a rare bird of a dying breed. They also have the Woodland Hills Supper Club. In case you don't know what that is, a supper club is a dining establishment from a half-century ago, when people dressed for dinner and had a cocktail and jazzy music with their prime rib--and a dessert cocktail as dessert. This one has a hitching post for those arriving on horseback!

Science is divided on exactly what went on in Lake Mills millennia ago, but that's not to say that the claims came from wackadoos trying to pull off a hoax. Nope, the Smithsonian itself was the first to open the story publicly in 1891 after inspecting Rock Lake themselves. Modern anthropologists and archaeologists say it's just a bunch of rocks. So what's in there? Pyramids. Some say they were built by a race of red-headed giants (whose nine-foot skeletons have been unearthed throughout Wisconsin and who are also part of Native American oral tradition), and some say they were built by Native Americans from the nearby Fort Aztalan. The lake is also home to Rocky the sea serpent, who is 'the color of a pickerel.' Residents are still looking for more, from dinosaur skulls to bird-shaped rock formations under the water. They believe there is an entire city down there. Join their search!

The Dells are the magical source of endless fun and wacky attractions! Wisconsin Dells the city is what many might call the ultimate tourist trap, but those people just don't appreciate the finer points of kitsch. The town devotes to the traveler a myriad of entertainment and oddities when they come to visit the Dells of the Wisconsin River and other sites of natural beauty. If you love fun, you'll love living there. It doesn't have to be tourist season for you to get pizza delivered from a giant moose riding on top of the delivery car. The Dells are so fantastically strange that a haunted-house attraction had to be closed down because employees started seeing actual ghosts.According to Native American legend, the dells and bends in the river were caused by a giant sea serpent from the North trying to squeeze his way through the hills. Nearby you can see the nation's most artfully made burial mounds in the shapes of a bear, an eagle, and a panther. Wisconsin Dells is also a place of firsts: stop-motion photography, duck boats as tourist vehicles, and indoor water parks.

Elkhorn is as cute as a small town gets, but it has a dark side: The Beast of Bray Road. The reports pop up so often and match so well that a reporter left journalism to devote her life to it, and 'The Sean Hannity Show' has done a feature on it. It walks upright and has been theorized to be either a werewolf (though no one has seen it transform) or a waheela, a giant wolf wandering south from Canada. Imagine the residents of Elkhorn enjoying their ribs at Ribfest or seeing a movie in the bandshell at the park, looking over their shoulders when they see a slight movement in the woods. Could it be? If you move there, watch your back! Also watch acrobatic waterskiing at the lake--you know, like those pyramids of water-skiers who used to do shows in the 1960s? They still have that in Elkhorn at the lake!

Holy cow, you get into a hot mess of weird in this rural mecca of fantastical delights. But hold on to your hat, we'll get to the best part last. Let's start with the Don Q Inn. It's one of those hotels where you get to pick a themed room, like a spacecraft or Sherwood Forest. It's just down the road from House on the Rock. Frank Lloyd Wright and his protege nemesis were here. At Folklore Village, you can learn to clog, basket weave, plant prairie flowers, or whatever else. The police in Ridgeway have a ghost on the insignia patch on their uniforms. Attend the Wisconsin Cheese Experience or the Wisconsin Grilled Cheese Championship. Really, there is too much weirdness to list, so to sum up, the main thing is the Phantom of Ridgeway. Sometimes it's real; sometimes it's pranking locals--but it's never the same. It shape-shifts into balls of fire, pigs, dogs, a man with a whip, a headless horseman, and others!

You've heard of the Bermuda Triangle, so you'll totally understand the concept of the Lake Michigan Triangle--same thing, pretty much. Venture into it and you might not come out! People have even been rescued and said that their ship sank, but then the mysterious people themselves disappear! So now that you understand that, here's this: in 1962, a piece of Russian spacecraft Sputnik IV fell on Manitowoc. They have since had a yearly festival to celebrate this strange occurrence. They crown a 'Space Debris' queen and have Alien Pet and Cosmic Costume contests. The real space-debris piece of Sputnik is displayed lovingly alongside artwork from O'Keefe, Picasso, and Warhol at the local art museum.