Thursday, November 8, 1973

Big Muddy Monster makes the big (New York) time

About the article

Murphysboro’s Big Muddy Monster of last summer has attracted nationwide attention. Radio stations in New York and Massachusetts and a national magazine have made recent inquiries about the monster. New York Times News Service reporter Andrew H. Malcom visited Murphysboro in October and filed this story on the national wire of the Times’ news service on Oct. 30.

By Andrew Malcolm
New York Times
News service

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?”

Tuesday, July 8, 1975

Is Big Muddy Monster back?

Is the Big Muddy monster active again in the Murphysboro area?

It’s that time of the year, and reports indicate another unexplained sighting Sunday night in the Harrison area, north of Murphysboro.

Jackson County authorities and Murphysboro Police checked the area near the Pentecostal Church grounds about 1 a.m. Monday, after two Harrison area residents reported seeing a “white and shaggy haired creature about seven feet tall.”

Police identified the two as Donnie O’Guinn and Marty Rogers. The two told police they were gigging frogs in a pond near the church when they saw the animal.

They said the animal made no threat to harm them before turning and walking away. The two told police the animal broke a tree limb near the scene, and police later found the broken tree limb.

Police reported they were unable to find tracks or any other trace of whatever it was the two saw.

Previous sightings of unexplained events, including the Big Muddy Monster, date back to 1973, and almost all sightings occurred around the Fourth of July.

The first sighting was in June 1973, when two different sightings were reported in the Riverside Park area in Murphysboro. A couple parked near the boat ramp on South 24th Street reported seeing a “white and shaggy haired creature about seven feet tall” approach their car.

Police checked the parking lot and found footprints in a muddy area near the lot. Police also reported hearing “unusual screams” in the parking lot area.

The next night two 17-year-old Murphysboro youths were sitting on the back porch of a home in Westwood Hills Subdivision, just northwest of Riverside Park, when a creature of similar description approached the rear yard of the home.

The following week workers at a carnival in Murphysboro’s Fourth of July celebration in Riverside Park, on the banks of the Big Muddy River, heard what they reported as “unusual screams.”

Not much more was heard from the monster until the first part of this year, when four truckers driving on Illinois 3 near the Illinois 149 junction west of Murphysboro reported to authorities they had seen a “bearlike animal,” on the highway near the Illinois 3-149 junction.

The sightings occurred near the United States Forest Service rest area, in a thickly wooded area.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Letters from all over sent after sighting

Southern Illinoisan

Shortly after the Big Muddy Monster made its supposed appearance in Murphysboro, newspapers and other media started covering the strange sightings.

News reports appeared in papers like the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Omaha World-Herald and more; which prompted a flood of letters set to either Murphysboro city hall or then police chief Tobias Berger.

Following are a few excerpts from the letters sent from across the country:

“Dear Sir…”wrote one admirer in November of 1973. “My mom can catch it. she is good, too. Please let her try…Where there is terror she love to solve. She is good with guns. And knifes allso.”

The city received advice from one young Kansas man in 1975.

“I think next time you get a call about the monster you should take a tranquilizer gun. A powerful drug that makes him sleep and just in case it take a little work put a little signal senter and you can watch it on an electric chart…”

Others begged for police to be kind to the creature. One North Carolina woman wrote in November of 1973, “It distresses me very much that whenever people are confused and frightened they get out their guns. etc…”

She suggested, “Surely a little kindness and feeling for this ‘monster’ would go a lot farther in really finding out what is going on…”

In the Big Muddy Monster file is still held under lock and key at the Murphysboro Police Department there are nearly 40 letters that contain such opinion and musings.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Renowned cryptozoologist got his start at SIUC

By Marleen Shepherd
Southern Illinoisan

Loren Coleman has the Abominable Snowman to thank for his SIUC degree and successful career. In 1960, the Decatur youth caught a campy movie featuring the legendary Himalayan hominid and came back to school the next day with a lot of questions for his teachers.

“They said, ‘Don’t waste your time. It’s not true,’ which of course prompted me into reading everything I could about them,” said Coleman, now considered one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists – scientists who study rumored, mythological or extinct animals that are presumed to exist but for which there is no conclusive proof.

At only 12 years old, Coleman began absorbing every book he could on the subject, attending academic conferences and corresponding with more than 400 scientists, authors and amateur monster-hunters.

His journey of discovery led him to SIUC folklorist John W. Allen, whose 1963 book “Legends & Lore of Southern Illinois,” is now considered the Bible for the area’s celebrated storytelling.

Allen recounted descriptions by Southern Illinoisans and Kentuckians of the “little red men of the woods.”

The creatures are described as 4-feet-tall and hairy with human-like faces. They stand upright but are also able go to all fours like an ape. They are commonly reported throughout the American South in swampy areas and are known as swamp apes, skunk apes or napes, and monkey men.

A Mount Vernon resident told Allen he struck one of these mini-Bigfoots, known to Southern Illinoisans as Boogers, over the head with a rifle.

“(Allen) collected them as folklore,” Coleman said. “I was interested in them as actual cases of cryptozoology.”

Coleman arrived at SIUC in 1965 as an anthropology major and zoology minor to study Boogers as well as other mysterious animals of the area.

“I found SIU extremely open-minded about this,” Coleman said. “There was a lively intellectual atmosphere there that let me do what I needed to do.”

Coleman documented sightings and conducted field work knee-deep in Southern Illinois swamps. He went on to travel the world doing the same.

The result is more than 30 books, many of which make mention of central and Southern Illinois, including the classic 1983 “Mysterious America.” Coleman is a frequent guest of radio programs such as the paranormally friendly “Coast to Coast AM,” and has also appeared on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”

Coleman is a consultant on several television shows including “In Search Of,” “Ancient Mysteries” and “Unsolved Mysteries.” During 2002, he was featured in “Search for the Mothman,” available on the DVD of the movie “The Mothman Prophecies.” He also served as the Screen Gems’ national and international publicity spokesperson for the movie.

This week Coleman is celebrating the first-ever Creature Appreciation Week, sponsored by the Wizards of the Coast’s Duel Masters trading card game, for which Coleman is also a consultant. Coleman says children’s interest in these creatures is often a gateway to education in the sciences.

“I get 500 e-mails a day from kids 7 and 8 and up through college who are interested in monsters. I tell them to stay in school and follow their passions.”

Coleman, now a film professor at the University of Southern Maine, encourages those hot and bothered by Bigfoot to study zoology and those loony for Loch Ness Monster to pursue marine biology.

He hears from parents who are thrilled that their reading-resistant kids are willing to sound out the names of the monsters on trading cards and in Coleman’s “Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature.”

Coleman now lives in Portland, Maine, where he created the International Cryptozoology Museum in 2003.

Creatures he has chased in Southern Illinois include the Murphysboro Mud Monster and black panthers, which have been sighted since the turn of the last century in the Shawnee National Forest and Crab Orchard areas.

Other animals in regional folklore include giant snakes and turtles, sea serpents of the Mississippi River and thunderbirds, flying mammals as large small airplanes. Illinois is considered a hotspot for cryptids, or the hypothetical critters Coleman chases.

“In the mid ’70s, Illinois had the most creature reports east of the Rockies,” Coleman said. He believes this is because SIUC professors and students, and area residents, actively related sightings. In addition, the long state of Illinois stretches from a dense urban area in the north to the plains in the middle to the swamps and forest of the south.

“There’s a wide variety of biohabitat,” he said.

While Coleman said he does not have a reason to believe in all of the creatures about which he compiles evidence, he does expect Bigfoot to be confirmed as reality.

“I think it’s pretty credible. I’ve talked to police officers in Alabama who found prints that matched those found by conservationists in Florida and game wardens in Illinois,” he said of a type of footprint that indicates a large side-attached big toe. “Most people who put fake Bigfoot prints make it look like a giant human foot. All these people finding the same large footprint tells me there’s something going on there that’s beyond fakery.”

For those skeptical of cryptozoology, Coleman points to the many animal discoveries once rumored to be myth. Among these are mountain gorillas, the megamouth shark, the coelacanth (a six-foot-long, walking fish), and most recently, the ivory-billed woodpecker.

“In Brazil, they’ve found a new monkey every year during the last decade,” Coleman said. Once a discovery is made, traditional science takes over and cryptozoology moves on to the next mystery. Coleman believes about 80 percent of the reports he investigates are fraudulent or the result of human error or imagination.

“That left me with 20 percent of the cases that were unknown and that’s what’s exciting.”

Thursday, October 30, 2003

A Monster of an Idea to Boost Tourism

By Jeff Smyth
Southern Illinoisan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday, November 6, 2003

Time for the Big Muddy Monster to come home

By Jeff Smyth
Southern Illinoisan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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