StanCourtney

Sunday, September 15, 1996

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

By Tracy James

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 and were reported north and west of Murphysboro 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 Baptist 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.

“It just stood there and stared at us,” said Cheryl Ray Rath, from her Florida home. “I couldn’t have run if I tried.”

“THE SMELL. It wasn’t right away,” she said. “You would think when we were standing right by it we would notice it. It was when we got up to the house (50 yards away) that it was terrific … it was worse than a sewer smell, I can’t even begin to describe it.”

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.”

So, what would police have done if they found the Big Muddy Monster?

“I don’t know,” Scott said, chuckling. “I don’t know if  anyone discussed what we’d do if we did find something.”

Police weren’t the only ones looking for the Big Muddy Monster. Hundreds of cars drove through Riverside Park looking for the beast. Out-of-state media came to the area, some camping out in the river bottoms. A story about the sightings appeared in the New York Times — not exactly a tabloid.

OTHER STORIES included one by some truck drivers heading north on Illinois 3 in February of 1975. They saw something that looked like a bear or gorilla near a wooded area several miles south of Illinois 49. 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.

Randy Creath reluctanly returned the recent phone call asking about the night in 1973 when he and his girlfriend, Cindy Ray, came face to face with the Big Muddy Monster. Sometimes, he said, he wishes they had never reported seeing the creature.

At the time, reporters looked at him like, “you poor jerk.”

His father found the drawing Creath made of the creature and a reference to him in an old science textbook. And every two or three years he gets calls from reporters about his adventure.

The story had followed Cindy, too. A first-grade teacher heard of her story from one of Cindy’s children and asked her to tell the class about it. Since then, she returns annually to the classroom.

Rath and Creath think the creature might be similar to a Sasquatch, a manlike being reported in the Pacific Northwest. Or, Creath said, it could have been somone wearing a costume. Rath doubts that, even considering how realistic modern can be.

Creath also discounts the bear theory. He’s seen bears. That would have to have been “a big bear. A way big bear. “

June 1988

Monster is drawing attention

By David Hiser

American Staff Writer
Murphysboro American

“Hi, this John Goldsmith, at WGEL Radio in Greenville, Illinois. What do you know about this Big Muddy Monster thing?”

That was the start of one of several conversations here at the American office during the past week as reporters from all over began to pick up on the latest reported sighting of the legendary monster.

“We’ve been pretty busy,” commented security guard Charlie Straub  as he was hustled off for an interview with a television crew.

Straub, an employee of Bob Reiman, was one of eight people who claimed to have seen the monster on June 3rd at Reiman’s salvage year on the north edge of Murphysboro.

Friday afternoon, anchorman John Pertzborn and cameraman Glenn Buermann of KSDK-TV in St.Louis walked into the newspaper office and interviewed acting managing editor Tom Tiernan.

The two had just been to the salvage yard and stopped by the office to get a copy of the American and take a shot of the artist’s conception of the monster which was used on the front page of last Thursday’s edition.

“People are really interested in this thing,” said Pertzborn, who pulled out a piece of Associated Press wire copy which gave the story state-wide billing.

Hoax or fact, the monster is certainly getting the coverage.

We asked Pertzborn if the 90 mile trip from St.Louis wasn’t a long drive for a monster which might not exist.

“Oh, we didn’t drive,” responded Pertzborn. “We flew down in the helicopter.”

Although police are not getting involved in the recent reported sighting, the monster is being investigated by at least one expert from Indiana who specializes in research on Bigfoot or Sasquatch type characters.

As of late last week, the site had been visited by an estimated 200 people, many of them just curious, but some of them were serious monster buffs.

The latest reported sighting brings to 29 the number of people who claim to have seen the hairy beast over a twelve-year span. There have been a total of 12 incidents in which persons have claimed to have seen the creature, most of them occurring in rural Murphsyboro.

April 1987

The Big Muddy Monster

By Helen W. Linsenmeyer-Keyser

Springhouse – Magazine

From time to time a shiver of fear courses throughout southern Illinois, after still another report that a monster has been sighted in an out-of-the-way location. This has happened not only in and around Murphysboro and Grand Tower, in Jackson County, but in other localities as well.

In the early 1970s a monster appeared, apparently for the first time in Jackson County. Russell Ward, a Murphysboro man, reported that as an eleven-year-old boy, he was playing with some friends in the woods near his home in Westwood Hills, a Murphysboro suburb, one afternoon, when a “thing” appeared. Terrified, the boys raced home and Russell’s mother said he was almost incoherent as he tried to describe this hair-raising experience and the creature which brought it about.

About midnight June 25, 1973, a young Murphysboro couple, Randy Needham and Judy Johnson, were sitting in Needham’s car in Riverside Park on the southwest edge of Murphysboro, bordering the Big Muddy River. They heard a cry, inhuman, loud and shrieking, in the trees along the river’s edge. Then they spied a seven-foot tall creature slowly approaching the car. It appeared to be covered with light-colored hair, matted with mud, and was walking upright. They left the area in great haste and Needham filed a report with the Murphysboro Police Department. Judy was married at the time, but not to Needham. “So they were really scared,” a Deputy Sheriff said. A police officer, James Nash, inspected the footprints fast disappearing in the oozing mud. He heard the “most incredible shriek” from the bushes and “high-tailed it out of there.” Officers searched the riverbank for hours, following a splashing sound like something floundering around in the water, but found nothing.

The next night Cheryl Ray and Randy Creath, the 17-year-old son of a state trooper, were sitting on Cheryl’s front porch and saw the creature. Randy drew a picture of it for the police. Police Chief Berger ordered the entire 14-man police force out for a night-long search, and Jerry Nellis, a dog trainer, brought his 80-pound German shepherd along to aid in the search. Using floodlights, the officers discovered a rough trail in the brush. Grass was crushed, broken tree branches dangled, and small trees were snapped off. The dog picked up the foul-smelling scent. The trail led to an abandoned barn in the area. On approaching, the dog backed off, yelped, and refused to enter the barn, whereupon Nellis picked it up and threw it bodily into the doorway. But the dog crawled out immediately, whimpering, and when the police entered the barn it was empty.

In 1975 the Monster made its appearance in the Harrison area, immediately north of Murphysboro, the first sighting reported since 1973. That same year two truckers reported a sighting at the junction of Highways 149 and 3, west of Murphysboro. Also that same year Tom Hale, Grand Tower restaurant owner, displayed the plaster cast of an extraordinarily large, peculiarly-shaped footprint in his restaurant. He told inquiring visitors that the cast had been brought in by a Boy Scout group, and had been made from tracks in the Oakwood Bottoms, a swampy, spooky area along Highway 3 near Grand Tower and not too far from the above-mentioned junction of Highway 3 and 149. As Hale was well known as a practical joker, some of the viewers scoffed and called it a fake.

Also in 1975 the Miller Carnival was set up in Riverside Park, not too far from the previous sighting of the Monster. The ponies used for riding by the youngsters who came to the park were tethered to bushes on the riverbank. Suddenly the ponies shied, rolled their eyes and raised their heads in an effort to pull free of their ropes. Three carnival workers, Otis Norris, Ray Adkerson and Wesley Lavander, walked around the truck and right there, standing upright in the darkness was what they described as a 300 to 400-pound creature, growling fearsomely. The workers retreated, and sounded the alarm. Townspeople and outsiders stalked the area with loaded guns, forcing the authorities to close the park. A newspaper reporter commented that as southern Illinois is hunting country and hunters own guns, if the creature was human, it (he) was likely to come to harm if the whole affair was a hoax.

About the same time two youths near the McIlvain School on the outskirts of north Murphysboro, reported seeing “it” while gigging frogs along the Big Muddy River. And a logger near Cairo, at the extreme southern tip of the state where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers converge, reported seeing a monster along the Ohio River levee.

Exploration continued through the years, and periodically sightings of strange, foul-smelling, fur-covered, gorilla-like creatures were reported in other parts of the world. In Asia the Abominable Snowman astounded and frightened those who swore they encountered him (them). In 1973 a report from the Himalayas, and from northern California heightened peoples’ curiosiity and apprehension. In her book Bigfoot, Carrie Carmichael inquires into the existence of this purportedly half-human, half-animal creature said to have roamed the northwestern states and British Columbia for hundred of years. In 1924 a man, in search of adventure, ventured into the British Columbia woods to hunt for a lost gold mine. His Indian guide told him about another man who set out in a similar search and was never heard from again. A sasquatch killed him, said the guide. (Sasquatch is an Indian name for large mountain creatures, over 8 feet tall, with hair all over their bodies; but they are not animals.) Their feet were over two feet long. The man, a Mr. Oatman, proceeded on his quest and was kidnapped by strange creature and carried to a camp where he was held captive for a time. Eventually he made his escape and returned to civilization. However, he kept his story of his incredible adventure secret for 30 years, for fear no one would believe him.

Leif Ericson’s Norsemen reported finding some strange creatures which they described as horribly ugly, hairy and dark “with big black eyes.” And in 1811 an explorer, David Thompson, went to British Columbia to hunt furs. One day he came across a track in the snow; measured it: 14 inches long by 8 inches wide. In 1884 railroad workers building a railroad through the wilderness captured a strange creature which they named Jacko. A newspaper decribed the creature as “4 feet, 7 inches high, weighing 127 pounds, resembling a human being except that his entire body except his hands and feet, was covered with glossy black hair. They planned to send him back to England, but one day he disappeared. They had assumed from his behavior that he was young.”

Another story told by Theodore Roosevelt was about two hunters in British Columbia who encountered Bigfoot, and of one being strangled.

Skeptics would like to know why no carcasses, or even a single bone of these monsters have ever been discovered. Investigators say bones of any species do not last long in the forest floor, as scavengers break them up and the acidic soil of the forest is not conducive to fossilization. Bones of deer, common in this area, are seldom found. Meanwhile, memories of the reports in 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1975 in the Murphysboro area continue to be discussed among those who saw whatever it was, and the question remains: could a population of 7-foot tall humanoids live in the United States and elsewhere, thus far unknown to science?

Thursday, June 09, 1988

He’s back: Big Muddy Monster

Big Muddy News

(Editor’s Note: While portions of the North American Continent claim to have their Bigfoots or Sasquatch, Murphysboro has its own monster, commonly and lovingly referred to as “The Big Muddy Monster.” The monster, supposedly seen several times over the past 16 years, is known as The Big Muddy Monster because of the Big Muddy River that travels through the area. The following is the latest eye-witness account of the monster.)

By David Hiser
American Staff Writer

Just when you feel like everything’s all right, it comes back. Just when you feel like you’re safe walking through that wooded area in the full moonlight, there it is.

Yep, it’s the Return of the Big Muddy Monster.

“What was surprising to me was that it came right up behind the garage. It gave out a real high-pitched scream or bellow. Norman could make a sound like that.”

Bob Reiman was recounting the events of early Friday morning when the legendary monster reportedly made an appearance in his salvage yard on the north side of Murphysboro near the Missouri Pacific tracks just off Business Route 13.

Reiman had been called to the scene by security guard Charles Straub, who though [sp] there might be a prowler in the salvage yard. Reiman and Straub searched the yard for a while, then came upon whatever they said was an 8 to 10-foot tall creature covered with fur.

“Its eyes were red in the beam of the flashlight,” said Reiman. “And it had lots of teeth. They weren’t like fangs, they were just teeth. You could sure tell it hadn’t been using Polident.”

Reiman said the first thing he and Straub noticed was a strong odor. Then they heard a rustling in the treeline on the edge of the lot and saw the creature.

“When they called us about it, we thought they were joking,” said Joyce Tindall of Royalton. Joyce, Reiman’s sister said she had loaded up some toilet paper to pull a prank on Reiman if it turned out to be a joke.

“When we saw Bob and Charlie’s faces, we knew it wasn’t any joke.” Joyce said she, Cheryl Reiman, and the rest of the group encountered the creature in the south portion of the salvage yard.

“When it stood up, I just couldn’t speak. Then it ducked back down and all these words just came out of my mouth.”

“It seemed to be making semi-circles around us like it was stalking us or checking us out. It seemed to be just as curious about us as we were about it.”

The night before, Mrs. Tindall said they had heard a loud slurping noise coming from the vicinity of the pan of water which the dog normally drank out of. The next morning, the pan was dry.

Tuesday, Reiman was spending all of his time on the phone in his garage, talking to reporters and other interested people.

“We didn’t want to report it to the police, because we thought we’d be ridiculed. Folks from the newspapers haven’t been like that, though. They seem to be genuinely interested in this thing.”

The weeds in the area show signs of being trodden down and a path leads to the low area next to the railroad embankment where what was claimed to be a footprint of the monster has now seeped full of water.

The tale of the Big Muddy Monster dates back to 1972.

The creature got its name because some of the first sightings were in the 20th Street area and near Riverside Park adjacent to the Big Muddy River which flows south of Murphysboro.

There have been 12 reported sightings of the monster, most of them near Murphysboro.

Thursday, December 11th, 1969

Abominable snowmen in Southern Illinois?

By Norris Jones
Daily Egyptian Staff Writer

Carbondale Daily Egyptian

The abominable snowman, the legendary giant of the Himalaya Mountains, is the subject of an absorbing study by an SIU student majoring in anthropology who finds evidence that brings the man-like beast closer to home.

The possiblility that an unidentified human-old creature could exist in Southern Illinois been raised by Loren E Coleman.

Coleman has been gathering information for the past eight years on the fascinating subject. He describes the “unknown anthropoids” in this region as averaging three to four feet in lenght, with long black or dark gray hair covering the entire body except for the face and hands.

Coleman pointed to the book, “Abominable Snowmen,” written by Ivan T. Sanderson, and quoted a description of the species that supposedly reside in the Midwest.

The book said the creeatures ranged in size from just a little smaller than the average human being to tiny, clothed in thick black or red fur but with differentiated head-hair that usually forms a mane. It said they have a primitive form of language, are good tree climbers and swimmers, with their toes subequal and heels small or pointed. The snowmen are “omnivorous, insect, fish and small animal eaters,” Sanderson wrote.

In anothor section of the book, Sanderson divided North American snowmen into two groups: those of giants who live across the top of the U.S. and down the western mountains that are known as “Sasquatch” or “Bigfoot”; second, the much smaller “little red men of the bottomlands” from the Mississippi River drainage region.

Gathers Information

The SIU student has amassed scores of letters, newspaper articles and individual interviews to help back his theory that “an undiscovered species of anthropoids who are high in numbers exist throughout the backwoods and uncharted swamps of middle America.”

“I am very serious about this matter,” Coleman, a member of the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, said.

“There is, indeed, something-most likely an unknown primate-in this area and throught the swampy and wooded waterweb that covers 40 per cent of the United States.”

He said films of similar beasts in the Pacific Northwest may back up the theory of a creature of an unknown variety and that he hopes to get pictures and plaster casts of footprints of the beasts
in this section of the country.

The earliest sighting Coleman has documented was reported in the Memphis Enquirer in 1851. The article, entitled “Wild Man of the Woods,” described something “bearing an unmistakable likeness of humanity.”

The story said the man was “of gigantic stature, the body being covered with hair, and the head with long locks that fairly enveloped the neck and shoulders.”

When the “wildman” saw a pair of hunters, it turned and ran away, leaping “from twelve to fourteen feet at a time.” The creature’s footprints measured 13 inches.

Mt. Vernon ‘beast’

In 1942, the Carbondale Free Press reported that a squirrel hunter near Mt. Vernon was approached by a half-man beast. The creature had jumped over his head knocking off his hat and dislodging the pipe from his mouth. When it came towards him, the hunter (an ordained minister) fired his gun and frightened it away.

Mt. Vernon authorities organized a massive hunt to track down the beast, whose tracks “were similar to a raccoon’s but four times as large.” The paper reported that “sometimes two tracks have been found, sometimes four.” Its screaming was compared to that of a wildcat. “The beast must have got news of the big hunt, for reports started coming in of its appearance in other creek bottoms, some as much as 40 or 50 miles from the original site,” the journal “Hoosier Folklore,” reports.

A man driving near the Big Muddy River, in Jackson County, one night saw the beast bound across the road. Some hunters saw evidence of its presence in Okaw, “Its rapid changing from place to place must have been aided considerably by its ability to jump, for, by this time, reports had it jumping along at from 20 to 40 feet per leap,”the journal added. The hunt failed with the hunters bagging “a large hoot owl and several crows.”

Author Jared Sparks of East Lansing, Mich., said under the heading “Missouri Monster Tale”, that in that state’s south-eastern swamps, and animal was loose which could kill and rip up full-size cows and horses. No one was able to identify the monster even after it was shot and killed. “It was something like a gorilla,” he said.

Coleman interviewed Bob Earle from Decatur in November, 1962, and learned that two men had seen a large, gray animal standing upright in the middle of a creek east of Decatur, off East William Street Road, “They felt it was definitely not a bear,” Coleman said.

‘Half-man thing’

Under the headline “Half-man ‘thing’ baffles St.Louis, ” the Chicago Daily News reported in May of 1963 that witnesses and a patrolman saw “something near a housing project.” Centreville police received over 50 phone calls reporting a monster. James McKinney said “It was in front of my house and was half-man, half horse.”

The Decatur Review published a story Sept. 22, 1965, dealing with four young persons who claimed a black, amn-like monster approached their car. Headlined “youths report ‘monster’ near edge of city.” the article said the young men took their companions back to Decatur and returned armed with shotguns, to see if “it” returned. “It” did. They left, hurriedly.”

During August, 1968, Robert R. Lynn of KXOK News, St. Louis, told of a 22-year-old woman who claimed that an animal had grabbed her four-year-old nephew in the backyard of her house in Kinlock, Mo. “She saw it and screamed. The dog went after “It”. “It” dropped the boy and fled into the woods,” Lynn told Coleman in an interview. When police searched the woods, they found nothing. The news announcer said the woman described the thing as looking like a bear. Upon seeing a model of a gorilla the next day, the boy said “it” looked like the gorilla, Lynn added.

Chittyville ‘What’s it’

Tagged “10-foot-tall ‘what’s it’ reported seen,” a Southern Illinoisan article in 1965 told of a “thing” roaming the woods near Chittyville. A guy and his date met the creature Aug. 11 while they were driving northeast of Chittyville, an unincorporated area north of Herrin.

Upon seeing the thing, the woman started screaming. She described it as “huge, about ten-feet-tall, with a head as large as a steering wheel.” Although the driver said he did not see it, he returned to the area the next day and found a depression in the grass, “indicating a large animal had rested or slept there.”

Appearing in the April issue of Argosy, 1969, the article, “Wisconsin’ ‘Abominable Snowman'” told of 12 deer hunters who all saw “something blac…they didn’t shoot, it was manlike.”

The article describes the creature as “a large and powerfully built man covered with short, very brown or black hair and with a lighter and hairless face and hairless palms. The head appeared smallish, also with short hair, but the neck appeared to be enormous and so short as to be almost nonexistent. The shoulders were very wide and large and the torso barrel-shaped.”

Although some of the reports contradicted Coleman’s assumumption that the midwestern species were small, he explained that these animals were interlopers, migrating through the region.

‘No cause for alarm’

He emphasizes that he sees no cause for alarm concerning the reports. “No harm has come to any human being in all the reports gathered,” he says. ” What I find is a pattern of intelligent primate behavior, a mixture of curiosity and communcation.

“These are not reports of one excaped orang or a wandering hermit, but a cross-section of an undiscovered species of anthropoids that are high in numbers.”

Coleman hopes that through this article, area residents will know “there is someone who will listen to their claims of ‘hairy monsters’ and so forth, and not ask them if they had been drinking.” His address is 202 East College, Carbondale.

Researching the existence of abominable snowmen is embarassing to many of his colleagues, Coleman said, “Since it is still in the area of myth, it is disgraceful and not ‘nice’ to talk about,” he explained.

Science, today, is really not in pursuit of the unknown, he proposes, “It’s simply re-researching old material.”

The SIU senior said science is slowly realizing it must listen to common folks. “Unfortunately, reporters and sheriffs often just laugh them off. They are disregarded because they are not educated in the field,” he said.

Coleman also files accounts of bear or large cat sightings. He feels that many people, upon seeing strange beasts, interpret them into known animals. He pulled out an article from the Cairo Evening Citizen reporting a black panther being spotted in Alexander County in April of 1966, as evidence of his claim.

Joseph Moad, who lives about four and one half miles west of Elco, “shot at a mysterious beast shortly after 8 p.m.,” the story reported.

“I turned on a flood light and could see his eyes shining.” Moad said, “He screamed and it was the keen scream of a panther, not the coarse scream of a bobcat or cougar,” he added.

Moad said he has heard screams of both bobcats and panthers and was certain this was the yell of a panther. The cry of a panther has been likened to the shrill scream of a woman, the article said.

Beast’s legend

Sightings of large bears and big cats, as well as man-like creatures are all recorded by Loren Coleman to pinpoint the creature’s most likely hideout. He has kept files on the other animals to insure that the abominable snowmen (ABSM) are not incorrectly identified.

Numerical signs (#) represent ABSM sightings; the “x” shows big cat reports; and the asterisk (*) identifies areas where bears have been spotted.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Chasing Monsters: Big Muddy Monster still has Murphysboro residents wondering

By Kristen Cates

Southern Illinoisan

MURPHYSBORO – There are two dates from 1973 in Murphysboro that still leave some haunted – or at least curious.

The two police reports dated June 25 and June 26 relate the sighting of an unknown creature.

It was in those two evenings that reports came in of a loud, tall, white-haired creature caked with mud being spotted in the woods on the outskirts of town near the Big Muddy River.

It was later dubbed the Big Muddy Monster because of its indefinable features and mysterious presence. It set off a media frenzy after the initial reports on those two days, said former patrolman and retired Murphysboro police chief Ron Manwaring.

“(Those) are the most copied, most looked-at reports in the history of the department,” he said.

Letters came streaming in from those as far away as California and New York wanting a piece of information or a piece of the prize.

But the prize is still elusive.

There are only two cases that remain unsolved in Murphysboro, Manwaring said, but after 32 years the case on the Big Muddy Monster still remains open.

“It’s an unsolved case because I can’t tell you what it was,” he said.

Having retired three years ago and having not seen the Big Muddy Monster police reports in years, Manwaring is still able to recount those haunting evenings as if they had happened just yesterday.

And he recounts the stories as he would if writing the police report all over again.

“There were numerous sightings and people interviewed,” he began.

The first report came in just before midnight on June 25. A couple had been “parked” near the boat dock on the southwestern edge of Riverside Park, next to the woods.

The two, who were not married, said they were in the car when they heard a loud screaming sound in the wooded area and observed a “large creature approximately 7 feet tall. The creature appeared to have light-colored hair matted with mud. The creature appeared to be walking on two legs and was proceeding toward his car” according to the report.

Manwaring said the two came to the police department and risked exposing their indiscretions because they were so frightened by what they saw.

“There was no advantage for them to come up and report this,” he said.

Police searched the area with flashlights and spotted tracks in the mud approximately 3 to 4 inches deep, 10 to 12 inches long, and 3 inches wide. While officers were searching the area they reported hearing another scream coming from the woods.

But nothing could be found.

The next evening Manwaring said he was an officer on duty when a call came in from the Westwood Hills subdivision that two teenagers were sitting on the back porch when they spotted a tall, white-haired, hairy creature in a field just to the edge of the woods.

Manwaring said officers responded and while they were at the scene, a neighbor said his 5-year-old son had just come in 10 minutes earlier saying he had seen something on the edge of the woods.

“My partner and I decided to go down to the area where they saw this thing,” Manwaring said.

He started traveling a footpath through the bushes and noticed a stench and a slimy film on the tree branches.

“I saw this substance and smelled the smell myself,” he said.

Jerry Nellis, an officer with the Carbondale Police Department at the time and a trained dog-handler, was called to the scene. The dog tracked the scent all the way to a barn, but once it got to the barn, the dog refused to go inside.

Nellis said in his humble opinion it was a bear.

“We never got a good view of any tracks,” Nellis said. “Is there a Sasquatch? I don’t know – it makes for a good story, though.”

Loren Coleman, a cryptozoologist who studied the Big Muddy Monster in the 70s, believes that it wasn’t an animal in the woods.

“I think it’s within the context of other reports of a Bigfoot,” he said.

Like West Coast Bigfoot reports, Coleman said this creature was hairy, but differs in the fact that nobody was able to see any distinguishing characteristics in the facial area. He said this creature also seems more aggressive than those supposedly spotted in the West.

“There’s something very unique about this eastern-midwestern Bigfoot,” Coleman said. “From the reports from the Mud Monster it seemed to frighten people the way it didn’t in the west.”

Manwaring said people initially thought it was a prank, but after all this time no one has come forward to say so. And after the hype and hysteria was over with, he said he heard two more reports that seemed similar to those in June of 1973. One came in early July of that same year.

But what haunts him more is a report he heard from a man who lived in the Westwood Hills area before it was developed into a neighborhood in the 1950s. Manwaring said the man told him he was out working in his garden one evening when he spotted a creature that was similar to later reports of the Big Muddy Monster.

“I never did see it; but in my mind I feel those people really did see something,” Manwaring said. “I guess it just remains a mystery.”

Thursday, November 01, 1973

Yeti-Like ‘Monster’ Gives Staid Town in Illinois a Fright

By Andrew Malcolm

New York Times

Murphysboro, Ill., Oct. 31 –

Mrs. Nedra Green was preparing for bed in her isolated farmhouse near here the other night when a shrill, piercing scream came from out by the shed.

“It’s it again,” she said.

Four-year old Christian Baril was in his back yard chasing fireflies with a glass jar. He ran in the house. “Daddy, Daddy,” he said “there’s a big ghost out back.”

Randy Creath and Cheryl Ray were talking on her darkened porch when something moved in the brush near by. Cheryl went to turn on a light; Randy went to investigate.

At that moment it stepped from the bushes.

Towering over the wide-eyed, teen-age couple was a creature resembling a gorilla. It was eight feet tall. It had long shaggy matted hair colored a dirty white. It smelled foul like river slime.

Silently, the couple stared at the creature and the creature stared back at the couple, 15 feet apart. Then, after an eternity of perhaps 30 seconds, the creature turned slowly and crashed off through the brush back toward the river.

Halloween for Real

It was the Murphysboro Monster, a strange creature that has baffled and frightened the police and residents for weeks now in this southern Illinois town on the sluggish Big Muddy River.

It is a creature that has brought a real kind of Halloween to Murphysboro’s 10,000 citizens. And although the hobgoblin is so far benevolent, no one here is taking any chances. Many have armed themselves and a good number of God-fearing families decided to curtail traditional Halloween trick-or-treat rounds.

Such monster sightings are bizarre indeed for an old farm county seat where brightly colored leaves fall on brick streets and high school majorettes practice baton twirling for the Red Devils’ upcoming football game with Jonesboro’s Wildcats.

“A lot of things in life are unexpected, said Toby Berger, the police chief, ” and this is another one. We don’t know what the creature is. But we do believe what these people saw was real. We have tracked it. And the dogs got a definite scent.”

It all began shortly before midnight June 25. Randy Needham and Judy Johnson were conferring in a parked car on the town’s boat ramp down by the Big Muddy.

‘Complainant Left the Area’

At one point the couple heard a loud cry from the woods next to the car. Many were to describe the sound as that of a greatly amplified eagle shriek.

Mr. Needham looked out from the front seat. There lumbering toward the open window was a light-colored, hairy, eight-foot creature matted with mud.

At that point, the police report calmly notes, “complainant left the area.” He proceeded to the police station and filed an “unknown creature” report.

Judy Johnson was married at the time, according to the police, but not to Mr. Needham. So when the two reported the monster, the authorities took it seriously. “They wouldn’t risk all that if they weren’t really scared,” said one.

Later, as Officer Jimmie Nash inspected some peculiar footprints fast disappearing in the oozing mud left by the receding river, he became a firm believer.

“I was leaning over when there was the most incredible shriek I’ve ever heard,” he said. “It was in those bushes. That was no bobcat or screech owl and we hightailed it out of there.”

Officers searched the riverbank for hours, following an elusive splashing around like something floundering through knee-deep water. They found nothing.

Plains folks hereabouts do not excite easily. So the next day on page three The Southern Illinoisan published a 200-word account of the “critter,” omitting the embarrassed couple’s names. That presumably was the end of the case.

But the next night came young Christian Baril’s encounter and the experience of Cheryl Ray and Randy Creath, the 17-year-old son of a state trooper, who drew a picture of the creature.

Drawing by Randy Creath

That did it for Chief Berger. He ordered his entire 14-man force out for a night-long search. And Jerry Nellis, a dog trainer, brought Reb, an 80-pound German Shepherd renowned for his zealous tracking.

With floodlights officers discovered a rough trail in the brush. Grass was crushed. Broken branches were snapped. On the grass Reb found gobs of black slime, much like that of sewage sludge in settling tanks on a direct line between the river and the Ray house.

Red led Mr. Nellis and Officer Nash to an abandoned barn on the old Bullar farm. Then, at the door, the dog yelped and backed off in panic. Mr. Nellis threw it into the doorway. The dog crawled out whining. The men radioed for help. Fourteen area police cars responded, but the barn, it turned out, was empty.

Officer Jimmie Nash searching an area at Murphysboro, Ill., near a parking lot where a monster was reported.

Ten days later the Miller Carnival was set up in the town’s Riverside Park, not far from the boat ramp. At 2 a.m. July 7 the day’s activities had stopped and the ponies that walk around in circles with youngsters on their backs were tied to bushes.

Suddenly they shied. They rolled their eyes. They raised their heads. They tried to pull free. Attracted to the commotion, three carnival workers – Otis Norris, Ray Adkerson and Wesley Lavander – walked around the truck and there, standing up right in the darkness was a 300 to 400 pound creature, hairy and light colored and about eight feet tall.

With no menace, but intense curiosity, the creature was watching the animals.

The men ran for help. The creature left. But an hour later Charles Kimbel saw it again peering over bushes, its head cocked, watching the ponies.

The creature report, which carnival operators delayed filing to avoid hurting business, was the last official note of the Murphysboro Monster. However, there have been many incidents that have not been reported for fear, not of the monster, but of the hundreds of humans who flock to each sighting with rifles and shotguns.

Somehow, no one has shot anyone else yet, but the police had to close the park one night. It was crammed full of hunters and curious campers.

“This is no hoax,” said Tony Stevens, the newspaper editor, “this is hunting country, you know, and anyone who goes around in an animal costume is going to get his butt shot off.”

Local officials are not really sure what to do. They invited Harlan Sorkin, a St. Louis expert on such creatures down for a spell.

Mr. Sorkin said the descriptions matched those of over 300 similar sightings in North America in the last decade, one of them on an Ohio River levee not far from here. There has even been a movie, “The Legend of Boggy Creek,” made about a similar creature in Arkansas.

Mr. Sorkin says the creature is probably a Sasquatch, believed to be a gene deviation in a large ape that has produced a creature that Tibetans call the Abominable Snowman or Yeti and Rocky Mountain Indians call Big Foot.

Favor Riverbottoms

Typically, he said, these creatures are very shy and favor riverbottoms for their ample vegetation. Even in winter here in Southern Illinois, which is further south than almost all of Virginia, plenty of plant life is available, especially in the vast Shawnee National Forest that straddles the state 400 miles south of Chicago.

Mr. Sorkin speculates that this year’s flooding forced the creature from its natural home, perhaps a cave down river.

Genetically placid creatures, the Sasquatch is said to have killed some hunting dogs during chases. And there are stories of wilderness loggers in the northwest found crushed next to their emptied rifles.

“These creatures have the strength of five men,” Mr. Sorkin said, “and when frightened they take five-foot strides.” To skeptics Mr. Sorkin replies, “you know the gorilla as we know it today was not discovered until the early 1800’s. Can you imagine what people thought when they first saw it?”

Whatever, it is called, the exotic new inhabitant here is real to residents of Murphysboro, a “hospitable” town which, the Chamber of Commerce, says “welcomes newcomers in a way that makes them happy to be living here.”

“These are good honest people,” said young Randy Creath, “it would be fascinating to see it again and study it. But you know, I kinda hope he doesn’t come back. With everyone running around with guns and sticks, he really wouldn’t have much of a chance, would he?”

Wednesday, June 27, 1973

More meanderings for the Murphysboro Monster

Carbondale Southern Illinoisan

Murphysboro Police are more certain than ever there really is a “monster from the Big Muddy River” near Murphysboro following a second sighting reported Tuesday night.

Police said today they spent several hours tracking the monster with a dog after what they described as an “accurate visual sighting” by two Murphysboro teen-agers Tuesday night.

The description supplied by the two, Randy Creath, 17, and Cheryl Ray, 17, is almost identical to one supplied by two Murphysboro residents who first reported the “seven-foot light-haired muddy monster.” Monday night near the boat launch area in Riverside Park.

Creath and Miss Ray said they were sitting on an outside porch at the Harry Ray home, 37 Westwood Lane, about 10 p.m. Tuesday, when they saw something walking toward the back yard of the home.

Creath told police he stepped into the yard to get a better look while Miss Ray went into the house to turn on a yard light.

Creath told police he saw something “seven or eight feet tall, with light hair, covered with mud, and weighing 300 to 350 pounds.”

The youth told police the figure had a distinct odor of river mud.

Miss Ray said what she saw was a “gigantic figure” of seven to eight feet tall. She also described the figure as covered with “dirty white hair,” and said it was covered with mud.

“It was dark and impossible to make out any facial features. The figure had a head and very large shoulders and very long arms. It stood erect on two legs, like a human,” Miss Ray said.

Miss Ray said the figure made no threatening moves and did not make any sound, but “Just walked away.”

“Scared?” You bet. I was up all night.” Miss Ray said.

Murphysboro Police and Jackson County authorities searched the area and found a series of footprints in the area where the two youths said the figure approached the yard.

Police said river slime was also found near several of the tracks along a grassy slope leading to the Ray home. The Ray home is in the Westwood Hill Subdivision, on high ground just northwest of Riverside Park.

Police said a tracking dog picked up a trail from near the Ray home toward the park, but lost the trail. The dog picked up another scent a short time later, and trailed the scent to a barn. Police said the barn is on the former Ralph Butlar farm. No one lives on the property now, they said.

The dog, owned by Jerry Nellis, refused to enter the barn.

“He has been trained for this type of work and I have never seen him back down from anything before.” Nellis said.

Police checked the interior of the barn, but found nothing.

Police said a child in the Westwood Hills area told his parents he had seen a “white ghost in the yard.” Police said the story was first discounted because of the childs age – but siad [sp] it is possible he did see the same things.

“We believe these people definitely have seen something and it could be something of a dangerous nature. The stories told by the two youths were in detail, and we believe they saw what they said they saw.” Murphysboro Police reported today.

Thursday, June 09, 1988

Big Muddy Monster sighted in Murphy

By David Hiser
Murphysboro American

Just when you feel like everything’s all right, it comes back.

Just when you feel like you’re safe walking through that wooded area in the full moonlight, there it is.

Yep, it’s the Return of the Big Muddy Monster.

“What was surprising to me was that it came right up behind the garage. It gave out a real high-pitched scream or bellow. Norman could make a sound like that.”

Bob Reiman was recounting the events of early Friday morning when the legendary monster reportedly made an appearance in his salvage yard on the north side of Murphysboro near the Missouri Pacific tracks just off Business Route 13.

Reiman had been called to the scene by security guard Charles Straub, who though [sp] there might be a prowler in the salvage yard. Reiman and Straub searched the yard for a while, then came upon whatever they said was an 8 to 10-foot tall creature covered with fur.

“Its eyes were red in the beam of the flashlight,” said Reiman. “And it had lots of teeth. They weren’t like fangs, they were just teeth. You could sure tell it hadn’t been using Polident.”

Reiman said the first thing he and Straub noticed was a strong odor. Then they heard a rustling in the treeline on the edge of the lot and saw the creature.

“When they called us about it, we thought they were joking,” said Joyce Tindall of Royalton. Joyce, Reiman’s sister said she had loaded up some toilet paper to pull a prank on Reiman if it turned out to be a joke.

“When we say [sp] Bob and Charlie’s faces, we knew it wasn’t any joke.” Joyce said she, Cheryl Reiman, and the rest of the group encountered the creature in the south portion of the salvage yard.

“When it stood up, I just couldn’t speak. Then it ducked back down and all these words just came out of my mouth.”

“It seemed to be making semi-circles around us like it was stalking us or checking us out. It seemed to be just as curious about us as we were about it.”

The night before, Mrs. Tindall said they had heard a loud slurping noise coming from the vicinity of the pan of water which the dog normally drank out of. The next morning, the pan was dry.

Tuesday, Reiman was spending all of his time on the phone in his garage, talking to reporters and other interested people.

“We didn’t want to report it to the police, because we thought we’d be ridiculed. Folks from the newspapers haven’t been like that, though. They seem to be genuinely interested in this thing.”

The weeds in the area show signs of being trodden down and a path leads to the low area next to the railroad embankment where what was claimed to be a footprint of the monster has now seeped full of water.

The tale of the Big Muddy Monster dates back to 1972.

The creature got its name because some of the first sightings were in the 20th Street area and near Riverside Park adjacent to the Big Muddy River which flows south of Murphysboro.

Some 21 persons had previously reported sighting the monster.

Police Chief Larry Tincher was quoted as saying, “Fortunately for the Murphysboro Police Department, the monster has stayed out of town.”

Thursday, June 28, 1973

Monster watching popular

Carbondale Southern Illinoisan

No new sightings

There were no reports of new sightings of Murphysboro’s Big Muddy Monster today, but it wasn’t because no one was looking for him, or it, or whatever.

Murphysboro Police reported Riverside Park, the area of two sightings earlier this week, was a “beehive of cars.”

Police said hundreds of cars drove through the park during the night and said there were several groups of overnight campers, some apparently trying to catch a glimpse of the city’s latest mystery.

A creature described as seven feet tall, covered with white hair and mud, was reported seen by two people parked near the boat launching ramp near the east end of Riverside Park Monday night.

Tuesday night two teen-agers reported they saw a figure of identical description, near the back yard of a home in Westwood Hills Subdivision, just northwest of Riverside Park.

On July 25, 1972, Leroy Summers, Cairo, reported to Cairo Police that he saw what he described as a hairy, white, two-legged creature standing 10 feet tall. Summers reportedly spotted the creature near the Ohio River levee in Cairo.

Murphysboro police said several routine patrols were made through the Riverside Park area, but said no new reports were received of any unusual activity.

Murphysboro Police and Jackson County authorities found tracks in a grassy area near the Westwood home Tuesday night. A dog followed a trail to a barn on a vacant farm, but police found nothing in the barn.