StanCourtney

Thursday, October 30, 2003

A Monster of an Idea to Boost Tourism

By Jeff Smyth
Southern Illinoisan

If Southern Illinois is to become the tourism hot spot many desire, it needs a gimmick. We need something out of the ordinary. Something so unique that it will make people want to drive here from hundreds of miles away to buy our T-shirts.

We’ve tried touting the region’s natural beauty, its rich history, mild weather, wine trail, golf trail, orchard trail, Trail of Tears and trailer parks, but we’ve been unable to find the hook to distinguish ourselves from other tourist traps.

If what already exists here isn’t enough of a draw it’s time to make up something that will bring in visitors. In short, we need a monster.

Other towns and regions around the world have them and it has proven lucrative, so why not Southern Illinois?

Roswell, N.M., has the UFO and the body of an alien no one has seen. The Pacific Northwest has bigfoot tramping through its forests and only a snippet of celluloid of a guy in an ape suit to prove it. There is a dinosaur that has been swimming in Scotland’s Loch Ness the past 65 million years and captured only once by a photographer using grainy black and white film.

Still, for all the skepticism that these creatures exist or have existed, people like to investigate and hunt them and see for themselves if they are real. In doing so they spend lots of money.

“Nessie,” the dinosaur with the snake head, has been a cash cow for the towns around Loch Ness. Roswell survives off the curious who travel to this town off the beaten path in New Mexico’s upland desert in hopes that, just because they’ve arrived, the U.S. government will fess up to hiding the ET.

Southern Illinois can take a cue from these communities and begin hyping legend and lore of a beast of some kind like no other seen on earth.

There was an effort years ago to create monster lore in Southern Illinois. Sightings of what was dubbed the “Big Muddy Monster” surfaced in 1973. “Mongo,” as it was also called, was described as being between 7 and 10 feet tall with light colored hair, red eyes and yellow teeth and smelling like a skunk that had rolled in a deer carcass. The problem is that described any of a number of bubbas and bikers who used to roll out of Midland Inn into the night back when it was a true roadhouse.

The Big Muddy Monster created quite a stir in these parts even gaining Southern Illinois publicity in The New York Times. Alas, the hullabaloo subsided after only a few years. My theory is that Mongo was too similar to Big Foot – a copycat monster – and people wised up to the hoax.

We need an original ogre if we are to dupe unsuspecting tourists to come here and join the hunt. What form it will take is the biggest question.

I queried a few people on the subject and they conjured some interesting monsters, but their ideas need to be fleshed out.

With the raising of freshwater prawns becoming more popular in Southern Illinois, one suggestion was that we create a myth about a local fish farmer who used hormone drugs to grow super-sized crustaceans. His experiment got out of hand and some of the prawns grew to be as large as the fabled giant squid, escaped from their holding pens and are now terrorizing fisherman on the region’s ponds, strip pits, lakes, rivers and streams.

A variation of this would be to use mutated catfish that “walk” like fish found in Florida and eat small cattle and family pets.

Since many believe there is a government conspiracy to reintroduce mountain lions in these parts, we can springboard from here. Pumas themselves wouldn’t be much of a draw, but what if we circulated rumors that saber-toothed tigers are prowling our forests?

This has the right mix of which great myths are made. A prehistoric creature, a government cover-up and danger.

A final suggestion I heard was of an apeman who lives in our underground coal mines and terrorizes miners. I’m told a mythical subterranean creature already exists in the minds of some coal miners. The “Gob Monster” is a creature that attacks miners when their cap lamps go out.

I like the idea of resurrecting the Gob Monster, but there is a downside. The mines are off limits to the public so few would have a chance to hunt for the creature. On the other hand, Area 51 in Nevada isn’t open to the public and it still draws scores of the curious.

The experts I assembled on the subject had some good ideas, but the possibilities are endless. I’m certain there are many pranksters out there creative enough to come up with their own beast. The best way for such a creature to “grow legs” and become local lore is to just launch it with no fanfare. A few chance sightings, some media coverage and we are on our way.

We’ll have a great opportunity tomorrow night to get inspiration for a Southern Illinois monster. The streets will be filled with ghouls, goblins and unworldly things that go bump in the night. They may come to your door, but don’t be afraid. Just feed them some sweets and they will go on their way. Happy Halloween.

Thursday, November 6, 2003

Time for the Big Muddy Monster to come home

By Jeff Smyth
Southern Illinoisan

Mongo phone home. Better yet, come home. Southern Illinois needs you.

Mongo, a.k.a. the Big Muddy Monster or Murphysboro Mud Monster, hasn’t been seen in these parts since the 1970s when sightings of the 7- to 10-foot ape-man that smelled like muck were rampant.

Those who fear for the beast’s demise need not, though. He’s still with us, although he’s relocated farther south.

Last week I referenced the Big Muddy Monster in the context of how Southern Illinois should create its own mythical creature as a tourist draw la the Loch Ness Monster. As a result, Loren Coleman contacted me.

Coleman is an author, filmmaker and professor at the University of Southern Maine. He is also a cryptozoologist. In short, it means he studies creatures whose existence is unproved.

Coleman knows all about the Big Muddy Monster and other strange denizens of this region. He was drawn to Southern Illinois from his hometown of Decatur in the 1960s because he heard about strange beasts prowling our swamps and woodlands.

Coleman earned a degree in anthropology with a minor in zoology from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Those “accepted” sciences aside, Coleman was more interested in chasing the unknown.

He carved his niche as a cryptozoologist and is now considered the world’s leading expert in the field. When “Mothman,” a movie about a flying beast terrorizing West Virginia, was made, Coleman was a senior consultant. He wore the same hat for the producers of the TV show “Unsolved Mysteries.”

He also has written nine books on the subject, the most recent published this year titled “BIGFOOT! The True Story of Apes in America.” In it, Jackson County and Murphysboro are listed 10th among his top 20 places to see Bigfoot.

Coleman was unruffled by my skepticism about his life’s calling.

“Cryptozoology is not evangelical. Belief is the providence of religion. I’m not here to convince you these things exist,” he said. “You’ll have to come to that conclusion yourself. I think it is important, though, to keep an open mind.”

So convince me that the Big Muddy Monster and the estimated 500 other reported sightings of ape-men should be taken seriously.

“Eighty percent of the reports need to be thrown out. A few are hoaxes but most are a mistake in identity,” he said. “That leaves 20 percent to investigate.”

Coleman is certain there are creatures in this world, even in our own backyards, that have yet to be discovered – some as grand as a Big Muddy Monster. He points to the mountain gorilla that was finally discovered in eastern Africa in 1902 after decades of searching. More recent was the discovery of the megamouth shark in 1976. It was captured accidently by researchers working off the Hawaiian Islands.

Discoveries such as these fuel Coleman’s desire to find more. Proving the Big Muddy Monster, Bigfoot, Sasquatch or whatever they are called by local residents exists is akin to finding the Holy Grail, he said.

What we call monsters, Coleman calls North American apes. He is certain they exist living in small bands. He believes their intelligence is little higher than a chimpanzee’s, they don’t use simple tools and they live amidst a primate social structure. They are nocturnal and emit a screeching, yet guttural, sound. He estimates the population to be between 2,000-4,000 on this continent.

That the body of one has yet to be displayed leaves him unfazed, “Have you ever seen a dead bear or mountain lion in the woods?’ he asks.

Coleman accepts the skepticism, even ridicule, bestowed on him by many regarding his belief in ape-men, but he is troubled that others in academia shun cryptozoology as a pseudo-science.

“There should be graduate studies with researchers in the field six months at a time, not two or three days when a sighting is reported,” he said.

That many refer to these creatures as monsters doesn’t trouble Coleman even though he doesn’t believe they are. It is a psychological response to the unknown, he said.

As for the Big Muddy Monster, it, or at least one of its kinfolk, has been seen in both Tennessee and northwest Arkansas as recently as last week.

“(Bigfoot) are fascinating species,” Jacqlin Castillo, a Bigfoot tracker, told the Siloam Springs (Ark.) Herald-Leader. “They are absolutely out there, but they’re so elusive… I think people need to be educated about them.”

So, my invitation stands. Big Muddy Monster, Mongo, Murphysboro Mud Monster, whatever you want to be called, come home to Southern Illinois. I’ll meet you at Mungo Jerry’s Fat Cat Cafe and you can tell me what it’s like to be so misunderstood, what you thought of the movie “Planet of the Apes” and if you think King Kong is a prima donna.

Before we get together, though, would it be too much to ask that you bathe?

Saturday,  October 30, 2004

Haunted Southern Illinois: Region full of the scary, bizarre, and freaky phenomena

By Marleen Shepherd
Southern Illinoisan

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS – The ghost stories of a region are the remnants of an oral tradition, a chronicle of persons and events that are chillingly recounted for generations.

Our history books only tell part of the story; our wild imaginations fill in the blanks. Or is it imagination? Humanity has been wrestling with that question for centuries.

What we do know is that our own tales of rattling chains, of strange forest creatures, of visitors from beyond the grave, are as deeply ingrained in Southern Illinois culture as the historic sites from which many of the tales emanate. The sheer expanse of Southern Illinois’ phantasmic folklore has been the subject of several books such as “Haunted Illinois,” “Weird Illinois” and “Weird Egypt: History, Haunts & Lore of Southern Illinois.”

Several ghost stories from Southern Illinois reach back to and beyond the area’s settlement. The region’s eerie tales – like those of the Old Slave House in Equality – are still used by native Southern Illinoisans to spook their children on stormy Halloween nights, some 150 years after the first ghost story about the plantation appeared.

Others, like the spirits at Carbondale’s DCI Biologicals, are newly told here and will likely be added to the campfire compendium entertaining the next generation.

Here are some of the area’s finest, sure to send the proverbial chills up your spine and leave you to wonder, “Was that knock just now really the house settling?” Maybe it is a new tale to add to the repertoire of spirited stories that tell us as much about our history as they do of the paranormal.

DCI Biologicals, Carbondale

This historic building that once served as Carbondale’s stately cement post office is a place where “weird things happen all the time,” according to Michelle Kell, the center manager who did not believe in ghosts before working at the building on Main Street.

Now Kell admits she’s afraid to be alone there at night, and she recently lost the employ of a night janitor who could not handle the intensity and frequency of poltergeist activity.

According to Kell, one of the janitor’s scarier nights on the job included becoming locked in a closet when the door shut behind him and a chair flew behind the door. This has been known to happen to other employees, sometimes in broad daylight.

Kell has been alone in the building when doors of the nearly century-old edifice open and shut by themselves.

“I’ve heard a phone ringing downstairs. We don’t have any phones downstairs,” said Kell, who also reports the radio routinely turns on and off by itself at night. “That’s the reason I don’t want be here by myself.”

The huge chandelier in the lobby also takes to swinging back and forth of its own volition and a recent photograph snapped in the lobby revealed a ghostly figure posing for the camera behind an employee.

“It looked like somebody white standing behind her. You could see it perfectly, like a white form,” Kell said.

The white feminine outline, wearing a long dress, has been spotted at other times floating through the lobby.

Kell said the old post office, where a postmaster reportedly died, was also used to house other government offices like that of the FBI.

Old Slave House, rural Equality

This home, originally named Hickory Hill, is considered not only one of the most haunted places in Southern Illinois, but in the nation.

It was once used in the reverse underground railroad to capture free blacks and sell them into slavery for hefty profits. Some slaves were kept in Illinois for the excruciating work in the salt tracts owned by the home’s owner, John Hart Crenshaw.

The attic of the beautiful white home was fashioned into a torture chamber where the blacks were shackled to small make-shift cells. The whipping post, bars on the two tiny windows that allowed practically no airflow into the slave holding cells, a ball and chain and the secret passage leading directly from the attic to a carriage door are grim reminders of the horrors endured here.

Jon Musgrave, a researcher of the home’s history, says rumors of ghosts in the attic actually started appearing in the 1800s when townspeople weren’t hearing Hickory Hill ghosts. They were hearing the all-too-real moans of live people.

When the house re-opened for tourism in the 1920s under new ownership, the ghost story revived as inhabitants and visitors alike told of strange noises throughout the house, most noticeably from the attic where, reportedly, blood stains appear on the walls and where chains still rattle and cries still echo at night.

The building, which closed to tourism eight years ago on Halloween, has hosted some 150 ghost hunters who tried to spend the night in the home. Only one made it through an entire night, departing with tales of ghostly sounds, according to “Haunted Illinois” author Troy Taylor, as recounted on his Web site www.prairieghosts.com.

Reports of ghostly shapes and areas of extreme cold in the house, even on the hottest August days, continue through this day.

The Murphysboro Mud Monster

He has been called Bigfoot in the United States, the Abominable Snowman in the Himalayas, Mapinguari in the Amazon, Sasquatch in Canada, Yowie in Australia and Yeti in Asia.

In Jackson County, where a string of sightings occurred in the late ’70s and early ’80s, he’s known as the Big Muddy Monster, named after the river he reportedly used as a main thoroughfare.

According to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Association, which has an extensive on line database of all sightings in the United States, the Murphysboro Mud Monster earns a class C in credibility, the lowest ranking.

However, many of the people reportedly saw the beast (often smelling a foul odor beforehand) still talk of the rare sightings of a creature most often described as looking like a big-boned and hair-covered 7-foot-tall biped. The hair was usually matted with mud and plant material, and recounts of the color vary from white to brown with silver streaks.

The monster never hurt anybody but spooked local hunters, children, lovebirds and once a troupe of carnies that said the beast stopped in to inspect the Shetland ponies one night while the group was setting up for a Riverside Park carnival.

The slew of sightings drew headlines from newspapers across the United States, including The New York Times.

It has been a decade since the last sighting of the mud monster, or Mongo as he is sometimes dubbed. But locals in the community still trade stories of the piercing cries made by the creature and large footprints left in the mud.

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Association reports a dozen other Bigfoot sightings in Southern Illinois over the last 50 years. The agency contends that Native Americans in the area first documented “non-human peoples of the wild,” and for 400 years the wilderness of North America has been entertaining similar tales.

Devil’s Bake Oven, Grand Tower

Historians surmise that places with names like Devil’s Bake Oven often earn such monikers because of a belief by early inhabitants that such lands are cursed or somehow connected to the paranormal.

The once-booming iron town of Grand Tower, along the Mississippi River on Illinois 3, is no exception.

According to Taylor, legends of ghostly activity were first circulated by the Native Americans who called this area home. Powerful rapids slap the base of the rock, which caused numerous deaths at nearby Devil’s Backbone, a rocky ridge about a mile-and-a-half long at Grand Tower’s northern edge. Devil’s Backbone continued to thwart the most experienced riverboat captains, resulting in many tragedies.

Ghost stories continued throughout the ages, including the story of a drowned wedding party that resurfaced from the river and foretold the coming of the Civil War to their descendants.

The most famous spirit in Grand Tower is that of Esmerelda, the daughter of a prominent citizen in the mid-1800s who lived atop Devil’s Bake Oven. Esmerelda was said to have fallen in love with the handsome rogue pilot of a riverboat appropriately named “Spectre.”

After a boiler explosion claimed her lover’s life, according to legend Esmerelda leaped to her death from the high cliff. While her home that sat above the cliff is long gone, some believe Esmerelda remains.

Locals have said the dead girl appears as a fine mist. According to Taylor, she walks along the pathway and vanishes among rocks near the old house. The moaning and wailing that still echo from the area are said to be most acute during thunderstorms.

The Hundley House, Carbondale

This historic brick home on Main Street with accents such as an original Art Nouveau stained-glass window was the site of an unsolved murder in 1928 of the former mayor J. Chas Hundley and his philanthropist wife, Luella.

Speculation on the killing abounds with tales of shady connections the family may have had in the heyday of prohibition and mobsters. The only suspect was Hundley’s son, who was allegedly involved in a bootlegging ring. He was never charged.

The hole from the 45-caliber bullet that ended Luella’s life still remains by the private back staircase leading up from the kitchen of the current gift and wine shop to private rental quarters.

Guests and residents have reported ghostly activity continuously for the last seven decades. The porch swing starts swinging by itself on windless nights, pots and pans bang in the kitchen, doors open and close, and lights turn on and off by themselves.

Tenants who live in the upper level of the house also have reported creaking on the steps where Luella was slain.

Monday, July 2, 1973

Bear wasn’t there, neither was monster

A large white bear reportedly killed over the weekend and identified as “Murphysboro’s Big Muddy River monster apparently exists only in imagination.

“That’s the first I have heard of it,” replied Police Chief Toby Berger this morning, when asked if the report was official.

Berger said a check showed some reports from the Gorham – Grand Tower area over the weekend of a large white bear being killed, but said police have no official reports of any such incident.

Police earlier had indicated some possibility the Big Muddy monster, seen two times last week, might be a white bear.

Berger said police have no official reports of any unusual sightings of the creature, whatever it is, since Tuesday night.

“We did get one report someone had seen the creature Friday night, but a check showed it was a cow in a field,” The chief said.

Two sightings early last week started the Big Muddy monster stories.

Monday,  June 21, 1976

Muddy monster reported

Murphysboro’s Big Muddy Monster was back in the news today, right on schedule for regular appearances close to the Fourth of July Holiday.

Murphysboro Police said three youths in the Westwood Hills Subdivision area at the west city limits called police about 10 p.m. Saturday to report “something unusual” in a wooded area near the subdivision.

Police said some broken branches were found in the area, but said no other traces of any kind, including footprints, were found.

The description provided, by the youths was vague because of dim light, police said.

It was in the same area as one of the first sightings of the Big Muddy Monster, as the think – whatever it is – was named by police.

The first sighting was reported late in June in 1973, when a couple saw a “7-foot-tall mud-covered and light-haired man” in a parking area in Riverside Park.

Several days later two Murphysboro teen-agers saw a similar figure near a back porch of a home in Westwood Hills, just a short distthe ance from Riverside Park and  the Big Muddy River.

Police in 1973 found tracks, including river slime, near the home in Westwood Hills.

Not much was heard from the monster until February of 1975, when two truckers on Illinois 3, near the Illinois 149 junction weest of Murphysboro report of a “bear-like animal” on the side of the road near the highway junction.

In July of 1975, residents in the Pentecostal Church grounds area north of Murphysboro reported seeing a “white and shaggy haired creature, about seven fee tall.”

Teams of investigators from several sections of the country check out the various sightings. Scientific investigation had identified similar sightings in other areas as a Sasquatch, or more commonly called Big Foot.

Big Muddy Monster A Favorite Local Legend

By Amanda Schmid

Volunteer News Staff

In the small town of Murphysboro, Illinois, several sightings of an unusual creature have been reported. This creature is rumored to use the Big Muddy River as its means of travel. Nicknamed the “Big Muddy Monster”, the legend says that it is tall, and matted with mud and hair.

A young couple reported the first sighting of the Big Muddy Monster during June of 1973. Randy and Judy Needham were sitting in their car near the boat ramp at Riverside Park, when they heard a loud, long scream.

Randy Needham says, “I’ve never heard anything that sent that kind of chill through me. Nothing could imitate that noise.”

Needham reports seeing the outline of a large, indescribable shape lurking in the streetlight. The scared couple started their car and headed for the Murphysboro Police Department. Two police officers went with Needham to the scene, and in the woods they found large impressions in the mud. The officers, as well as Needham, heard the strange scream again. Needham stated that neither he nor the officers had ever heard an animal produce a similar noise before. Needham explained that he never gave specific details of the creature’s description or its exact size.

Shortly after, former Murphysboro Police Cheif [sp] Ron Manwaring received a call from two teenagers in Westwood Hills who spotted a similar creature just outside of the woods near their house. Another young child from the subdivision reported seeing something strange while playing outside. Manwaring went to investigate and discovered tracks and a “slimy film” in the woods.

Other incidents around that time period were rumored to be appearances of the Big Muddy Monster as well. On the 4th of July that summer, the police were called to the celebrations at Riverside Park because something strange was spooking the horses.

There have been no more sightings of this strange creature in many years, but the legend is still discussed today. According to Needham, it is a story he has never escaped from, and he doubts it will ever be solved. The mystery of the Big Muddy Monster is one of the only unsolved cases in Murphyboro to this day.

Although he can’t explain the source of the noise he heard that day, Needham swears that it was not like anything he had heard before.

“To think that humans have everything figured out in this world is unrealistic.” he says.

Sunday, November 20, 2004

The Big Muddy Monster – Tracks, screams, smells and sightings since 1973

The Southern Illinoisan

Many people think the Big Muddy Monster and the people who claim to see it are the stuff tabloid stories are made of. Sporadic sightings of the creature, described as seven or eight feet tall, chunky, usually standing upright, and covered with light, mud-covered fur, began in 1973 near Riverside Park in Murphysboro and were reported north and west of the town for the next three years.

One more siting would be reported by a group of people in 1988. With the early sightings, mysterious tracks were found. Piercing screeches ran chills up the spines of residents and police. Stinky river slime fell on bushes and swaths were made through woods.

Some say its odor was so bad that it totally overshadowed any fears they had of becoming the monster’s lunch.

“It’s the sort of thing people associate with tabloid weirdness and too much to drink, actually,” said Randy Creath, now a music minister in Fort Wayne, Ind. “it’s just one of those things you say, ‘Oh, should I tell anyone?” And before there was a chance to make that decision, the police were called.”

Twenty-three years  ago Creath sat with his girlfriend Cheryl Ray, both 17, in the breezeway of her parents’ home in Murphysboro’s Westwood Hills subdivision near the Big Muddy River. They heard a rustling noise at the edge of the yard near Ray’s father’s garden.

Thinking it was neighborhood children, they went out to scare them. But after a few steps in that direction, they found themselves frozen in their tracks, staring in awe at a towering creature only 15 feet away.

Their experience came only days after a couple claimed to see a creature similarly described at the Big Muddy boat dock on South 24th Street. Newspaper reports said the creature came lumbering toward a car shortly after midnight. The driver took off, heading for the police department. A young neighbor of the Ray family told his parents he saw a big white ghost in their back yard as he ran around trying to catch fire flies.

The monster craze had begun. Early on, police took these reports seriously, according to newspaper accounts. Murphysboro police and Jackson County sheriff’s deputies checked out the reports trying to find evidence – one way or another – that the creature existed or was a hoax.

A police dog was used after the siting near the boat dock. The dog followed a scent to an outbuilding on a vacant farm, but refused to go in. More than a dozen police officers answered the call for backup but a search of the building turned up nothing.

Bob Scott, a sergeant with the Carbondale Police Department, was a sheriff’s deputy at the time and was involved in the searches. He and another police officer walked into the woods near the boat dock where the couple said the creature was seen. They got as far as 25 yards.

“We heard the largest screech that I’d heard in a long time and it immediately got our attention.” Scott said. “So we decided to come out of the woods and reassess.”

In the back of his mind, he thinks it could have been a hoax because everything they saw and heard could have been produced by humans.

“I do know there was an unusual odor and I still can’t describe what it was” he said. “And there were some strange footprints that weren’t shaped like an animal print or a human print.”

Another siting near McElvain Shcool that summer turned out to be an Angus cow. And in the summer of 1972, a Cairo man said he spotted a hairy, white two-legged creature standing 1o feet tall near the Ohio River levee in Cairo.

The night Creath and Rath had their close encounter, some other teens were having a party across the street. When they heard of the siting, the civic-minded youths, recent graduates of Murphysboro High School, decided to get involved.

“We decided we’d go look for it,” said Debbie Moore, of Carbondale. Moore, the executive director of the Carbondale Convention and Tourism Bureau, grew up a couple blocks from the Big Muddy River. She said she is convinced the people who saw the creature saw something. She just doubts it was a monster.

“That was a period of time when the stories of swamp monsters and all those things were really big across the nation,” she said. “But in my family, people who grew up close to the river and hunted and fished, were were convinced it was a bear that made its way down the river on some logs.”

Her father got some mileage out of the craze. He made some plywood feet and made some Big Muddy Monster prints of his own. Moore said those plywood feet stuck around in her family. Ever her young children played with them.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Murphysboro’s Big Muddy Monster

By John Gojkovich
Executive Editor

Murphysboro American

Murphysboro is home to the tale of the “Big Muddy Monster.”

This tale conjures up images of scenes from a late night horror picture show, like the creature of the Black Lagoon dragging itself out of the swamp, dripping and hissing.

The Big Muddy Monster has been sited on numerous occasions here in the city. Recorded sightings are in the 1950’s at the Murphysboro Iron and Metal Co., which was located on Gartside and 19th and in June 1973 near Riverside Park.

In July 1972, a jogger reported seeing something like the Big Muddy Monster near the Ohio River near Cairo.

Between June and July 1973 nine people reported seeing it in four separate incidents in Murphysboro.

In February 1975, four truckers, traveling seyparately radioed in reports of seeing a “bear-like” creature along Illinois 3, near the Illinois 149 junction west of Murphysboro.

In July 1975, two Murphysboro men reported something they thought may have been the Big Muddy Monster near a pond in Harrison community near north of Murphysboro.

In June 1976, three youths said they saw something near the Westwood Hills Subdivision – the area of two previous sightings.

Numerous other sightings were recorded in 1975 and 1976 as well as the ones previously mentioned.

Following these incidents, the Murphysboro Police Department  was flooded with mail about the Big Muddy Monster. One California youth wrote to let the police know his mom could catch their monster.

Other offers came like two fur trappers from Oregon who offered to capture the monster: We would be willing to take on the adventure at only the costs of expenses and materials for doing so,” they told local authorities.

The most recent incident came in June of 1988, when two residents reported seeing the legendary monster in a salvage yard on the north side of Murphysboro near the Missouri Pacific tracks just off Business Route 13.

Bob Reiman had been called to the scene by security guard Charles Straub, who thought there might be a prowler in the salvage yard.

Reiman and Straub searched the yard for a while, then they came upon what they said was an 8 to 10 foot creature covered with fur.

The sightings even brought two men to Murphysboro in 1988 to investigate the Big Muddy Monster.

So far no “other reports of the Big Muddy Monster have surfaced, but it sure  holds a place in the folklore of Murphysboro.

The Big Muddy Monster is reported to be about seven to eight feet tall and weighing more than 300 pounds.

Even local police officers, who were called to investigate  sightings, claim to have smelled something out of the ofrom the rdinary and to have heard weird, high-pitched shrieking coming  from the distance .

To this day the Big Muddy Monster is still speculated about.

There have been several people that have come forward claiming to have knowledge of the myth and even a few that claim they were the Big Muddy Monster and the whole affair was just a clever hoax. One even said it was a hoax designed to scare area women.

Friday, October 26, 2001

It came from the Big Muddy

Local reports claim monster inhabits Muddy River region

By Mark Lambird

Daily Egyptian

Many people are familiar with the Loch Ness Monster and the Bigfoots of the Northwest, but few realize one of the most infamous monsters of the last century roamed the banks of the Big Muddy River.

The river was the namesake of the Muddy River Monster. It was first sighted along the banks of the river in Murphysboro nearly three decades ago.

On June 25, 1973 Randy Needham and Judy Johnson were parked by the boat ramp at Riverside Park in Murphysboro. Randy and Judy both heard the piercing cry of the creature coming from the nearby woods,

“I heard a loud shrill scream and then saw an outline of something pretty big in the woods,” Randy said.

The couple took off and went to the local Murphysboro Police Department to report the strange sighting.

When Randy returned with a Murphysboro police officer and a Jackson County Sheriffs deputy, the creature had slipped off into the forest along the bank of the river, or so they thought.

“When we went back we saw the footprints and then we heard the scream again,” Randy said. “When those officers hear the scream, they ran just as fast as I did.”

The footprints that the trio discovered were large, but had begun to lose shape in the soft mud of the river bottoms.

“They were long and wide, but you really couldn’t tell if they looked like human prints because water had began to fill them.” Randy said.

After almost 30 years, Randy said he still remembers that loud cry from the woods.

“At the time people wanted me to make the sound that I heard, but it is something a human couldn’t do,” Randy said.

He said the shadowy figure he saw moving among the trees was larger than a man, but that was about all he could remember.

“When you see something like that you just don’t stand there and stare,” Randy said.

The sightings continued into the summer. On July 4th, workers with a carnival that had made a stop in Murphysboro reported a strange animal in Riverside Park. the workers said the monster had been looking at the Shetland ponies. The workers did not report the sighting until later, because they thought it would hurt attendance at the carnival.

Three nights later, the monster was heard from again, this time the blood-curdling scream came from a barn owned by Nedra Green, but she left the monster to itself.

After that, summer sightings grew less regular and the monster faded from the newspapers. At the height of the sightings the monster drew headlines from newspapers across the country, including The New York Times.

The last major sighting was in 1988, when Bob Reinman, who owned a salvage yard in Murphysboro and now lives in Alton, and Charlie Straub, former police chief of Ava, saw the monster.

“It was about 1:30 in the morning when I got a call that someone was in my salvage yard,” Bob said. “So I called three other guys and we went down there to check it out.”

He said when they got to the yard they expected to find some teenagers in the yard stealing stuff from the old cars.

“Me and Charlie started into the yard with our flashlights,” Bob said. “It wasn’t until we heard this strange grunt that we saw the thing.”

He said they shined their lights on the monster and saw that it was about eight feet tall, had long brown hair with silver streaks and he said its eyes glowed in the light, like a deer.

When the two encountered the beast there was almost a confrontation, but Bob decide the sheer size of the beast made it too dangerous to risk an attack.

“Charlie wanted to shoot it but I told him something that big could rip us apart, so we started running,” Bob said. “When I turned around it looked like it was running after us, but we made it back to the shop.”

He said it stayed around the lot for awhile, he even called some of his family to come and see the beast.

“I called my mother and got her out of bed to come down and see it,” Bob said.

Reports still are made, but few are explained. In 1989 some campers were attacked at Rend Lake in a tent. The “monster” that tore a hole in their tent later turned out to be a do.

Reporter Mark Lambird can be reached at mwll79@hotmail.com

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Dreadful tales of Little Egypt

By Edmund Meinhardt

Daily Egyptian

Southern Illinois has many such legends. Some, like the Big Muddy Monster, may forever remain mysteries. With others, like the Old Slave House in Equality, Ill., the excesses of human nature may ultimately prove far more chilling than any supernatural activity.

Screams, slime and footprints in the mud

On June 25, 1973, Murphysboro police officers responded to a report by Randy Needham and Judy Johnson, who had been parked near a boat ramp by the Big Muddy River.

Needham and Johnson heard a strange scream from the woods near the river. When they looked in the direction of the sound, they saw a seven-foot creature approaching them, lumbering on two legs, its long white matted hair streaked with slimy river mud. As the creature approached to within 20 feet, they drove away quickly and contacted the police.

Officers Meryl Lindsay, Bob Scott and Jimmie Nash returned to the area with Needham and found footprints in the mud. While they were investigating, they heard the creature scream again, this time from about 100 yards away. All four men retreated for the safety of the patrol car for a while but went back out to follow the footprints and try to track down a splashing noise they heard in the distance. They didn’t see the creature.

The next night, there was another sighting, this time in the Westwood Hills subdivision of Murphysboro. Randy Creath and his girlfriend, Cheryl Ray, who were then 17 years old, were talking in the breezeway between her parents’ house and garage when they heard something moving in the bushes behind the house. They also noticed a foul smell and walked out to investigate.

He said he saw the creature standing about 15 feet away.

“There was mud and crud in the bushes,” Creath said. “You could see where it had flattened the bushes and grass so it could sleep or do whatever it was doing out there, like a deer beds down. It was between seven and eight feet tall, fairly substantial in girth. It had light-colored fur. I saw its outline more than actual detail.”

Creath and Ray returned to the house. Ray’s mother called the police.

“It had gone by the time the police arrived,” Creath said. He told police the creature appeared to weigh about 300 to 350 pounds and smelled distinctly of river mud.

The police were initially skeptical.

“They thought we’d been drinking or smoking something,” Creath said.

Christian Baril, then a four-year-old child who lived near the Rays’ property, reported seeing a “big white ghost” the same night.

After talking to Creath, Ray, her parents and Baril, the Murphysboro police were convinced, according to a story in the Southern Illinoisan on June 27, 1973.

The story quoted the Murphysboro police as saying, “We believe these people saw what they said they saw.”

The creature, called the “Murphysboro Mud Monster” or the “Big Muddy Monster,” made a few more appearances, according to a Web site maintained by Troy Taylor, formerly of Alton, a collector and publisher of supernatural legends.

Carnival workers reported seeing the creature near some Shetland ponies on July 4, 1973, and Nedra Green, who lived on a rural farm near Murphysboro, reported hearing a screaming sound coming from her barn.

Creath is now a Methodist pastor living in Melrose Park, Ill. He is bemused and somewhat irritated by the seasonal interest in his encounter with the legend.

“I wish I’d kept my mouth shut,” he said.

George, the itinerant artist and the jasmine lady

Alton, Ill., located north of St. Louis near the confluence of the Mississippi, Illinois and Missouri rivers, has a reputation for being one of the most haunted cities in the United States.

Nestled between the Mississippi and some dramatically sloping streets is the Mineral Springs Hotel, built in 1914. It was originally the site of a meat-packing operation, but the discovery of mineral water during the excavation for an ice storage site gave rise to the idea of a spa hotel. A chemist declared the water to have medicinal properties. It was pumped out of the ground and put into swimming pools and into smaller tubs where people could pay a dollar to soak for “water treatments.”

In the early part of the century, it was considered improper for men and women to swim together, so a large pool was built just below the ground level for the men, and a smaller pool was placed on a lower level for the women.

Spas were very popular at the time, and the promise of water treatment cures drew people from great distances. For a time, the hotel flourished, but business began to decline in the 1930s, when few people could afford to pay a dime to swim or a dollar for a water treatment.

Several strange tales are told about dark events and lurking spirits at the Mineral Springs Hotel.

One legend tells of a man, referred to in some accounts as “George,” who drowned in the men’s swimming pool. His wife, fed up with his numerous infidelities, confronted him by the pool and struck him in the face with her shoe. Momentarily blinded by blood, he walked into one of the stone columns which surround the pool, fell into the water and drowned. After that time, guests began to report seeing an angry, brooding man in tie and tails standing by the men’s pool from time to time.

Another tale tells of an itinerant artist, who couldn’t pay his bill and was supposedly allowed to paint a mural of the city of Alton in the bar. He died before finishing it, or so the story goes, and can sometimes be found on the ground level looking confused and smelling of alcohol. Guests called him the “drunk ghost.” The unfinished mural can still be seen on the wall of what is now an antique store.

By far, the most famous Mineral Springs Hotel ghost is the jasmine lady. Her story, too, is rooted in an adulterous affair. One day her husband discovered her at the hotel with her lover. During the confrontation, her husband pursued her out of the room and she fell or was pushed down a flight of stairs. She died of her injuries, and her husband went into her room and hung himself. The jasmine lady is so called because of her fondness for jasmine perfume, and people report smelling it in the building. Some also report being able to see the jasmine lady walking slowly down the stairs.

Wayne Hensley, who has run a barber shop in the building for 25 years, conducts regular “ghost tours” on the premises.

“Out of 47 people, 10 smelled the jasmine on the last one,” Hensley said. “I didn’t smell it, but I have smelled it in the past many times.”

Hensley said strange things often happen on his tours.

“It’s not unusual for camera batteries to go dead,” Hensley said. “On the last one, one lady’s camera battery went dead, then it started to get warm. She said it started to vibrate. She gave it to me to hold, and I couldn’t feel anything at first, but then it did start to vibrate.”

The jasmine lady’s room is now part of an apartment, Hensley said.

“It gets cold up there,” he said. “Covers get pulled off beds. There are two little dogs up there, and sometimes they stand outside of that room and bark. They won’t go in that room.”

The Mineral Springs Hotel has been featured on Fox Family and on the Travel Channel’s “Weird Places” show.

Hensley said there is a theory about some of the other strange occurrences that people report, which include weird orbs of light, gathered into a straight line.

“There was a Civil War prison about four blocks away,” Hensley said. “They may have used some of the stones in the basement after they tore it down.”

The spirits of some of the men who died in the prison may have followed the rocks, Hensley said.

In addition to the tours, guests can sleepovers. People bring sleeping bags and camp out in the swimming pool in hopes of catching a glimpse of a ghost.

McPike Mansion

Not far from the Mineral Springs Hotel stands the remains of McPike Mansion, another favorite attraction of the ghost tours which regularly wend their way through Alton.

It is owned by Sharyn and George Luedke, who live next door. They conduct tours of the property, although they can’t let anyone inside.

“It’s condemned,” Sharyn said.

Brightly colored signs affixed to the front of the house declare it to be unsafe for human occupancy. There is also a bright orange building permit, issued by the city of Alton. The roof of the porch is collapsing. About two dozen molded plastic chairs sit facing the front of the house.

It was built in 1869 for Henry Guest McPike, a businessman active in local politics.

Since buying the house in 1994, Sharyn said she has since encountered many of the spirits lingering in the house. Once she felt a tug on her jacket as she tripped on some bricks and said she thinks it was a spirit trying to keep her from falling.

They have 25 minutes of footage of a foggy mist in the basement. Photographs taken in the vaulted wine cellar sometimes show orbs of light.

“Sometimes there is a lady in white who stands at the window,” Sharyn said.

Even though they can’t let anyone enter the mansion, they have campouts on the grounds. Someday, she hopes to refurbish the house, so people can once again enter.

Hickory Hill

Construction started in 1838 on Hickory Hill, John Hart Crenshaw’s house in Equality, Ill. Crenshaw bought his way into the salt business and was reputed to have constructed a system for sending freed blacks back into slavery in the South.

Jon Musgrave, a former reporter for the Harrisburg Daily Register and author of the book “Slaves, Salt, Sex and Mr. Crenshaw,” said he has found ample evidence in his research to support this idea.

“Crenshaw was a kidnapper,” Musgrave said.

One of the more sordid rumors about the Old Slave House involves a stud slave named Robert Wilson, also known as “Uncle Bob,” who supposedly spawned 300 children while held captive by Crenshaw in the 1850s.

“He was a real person,” Musgrave said. “We don’t have a detailed account of his life. We know from historical research that slave breeding did take place, and there are affidavits from many people who talked to him during the twenties, thirties and forties. He told dozens of people that he was used as a stud slave.”

Musgrave said Wilson died in 1948 in Elgin, Ill., at the age of 112.

Strange devices have been found in the attic, which some speculate may have been whipping posts. There are rings set in the floor that could have been used to shackle slaves.

Stories abound of eerie and unsettling sounds of crying, whimpering and dragging chains coming from the attic. These stories date back to the time Crenshaw lived in the house.

Musgrave said the stories are probably based on real sounds, and that it is possible Crenshaw hid slaves in his attic, biding his time until he had enough of them to make it worth the risk of selling them south.

Even after Crenshaw sold the house, stories of the sounds persisted. The house was occupied by an immigrant family who spoke little English. Musgrave said Crenshaw probably continued using the house in his lucrative slave trade, even as the family lived there.

“There are stories in circulation which would indicate the father was involved,” Musgrave said. “He was probably paid to look the other way.”

Around the turn of the 20th century, the house was also said to have been cursed by a witch.

“People who lived there were running a coal mine at that time,” Musgrave said. “They burned down the house of a woman who lived at the foot of the hill. She walked up the hill and put a curse on all of the male inhabitants and said they would all die horrible deaths. From what I’ve been told, they all did.”

The Sisk family bought the house in 1913. George Sisk lives in the Old Slave House, also known as Hickory Hill. For years, he tried to persuade the state of Illinois to purchase it and run it as a state historic site. In 2000, he succeeded.

The site is closed due to a lack of operating funds.

“The state needs to look at how we manage historic sites. It expects them to operate without admission fees,” Musgrave said. “It’s better to charge admission than to keep it free and keep it closed. That’s almost criminal neglect, especially with counties down here hemorrhaging jobs.”