The Woo-Woo of Warren County

Naturalist and writer turned Fortean researcher Ivan T. Sanderson has found a home on this blog before, thanks to his personal brushes with The Weird.  One such occasion, which was also witnessed by two of his friends, took place at his home in New Jersey.  On April 13, 1968, a local newspaper, the “Blairstown Press,” published a letter from Sanderson giving details about the incident.  The letter begins with Sanderson describing his interest in local history and the stranger side of life, then segued into his desire “to speak of even more out-of-this-world things”:

There is one that has sort of popped back again recently through a chance remark that one of us happened to make when Raldo Mattioli, a most progressive staff writer for your opposite number over the river--the “Easton Express”--was visiting us.  Being a good reporter in the proper sense, he picked on this and made it his lead to a story he wrote on us.  This gave us rather a shock, but simply because we handle so many curiosa that any personally experienced one of this nature tends to get lost in the shuffle.  The “story” is as follows; and this is where we would like to ask your readers’ help.

In mid-June of 1965, three of us rolled into my place in Polkville at dawn.  We had driven all night from Washington, D.C., where we had been for several days on business.  This business was the news business.  Both my friends were longtime, professional newsmen.  Tom Allen, Senior Feature writer for the Sunday “New York News” for ten years, and Walter McGraw, audio (meaning using tape for interviewing) reporter for Westinghouse Radio and TV, the AMA (American Medical Association), and the Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the Federal Government, among other things.  Such boys are really hardboiled cookies and not to be fooled by any kind of “kookery.”

It was one of those almost mystically beautiful mornings, with the birds singing, the frogs froggin, and insects “insecting”--I suppose you would call it.  As we had an enormous load of equipment--tape recorders, film cameras, cases filled with office equipment, typewriters, and all the other assorted junk that working newsmen have to lug around--I drove up around the house to the back lawn.  Backing into the back door makes life so much easier when unloading such a load.  Also, it just so happened that all three of us have what I can only describe as “sensitive backs” due to “incidents” in what is now called WWII.  We put down the back flap of the station wagon and started to unload.  But the morning was so absolutely glorious, with its clean fresh Warren County air, and the rising sun, and the boids and the bees and the frogs and so on, that we just sat on the flap and breathed.  Tom Allen had just remarked upon this glory compared to the rat-race in the capital when….

Absolutely without warning of any kind that we could detect, every bird, frog, insect, and all else alive just simply, absolutely, and completely “dropped dead” as it seemed.  The resulting silence was so absolute it would have scared even an Eskimo on a still night on an arctic icecap, where the absence of sound is so profound that it almost hurts.

We all looked at each other for a few seconds.

Then it came.......WOOOOoooooo-WOOOoooo-WOOOooo…..three times in quick succession. Then a pause; then again three; and so on for about seven minutes.

I've searched for and collected animals all my life all over the world, and I'm not given to panic; nor am I either impressionable or much impressed by any "unexplained", but I can tell you that that vast, enormous, terrific noise which welled up from the Walnut Valley sent the proverbial cold shivers through my spine and, as we used to say in the old country, "with bloody knobs on". But the thing that impressed me most was that it apparently had the same effect on my two colleagues--hard boileder, hardnoseder, and more sceptical than whom I have never met. Besides, both are Vets and both happen to have quite some experience with wildlife as well.

This event had several aspects that I will elaborate upon, in a minute, but I must tell you what happened with us.  Here we had probably the best and most elaborate recording equipment then available and two real experts in its employment whose whole life depended upon “grabbing the mike” as they say when an unexpected event took place.  Yet the three of us just stood with our mouths open, gaping and turning our heads from side to side.  None of us so much as thought of flipping open the battery-recorder and throwing just one switch.  But how often does one fail to do the right thing in an emergency?  How many times have you kicked yourself, saying:  Why the heck didn’t I take a photo of that?  This seems to be a universal trait; but professional reporters have trained themselves to try and overcome this reaction--or lack of it.  Yet, here we were, three very longtime pros, just standing there with our mouths open!

This was a purely psychological reaction.  What might be called the intellectual one came later, but too late.  It probably hit me first because of my lifetime in the field studying animals.  In fact, so extraordinary were some aspects of this sound and its “behavior” that I completely forgot the tape recorders and just about everything else.  The reasons were as follows.

First, I had never heard any noise or sound like this before in my life.  Second, the only times when I have heard ALL noises made by all types of animals stop suddenly and at the same instant like that, has been before major earthquakes--and I have witnessed half a dozen of these all over the world.  Third, the sheer volume of sound was absolutely unbelievable; in decibels I would say that it equaled a four-jet plane taking off, as registered from about a quarter of a mile.  Fourth, it seemed to start somewhere up about the region of the Blairstown-Millbrook Rd., but in a couple of minutes if not less it was manifestly west of us, which put it over (or beyond) Hainesburg; and in another couple of minutes the calls were definitely coming from the direction of Columbia and the Gap.  This is about 12 miles in a maximum of four minutes--probably less, because even an experienced radio man’s timing goes all off in an emergency.  But most of all there was both an echo AND an answering call of exactly similar nature from, apparently about west of Bangor, across the river!

Our timing may, as I say, have been way off, because the whole thing was so shocking that none of us even pulled out our stop-watches, though all of us had one in our pocket on a chain.  (This is standard equipment for radio persons.)  It could have been of much shorter duration, but it certainly could not have been any longer.  The point I am trying to make is that 12 miles in even four minutes is 180 m.p.h.  What animal, I ask, can travel at that speed?....

I should point out that we don’t know, of course, if this “Thing” did travel that far in that time.  Nevertheless, it could not have been a land animal, and especially a Gray Fox which, as several experienced local hunters and woodsmen have pointed out, does make a “who whhooing” noise sometimes--at least so it is believed.  Of the angle of travel we are quite sure as all three of us cupped our hands behind our ears which is standard practice for pinning down direction.  This angle, from where we stood, was no less than, believe it or not, 180 degrees!

Then again, the echoes absolutely confirmed that the darned thing--the first and loudest one--was over our ridge and in, or beyond, Walnut Valley.  There would have been no ring-back if it had been close enough to be in our little valley; and you can get a pretty close estimate of distance by the time of an echo, as in thunder.  This time lag decreased until the thing was due west (i.e., the closest) to us and then increased again as it went south.  In other words, it was a noise so enormous that, at a minimum of five miles, it made our eardrums ring!

However, the most incredible aspect of this whole incident was that the birds, frogs, and insects stopped all their noise, and suddenly, all together, BEFORE the first call, or whatever it was. What is more, they remained absolutely silent until at least five minutes after the two callers appear to have met and gone on south together, their calls blending and then getting fainter and fainter! Thousands of animals don’t behave like this except in some very exceptional circumstances. And, what circumstances in this case but the forthcoming WOOOoooo-WOOOoooo?

So out-of-this-world was this experience that the three of us talked about it all day and finally decided that it was just too way-out even for me to mention.  However, I did make a lot of somewhat discreet inquiries of every and all the experienced naturalists that I knew, from Game Wardens to scientific collectors; but, apart from the Gray Fox belief, none had anything even near a suggestion after he had heard a playback of a recording we made immediately after the incident on which we gave an imitation of the sound.

Then came Raldo Mattioli with his story and, no sooner does it hit the stands, than the phone calls start coming in.  As it happened, I was talking to the combined Warren County PTAs (Parent-Teacher Associations) in Belvidere that evening and the matter came up there as a result.  About five minutes after I got home that evening the phone rang and a citizen of Belvidere was on the line.  (I’ll give you his name next week, if you want it, and if he gives me his permission.)  And this is what he had to tell us.

He pinned down the date pretty well because he was married seven years ago and was then still a-courting.  One fine summer night he was so courting on a lovers’ lane up the mountains west of Bangor.  The lane was in the woods and there was only star-shine, there being no moon that night.  Suddenly, as he tells it, just this same enormous, ghastly, hair-raising sound rang out right ahead of the car.  The gentleman tells me that, although an ex-Navy man and having seen much war-time action, he had never been so scared in his life, and he said that he still does not like to talk about it.  So scared was he at the time, he said, that he was sort of paralyzed and to the extent of simply being unable to switch on the car lights.  He estimated that whatever made the noise could not have been more than twenty paces ahead up the road.  It continued to “WOOOoooo-WOOOoooo” just as ours did at regular intervals and then took off and faded away.

But more followed.  This gentleman told me that a couple of years later he was helping as a volunteer to do some digging for a school project in his township and at a lunch-break got to talking of funny things hereabouts, and no less than three others finally admitted that they had heard, and even “encountered” at close range, the same thing.  One, whose name I have, and whom I happen also to have met personally, has been a very keen sportsman-hunter all his life in the area and is definitely not given either to tall tales or, more so, the jitters; but he also just does not like to talk about it.

So what do we make of all this?  I have my ideas, but then, my ideas tend to be taken with more than just one grain of salt, so I shall continue to keep my mouth shut for now!  What I want is your ideas; and, more so, any similar accounts that any of you might be prepared to give me.  Your names will not be published unless you give express written permission.  However, your names I would like, in confidence as I would be most grateful if I could meet you--also in confidence and ask some questions that you may not have thought of.  I am very sincere in this request as this is a purely scientific enquiry.

And I am not suggesting GHOSTS.  I will have no part of such.

It is still a mystery what created the noises that Sanderson and the others heard, but whatever it was, I for one hope that I never encounter it.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

A Texan Bigfoot?  The “Abilene Reporter News,” July 7, 1977:

HAWLEY - The forest of the Northwest has its Big Foot, the Himalayas have the Abominable Snowman, and as of Wednesday, this dusty Jones County town has the Hawley Him. The Him, a shaggy 7-foot monster with long dangling arms, reportedly attacked three youths Wednesday morning at Bob Scott's ranch. The youths, Tom Roberts, 14; Larry Suggs, 15; and Renee McFarland, 15, all reported seeing the beast and even tried to down the critter with a shot from a 30-30 rifle before the apparition made good his escape in the thick brush.

The reported attack started at approximately 10 a.m. while Roberts and Suggs were clearing brush for Scott. Both the boys live at the Abilene Boys' Ranch, of which Scott is superintendent. The boys said they were taking a break when they were startled by the breaking of tree limbs and a shower of rocks. Suggs said he was hit in the leg by one of the stony missiles and showed a bruise on his right calf in support of his claim.  Roberts said his head just barely missed being beaned by one of the projectiles. 

During the attack the boys dropped their tools and ran for the safety of the nearby home of Mr. and Mrs. Ed McFarland.

"We got three good glimpses of him," Suggs said. "I call it him--whatever it was.” 

"It was kind of an ape, but still a man," he added. "He had huge arms. They hung to his knees. You'd have to see it to believe it.” 

Roberts said one of the peculiar aspects of the attack, outside the fact a monster was heaving rocks at them, was that it made no sounds "except for the brush cracking." 

After recovering from the initial attack the boys went back to their worksite along with the McFarlands' daughter, Renee, and her 30-30. 

"It's a good gun. It's got a boom like a cannon and a kick like a horse," Renee said in praise of her armament. 

While at the site a rock was thrown at the McFarlands' van and the three youths said they saw Hawley Him approximately 40 yards away in a tangle of nettles. Suggs shot at the monster, but apparently missed his mark.

"She (Renee) was going to shoot it until she saw it. Then she crammed the gun at me and said, 'You shoot it'," Suggs said. 

The recoil from the shot floored Suggs and he never got off a second round as the Him "glided" through the brush, leaving foot-long footprints in the sandy soil. 

"That stuff (the brush) is so thick you have to know where you're going and he just glided through it," Roberts said. Roberts added that just prior to the attack he noticed a rotten smell in the area.

The area the boys were working in is near the site where Scott recently lost 21 penned goats without a trace, until several goat carcasses later were found in the brush. Scott said the Jones County Sheriff's Office said coyotes got the goats, but he is not convinced coyotes are to blame since no goat was killed in the immediate area of the pen. 

Wednesday was not the first time Hawley Him has been sighted. Renee said she and two of her girlfriends saw the monster in October during a slumber party. But when she told her parents of the strange creature creeping about the house they discounted it as a "trick of the night." 

Another area resident, Mike McQuagge, said he saw the footprint the youths claimed the monster had left, but he had never seen the creature which supposedly left the track. When asked if he believed a monster was roaming Jones County, McQuagge said he rather doubted it. Whether the Hawley Him is real or just another of the Big Country's list of imaginary monsters such as the infamous Caddo Critter and the Haskell Thang, there's little chance that Suggs and Roberts will be out there clearing brush without armed lookouts.

For some time afterwards, hunters roamed the area in search of “Him,” but as far as I can tell, the smelly rock-throwing whatsit was never identified.  In November, it was reported that a “squat, shaggy creature” had been mutilating animals in Merkel, a town about 20 miles from Hawley, but that mystery seems to have gone unresolved, as well.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

As I have mentioned a number of times before, some of the damnedest things happen in Wales.  The “South Wales Argus,” August 30, 1946:

An amazing story of a strange creature, half-man and half-horse, said to be haunting Blaenavon in the early hours of the morning, has been reported in detail to the police at Blaenavon. 

Mr. William Henry Davies, age 34, a miner at Kays Slope Colliery, who lives at 1 Forge Row, Cwmavon, has made a signed statement describing how he saw the creature running at terrific speed, apparently frightened by the light from his bicycle. 

The statement says that the incident occurred at 4:50 a.m. on Tuesday, while Mr. Davies was cycling home from work. On Cwmavon Road, near the turning to Twynmawr Road, he saw in the half light of dawn and with the aid of the light of his cycle, a creature which appeared to be a man except that it had a head similar to a small horse, and a flowing mane. 

Until Friday, he was reluctant to tell anyone except his wife about the experience, but on Friday morning decided to make a statement to Blaenavon police. 

Mr. Davies said:  “I have not the slightest doubt about what I saw.  I was riding down the hill and was only five yards from the creature when I saw it.  It was running very fast and my attention was drawn by the long hair which flowed over its shoulders.

“It had a small horse's head, just like that of a colt.  It ran up a side street, apparently to avoid me, and as I pulled up I heard a neigh.  It was not loud, but it was unmistakable.” 

Mr. Davies added that the creature appeared to be wearing a blue suit. When he went home he told his wife, but was afraid to tell his workmates at the colliery because he knew they would laugh at him and he was afraid of earning a nickname which might stick to him all his life. After thinking the matter over, however, he decided it ought to be reported to someone in authority. 

Blaenavon police told a “South Wales Argus” reporter that Mr. Davies had signed the statement, but as yet there is nothing further to be said. The matter is being dealt with in the ordinary way and routine inquiries will be made.

When interviewed by a reporter, Mr. Davies said there was no question of him having been drinking because he was a teetotaler.  In any case he was on his way home from work at the time.  He was satisfied in his own mind about what he saw and described the apparition faithfully in his statement to the police.

The Cabbagetown Monster

The following article written by Lorrie Goldstein, which appeared in the March 25, 1979 issue of the “Toronto Sun” is the sole source for the claim that a sinister monster lurks in the sewers underneath the “Cabbagetown” neighborhood of Toronto, Canada--but the story is remarkable enough to be worthy of note.  Make of it what you will.

There’s an eerie city lying beneath the streets of Metro, a city none of us knows much about.

Ernest has been a visitor to that silent world of sewers, drainage pipes and the ruins under old houses, and the memory of what he saw there will haunt him for the rest of his life.

“I wish you’d never come here,” he says as he sits in his small, neat Cabbagetown apartment with Barbara, his wife of 19 years. “If I tell you what I saw, people will think I was drunk or crazy, they’ll never believe me.”

On a summer day last August, Ernest, 51, firmly believes he saw some kind of “creature” while crawling into a small cave near his Parliament Street apartment looking for a kitten from a litter he’d been caring for. But about 10 feet inside he says he saw a living nightmare he’ll never forget. 

“It was pitch black in there… I saw it with my flashlight. The eyes were orange and red, slanted… it was long and thin, almost like a monkey…three feet long, large teeth, weighing maybe 30 pounds with slate-grey fur.”

Ernest speaks reluctantly of what happened next…

He is convinced the thing spoke to him.

“I’ll never forget it,” he said. “It said “Go away, go away,” in a hissing voice. Then it took off down a  long tunnel off to the side…I got out of there as fast as I could. I was shaking with fear.”

 

Ernest didn’t come to the Sun with this story. The Sun found him after hearing about his experience from a reliable contact who works with a relative of Ernest’s, one of the handful of people to whom he has confided the experience.

He would agree to talk about it only if his last name was not revealed.

“I’m in the phone book,” he said. “I couldn’t stand being called by a bunch of cranks.” 

“I believe Ernie saw exactly what he says he did,” said Barbara. “He was terrified when he came back to the apartment and he doesn’t scare easily. Look, he’s been known to have a drink in the past--like most people, and to occasionally tie one on, but he’s not a drunk and he wasn’t drinking at all that day.”

Checks with friends, relatives and acquaintances in the neighborhood supported Barbara’s evaluation of her husband.

I accompanied Ernie to the spot where he said he had seen the creature. 

It is at the bottom of a narrow passage between the building where he lives and the one next door. The only way to reach the tunnel entrance is to clamber 15 feet down the wrong side of a fire escape, which had once served as an exit to the street but today simply leads to a narrow chamber with walls on four sides.

The tunnel entrance runs under a slab of concrete at the foot of the chamber. Inside, there is a narrow passageway, branching off to the left about 10 feet back.

The corpse of a cat lies half-buried in the tunnel, reminding Ernest of the “strange noises, like animals in pain,” he heard coming from the chamber last summer.

The concrete slab has collapsed on one side during  the winter, making it impossible for even a small adult to get inside.

“I saw it where the tunnel turns.” Ernest said.  “The last I saw, it was heading off into the dark. The passage-way seemed to drop down very quickly and go a long way back.”

Ernest believes the tunnel leads to the sewer system that runs beneath Metro and that the entrance beneath his apartment may have been only an access point used by the creature to the surface.

Metro’s sewer department agreed to inspect the tunnel since it could be a safety hazard. Children might try to enter it.

A long-time sewer worker told the Sun it was possible, although not probable, that the tunnel led into the sewers.

He said the tunnel was probably the result of poor drainage over the years which had caused erosion underground, hollowing out the passage.

“Who knows where it leads, or how far it goes?” he said. “You’d have to get in there and the way it is now, it would take a lot of work.”

Despite the strangeness of Ernest’s story, the workers did not scoff at the tale.

“People who work on the surface just don’t know what it’s like down there,” one said. “It’s a whole different world. Who would have thought a few years ago that people would live in sewers, and yet that’s what they found in New York a few years back. Even in Toronto, we’ve occasionally had to pull mattresses from the chambers beneath the manhole covers where the winos have been sleeping.”

Another worker said he’d heard of animals like beavers and raccoons occasionally getting into the system, but never anything like that described by Ernest.

“I don’t know what he saw down there,” he said. “But I’ll tell you one thing. If we could get in there, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to go down alone.”

Whatever you may think about this story, I think we can all agree with that last statement.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

The “Flatwoods Monster” has become one of the most famous episodes in American cryptozoology.  The following eyewitness account from the “Windsor Star” of September 15, 1952, is one of the (numerous) contemporary accounts, complete with a delightful headline.  

SUTTON, W. Va., (UP) Eyewitness accounts of a tall, glowing monster with a blood-red face skulking in the hills divided Braxton County today into two camps--believers and skeptics. 

Seven persons said they saw the unearthly being, described as “worse than Frankenstein,” in the hills above Flatwoods, W. Va., Friday night.

State police and a number of residents hooted at the reports as a product of mass hysteria.  Police said the eyewitnesses’ guess as to the monster's height varied from seven to 17 feet. 

The excitement began when the two young sons of Mrs. Kathryn May, a Flatwoods beautician, said they saw a flying saucer land on C. B. Fishers farm near here. 

Mrs. May, National Guardsman Gene Lemon, and five boys climbed a hill on the Fisher farm to look for the “saucer.”

Mrs. May said a fire-breathing monster, 10 feet tall with a bright green body and a blood red face, bounced and floated toward them.

“It looked worse than Frankenstein,” she said. “It couldn't have been human.”

Lemon, 17, said he thought he saw a possum or a coon until he turned his flashlight on “the thing.”  It was then he saw the monster with the blushing face and green body “that seemed to glow.” 

Mrs. May said Lemon stared and then screamed as the monster duck-walked toward them. All of them fled, occasionally looking over their shoulders. 

The monster, Mrs. May said, had an overpowering metallic odor that nauseated them. She said they vomited for several hours. 

A. Lee Stewart, co-publisher of the Braxton County Democrat, received the first report from Mrs. May. The veteran newspaperman organized an armed posse and went to the scene.

“The odor was still there,” Stewart said. “It was sort of warm and sickening. And there were two places about six to eight feet in diameter where the brush was trampled down.” 

Stewart said he did not know what to think. 

“I hate to say I believe it, but I hate to say I don't believe it,” Stewart said. “Those people were scared--badly scared, and I sure smelled something.” 

Authorities said they believed the “flying saucer” which Mrs. May’s sons saw was a meteorite. The incident occurred during a meteor shower over a three-state area.

Skeptics concluded that what the witnesses had seen was merely a barn owl, but the legend lives on!

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.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

via Newspapers.com

This unpleasant bit of Forteana comes from the "Victoria Advocate," February 28, 1971:

Oklahoma City (AP)--There's something out there. It walks like a gorilla, leaves hand prints like a man, rips doors off their hinges, and it likes chickens.

For want of a better name we'll call him Oklahoma's Abominable Chicken Man.

It's a long story and it goes like this.

An El Reno farmer walked out to his chicken coop one day in December and found its door on the ground, apparently thrown there after being ripped off the wall.

On the surface of the door, and inside the coop on the walls, were a number of strange hand prints--like none he'd ever seen before. They were about seven inches long and five inches wide.

The farmer called a state game ranger. The ranger had never seen anything like it either and he sent the door to the Oklahoma City Zoo to see what experts could make of the prints.

The experts were baffled too. Zoo Director Lawrence Curtis says the prints appear to be like those of a primate. A primate is an animal like a gorilla or a man that can stand erect.

The thumb of the print is unusual. Curtis says it crooks inside, as if it were deformed or had been injured.

"It resembles a gorilla," he said, "but it's more like a man."

"It appears that whatever made the prints was walking on all fours. There were some footprints on the ground outside," he said. Whatever it was was barefoot. Barefoot in December.

Since Curtis got the first print he has had reports of similar finds around the state. A man in Stillwater and a woman in McAlester have told him of discovering similar prints. The woman has a photograph she is mailing to the zoo for comparison.

Oklahoma has only four native animals big enough to leave such prints: the black bear, the mountain lion, the wolf and man. Curtis has ruled out all but the last.

"We've shown it to several mammologists and several wildlife experts in Oklahoma and some passing through. All agree it is a primate," he said. "These prints were made by some sort of a man, perhaps one looking for chickens."

Asked about the wide distances between the points reporting similar prints, Curtis said, "If there is one there is more than one. There has to be more than one unless he's hitchhiking."

There are no zoos in El Reno, no circuses and no one known to be keeping a gorilla. In fact the only thing in the area that "keeps" primates--in this case men--is the federal reformatory just on the outskirts of town.

The Abominable Chicken Man is being compared with reports of similar findings from California. In this case people have reported seeing a seven-foot man-like creature wandering in the northern wilds. They call him Bigfoot, after the large tracks he makes.

The description also seems to match the Sasquatch, also known as Bigfoot, a towering primate reported in Washington and British Columbia.

Curtis is trying to find a book and a magazine article that tell about the Bigfoot sightings. He's anxious to make a comparison.

In the meantime he has the chicken coop door in his office for reference, and one supposes, for conversation.

There's not much else to go on until somebody reports actually seeing the Abominable Chicken Man.

There are a lot of people looking.

So far as I know, they never did find it, so Oklahoma poultry had better remain on guard.