Move over, Mothman. UW-Platteville students dream up the Driftling as official campus cryptid

 What has emerged, I think, is ... a creature that feels simultaneously strange but recognizable.

- Dr. Amanda Tucker

Move over, Mothman. Step off, Bigfoot. Bye-bye, Bray Road Beast. UW-Platteville has adopted its first official campus cryptid, a mysterious shapeshifting being known only through whispers as the Driftling.

Around 600 first-year students in the Helios Program spent the first two months of the fall semester dreaming up a creature that might haunt the campus as a means of practicing collaboration, developing storytelling skills and strengthening their sense of belonging. 

Led by English professors and Helios co-directors Amanda Tucker and Katie Kalish, the students began in mid-September by scouting spooky spots on campus that a cryptid might use as its lair. Over multiple weekly sessions, they worked out how the physical habitat might shape the creature's behavior, motivation and physical appearance. They also considered what monsters reveal about the communities that create them, how monster lore emerges and grows and how to communicate their final vision of the creature.