Uncategorized

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.”

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?