Recently, the 3rd of July 2011,  I was contacted by a friend of mine about an odd occurrence. Her niece lives near Staunton, a small town in Central Illinois. The niece was  gone for the weekend and when she returned home found that something had broken into her chicken coop and killed 24 chickens by pulling their heads off and laying them all in a straight line, all laying in the same direction.

This is a disturbing incident. What could be so brutal as to not only slaughter all of her chickens? But also what or whom would leave them all in a row. That suggests purpose and intelligence.

This Central Illinois incident left few clues. Their neighbors had also lost rabbits which were housed in hutches in their back yard, and unusual sounds had also been noted.

Map of Staunton, Illinois located about 40 miles northeast of St.Louis, Missouri.

Are there other similar cases perhaps in other parts of the country? And if so what conclusions were drawn?

In May 2010 the following article appeared in the Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News.

Mystery surrounds 26 headless chickens in North Pole

COOP: Bodies laid in a lollipop pattern, heads gone; three survived.

By James Halpin

Twenty-six chickens were mysteriously beheaded at a North Pole chicken coop this week. Then things got weird.

Troopers say they were called to a home on Sharon Road on Monday to a report of a mass chicken slaughter, with the carcasses laid out in a peculiar pattern on the ground.

The homeowners, who live in a semi-rural wooded neighborhood with large lots, had 29 white chickens in a backyard coop, said Trooper Ken Vanspronsen, who responded to the scene.

Sometime overnight Sunday, someone crept in and tore their heads off, but the homeowners told troopers they didn’t hear anything unusual. They woke up Monday and went out to feed the chickens, when they discovered 26 of them dead.

“They were very concerned as to why somebody would do it, and kind of spooked,” Vanspronsen said.

There was no sign of the heads, troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said. The carcasses had been laid out in a north-south pattern — oriented with the coop — in a roughly 12- to 15-foot line on the ground with a circular arrangement of corpses at one end, in something of a lollipop pattern.

“It’s kind of a mystery as to why somebody would tear off chicken heads and then arrange the bodies in a linear pattern,” Peters said. “It’s certainly something that is perplexing. … It’s unsettling, to say the least.”

Troopers wouldn’t name the homeowners, saying they didn’t yet know if the act was a threat against them or if it was simply motivated by vandalism.

There was no damage to the coop itself and just three chickens survived the incident. It wasn’t clear if the suspects had been interrupted in their work of if the surviving chickens held some unknown significance.

“It’s kind of hard to say why anybody would do it in the first place, let alone why they’d stop,” Vanspronsen said.

The chicken carcasses when found were buzzing with flies in the warm Interior day and the meat was not salvageable. The display was photographed and the chickens were thrown out, Peters said..

I have been in contact with the reporter and in the last year nothing new has been added to the story.

In March of 2008  I visited a rural home near Springfield, Missouri and spoke with a lady who over a period of weeks had lost a large number of both chickens and ducks that were housed behind her home.  In this location only a few chickens were taken each night and none were laid out with their heads pulled off. I felt sorry for the two remaining chickens who roosted on her front porch and as close to her door as possible.

This family in Missouri had heard loud wood knocks and roars coming from the dark ravine behind their home. Large footprints and stick structures have been found by researchers on their property.  They sold their home and the new owners have been reporting strange sounds as well

In November of 2010 I gave a public talk in Belleville, Illinois. One of the attendees related to me that she was losing 5 or 6 chickens at a time. She also reported hearing odd sounds like a baby “crying in the woods” as well as other unusual and unidentifiable sounds. Their home is located in the woods near Red Bud, Illinois.

From Paul Graves, well known bigfoot researcher in Washington State comes the following note:

Hi Stan , my friend still lives in the cabin where he had a white sasquatch tear into his chicken pen and take 5 chickens and it layed them in a perfect row in the snow with all there heads pointed in the same direction , they shot bird shot over it’s head because they were scared and didn’t know what it was, they ran back in the cabin and when they came back three of the chickens were gone and two were left on the snowbank, his story was redone on “Monster Quest” show critical evidence, and the very first Monster Quest also .

This incident was also reported in the local newspaper (Wenatchee, Washington) the Wenatchee World 26th of January 1977.

So what are we left with? Were these chickens, killed by having their heads pulled off and laid out in a row, killed by a sasquatch?

I would think that the folks involved would much rather know that they were perhaps dealing with an animal, such as a sasquatch, than what so many suggest, some type of satanistic cult.