The Beast of Knox County

I don’t normally have a great interest in cryptozoology--my attitude towards Bigfoot is that if it leaves me alone, I’ll leave it alone--but one of my exceptions to this rule is the story of an alarming creature which once terrorized an area in Knox County, Indiana.  Not only were there multiple sightings of this fearsome whatchamacallit, these eyewitness accounts were more credible than the usual "How I Took a Selfie With Sasquatch" fan fiction.

On the night of August 22, 1981, Jack Langford was fishing in the White River, in eastern Knox County.  After he had been there a couple of hours, he began having the  creepy  feeling that he was being watched. When he looked up, he saw two eyes, each about an inch in diameter, glowing red from the campfire and staring right at him from a distance of 50 yards away.  The creature was standing in the river at a depth of about four feet.  It was too dark to see the face, but Langford could tell the body was very large, and very hairy.  After silently studying the fisherman for a few minutes,  it used a tree limb to raise itself out of the water and went on its way.  Langford estimated that the creature weighed about 200 pounds, and had arms  that went down to the knees.  As it left, it “made a loud squeal or high-pitch shriek when it left, something like a young pig would make when you try to hold on to it.”  Langford had heard similar noises  on earlier visits to the area, but at the time thought little of them.  

Five days later, Vincennes residents Terry and Mary Harper, who lived not far from where Langford had his unsettling encounter, woke up to a disturbing sight: although they had heard no disturbances during the night, while they slept, something had vandalized their house.  Part of a door and chunks of aluminum siding were torn off.  Whatever it was that attacked the home left behind traces of blood--some as high as eight feet high on the house--toothmarks, and bits of white fur.  They also found paw prints four inches wide.  Oddly, the area the creature attacked was nowhere near the kitchen or food storage areas.  The food bowl belonging to the family dog was only about 10 feet away from the damaged spot, but it was untouched.  The dog herself, a German shepherd who normally chased any animal intruders from the yard, was left, according to Mrs. Harper, “shaking and whining and too frightened to move” for hours afterward.  The morning after the attack, their neighbors were horrified to find that during the night, something had killed their pet rabbit.  The poor animal had its throat torn out and the paws chewed off.  The local police shrugged and said it was probably a wolf.  The understandably nervous Harper family started a round-the-clock watch and left lights on throughout the night.  Fortunately, the incident was not repeated.  

Vincennes Sun-Commercial, October 9, 1981, via Newspapers.com. As you can guess, the local papers didn't take the whole business very seriously.

On the night of September 25, a woman named Barbara Crabtree, who lived about 12 miles south of the Harpers, was putting out the garbage when she saw a creature standing in a cornfield a short distance away.  She described it as having “dirty white hair all over and stood somewhere between 7 and 8 feet tall.  He emitted a bad smell and had huge eyes, but I couldn’t tell what color they were because I didn’t stand around long enough to look.”  (A sensible move, that.)  Before retreating to the house, she noticed that a chicken she had put in the garbage can that morning was now gone.

Later that same night, Barbara and her husband Roger went to the movies.  While on their way home at about 2 a.m., they saw the same creature heading toward the road from some nearby woods.  Mr. Crabtree notified the sheriff’s office, but when deputies searched the area, they found no trace of the strange beast.

Four nights later, Mrs. Crabtree was awakened by an ominous growling outside her house.  It was like nothing she had ever heard before.  When her husband turned on the front porch lights, the growling stopped.  A few minutes later, they heard the noise on the other side of the house.  When the Crabtrees called police, they received the same dismissive response given to the Harpers.  A wolf.  Or a coyote.  Or some overactive imaginations at work.  And so the story quickly faded from the newspapers.

In the years since then, there have been occasional claimed sightings of this large white whatzit, but no more violent incidents have been reported, fortunately for the residents of Knox County.  The Harpers had a hell of a time explaining their damaged home to the insurance company.