Southern Illinois is a strange place. Those of us descended from the early settlers come from an anti-social stock. They were those who pushed into the Appalachians from the early colonies, only to find those remote regions too crowded. The pushed on through the passes and gaps, settled for a few years then noticed there were still too many neighbors. So they took to the great rivers that flowed into the unexplored heartland. Then pushed further, along the smaller rivers till they found a place suitably quiet from human interference.
Today the population is still somewhat belligerent and anti-social. This is Illinois, but we hate Chicago. Our education system is surprisingly good, but still much of the population doesn’t care much for book learning. Experience teaches them all they believe they need to know. Science, historians, the media and especially politicians aren’t particularly trusted. They believe in what they can taste, feel, smell and see.
And of course, God. This is the Bible belt after all.
Depending on where you fall in belief in strange creatures, the area is ripe with the type of people easily prone to superstition, and gullible enough to fall for pranks.
This is true. But the plethora of monster sightings in this area, stretching all the way back to the native Americans can’t be so easily dismissed. Many of those who came forward and filed police reports were not only honest, well respected citizens, but often quite well educated and brimming with intelligence.
They just happened to see shaggy, hairy creatures out in the woods. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
In 2017, Illinois logged the second highest number of Bigfoot sightings in America, with most of them coming from the southern tip. The Shawnee Forest stretches from the eastern border along the Ohio Rive to the western and the Mississippi, down to where the great rivers meet, like a sylvan patch of pubic hair on the trunk of the state. The area is known for rolling hills, steep bluffs, high hills and dark hollows. Each spring and fall, the famous Snake Road is closed to allow the reptiles to migrate to their summer and winter homes.
When the government bought the land in 1939 for a national forest, under Franklin Roosevelt, it was mainly exhausted farmland. Most of the trees which blanket the landscape were planted then.
When the settlers came this was old growth forest, teeming with predators like bears, wolves, mountain lions and rattlesnakes. Today the super predators are gone, except for a few wolves reintroduced to the area, and of course the snakes.
And perhaps, Bigfoot and other creatures which most people don’t believe even exist. But many of the people who live here, and those who lived here before us beg to differ.
Southern Illinois has perhaps more in common with the south than the north. In the Civil War, much of the southern part of the state was sympathetic to the southern cause, with an underground rebellion working out of the Shawnee hills. Today you can still hear it in the accent, and in an appreciation of a good story.
Urban dwellers put down those who believe in such things as giant birds and hairy beasts as gullible, superstitious. Those who live here shake their heads and sniff, “city folk don’t know shit.”
I fall somewhere in the middle. I’m educated enough to know that the evidence for such creatures is scant, and eyewitness accounts about anything is notoriously unreliable. But even I’ve heard and seen strange things in the forest.
So as traveling in the age of Covid is limited, I decided to track down some of the stories I’ve heard from this area in one form or another my whole life and to ask myself a question. Not whether I believe these creatures exist, but what is it about this place that makes it ripe for legends?
Prehistoric creatures high on a bluff over the Mississippi leave a tantalizing clue for those came after
Father Jacques Marquette, a 17th century French explorer is our source for the first report of a strange creature that was part of the native American mythology of the area, and dubbed by some to be an underwater panther.
Whilst passing down the Mississippi near present day Alton in 1673, Marquette wrote in his journal that “While skirting some rocks, which by their height and length inspired awe, we saw upon one of them two painted monsters which at first made us afraid, and upon which the boldest savages dare not long rest their eyes. they are as large as a calf; they have horns on their heads like those of a deer, a horrible look, red eyes, a beard like a tiger’s, a face somewhat like a man’s, a body covered with scales, and so long a tail that it winds all around the body, passing above the head and going back between the legs, ending in a fish’s tail. green, red, and black are the three colors composing the picture. Moreover, these two monsters are so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is their author; for good painters in France would find it difficult to reach that place conveniently to paint them. Here is approximately the shape of these monsters, as we have faithfully copied it.”
The underwater panther made an appearance as well on a 1682 map of the area by another Frenchman, the cartographer Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin.
It’s known today as the Piasas, and it’s unclear whether it gave its name to the area, or the creature became synonymous with where it was believed to live. In a book by Thomas Hutchings in the 18th century, Alton, Illinois is given the name Piasas. And later, another French explore gave the name Hauteurs De Paillisa to the cliffs above where the original painting was found.
Reliable reports of the paintings existence end in 1698, when it was reported to be barely visible. It’s possible that it was repainted, perhaps incorrectly as in 1836, John Russell described the creature as the Piasa Bird. And overnight, the legend took on wings.
According to Russell, the “name is Indian, and signifies in the language of the Illini, ‘THE BIRD THAT DEVOURS MEN.’” The Piasa once terrorized Native American villages, Russell claimed, killing many warriors before it was slain by the chief Ouatoga, who had offered himself as bait and had 20 warriors with poisoned arrows wait in ambush for the monster. When the Piasa swooped down to attack Ouatoga, it was killed by the barrage of poisoned arrows, thus saving the tribe.
Unfortunately that story, as well as a cave inhabited by the Piasa filled with human bones turns out to be bullshit, as Russell later admitted he more or less made it up. But its resemblance to the Thunderbird or Manitou, which was an authentic native American belief made it easy to believe Russell’s tale.
It’s possible that the mural was first painted before 1200 CE, at the height of Cahokia to the south. Cahokia was a city of 20-20,000 people of the Mississippian culture, best known for their mound building. The icons they created are found on everything from carvings to pottery, and quite often include Thunderbirds, bird men, gigantic snakes and other creatures.
It’s thought by some that the painting at Alton was to identify this stretch of the river as being under their control, a warning if you will. By the time that Europeans arrived here, not only had the native culture forgot who created the painting, as Cahokia had been abandoned long before, but they no longer realized what the creature actually was.
Still, the modified painting could be confused with a Thunderbird, at least to 21st century eyes. And we know that they native Americans believed in that. At least metaphorically.
But was it ever thought to be a real creature, and could it exist today? Did giant birds once fly high over Alton and Cahokia? In the summer of 1977, a boy in Lawndale, Illinois, was reportedly snatched from the ground and carried thirty feet by a large bird, before the boy’s mother managed to beat the bird into letting her boy go.
And forty years ago, near Decatur, Illinois, John D. Walker, a teenager out for a walk with a friend, reported seeing a bird with a twenty foot wing span glide past. When asked later, in 2007 what it could have been, he said Thunderbird.
Combing Millstone Bluff in search of the native American Thunderbird
Visible for miles, Millstone bluff rises above the uplands of the Shawnee Hills like a native American version of Glastonbury Tor, about 145 miles southwest of Cahokia. Like that culture, the native Americans at Millstone Bluff left their iconography behind, with terrifying creatures recorded in stone.
During the days of the settlers, millstones were made here, giving the hill its name. But its the native American village which thrived here just after Cahokia was abandoned that gives the site its importance.
It’s a relatively easy hike, less than a mile unless you take the long route, and only the first part is truly uphill. As you begin to reach the top you first notice the stones heaped up into a wall, built by later Woodland Indians, before you come across the box gravers of the cemetery from the older culture.
There are still 23 box graves, though all empty now. Box graves were constructed of four walls, made of easily breakable stone which could be shaped into an equal sided rectangle, with the same type of stone used for the roof. The floor was usually stone, shell or broken bits of pottery, and quite often belongings or other items were buried with the dead. At times, the graves reused, the older skeleton taken apart and moved to the side.
From the moment you stand atop Millstone Bluff proper, there in the midst of an ancient graveyard, you feel you are in the midst of a community, a place where people lived. Albeit in a way completely foreign to us now.
From this point on the wood chipped trail levels out and it’s easy walking. As the trail winds around the hillside you find yourself on the bluffs. Steep climbs are handled with solid wooden stairs, secured with railings. Signs point out the petroglyphs on top, thankfully as otherwise you’d never spot them.
As it is, staring at the rocks, looking for the thunderbird is like looking at one of those Magic Eye photos. You know it’s there, you just have to adjust your eyes to see it.
You get the sense after a while that you’re more likely to see it by looking up, into the sky, or out over the Shawnee hills from this high point. Millstone Bluff is far enough away from any towns and highways as to render it quiet, a rarity even in the Shawnee Forest. I’ve never seen many people there. Hell, I’ve never seen anyone else there. Maybe I’m lucky.
Because it takes quiet and solitude to begin to see the world in a new way. To find that connection to nature where it’s easy to believe anything can exist. You see the sparrow, the robin, the hawk, the eagle and it seems the most natural thing in the world for a larger bird to exist, one which rules over all the others.
Look up and out and high overhead from the top of Millstone Bluff and you’re likely to see birds. Large birds. For those of us lucky enough to live in places where you see things like turkey vultures, owls, hawks and eagles, it’s nothing new. But it’s still miraculous. We don’t feel like prey when we see an eagle. In fact, soaring overhead, you feel protected. It’s easy to see how one truly large bird, larger than the rest could spark the imagination of the native Americans.
The native Americans didn’t write things down in language that we can understand. They wrote in images, which they could comprehend, even though we’re baffled by them today.
We know that the Thunderbird ruled the world above ground, keeping at bay the underwater panther which ruled that realm. Ironic then that the great panther on the bluffs at Alton should over time become a Thunderbird.
Some believe that world was ruled by the Great Horned Serpent, and serpents are found carved into the rocks at Millstone Bluff. You have to wonder, were these carvings meant to ward off, or attract these creatures?
Away from the bluffs and into the forest you find the remains of the village, now nothing more than sunken depressions of 25 houses, scattered around a central plaza. After 200 years, the inhabitants burned the village, cleaned it up and disappeared. From here the trail is shady and it’s a different world again within the trees, away from the open bluffs, the sky filtered by the canopy overhead. A shelter from the creatures above, high above the denizens of the waterways. It’s only the creatures of the forest you have to fear.
Away from the bluffs and into the forest you find the remains of the village, now nothing more than sunken depressions of 25 houses, scattered around a central plaza. After 200 years, the inhabitants burned the village, cleaned it up and disappeared. From here the trail is shady and it’s a different world again within the trees, away from the open bluffs, the sky filtered by the canopy overhead. A shelter from the creatures above, high above the denizens of the waterways. It’s only the creatures of the forest you have to fear.
Early French settlers bring the werewolf to the region, and its howl echoes in the southern Illinois woods
Vincennes, Indiana was one of the earliest settlements in this area, founded in 1732 by French fur traders on the banks of the Wabash river, which separates Indiana from Illinois.
The trading network which ran along the rivers not only traded furs in what would later be adjoining states, but folklore as well.
The native Americans were here for about 3,000 years before that, using naturally formed hills for burials and ceremonial purpose, sometimes shaping the hills themselves. Most people still believe they’re man made, rather than a natural feature skillfully modified.
The French brought along their legends, including the Loup Garou, or creature that was part man, part wolf.
Werewolf.
At Vincennes and along the Wabash, the typical European werewolf beliefs merged with native American beliefs in shapeshifters and coming from Canada, the Wendigo. According to Canadian scholar Basil Johnston, “the Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash-gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody … Unclean and suffering from suppuration of the flesh, the Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption.”
The Wendigo was also a cannibal, and in some cultures absolutely huge, growing larger each time it ate someone. In Vincennes, the area along the Cathlinette Road which led south from town was known to attack travelers on that road.
Another tradition found in old Vincennes is that of the hairy wild man, or man-mountain. Richard Day, a Vincnnes based historian quotes a newspaper description in 1829 of a man-mountain in Georgia’s Okefenoke Swamp … “Huge footprints were found–18 inches long, nine inches wide, with a six-foot length of stride. Nine hunters followed the track. Suddenly they saw a 13-foot-tall giant advancing toward them “with terrible look and ferocious mien.” The hunters shot their guns, but it didn’t stop the monster. Enraged, he wrang off the heads of five of the men before falling dead. The other hunters fled in terror.
There were inevitably reports of local wild men.”
I came across the above on the website, Folklore, Legends, Tall Tales: An Interactive Casebook for Knox County, Indiana, by a friend of mine, Richard King, former reference librarian at Vincennes University. Richard has an interest in all things local and strange and has a fascinating site with tales from southern Indiana, as well as some from neighboring southern Illinois. In fact, I’ve stolen liberally from Richard’s work over the years, as he was the first to point me to the story of Big Jim the Rattlesnake from my own hometown.
Richard’s site also led me to another story which made a lasting impression on southern Illinois folklore, which came from The Saturday Herald in Decatur, Illinois, in 1883. The headline read “A Roaming Madman – Startling Experiences of An Illinois Lady with a Wild Man – As Naked as the Day He was Born.”
Centreville, Ill., Sept . 4 – A wildman, naked as Adam, has been roaming around the country in this vicinity for several days, causing intense excitement and consternation among the farmers’ families. His long tangled beard and matted hair, his tall athletic form and the fierce look out of his eyes make him an exceedingly unpleasant person to meet in a lonely spot. He is begrimed with dirt from head to foot, for he never gets a bath except when it rains or when necessity compels him to wade a creek in search of prey. He was seen by the wife of Dr. John Saltenberger, who lives about three miles west of this place. Mrs. Saltenberger was returning home shortly after nightfall, and was near the Stelzelriede farm. The wild man crept stealthily out of the orchard, and when near the buggy, made a rush to stop the horse. The lady gave the animal a frantic cut with the whip, and he bounded along the road at a furious pace, but almost before she had recovered her breath, the wild man had overtaken her and leaped into the vehicle from behind. He uttered not a word, and seemed immediately to become as badly frightened as the lady herself. He spring down and ran rapidly towards the woods. A telephone message was sent to Belleville, yesterday, asking the sheriff to come and capture the creature. Young men of the settlement are searching the woods in every direction today, but some of them are not over anxious to encounter the monster. Superstitious persons declare it to be the ghost of one of the Stelzelriede family, five of whom were murdered and robbed about eight years ago. Others are puzzled to decide whether it is the Missing Link or an escaped lunatic
Squirrel hunting preacher fends off baboon attack in the woods near Mt. Vernon, Illinois
Another Indiana publication pointed me to another Illinois folk tale about fantastic beasts. The March, 1946 issue of Hoosier Folklore contains an article from the southern Illinois community of Mt. Vernon.
Gum Creek is bottom land there, and during the summer of 1941, a local preacher was squirrel hunting in the woods along the creek. For the uninitiated, squirrels, when cooked are liked a wiry rabbit. Usually kind of tough and very gamey tasting. Squirrel brains fried however, is said to be a delicacy around here. I can’t vouch for that, particularly after the mad cow scare a warning went out on eating squirrel brains.
At the time, this area around Mt. Vernon was still pretty wild and somewhat remote. As the article tells the tale, when the preacher was stalking the woods “ a large animal that looked something like a baboon jumped out of a tree near him. The preacher struck at the beast with his gun barrel when it walked toward him in an upright position. He finally frightened it away by firing a couple of shots into the air.”
“Later the beast began to alarm rural people by uttering terrorizing screams mostly at night in the wooded bottom lands along the creeks. School children in the rural districts sometimes heard it, too, and hunters saw its tracks. By early spring of 1942, the animal had local people aroused to a fighting pitch. About that time, a farmer near Bonnie reported that the beast had killed his dog. A call went out for volunteers to join a mass hunt to round up the animal.”
“The beast must have got news of the big hunt, for reports started coming in of its appearance in other creek bottoms, some as much as 40 or 50 miles from the original site. A man driving near the Big Muddy River, in Jackson County, one night saw the beast bound across the road. Some hunters saw evidence of its presence away over in Okaw. Its rapid changing from place to place must have been aided considerably by its ability to jump, for, by this time, reports had it jumping along at from 20 to 40 feet per leap.”
“It is impossible to say how many hunters and parties of hunters, armed with everything from shotguns to ropes and nets, went out to look for the strange beast in the various creek bottoms where it had been seen, or its tracks had been seen, or its piercing screams had been heard. Those taking nets and ropes were intent on bringing the creature back alive.”
A large, white, shaggy haired creature stalks the swampy woodland of Tuttle bottoms, near Harrisburg, IL
Harrisburg, Illinois is about a thirty minute drive from here. As you go south, the landscape becomes hillier. Just before you reach Eldorado, if you look quickly you’ll see the height of Cave Hill, in the foothills of the Shawnee Forest peeking back at you in the distance. As you approach Harrisburg, those hills stretch out to your left, the wilderness beyond.
The Saline river branches out near here into three forks, the middle fork passing just north and east of Harrisburg. To the northwest of town you find Tuttle bottoms, a sometimes swampy lowland which lies to the south of the river.
Harrisburg is a good sized town for this area, at its peak in the 1930s boasting 16,000 people. There was a demand for the coal found in this area, which started to decline as the demand for cleaner coal grew. Then it lost its railroad, and the wetlands surrounding the town were unfit for extended development. So now it’s down to a population of about 9,000.
In the sixties there wasn’t a lot for young people to do. But country roads and raging hormones beckoned, and many a young person found themselves parked in a car in the dark of night, out in Tuttle bottoms.
Today the road leading out of Harrisburg towards the lowlands is lined with modern, rather well to do houses. The road is flanked with trees and it’s fairly wooded, and still hilly till the road curves and goes down and the houses become further spaced, and the woods alongside the road become dense, forming a canopy overhead.
Streams flow through this area, some cleat, some dark and dank, others coated in green looking like primordial swamps. It’s the perfect place for a creature.
It was in the sixties that reports of a strange beast began to pop up, frantic teenagers describing it as hairy, huge, looking like an overgrown anteater. Hunters saw it as well, sometimes describing it as a large bear. Bears were prominent here in the 19th century and in fact, the main source of meat for the early settlers. But they’ve been gone for a long time.
Strange tracks were said to be found, and the rumors piled up. Soon there were tales of devil worshippers, and of a series of murders was rumored to have occurred here.
One online post even describes what the person said looked like a “prehistoric pterodactyl,” which swooped down on the roof of the car and followed it for some distance.
In short order, Tuttle bottoms became the type of place that mothers warned you against. And the type of place people flock to in search of the weird. Get enough of them together, mix in beer and weed and people will find the weird.
Much of Tuttle bottoms is open farmland and quite flat. It’s easy to see how the area can become a swamp in wet weather, when the river’s up. Cornfields give the place a menacing Children of the Corn feel. The prefab houses give way to old farmhouses, and there’s a mysterious, closed feel to the place.
That feeling was belied by the woman we no doubt freaked out as we pulled into her driveway and circled back around as she was leaving. She turned around to follow us as we approached her house, and waited patiently for us to leave. I stopped to ask where we might find Tuttle Cemetery, our quest. She kindly told us it was on her property, and there was nothing left now. Time had eaten away at the old tombstones, as is often the case with old country graveyards around here. Tombstones were often do it yourself projects, and it was easier carving in sandstone and some of the softer rocks. But they didn’t last like marble or granite.
But she was kind, almost apologetic and we went our way, back onto the backroads and wandered a bit more. We didn’t expect to see the Tuttle bottoms monster, but we wanted to get the feel well enough to make it seem like it could exist. That we succeeded at.
According to the Harrisburg Daily Register, the police department reported that they’ve received over fifty reports of the Tuttle Bottom Monster since the sixties. They even dug up what is believed to be the first report of the monster, in 1963.
“Saline County Sheriff James L. Thompson spent a busy night last night, starting about 11 p.m. and ending about 4:30 a.m. The Sheriff said he ran across a youth at Tuttle Bottoms about 11 p.m. The young man was armed with a rifle and told Thompson that there was a monster loose in the bottoms. He said it was eight feet long, four feet high and had a nose like an anteater. The young man put his rifle in his car and left, and later Thompson ran across about a dozen boys, armed with shotguns and other weapons and all looking for the “monster” in the bottoms. Their Sheriff soon dispersed the boys and sent them home.”[1][better source needed.”
Some say the monster is up to eight foot long, some say it walks on four legs, others two. The common feature seems to be a long snout, like an anteater. The creature didn’t appear to be hostile, and in fact, one couple reported it walked right up to them.
When I read that I thought of a dog coming up to people, on four legs. And something clicked that I’d read earlier. One researcher has discovered and I verified myself, that there was a zoo in nearby Mt. Vernon up until 1955. When it was closed down, according to the story, the animals weren’t properly dealt with. In fact, the man charged with doing that was cited for failing in his duties, as among other things, some of the animals were released into the wild.
Including a giant anteater.
It’s certainly possible that a creature that large could survive the local predators. And make the trek from Mt. Vernon to Harrisburg. God knows there are enough bugs to keep a herd of anteaters well fed around here.
He also believes the Mt. Vernon Zoo could be the source of many of the strange creatures reported around here in the sixties and beyond. By now certainly, the life span of these animals are long past.
But good stories never die.
The Chittyville monster rears its large head as oversized man-like beasts appear to romancing couples throughout the area
In the sixties, hairy beasts started springing up all. The Carbodale, IL newspaper The Southern Illinoian told the story of a man whose date spotted a creature ten foot tall, covered in black hair with a head as big as a steering wheel in 1965.
For the record, steering wheels were real big back then.
The man didn’t see the beast, but when he went back the next day he found a depression in the grass where a large animal had slept.
In the April issue of Argosy, 1969, an article told of 12 deer hunters who all saw “something black…they didn’t shoot, it was manlike,” in a Wisconsin wood, north of Illinois. It was described as “a large and powerfully built man covered with short, very brown or black hair and with a lighter and hairless face and hairless palms. The head appeared smallish, also with short hair, but the neck appeared to be enormous and so short as to be almost nonexistent. The shoulders were very wide and large and the torso barrel-shaped.”
Bigfoot steps in front of the cameras and becomes a television sensation
I first read about Bigfoot in Reader’s Digest. It was an article on the film of Bigfoot, you know the one, shot by Patterson and Gimlin in 1967.
It’s the iconic image of Bigfoot, and fifty years later, the 53 seconds with the creature has yet to be convincingly proven to be a fake. This despite two men coming forward confessing that they’d had a hand in creating the hoax.
But the film’s creators never strayed from their belief that what they shot that day was a real Bigfoot.
As the sixties wore on, Bigfoot became more popular. My parents let me stay up one night and watch Patterson talk about it on Johnny Carson. I was fascinated.
Then I was hooked. On November 25, 1974, CBS broadcast Monsters! Mystery or Myth, a documentary about the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, and the next day at school it was the most popular topic. Co-produced by the Smithsonian and written by Robert and Frances Guenette, it gave an air of respectability to Bigfoot which it had been missing.
Thirteen years old at the time, I even bought the book.
As might be expected, Bigfoot sightings picked up. But some were quick to point out that these new sighting were nothing new at all.
A teenager’s hoax born on Cole Hollow Road brings back memories for an older, more honest generation, and monster hunters shoot themselves in the foot
It was July of 1972, when an East Peoria teen made the claim that he, along with other friends had seen a hairy, stinky, 12-foot tall creature with white hair in the area around Cole Hollow Road. He claimed it then let out a screech which sounded like a human version of a train whistle.
That led to an armed posse taking to the woods to find the creature. The adventure ended when one of the participants accidentally shot himself in the leg.
Years later, the boy confessed it was all a hoax.
Yet others who saw mysterious creatures in the area stood by their story. The increased talk of hairy beasts in the Illinois woods prompted Mrs. Beaulah Schroat of Decatur to write into the Decatur Review.
To the Editor:
In reference to the creatures people are seeing, I am 76 years old. My home used to be south of Effingham. My two brothers saw the creatures when they were children. My brothers have since passed away.
They are hairy, stand on their hind legs, have large eyes and are about as large as an average person or shorter, and are harmless as they ran away from the children. They walk, they do not jump.
They were seen on a farm near a branch of water. The boys waded and fished in the creek every day and once in awhile they would run to the house scared and tell the story.
The Enfield monster shows the pitfalls of reporting what you see, even in the land of honest Abe Lincoln
It’s often been said that the people of southern Illinois are honest. It’s the land of honest Abe after all. And I have to admit, I’m honest to a fault in no small degree from growing up with the tales of Abraham Lincoln goading me into being more honest than any human should probably be.
So when someone from here comes out with a tale about seeing large, hairy creatures in the woods, I tend to listen. Because it takes real courage to tell a tale like that in a small town.
Enfield, Illinois lies about ten miles from my hometown of Carmi, and in the seventies I was eating breakfast before school, when a report came on the radio about a resident there who had seen and shot at a large hairy creature in his backyard. Over the next few days other reports came in, then another report from the original man. Journalists from around the country came to Enfield, anthropology students, assorted freaks. Some claimed to see the beast themselves, others recorded its cry. Many people found its tracks.
By this time Enfield was world famous for its monster. The sheriff was eager to squash the story, and told the man who had first reported it that if he reported it again, he’d be arrested. Rumors swirled that the man was crazy, or an alcoholic or both. His wife just wanted the ordeal to end. Eventually the reporters went home and it did.
I felt sorry for the man. I’d seen ghosts, and most of those I told reminded me that ghosts don’t exist. Only crazy people saw ghosts. I knew how hard it was to tell people you saw something there which shouldn’t be there.
Thirty some odd years later I’m drinking with a fellow in a local bar. He’s a few years older than me and the Enfield monster comes up in conversation. He laughs and tells me the story. It was a friend of his in a gorilla costume. The police had known the truth early on, but didn’t want to go public to protect the kid’s reputation.
Unfortunately, nobody thought to do the same for the old man. But that’s the risk with telling the world you believe in Bigfoot.
Yet the important thing is, he might have been insane, he might have been an alcoholic. Or he could have been completely sane and a teetotaler. I didn’t know the fellow, so I can’t say. What counts, is he was telling the truth. He did see something. Even though everyone else thought he was balmy.
Remember that next time you dismiss those who tell wild, fantastical tales.
Today the case is used in schools to study mass hysteria and other sociological issues. But what about the other witnesses, those who couldn’t have seen the man in the monkey suit? Well, it got people out into remote areas, looking for things.
When you go off into the bottoms and woodlands of southern Illinois, you’re quite likely to find something.
The Murphysboro Mud Monster takes up residence along the Big Muddy river and keeps the community on edge for several years
Around ten o’clock at night on June 26, 1973, Cheryl Ray and her boyfriend Randy Creath were in his parent’s house and heard something in the woods around Murphysboro’s Westwood Hills. Randy got up to investigate, with Cheryl following behind. He hurried her up and told her to come see what he was looking at.
“The thing I remember was the bulk of it, the shape, the human form, and the stench of the river slime it apparently had on it. It was about eight feet tall, and at least as stocky as ny football player. We were within 15 feet of it, close enough to see the body, the texture of the fur, long and hairy, like an English sheepdog,”
“It was real tall, hairy,” Mrs. Rath said, “I think it was white, but it was dirty, matted. It had a real bad odor. It was really rank. I never smelled anything like it. It seemed like an eternity we stood there, and then it just turned around and walked off into the woods. We could hear it trampling through the woods.”
The Murphysboro police, who were kept relatively busy investigating monster sightings in the area around that time came out to investigate. According to Murphysboro Police Officer Ron Manwaring, “I heard some unusual shrieks, smelled the foul smell, and saw the ground trampled down in the area, where they said this thing was standing,” he recalled.
Jerry Nellis, another investigator brought along a trained dog, who followed it, stopping frequently to pick up the trail from a slimy residue the creature had left on the weeds. This was a well trained dog, trained to attack as well as track, and it never shied away from anything. Eventually it came to an abandoned barn, which the police canine refused to enter. As they coerced it into the barn it immediately turned tail and ran out. When the officers searched the barn themselves, they found nothing.
The Big Muddy Mud Monster had escaped.
Following the trail of the Big Muddy Mud Monster around Murphysboro, and debating whether to dismiss the witnesses or the experts
Murphysboro, population of about 8,000 people is like countless small towns in Illinois. Near the tip of the southern end of the state, it lies ten miles from the Mississippi river. The Big Muddy river, from which the monster derives its name flows on the southern edge of the town, curving up the eastern boundary as well. The Big Muddy is aptly named, brown in color, not too far across and at times does carry a peculiar smell, from rotting vegetation, run off from fields and decomposing fish and other wildlife which you frequently find partially eaten along its banks.
We were winding our way down the narrow streets, aiming for the river when we came to the entry of Riverside Park. The first sighting of the Big Muddy mud monster occurred some miles away at Cairo, where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers meet. There a jogger had reported seeing it at the levee which protects the town on July 16, 1972.
Eleven days later, while there was carnival in town set up here in Riverside Park, several carnies reported seeing it. It didn’t seem dangerous, merely curious about the ponies which came along with the carnival. As we wound along the roads in the park, the only unusual creature we saw was a rather large, red fox, hunting for snacks left behind from Labor Day picnickers.
Today we’re looking for the boat ramp where the first sighting in Murphysboro took place. When we found it, I kept in mind that at the time this area was a bit more remote, with fewer houses. At night it would have been almost completely secluded, as few people have use of a boat ramp late at night.
A large parking lot is adjacent to the boat ramp, shielded from view from the rest of the town by a line of trees, the river more or less hidden by another stand of trees on the southside of the lot.
It was there that two lovers were parked in the dark of night that year on July 26. It was the worst part of summer, and summers in southern Illinois can truly suck. Some say it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. I say it’s both. And having spent a lot of time wandering the rivers of this area, I can truly imagine the type of stench any creature that lived along the river must carry.
Their trust was interrupted by the sound of something moving in the trees next to the river. First it was a scream that caught their attention. It was a dark night and the woman claimed she couldn’t make out what was shrieking, but she certainly heard it. The man saw it, giving a description that matched what the jogger saw in Cairo, and what would become the standard description of a light colored beast, covered in matted hair, standing about seven foot tall and stinking to high heaven.
The couple went directly to the police station, who investigated. They found tracks and when taking photos of them, the shrieks began again. The police high tailed it back to their squad car, one officer dropping his gun in the flight. They radioed for backup.
Over the next four years, 21 people reported the Big Muddy Mud Monster to the police, nine of which saw it here in Murphysboro. The night after it was spotted by the carnival workers, a crowd gathered to search for the beast, several bringing guns.
Guns and fear don’t go well together. Never have.
On April 15, 1852, Mrs. Michael Catt of Decker, Indiana thought it would be fun to don a sheet – ghostlike – and scare the family. Her son in law fell for it and shot her dead in his fright.
In 1908, in Gibson County, Indiana, a large cat thought to be a panther which ranged from there into Illinois was on the prowl. When it moved into Snyder’s Gulch, the locals hunted it down. All they managed to do was nearly shoot a tramp who they’d chased into a tree, thinking it was the panther.
On June 19, 1976, the Big Muddy Mud Monster was once more back in the Westwood Hills subdivision, where it had been spotted by Cheryl Ray and Randy Creath, as well as once before them. This time it was three youths which saw it, and their parents vouched for their kids.
After that it stopped. Today, many of those who filed reports, conveniently provided on the City Of Murphysboro website, along with the complete police file, stand by their story. Others won’t talk about it, saying that people didn’t believe them and ridiculed them then, and would now as well. At least one of those people’s wives said despite her husband’s reluctance to talk about it, he still dreams of it.
Cheryl Ray, now married in Florida and with a last name of Rath, said “I wasn’t going to make up anything like that. I got a lot of kidding, but I know what I saw.”
Anthropologists and other experts tend to discount the reports, claiming the sightings were at best a misidentification, at worst victims of a prank. But they’d have to, wouldn’t they? Science relies on facts, not eyewitness accounts. The muddy footprints the police found were inconclusive, and no police saw the creature, though several heard its cry.
A later Police Chief Larry Tincher, isn’t so quick to dismiss the reports. Quoted in The Southern Illinoisan in 1985, Tincher said “I’m confident these people saw something, These people were too frightened. What makes it hard to believe it was some man in costume is knowing about all the hunters around here with rifles. It would really be taking a big chance.”
Cheryl Ray’s old boyfriend, Randy Creath, now a minster summed up his experience and its lasting effect. “It reinforced my belief that humanity is not nearly as intelligent as we think. Our system of natural laws is not really as fixed as we would like to believe. We don’t know nearly as much about the world as we pretend.”
Finding Bigfoot finds no Bigfoot, but people believe on, even in an age when people believe in almost nothing
The 100th episode of Animal Planet’s series ended the shows run, without actually finding the creature. That was a foregone conclusion as any tv show has to work so far in advance that had they found Bigfoot, the news would have been out long before the show aired.
These shows aren’t about proving anything, they’re about selling advertisements. Even the Bigfoot enthusiasts knocked Finding Bigfoot, but they miss the point. The show as about entertainment.
Bigfoot has become an icon in our culture, of a somewhat wacky legend which just won’t show its face, and won’t die.
What I find convincing in a way, is that in the internet era, when you’d expect these old legends to roar back to life with new sightings, it doesn’t really happen. Sure, now and then someone will speak up, but for the most part, it seems like the creatures moved on or died off. As one would expect.
There is little scientific evidence for the existence of large, hairy, manlike creatures in southern Illinois, or anywhere else for that matter. The samples of fur given to scientists to investigate turn out to be human, animal or plant. There are so many hoaxes out there that almost nothing, particularly eyewitness accounts can be believed now. Unless you actually know the people who make the claim, and can look into their eyes as they tell you.
But to dismiss the legends outright means dismissing the word of countless people after almost 200 years of living here. Those people weren’t always nut jobs, publicity seekers or those out to make a buck selling a story. They were our neighbors, friends and relatives.
As the police so often say after taking their statements, these people obviously saw something, and quite often it scared the hell out of them. We know nature here, we know the critters that populate our region. And when we know when we see something that doesn’t belong there.
Even if we can’t say what it is.
The Shawnee Forest is a huge, remote region. There are places deep in the woods that people seldom go. There are large animals aplenty to support a small colony of large creatures. And humans trodding through the forest would make enough noise that a wild animal would certainly hear it coming. Even one uncannily human like.
Noted anthropologist Jane Goodall, who knows a thing or two about large, hairy ape-like creatures, when asked about Bigfoot by NPR stated that “I’m sure they exist.” When pressed on it, she laughed and said “Well, I’m a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist. You know, why isn’t there a body? I can’t answer that, and maybe they don’t exist, but I want them to.”
That’s the best summing up I can find for the mysteries that haunt southern Illinois and much of the world. When we know everything, there is no longer any mystery. And a life without mystery, is a dull life indeed.
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The Legends and Myths of Sweet Hollow and Mount Misery: Part III, Research on the asylums of Mount Misery and Sweet Hollow
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