StanCourtney

Tuesday, June 26, 1973

Big, muddy ‘critter’ sighted at Big Muddy

Carbondale Southern Illinoisan

Tracks, screams

Is there really a monster from the Big Muddy River?

Murphysboro police and Jackson County authorities spent several hours early today trying to find out.

The answer is still awaited:

The physical facts included:

A couple parked near the boat launch area just east of Riverside Park said they definitely saw something about midnight:

Police found tracks near the scene:

Police heard unusual screams in the distance, while checking the scene.

Murphysboro Police said the tracks appear to be “some type of animal,” and said that screams heard appeared to be from some type of bobcat.

Police were called about midnight, when a man reported he had seen what he described as a “7-foot-tall mud-covered and light-haired man” walking toward his car.

A companion in the car reported she had heard screams, shortly before the man was seen.

The man told police he saw the man walking toward his car and “took off.”

Police returned to the scene and found footprints in a muddy area where the man indicated he had seen the figure.

Police said animal screams were heard in the distance about 3 a.m. as officers continued their investigation.

Right now the incident remains “open” on police records, pending further information, or another appearance of whatever it is.

Wednesday, July 09, 1975

Fabled Monster Reportedly Seen

Centralia Sentinel

Murphysboro, Ill. (AP)

A “white and shaggy hairy creature about 7 feet tall,” has been spotted in a country churchyard near here.

Two men who said they were gigging frogs reported seeing the creature, whose description matches that of the fabled “Big Muddy Monster.”

The men said the creature moved quickly away, breaking a tree limb as it left. Jackson County authorities searching the area Monday morning found a broken limb, but no other clues.

The “Big Muddy Monster” was first reported in June 1973 and again in early July 1974.

Saturday October 14th, 2006

‘It’s time for your close up, Mr. Du Pont monster’

By Charles Stanley

Ottawa Times

People who have heard of the Du Pont monster, the Seneca area’s version of Bigfoot, but have never seen him may not have much longer to wait.

The creature may soon be on the silver screen in a film in preproduction.

Plus, some of the filming is planned for the Seneca area, and local residents may have a chance to participate.

” ‘The Du Pont Monster” is, in fact, the name of the movie,” says Dave Childress, the movie’s mastermind, who lives in Kempton.

Kempton is a small town of a couple of hundred people about midway between Pontiac and Kankakee.

“They don’t get much smaller than Kempton,” says Childress.

Once a larger railroad town, among the few businesses remaining there are a bar and a book shop — the bar being Childress’s Sgt. Pepper’s Bar and Grill and the book shop being his Adventures Unlimited Bookstore.

“The bookstore is really quite well know,” says Childress. “We sell kind of unusual nonfiction books. Books on the Knights Templar, UFO books, real life X-files books, mind control, conspiracy, paranormal and cryptozooology books.” That last category includes Bigfoots.

Last year, a Times story about Seneca area Bigfoot sightings spawned a story in the Chicago Tribune, which Childress read.

Stan Courtney, of Pawnee, an investigator for the California-based Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization has researched Bigfoot sightings in the Seneca area. Two of the encounters took place in June of last year, while the others happened in 1983 and 1979.

But what is popularly called Bigfoot, Seneca locals have for decades been calling the Du Pont monster. Over the years sightings have placed the “monster” on Du Pont Road south of the Illinois River.

“These animals are everywhere where there’s adequate habitat,” Courtney said Friday. “There’s nothing unusual or special other than that perhaps people in Seneca talk about it. There was a sighting last spring at Starved Rock State Park, but the guy is a businessman and he doesn’t want a report written up.”

Courtney estimates that only 10 per cent of all Bigfoot sightings are researched.

Courtney said around Kankakee is another area where he suspects there is a Bigfoot population.

“Anywhere there is water and a big deer population. They have to eat something in the winter.”

There have been no new Bigfoot sightings in the Seneca area, Courtney said. And as far as the film is concerned, he worries the attention may drive Bigfoots away.

“The sad thing is these animals are not monsters, and that’s what’s always played. The animal part and the fear part.”

Childress said he is a Bigfoot believer.

“However, to tell the truth, the Du Pont monster stories seemed a little bit far-fetched,” said Childress.

But last year, he and his wife drove to Seneca and ended up doing their field research with the bartender and patrons of Jack and Lovey’s tavern on Main Street.

“We were convinced that something was going on there. The stories they told were cautious, but credible. It all made sense. I mean, I went there a skeptic but left a believer.”

Earlier this year, Childress and friend Steve Zagata, a Chicago filmmaker, decided to make a movie staring the Du Pont monster. About a month ago preliminary filming was done in Seneca to get some footage together for a seven-minute promo demo of the film to screen at an upcoming film festival in Chicago.

Childress’s plan is to do the majority of filming in spring.

“It will be a 90-minute movie with special effects. Of course, we have a Bigfoot costume all ready.

“I’m not going to tell you the whole plot, but the Bigfoot’s not going to be the bad guy — he turns out to be a good guy. There will be a bad guy. There’s an element of the script like the ‘Blair Witch Project’ and there’s a little bit of a ‘King Kong’ aspect. There’s also this cabin in the woods that they find and in it are some kind of weird cult things. I think that’s all I should say right now.”

He plans to use his bar in Kempton as a stand in for Jack and Lovey’s, but other filming will take place near Seneca and Kankakee.

For one part he would like some documentary style interviews with locals who have had Du Pont monster experiences.

“We would like to hear any real stories.”

People who want to be in the movie also are being sought.

“We would like locals. We have a couple of tall people to be the Du Pont monster, but we still have not cast the main players, one of which will be a young actress that will be the star. We realize that we need a cute girl in a tank top running around screaming with Bigfoot after her, so we’re looking for that gal.”

Childress can be phoned at (815) 253-6390 or e-mailed at auphq@frontiernet.net. The Web site for his bookstore is www.adventuresunlimitedpress.com.

October 10, 2005

Bigfoot believers – what do they believe?

Chicago Tribune – Online Edition

If this were Washington state, the rumors might not even raise an eyebrow.

If the City of Chicago were nestled in the heart of the Himalayas (I’d like to see Daniel Burnham’s urban plan for that one), the stories might be downright ho-hum.

But, reports of Bigfoot sightings … in Illinois?

Well, now, that’s unexpected.

But, would you believe it’s not the first time?

Not even close, as a matter of fact.

This summer, the Illinois River town of Seneca (pop. 2,053), located about 70 miles southwest of Chicago, produced reports of alleged Bigfoot encounters along a stretch of DuPont Road in a heavily-wooded area just south of the river.

Four accounts — two of which were from this June, while the others date to 1979 and 1983 — were deemed credible enough by a volunteer investigator with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization to be posted on the organization’s Web site, http://www.bfro.net/

The Seneca reports are among a total of 44 Illinois sightings listed on the BFRO site, with the oldest dating back to 1883, near Decatur.

That number actually gives Illinois the 16th-most documented Bigfoot sightings in the United States (one sighting behind Kentucky and one ahead of Indiana). Washington leads with 372, followed by California (322), Oregon (186) and — somewhat surprisingly — Ohio (181) and Texas (151).

It’s well known, of course, that there are people who believe in Bigfoot, and that includes some people living in the Land of Lincoln.

But what exactly do they believe in? And why do they believe in a creature that — in an era of satellite imagery, surveillance cameras and increased urbanization — has never been proven to exist?

In an attempt to find out, I called Matthew Moneymaker, a 40-year-old Internet consultant from Orange County, Calif., who founded the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization in 1995.

A passionate defender of the existence of the creatures, Moneymaker claims to have once stood 15 feet from a growling Bigfoot in eastern Ohio.

He contends that sightings of the creatures are not a psychological phenomenon, and chafes at what he says are generalizations made about those who believe in or allegedly encounter Bigfoots.

“If the explanation were psychological, we would find (sightings) happening in every town,” Moneymaker said. “Why is it only happening in certain towns? Why doesn’t it happen in the big city? If it’s happening in Seneca, then why isn’t it in the bigger town up the road?

“The psychology of Bigfoot is D.O.A. because it doesn’t explain why it happens in one place (and not others). The patterns are not demographic, they are geographic.”

Moneymaker said doubts about the existence of such creatures are normal. However, he also encourages an open mind.

“It’s natural to be skeptical. You would be, and should be,” he said. “… I tell the skeptics, that we (BFRO members) are better skeptics than they are. Because, we actually go out and look into these things. It’s a cop-out to just say there is no such thing as Bigfoot.

“… It’s the American mentality that makes it difficult to consider the possibility. Americans are very good at exploiting things. And people figure if something was out there, we would have exploited it already.”

But what is it that Bigfoot believers believe in?

Moneymaker said he and others think that nocturnal, intelligent and shy Bigfoot creatures may be descendants of an Asian ape named Gigantopithecus blacki that is thought to have become extinct several hundred thousand years ago.

The only remains of Gigantopithecus found by scientists have been a few jawbones and several hundred teeth.

But from the size of those fossils, some scientists believe the ape may have stood as tall as 10 feet and weighed as much as 1,200 pounds. Others have made smaller estimates.

Many Bigfoot believers contend that some of the apes may have crossed the Bering Strait into North America and survived in small numbers to this day.

The BFRO Web site estimates that 2,000 to 6,000 such creatures may be living in the U.S. and Canada.

“Don’t write it off as all imagination,” Moneymaker said. “Even in Illinois, there are a lot of woods and a lot to eat. These areas used to support a lot of Native Americans, and all that bounty has gone unused for the last 100 years or more. There’s enough food out there to support a small population of primates. And humans are primates, as well.”

In Seneca, longtime residents say that tales of a “DuPont Monster” stalking the forest along DuPont Road have circulated for more than 40 years.

And such a legend places Seneca among a handful of rural Illinois communities where colorful “monster” stories have long captured imaginations.

In Illinois, the heyday of these tales was during the early 1970s when reports of the “Farmer City Monster,” “Cohomo” and the “Murphysboro Mud Monster” — a trio of Bigfoot-like creatures — provided downstate Illinois more chills and thrills than a Hollywood studio.

In the book “Weird Illinois,” author Troy Taylor details these stories, beginning in July of 1970, when sightings of a “Farmer City Monster” threw the small central Illinois town located between Champaign and Bloomington, into a tizzy.

According to reports, dozens of local people — including a police officer — claimed to spot a huge, yellow-eyed creature in the nearby woods until the reports abruptly stopped in mid-August.

Two years later in May of 1972, a new monster story popped up west of Farmer City in the Pekin and Peoria areas.

Alleged eyewitness reports of a creature nicknamed “Cohomo” — short for Cole Hollow Road Monster — grew into the hundreds before a skeptical Tazewell County Sheriff’s Department decided to organize a 100-man search party for a hulking, fur-covered beast.

The search ended early, however, when a volunteer accidentally shot himself in the leg with a pistol.

A year later in the summer of 1973, southern Illinois became inundated with reports of a “Murphysboro Mud Monster” (also called the “Big Muddy Monster”).

The buzz surrounding tales of a 7-foot-tall, hair-covered creature lurking near the Big Muddy River became so big that even the New York Times sent a reporter to investigate.

In a Halloween-related story from Oct. 30, 2004, the Southern Illinoisan newspaper in Carbondale reported that it has now been a decade since the last reported sighting of the “Mud Monster” — which was also nicknamed “Mongo,” by some locals.

However, just like in Farmer City, Peoria and Seneca, the quirky legend still endures.

My guess?

The legends always will.

October 10, 2005

Small Town A Bastion Of Bigfoot Belief

By Dave Wischnowsky

Chicago Tribune

SENECA, Ill. — A few months ago, the big news in this village of 2,053 residents was that its lone men’s barbershop had closed after 42 years.

As the summer wore on, however, many locals found themselves bantering about a more exotic topic: Bigfoot.

For better or worse, Seneca has become a veritable Sasquatch Central following a flurry of investigations conducted by a member of the California-based Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, which bills itself as “the only scientific research organization exploring the Bigfoot/Sasquatch mystery.”

“My mind’s open to anything. After all, they just found another planet. So, who knows? Anything’s possible,” lifelong Seneca resident Jim Maier, 61, joked.

The rumors also create questions. From how and why Bigfoot stories can begin in a place such as Seneca–about 70 miles southwest of Chicago–to the reasons behind our powerful fascination with tales of things that go bump in the night.

“Bigfoot is one of those things that people like believing in,” said Dr. Christopher Bader, an assistant professor of sociology at Baylor University in Texas. “Because, how boring would the world be if we thought we had discovered everything?”

Since Stan Courtney of the BFRO first visited Seneca, he has deemed reports of four separate Bigfoot encounters near town credible enough to post on the group’s Web site. Two of the alleged encounters happened in early June, and the others date back to 1979 and 1983.

Courtney first posted two Bigfoot reports on the group’s Web site July 9, prompting the Daily Times, a newspaper in nearby Ottawa, to publish a story about the rumors. After that story ran, Courtney said he received information about other Bigfoot encounters. He posted two more reports in late August.

All four of the supposed sightings were within a mile of each other in a densely wooded area just south of the Illinois River along Seneca’s narrow and twisting DuPont Road. Three occurred in Grundy County, while the fourth was in LaSalle County. One account involved two Bigfoot creatures.

“We heard some commotion over in the woods, and we were looking down into the trees. … At first, I didn’t know what to think,” a man identified only as “Tom” is quoted as saying on www.bfro.net, the official Web site of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. “If anything, it could be a man in a suit.

“Then I saw the second one in the clearing as plain as day. I guess I don’t know how to explain it, but I just knew it wasn’t a man at that time.”

“Tom” believes the creatures he saw in June near Seneca– allegedly covered in hair, standing more than 8 feet tall and reeking of a pungent odor–to be Bigfoots.

To many longtime Seneca residents, such stories are actually nothing new. Tales of a towering, hairy creature stalking the woods along DuPont Road date back four decades, they say.

“Growing up, it was always the `DuPont Monster,'” said Kim Tedford, a resident of Seneca for more than 30 years. “The [Daily Times] newspaper story was the first I’d ever heard about it being Bigfoot.”

Whatever the names, countless towns throughout the nation boast tales of the supernatural. And like a good scary movie, those stories can provide a dose of excitement, Bader said.

“Every state has its roads where there’s a phantom hitchhiker, and every town has its haunted houses,” he said. “Regardless of whether there are such things as Bigfoot, people like that thrill of uncertainty, that sense of danger. It’s exciting to try and discover the unknown. And it’s a lot more fun to have that little bit of doubt when you’re sitting out in the woods.”

Bader says he once sat alone inside an isolated cabin in Washington state at 3 a.m. with a recording of a Bigfoot “scream” playing outside. The effort failed to attract any creatures, he said.

But it didn’t fail to excite.

“The only time I’ve believed in Bigfoot was from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. that night, when I thought playing that tape was the stupidest thing I’d ever done,” Bader said. “I was scared out of my wits. … But I felt that thrill.”

A belief in Bigfoot also can provide a sense of significance and belonging, said Dr. James Alcock, a professor of psychology at York University in Toronto and member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.

“One type of a believer is a person really fascinated by something strange, but who typically doesn’t have much background in science, or found science hard or boring growing up,” Alcock said. “But if they jump on the bandwagon with flying saucers or Bigfoot, they think that they’re doing some sort of science. And that in some way they’re a `real’ scientist at the forefront of trying to make a discovery.”

“It’s a shortcut,” he said. “To become a paleontologist, it takes years. But to become an `expert’ on Bigfoot, you just have to read a few books and join a few groups, and you know as much as anyone else.

“Another thing is that you’re treated with respect if you join these groups. Nobody laughs at you. And if you also bring up ghosts or other [supernatural] things, people will not say you’re an idiot.”

The BFRO says the Internet has made it easier for people to report sightings directly to investigators, without fear of public ridicule. Alcock contends the Web also has helped such beliefs grow.

“In small towns, there is more opportunity for a belief to spread,” he said. “And the Internet has a small-town flavor. It’s a place where you can seek out those who share your belief.”

On its Web site, the BFRO documents Bigfoot sightings in every state except Hawaii, and the encounters occur almost exclusively in rural locations.

Boise State University professor of psychology Dr. Eric Landrum offers an explanation.

“Perhaps people in small towns have more time to think creatively or imaginatively, or they seek more distractions from their everyday lives, as compared to city-dwellers,” he said. “[Bigfoot stories] are fuel for the imagination.”

In Seneca this summer, many locals were having fun with the rumors. Groups of local teenagers toted tents into the woods hoping to spot a Bigfoot, while adults cracked jokes about how such creatures were coping with the heat.

But for some, Bader said, Bigfoot will always offer a big allure.

“For whatever reason, there’s an inherent appeal to the myth of the Wild Man or Bigfoot,” he said. “Somehow, that’s ingrained in us. … Bigfoot is `everywhere.’ So I’m not at all surprised he’s in Seneca.”

July 21, 2005

Bigfoot seen in Seneca?

By Charles Stanley

Ottawa Daily Times

SENECA — For at least 20 years, the woods on both sides of Seneca near the Illinois River have been frequented by elusive Bigfoot creatures, according to an investigator for the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.

The reports of a sighting from 1983 west of Seneca in La Salle County and from just last month east of Seneca in Grundy County have been posted by investigator Stan Courtney, a hospital worker from the Springfield area, to the organization’s Web site www.bfro.net.

The first involved two campers who had a dark evening encounter with a creature near their campsite close enough that they could hear it breathe and pick up an odor that was a cross between garbage and musk cologne. By firelight they could see the creature was wide and about 8 foot tall. As it prowled nearby, the men became scared and crawled away.

Then, last month, a man hunting snakes heard a rustling in a nearby tree line.

“Right outside of the tree line I saw the back half from the waist up of this Bigfoot,” the man told Courtney. “It turned ever so slightly, it didn’t face me, but it turned towards my direction a little bit kind of like it acknowledged me there, and then continued to walk off.”

The witness also noticed a pungent, musky old mop smell.

Courtney, who since last year has made hundreds of calls around the country to obtain details of reported sightings, also visited both sites, which are on private land, with the witnesses.

“I went out in the field with them,” Courtney said. “I heard the animals myself, I heard their calls. You probably hear them 100 times more than you see one. So after that happened to me I thought, yeah, I know they’re there for sure.”

Now he is working on another more recent local sighting from the Grundy County side of Seneca.

The witnesses of the previous two sightings, who were unknown to each other, got together to visit each other’s encounter sites and saw two of the creatures together, Courtney said.

“These things are in family groups,” he said. “I believe there are four or five of them in the Seneca group. At least three different males have been seen there.”

Although Bigfoot creatures are associated with the Pacific Northwest, where they also are known as sasquatch, there have been sightings in Illinois for well over a century, Courtney said, but under different names.

At the state historical library in Springfield, Courtney combs old microfilmed newspapers.

“I have found reports back as far as 1882 from the Decatur newspaper,” he said. Most frequently the sightings are downstate and the creatures are termed as monsters — but their descriptions are similar to those of the Bigfoot creatures.

In the early 1970s there was a burst of monster stories from Central Illinois.

In 1970 the “Farmer City Monster” was said to have been seen by dozens of people, including police officers.

Two years later a large hairy creature spotted near Cole Hollow Road close to Peoria soon became known as “Cohomo.” A massive search for the creature organized by the Tazewell County sheriff ended when one of the volunteers accidentally shot himself in the leg with a pistol he had brought along.

In 1973 to 1974 it was the “Murphysboro Mud Monster” that drew public interest.

But around 1980 the reports began to dry up. Courtney attributes that to a takeover of the Bigfoot subject by tabloid newspapers.

“After that, people who experienced sightings weren’t going to come forward for fear of being exposed to extreme ridicule,” Courtney said. “Among the hundreds of people I have called invariably they will say ‘You know, you are only the second person I have ever told because I don’t want to be laughed at, and I don’t want to be called a liar. I have to live in my community and I just don’t want my family to go through that.’ “

For those same reasons, the identity of the men who made the Seneca sightings is confidential.

But with the arrival of the Internet, individuals were able to report their sightings directly to investigators such as Courtney.

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization Web site lists 42 sightings in Illinois over the years. But that is only a fraction of the reports, says Courtney.

Clearly about one-half are hoaxes, he said. Then about another 20 percent to 30 percent are sincere but questionable.

“Maybe people felt they saw or heard something, but they’re not sure,” Courtney said. “Just because they heard something and don’t know what it is doesn’t make it a Bigfoot.”

And of the remaining reports, some are posted on the Web page — but others are kept for internal organization use only. And even the ones that are posted are rated A, B or C for quality.

An April report from near Franklin Grove in Lee County posted to the Web site includes a photograph of a Bigfoot footprint. It appears large, but there is nothing beside it to establish the scale.

Courtney says that although Bigfoot creatures are portrayed as subhuman, that the current thinking among researchers is they are more closely related as primates to chimps or gorillas.

“There’s nothing to indicate they have intelligence higher than that,” he said. “They don’t build fires. They don’t make tools. It’s just the way their hips are built that they walk upright. People have a tendency to think they are more human, but I don’t think that makes it that way.”

There are an estimated 2,000 to 6,000 Bigfoot creatures in North America, he said.

The conditions that seem to favor their presence are wooded locations near a river with a substantial population of deer, which they hunt.

A posted Bigfoot sighting report from Kane County notes a deer carcass was found wedged in a tree fork.

“There’s evidence out west they do communal hunting for elk,” Courtney said.

Courtney admits it takes faith to believe that the Bigfoot creatures exist. But at one time gorillas also were thought to be a hoax, and even primate expert Jane Goodall gives serious attention to Bigfoot research.

Personal experiences will convert other skeptics as they did him, Courtney said.

“It really shook me up seeing my first Bigfoot footprint and hearing these animals come down to our campground at night and yell at us and then having them throw sticks and rocks.”

Where and when someone can expect to see a Bigfoot is impossible to say, Courtney said.

“But if you’re along the Illinois River, and in a place where there is a lot of woods and a lot of deer, then there is the chance you might see one going through that area.”

Wednesday, October 23, 1968

The Monster Story

Fulton County Democrat

About 9:30 p.m. Friday evening while driving on the Dutch Henry crossing near Lewistown, three high school boys in a pickup truck had been following their friends who were riding in a car quite some distance ahead of them. All at once the boys in the pick up pulled to a stop as the car they had been following was crossways in the road and the boy was laying in the road as though knocked out.

The boys got out of the truck and were walking toward the boy when someone or something attached them and knocked them to the ground and each time they tried to get back up were knocked down again. The boys said whatever it was did not fight with his fists but backhanded them. At one time the boys did manage to get it down but all at once it knocked them aside with ease.

During this time the other boy who had been on the ground ran for the truck and locked the doors. He said he got a fairly good look and it was not too tall, but very stocky built and seemd to be very hairy. Evidently something scared it away as all at once it was gone. The boys were not harmed but were quite shaken up. The incident was turned in to local police authorities.

Saturday, February 14, 1885

A Wild Man

Decatur (Illinois) – Saturday Herald

A wild man haunts the woods near Locust Grove.

Sunday, November 15, 1891

A Wild Man

Davenport (Iowa) Daily Leader

A wildman is defying the rigors of a Central Illinois climate by appearing in a nude state to residents of the Okaw bottom, near Vandalia. A search party is being organized.

Friday, December 04, 1891

The Wild Man Hunt

Decatur Daily Republican

A systematic hunt for the wild man who roams about in Loudon and Carson townships Fayette county is to take place Dec.5. A circle of searchers about four miles in circumference is to be thrown around the supposed haunts of the queer being in the Okaw bottoms, hunting toward the center. Some time ago an insane negro was found in these bottoms, and for a time it was thought he was the person who had been taking the poultry and pigs in the neighborhood; but it was found that it was a mistake and the wild man was still at large.