Saturday,  October 30, 2004

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

By Marleen Shepherd
Southern Illinoisan

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

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

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

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

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

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

DCI Biologicals, Carbondale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old Slave House, rural Equality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Murphysboro Mud Monster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Devil’s Bake Oven, Grand Tower

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hundley House, Carbondale

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, July 2, 1973

Bear wasn’t there, neither was monster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday,  June 21, 1976

Muddy monster reported

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big Muddy Monster A Favorite Local Legend

By Amanda Schmid

Volunteer News Staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday, November 20, 2004

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

The Southern Illinoisan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Murphysboro’s Big Muddy Monster

By John Gojkovich
Executive Editor

Murphysboro American

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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