Friday, July 28, 1972
Woman Picking Berries Says She saw Monster Near Rt. 98 Thursday
The Pekin Daily Times
A rural Pekin woman reported to Tazewell Co. sheriff’s officers that she saw Cohomo (Cole Hollow Road monster) while she was picking berries by the old coal mine on Rt. 98, about 3 miles east of Rt. 2, at 7:35 p.m. Thursday.
The unidentified woman did not furnish officers with any description of what she saw but said she became so scared she ran off and left her purse. Sheriff’s officers investigated the scene but found nothing.
The sheriff’s department received a call from a Eureka man who said he and his family were having a birthday party at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday in Fondulac Park, East Peoria, when they saw strange lights come in a vertical position and go down behind some trees. He said the lights left a vapor or smoke trail.
If Cohomo is actually Momo (the monster reported in Louisiana, Mo.) he apparently has been scared gray. According to first reports Momo was the same old black-haired, orange-eyed, stinky guy, but in the next 36 hours he grew a few feet, acquired an extra toe on each foot and learned to swim.
Thursday night East Peoria police said “two reliable citizens” told them they saw Momo. He was 10 feet tall, had a face with long grey U-shaped ears, a red mouth with sharp teeth, thumbs with long second joints, and “looked like a cross between an ape and a cave man,” they said.
Another sign of Momo’s neurosis may be his fear of lantern light, an acquired affectation for roaming thru damp caves and the exchange of his notable sulfur smell for that of “musky wet down dog.”
More than 200 calls jammed the switchboard at the East Peoria Police Department Wednesday night. Police vowed to administer a lie detector test to everyone filing a monster report.
Cairo Police Commisioner James Daley said anyone saying he saw Momo must submit to a breath test to determine alcohol intake.
Meanwhile back in Louisiana, Mo., Edgar Harrison, the man who first saw Momo, continued his watch for the monster. To get from Louisiana, on the west bank of the Mississippi River, to East Peoria, an amphibian would be compelled to go down the Mississippi to Grafton, about 45 airline miles, and then against the Illinois current to this area. The total distance would be about 165 miles airline point to point by this route-but both rivers twist and bend.
Wednesday night Momo, seven feet, black haired and smelly, frightened an elderly lady in Louisiana and minutes later turned grey and grew three feet to rip a fence in Illinois.