Cohomo (Cole Hollow Monster)
Newspaper articles:
Man Reports Seeing ‘Hairy Creature’ In Woods Near Cole Hollow Road
‘Hey, Bud, Did You See A Monster Go By…’
Woman Picking Berries Says She saw Monster Near Rt. 98 Thursday
Did a hairy monster stalk Tazewell County, Illinois?
Books & websites:
Bigfoot Encounters.com – Mackinaw River, Pekin, Illinois (1970-72)
Bigfoot Casebook – Tazewell County, Illinois – # 1
Monsters of Illinois
Terms commonly used to reference bigfoot / sasquatch in Illinois have been abominable snowmen, ape, bigfoot, creature,  critter, hairy gorilla-type, hairy human, hairy  monster, killer bear, red creature, roaming madman, sasquatch, what is it, what’s it, and wildman. Historically however, like it or not, most news sources references use the term monster.
Usually the monster name is associated with a specific town, creek or road name. I will post a series of articles that include links back to the source material for that particular “monster”.
Farmer City (Salt Creek) Monster
Sangamon River Bottoms Monster
BigCatMarks
BigCatMarks attempts to include links to websites, blogs and articles on large wild cats.
If you find a broken link, or know of a new website that you would like included please email me at stancourtney@hotmail.com or leave a comment at the end of this post.
I am constantly deleting outdated links and adding new ones but it is a never ending job. I am always open to suggestions, if you find a page that you think needs to be added or a broken link just send me a note at stancourtney@hotmail.com or leave a comment at the end of this post.
Woman Screaming, Pt. 2
I received the following comment from Bobby concerning my last post Woman Screaming. Since my reply was a little bit long I thought I would make a second blog post.
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Stan,
With all due respect and in your case my respect for you is immense. I respectfully gotta call you out on this one. Your saying that it’s 50/50 because theres no film/vid of a cougar making this sound?————————————————————————————————————————————
Bobby,
Thanks for the comment.
I have never said that any sound that I have recorded or anyone else has recorded is a sasquatch. To my knowledge there are no videos publicly available showing a sasquatch making a vocalization and accepted by science as doing so.
Now with respect to cougars sounding like a “woman screaming.”
Let’s look at my Guidelines for Sound Identification.
Guidelines for Sound Identificaiton – # 1
I am unaware of a sound file of sufficient quality of a cougar sounding like a “woman screaming” to use for analysis. I may be wrong and hopefully someone has a sound file that they would share or a url  of an existing sound file on the internet that fits this description. Perhaps a university somewhere has one in their collection and we just don’t have access to it.
Guidelines for Sound Identificaiton – # 2
I have spoken with several people who say “Well, I have seen cougar tracks in these woods, or I have seen cougar in this area, therefore that sound must be from a cougar.”
Guidelines for Sound Identificaiton – # 3
And lastly we just don’t have a sound clip fitting the description of a “woman screaming”.
I have seen two tawny cougar and two black panthers here in Central Illinois since 2004. I have been recording continuously since the spring of 2006. No one would be more thrilled than myself to record a cougar in the wild.
Here are a few sites with cougar vocalizations:
So please, if anyone knows of any additional websites with cougar vocalizations or of a video showing a cougar sounding like a “woman screaming” please let me know.
Woman Screaming
There are two sounds that I hear people talk about repeatedly, proclaiming them to be the vocalizations of cougar or mountain lion.
The first sound is what people describe as a woman screaming as if she were being killed. And the second sound is that of a baby crying, or the “cry baby” sound.
So what is that sound coming from the woods that sounds like a woman screaming? Almost every reference I have seen explains it as being from a large cat in heat. Now, I am not saying cougar do not scream, what I am speaking of in particular is the “woman screaming” type sound. Â It is typical human thought to ascribe unknown sounds to known animals. If some one sees large cat tracks or even a cougar in the woods and later hears the screams it is easy to see where they would put the two together.
To be 100% sure of any sound there needs to be a publicly available video showing the said animal making that particular sound. Is that the case with a cougar “screaming like a women”? I can not find it. Perhaps a reader can send me a link to a video showing a cougar making this particular sound. There are any number of websites with cougar sounds but none with videos showing the sounds being made.
Are there other animals in the woods capable of making these sounds? I think the sasquatch is one of these animals. There are reports of sasquatch sceaming and there are sound clips. But alas, just as in the case of cougar, no videos are publicly available showing a sasquatch making a vocalization.
In about 1952 my older brother hiked to our neighbors across the canyon in Northern Idaho. On his return trip home he heard what he described as a cougar screaming. Cougar had been seen in the area. When I questioned him recently about it his reply was, “Well of course it was a cougar, what else could it have been.” However in 2008 my wife and I found and cast humanoid looking footprints not far from my brother’s incident.
The area in N. Idaho where my brother heard loud screams.
Not far from where I live in Central Illinois neighbors complained for years about the screams they kept hearing coming from the woods. And then again, their explanation was it “had to be cougar, what else could it be, it sounded too big to be bobcat.” And once again this area has had lots of both cougar and black panther sightings over the years. I have seen two black panther and two tawny cougar in this area since 2004. However, what about sasquatch? I know of two daylight sightings and I have found six set of humanoid looking footprints at this location.
Large 14 x 5 inch footprints found in the snow in Central Illinois.
Conclusion:
So what is the final answer? Until someone comes up with a verifiable video of either a cougar or a sasquatch “screaming like a woman” there will be no conclusion to this question.  However, I think there is just as much reason to believe that it is from a sasquatch as a cougar.
Sasquatch Along the Lower Rio Grande
This is our first year to spend the colder winter months away from the Midwest. Our criteria was to both be out of the snow and to have interesting places to visit. So our first pick was South Texas and specifically the Lower Rio Grande, known to folks in these parts as the LRG. Every year 144,000 retirees, known as Winter Texans, take up residence in this part of the state. Being an avid birder I was very interested in checking out the dozens of great birding parks and nature preserves.
The Rio Grande River forms a long band of green for 1254 miles along the Mexico – United States border.
But what about squatches? Looking at several databases available on-line I was unable to find any activity in the lower 25 counties of Texas. Was this an indication of an absence of squatches or just an absence of sightings or witnesses reporting such?
We arrived on the 3rd of January and on the 6th of January I had my first unusual occurrence. I was walking alone on a paved road that meanders through one of the local parks. It was 8 a.m. and I was absorbed in listening to the dozens of unusual bird calls and songs that make this valley so unique and  special to many birders. I started to get that “watched feeling”. It was not intense but was strong enough that I turned around and looked behind me, nothing. It  could have been a collared peccary, a bobcat or even a coyote watching me. I walked about another 30 seconds when a small rock came sailing in and hit close to my feet. At the same time I heard the brush start breaking about 80 feet inside the tree line.  Those three thing happening at the same time made me stop wondering if it were just my imagination. I  know what I would have thought if I were back home in Central Illinois.
The small road where the rock throwing took place.
I slowly made my way from the park and returned the next day with my remote recording equipment. It was my intention to continuously record and see if any sounds of interest would be picked up.
I recorded for several weeks, picked up my equipment and slowly made my way through the sound files.
The small trail leading to where I dropped off my long-term continuous recorder.
On the 22nd of Jan 2011 I picked up the following sounds.
22 Jan 2011 – Possible wood knocks.
And then the next day, the 23rd  of Jan 2011 I picked up an unusual vocalization.
22 Jan 2011 – Possible vocalization.
Both the wood knocks and the vocalization were recorded at around 2 a.m. As always with any possible sasquatch sounds consideration must be given to human activity in the area and past known sasquatch activity, if any.
Media Article – Jackson County, Illinois – # 31
December 2010
In Search Of Bigfoot
by Bonnie Marx
Southern Alumni
Mysteries of nature – loch monsters, chupacabras, and Bigfoot – have long populated Loren Coleman’s world. He is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who most popularized cryptozoology, which is basically the biological study of “hidden animals.” But don’t expect this author of more than 6,000 columns and articles to blindly defend the creatures and critters that occasionally pop up in the news as “monsters.” Instead, he calls himself an “open-minded skeptic.”
The reasons people choose to attend Southern are myriad, but the incentive for Loren Coleman ’76 is likely unique. Now one of the world’s preeminent cryptozoologists, he says “I picked SIU because of reports and folklore of black panthers and hairy apes in the southern swamps of the area.”
Mysteries of nature – loch monsters, chupracabras, Bigfoot, and such – have populated Coleman’s world since his age was barely in the double digits. Within a year or two he was doing fieldwork and investigations on his own, traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of crtyptozoological mysteries.
Now, nearly five decades later, Coleman is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Most days he can be found at his International Ctryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, which has served as the setting for several documentary television programs’ interviews of Coleman regardins his books and continuing research.
For those unfamiliar with the term cryptozoology, it comes from the Greek “kryptos,” meaning “hidden” and zoology, the biological study of animals, giving it the literal mean “study of hidden animals.”
But don’t expect Coleman, who has written more than 6,000 columns and articles as well as more than 30 books on the subject, to blindly defent the creatures and critters that occasionally pop up in the news as “monsters”. Instead, he calls himself an “open-minded skeptic.”
It’s not just about the so-called monsters, like Bigfoot or Mothman. “There are new animals being discovered every day, like the snub-nosed monkey of Asia,” he says. An editor of the Skeptical Inquirer said that “among monster hunters, Loren’s one of the more reputable, but I’m not convinced that what cryptozoologists seek is actually out there.”
But Coleman is and his credibility makes him “the go-to guy for a lot of media trying not to be sensationalistic,” he says. Two days before his interview with Southern Alumni, National Geographic came to call. The Christian Science Monitor has visited three times since last spring. “They see that cyptozoology is a lot more grounded than ever.”
At Southern, “I majored in anthropology, minored in zoology, and did some summer field work in archaeology”, Coleman says. he also found it compelling that in his first year at Southern he was assigned to Allen Hall, name for John W.Allen, noted historian and folklorist who for several years was director of the University Museum. “I tuned in on that fact right away.”
(Coleman’s official graduation year from Southern, 1976, is a bit misleading. In 1969, he was a senior, two courses away from graduation, when the University closed because of student unrest. His degree was granted in 1976 after he petitioned to get credit for one of the books he’d written. His first book came out in 1969.)
Despite his passion for the subject, Coleman knew that cryptozoology wasn’t going to pay the bills. His career focused on social service, social work, and even public policy. His first job in the mental health field, he says, was working at the outdoor laboratories at Southern.
Coleman spent 17 years working in residential treatment centers before earning a degree in psychiatric social work at Simmons College in Boston, and also has done doctoral coursework in social anthropology and sociology. For another 20 years, he was a professor and researcher at universities in New England. He continues work as a consultant for the Maine Youth Suicide Program and has been called on for statements in the aftermath of school shootings and how best to respond to the problem.
Coleman says he “always cared about the kids (his social work) but teaching was very much a way to fund my other interests . . . . I needed to get out of research and get to cryptozoology. I also wanted to see my boys grow up and writing and consulting more could make the life I wanted to make.”
The SIU graduate’s own fascination with unclassified zoological enigmas came in the early 1960s when he first heard accounts of the Himalayan Yeti. But he quickly became disillusioned by modern science’s dismissal of the creatures and went to work establishing relationships with some of the most esteemed crypto-investigators.
During his earliest field investigations, Coleman was one of the few serious researchers to actually bear witness to the “Minnesota Iceman” carcass and he was one of the first investigators on the scene following the notorious “Dover Demon” encounters of 1977.
Although he was living back in his hometown of Decatur, Ill., in the early 1970s, he returned to the area when reports of the Big Muddy Monster started coming in. “The Big Muddy Monster was a big deal,” he remembers. “In the Decatur area and all the way down to Carbondale, people were reporting seeing a Bigfoot. There was the Farmer City Monster, who some said had a head the size of a steering wheel, and many different little incidents. I had the sense Illinois would explode with some big story.”
In 2003, Coleman opened his International Cryptozoology Museum in four rooms of his house, opening it only serious researchers. In 2009, the museum went public, moving into a storefront at the rear of a book store in Portland, Maine. In addition to the 8-foot-tall Bigfoot likeness, the museum holds about 2, 000 other items. He also writes for the blog Cryptomundo (www.cryptomundo.com).
Mysteries of nature populate Loren Coleman’s world but you won’t hear him use the work “believe.”
“Belief is the providence of religion,” says Coleman. “I distrust “belivers,” who are just as dangerous as the blind debunkers.”
This is one of more than 30 books Coleman has written on the subject. He’s also penned more than 6,000 columns and articles.
Media Article – Saline County, Illinois – # 2
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Web site tells of five southeastern Illinois bigfoot encounters
Harrisburg, The Daily Register
By Brian DeNeal
The Big Foot Research Organization has received over the past five years at least five reports of close encounters with bigfoot-type creatures in Southeastern Illinois.
Do the reports convince me there is a bigfoot in our area? No. But then I’m more skeptical than most people. I thought I saw a whole heard of bigfeet once, but they were magical, because before my eyes they transformed into whitetail deer. That said, I don’t think these people are nuts and if I was standing there with them when they saw what they have said they saw I may be singing the praises of bigfoot to anyone patient enough to listen.
Whatever your beliefs on bigfoot, the tales on the Web site of BFRO.net — which searches bigfoot encounters nationally by state and county — make for some good reading.
A father and daughter say they saw a bigfoot near what I believe to be Garden of the Gods Wilderness and believe it ran its fingers through the dust on their Ford Explorer. A boy out deer hunting in Mitchellsville says he spotted the beast lumbering through the woods. A couple camping at Williams Hill Pass heard an unearthly scream in the woods. A group near Iron Furnace say a creature hurled big rocks at them, putting their $10,000 telescope in peril. A Rosiclare family say they heard screams in the woods near their house. A man looking for cougars Bell Smith Springs says he heard bigfoot knocking logs together.
This link takes you to the three Saline County stories. To see the others go to Pope and Hardin county on the Web site’s map.