Mystery Animals In Illinois

by Loren E Coleman

Fate Magazine, March 1971 p. 48-54

Reports from all over the state tell the story of an “invasion” by weird creatures
whose activities defy explanation.

Since early in the century large “animals,” usually resembling mountain lions and frequently described as black, have been reported throughout the state of Illinois.

In 1917, a “puma” jumped and scratched a Monticello butler. Near Decatur a similar creature attacked an automobile on the night of July 29 that same year.

Other incidents have occurred more recently. A “black panther” was seen near Coulter’s Mill in northern Macon County. Game Warden Paul G. Myers shot it in the flank but its body was never found. A state trooper fired at a similar beast during the summer of 1963 in Saline County. An “elusive mountain lion” spooked cattle and killed a calf in southeastern Lawrence County in May 1963 and in late June 1965 a “large black cat-like animal” came out of the woods near Decatur to gobble up the sack lunch dropped by one of a group of fleeing children.

Accounts like these create a problem for the State of Illinois Department of Conservation. After all, the mountain lion/puma/panther (Felis concolor) has been officially extinct in Illinois since 1850. The Department’s reaction is typical and classic: “The ‘black panther’ of Illinois is a black Persian cat, a Labrador retriever or a black Angus calf that some person’s over-imaginative brain has conjured into a black panther.”

Unfortunately this tidy irrelevancy hardly explains the rash of reports mystery cats that filled the Illinois press early in 1970.

The “invasion” began in January 1970 in Macon County. West of Decatur an employee of the Macon Seed Company, Inc., saw a large black animal he described as a ‘cougar.” William F. Beatty, president of the firm, told me he himself had found tracks left by the animal. He also claimed the thing twice tore down his electric fence. But not until two days after Beatty made his report did Game Warden James Atkins bother to investigate. Atkins concluded somewhat imaginatively that the animal was beaver. A most unusual beaver to be sure, since the footprints Beatty discovered were “very large” and had claw marks.

Cougars, which possess retractable claws, generally do not leave claw marks and the ripping down of electric fences seems rather out-of-character behavior for the average puma (and the average beaver).

A month later and 75 miles away to the southeast in Jasper County Mrs. Donald Miller saw what she later described to me as an all-black cat as large as her German shepherd. Although not as tall as her dog, the “cat” was longer and had a tail at least as long as its body. The cat came within less than 150 yards of her house and she was surprised that the dog continued to lie near the house and watch without even barking!

During February and March similar incidents took place in other widely separated Illinois counties.

In Jersey County State Trooper James Warford watched a large cat-like animal cross the River Road in front of his car. Farmers around the county’s Pere Parquette Park (location of a former Nike missile site and presently housing radar equipment allegedly for “tracking storms”) encountered a large animal and found tracks the size of a man’s palm. One of the leading sportmen of the county tentatively identified the tracks as those of a puma. Other identifying details included heavy tail marks which suggest the animal had a long tail.

Farther south near the Jackson-Union County line at least two unknown animals left thousands of footprints as large as cow tracks. The families of Holly Craig, Lowell Newbold and Don Shadowens – each on different occasions – sighted a large black animal at least five feet in length with a long tail. One hunter came upon a large animal eating a deer and on three occasions raccoon hunters in those southern Illinois counties saw their dogs chased out of the woods by a screaming animal.

Perhaps one of the weirdest in incidents occurred at the extreme southern tip of the state in Alexander County. On Friday, April 10, 1970, Mike Busby of Cairo was driving on Route 3 to Olive Branch, Ill., to pick up his wife. At about 8:30 P.M., a mile south of Olive Branch, on this dark mostly deserted road that parallels the edge of the vast Shawnee National Forest, Busby’s automobile quit running. He got out of his car and had begun to release the hood latch when he heard a noise on his left. He was startled to see two quarter-sized, almond-shaped, greenish glowing eyes staring at him.

Before he had a chance to move the strange form, six feet tall, black and upright, advanced on him. Without warning it hit him hard in the face with two large padded front feet and they rolled over together to the left side of the road. “It” remained on top of Busby as the two tumbled together. Shredding his shirt to pieces it inflicted wounds on his left arm, chest and abdomen with dull two-inch claws. Busby desperately held its mouth open at arm’s length. Certain that it was trying for his throat he tried to keep clear of its long yellow canines.

While unable to see its features very well he did feel something “fuzzy” around the mouth which he took to be whiskers. Its general body hair or fur was short and wiry (“like steel wool,” he told me) to the touch and although it was dry it smelled like we hair. The creature emitted deep, soft growls unlike anything Busby ever had heard before.

Soon a diesel truck passed. Busby saw clearly now that the thing’s color was a slick shiny black. He also could see the “shadow of its tail.”. The truck’s headlights apparently scared the creature and with “heavy footfalls,” Busby said, it loped off across the road.

Dizzy, his body aching, Busby crawled back to his car. It started without trouble.

The truck driver, John Hartsworth, was waiting for Busby in Olive Branch. Hartsworth explained that he had been unable to brake the truck and stop to help. From what he saw in his headlights, however, he said the thing looked like a big cat.

Mike Busby was treated in St. Mary’s Hospital in Cairo by a Dr. Robinson who gave him two inoculations, one for tetanus, another for the relief of pain. Busby’s brother Don told me that in the days following the encounter Mike required aid in walking, was often dizzy and fainted once.

Such details as the creature’s unprovoked attack and the possible electro-magnetic effect on Busby’s automobile – although the latter could be coincidence – seem to take this account outside the realm of the normal.

But many things have happened lately in Illinois. From eastern Winnebago County in the northern part of the state in late May 1970 astounded residents reported what one state trooper described as “a male African lion about eight feet long with hair growth at the end of its tail and a mane.” One group of young men said it ran alongside their Volkswagen. All this prompted a small “safari” of law enforcement officers; complete with a state p0lice airplane, in the area of the sightings near Interstate 90. The usual teletype inquiries requesting information on escapees from circuses and animal shows elicited negative replies. But a week later something caused two ponies, a horse and four calves on the Lyle Imig farm near Rockford to bolt through a barbed wire fence. The prowling beast left enormous tracks like those of a “huge dog,” Larry Black of the county’s Animal Welfare League said. Black admitted, though, that he was baffled.

As reports continued they grew increasingly sinister. In Marion County during the last three weeks of May 1970 24 hogs disappeared. In the three preceding months “hognappings” had been numerous from Salem, Ill., area farms. In central Illinois near Farmer City three sheep turned up dead in the early spring. Officials assumed – until July 9 anyway – that it was the work of “wild dogs.”

On that date Don Ennis, Beecher Lamb, Larry Faircloth, and Bob Hardwick, all 18, decided to camp out on a wild 10 – acre buffalo grass-covered piece of land a mile south of Farmer City near Salt Creek. Their campsite, often used as a lovers’ lane, was very isolated. before the night was over they would realize just how isolated.

About 10:30 P.M. as they sat around the campfire they heard something moving in the tall grass. When ‘it” moved between them and their tent Lamb decided to turn his car lights on. The thing, whose widely-separated eyes gleamed at them, was squatting by the tent. then it ran off – on two legs. The young men left in a considerable hurry themselves – in such a hurrying in fact that Ennis, who had one foot in a cast because of a broken ankle, left his crutches behind.

Soon word about the Farmer City “monster” spread. On Friday, July 10, more than 10 persons said they had seen a pair of glowing eyes near the site of the first sighting. And on the 12th and 14th at least 15 persons swore they had seen a furry creature in the same area. Witnesses told me how “it” seemed to be attracted by the sound of loud radio music and campfires.

Police Officer Robert Hayslip of Farmer City decided to check the stories of the monster. He went out to the campsite/lovers’ lane area early Wednesday morning, July 15, between two and three o’clock. Hayslip heard something running through the grass. Then, “out of the corner of my eye I could see these two extremely bright eyes,” he told me soon after his sighting, “just like it was standing there watching me.” As he turned toward it, he said, it disappeared.

About 6 A.M. Hayslip again visited the site. He found that the heavy steel grommets in a tent that had been intact at 3:00 A.M. now were ripped out. A quilt lying nearby was torn to shreds.

The police chief of Farmer City, who had expressed the personal opinion that the so-called monster was nothing more than a Shetland pony, now decided to lock the gate that led to the 10 acre area.

The monster apparently moved on.

A couple driving near the Weldon Springs State Park on the afternoon of July 24 spotted a “bear” near the Willis Bridge on Salt Creek. Stopping at a farmhouse they asked the residents to notify the Dewitt County Sheriff’s office. The sheriff and State Conservation Officer Warren Wilson found several tracks with definite claw marks around the water’s edge and on a sandbar in the middle of the creek. Wilson said the tracks were more like a large cat’s but definitely not a bear’s.

Soon after the Willis Bridge incident, during the first week in August, Vicki Otto of rural Bloomington, saw something near the Ireland Grove Road three miles southeast of Bloomington. She saw a pair of eyes reflecting her automobile headlights as she approached what she first thought was a dog. Then, she writes, “I saw this ape running in the ditch. The thing I saw as the size of a baboon.”

About the same time three Rantoul youths on an early morning fishing trip to Kickapoo Creek picked up in their headlights an upright creature as big as a cow. It seemed unbothered by the lights and continued ambling along the edge of the creek.

That same week another person saw it near the Heyworth-Kickapoo Creek area, followed it and foun a string of opened mussel shells and half-eaten minnows.

On Tuesday night, August 11, Steve Rich, 18, George Taylor, 17, and Monti Shafer, 20, were hiking on the land of Farrell Finger about two miles northeast of Waynesville half a mile from Kickapoo Creek. At 9:15 P.M. Steve called the others’ attention to the ‘thing’ standing atop a cliff. They said it was between seven and eight feet tall, slightly hunched over, but not like an ape. Its arms were proportionately as long as a man’s. One of the youths fired an arrow at it but when they returned to the cliff the next day, they found only the undamaged arrow – no footprints. However, they too discovered piles of broken shells.

The night of a lunar eclipse marks the most recent monster report that has come to me.

On Sunday, August 16, Dan Lindsey and Mike Anderson, construction workers with the Arcole Midwest Corp., were driving on Route 136 approaching the Kickapoo Creek bridge north of Waynesville. Around 9:00 P.M. they encountered it: My first thought was a tall man or maybe a bear or a gorilla,” said Anderson. The creature stood six feet five inches tall, was all brown and had stooped shoulders. walking on two legs and illuminated by the car lights it more or less trotted across the the west side and along the creek’s edge. Then it was gone.

The Illinois creature (both puma and Sasquatch types) display the familiar “monster” preoccupation with automobiles, desolate lovers’ lanes and backwoods creek bottom-lands. Another common feature is the huge seemingly unidentifiable clawed tracks often found despite descriptions of apparently known animals. Have we here unknown but flesh and blood animals – or “monsters” of a paraphysical nature?

It should be noted, also, that they seem to act as a diversion. For while the Kickapoo Creek-Salt Creek monster was creating a furor over $2000 worth of cattle and swine were being easily “rustled” from Maroa and Argenta area farms just a few miles outh of the area of the monster reports.

The Illinois incidents parallel the reports of Mothman in West Virginia as well as other monster flaps of recent years. But 1970 marked a sharp increase – almost to “invasion” proportions – in the activity of weird unexplained creatures in Illinois.

 

Swamp Slobs Invade Illinois

by Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman

Fate Magazine, July 1974 p. 84-88

Numerous residents throughout the state have reported seeing – and smelling –
these ape-like intruders.

Illinois harbors some strange inhabitants not mentioned in the tourist guides. In
fact, the vast majority of the state’s citizenry do not even recognize their existence
About the only ones who do are the handful who have seen them and even these
persons have a hard time talking about “them.”

Unidentied creature tried to break into the McDaniel home in Enfield.

For one thing, “they” don’t even have a name. Researcher John Keel, who has studied
their appearances and habits over the years, calls them “abominable swamp slobs”
but the monicker hasn’t caught on. Call them what you will, they’re unwelcome. Any
creature, animal or human, that prowls around scaring people – and on top of that
smells bad – isn’t likely to be loved.

They are so far beyond our understanding that it’s no wonder stories about them
excite incredulity. But the frequent reports of their appearance in the wooded and
watery areas of Illinois and other places, couple with the obvious sincerity of those
who say they have encountered them, could convince as something awfully strange
is going on in the backwaters of America.

In the summer of 1973 Murphysboro in southwestern Illinois was the scene of a
bizarre series of events involving a creature which appeared suddenly and
disappeared just as suddenly two weeks later, leaving in its wake a number of
baffled, frightened individuals who probably never again will feel completely at
ease in the woods around their hometown.

The creature was first seen shortly after midnight on June 25, 1973. Randy Needham and
Judy Johnson were parking on a boat ramp to the Big Muddy River near Murphysboro
when a cry “about three times as load as a bobcat, only deeper” sounded in the nearby
woods. The two looked up to see a huge biped lumbering toward them, still shrieking
but now in altering tones. It was not a human sound.

Randy and Judy agreed the thing was about seven feet tall, white, its short body hair
matted with river mud. They were not interested in examining it at close range and by
the time it got within 20 feet of them they were roaring away from the scene, bound
for the Murphysboro police station.

Officers Meyrl Lindsey and Jimmie Nash checked the area and found “impressions in the
mud approximately 10 to 12 inches long and approximately three inches wide,” according
to the report they filed later. To a FATE reporter, Needham later described the
impressions as “something like a man with a shoe on would make.” He suggested that
toe prints may not have registered in the mud.

At 2:00 A.M. Nash, Lindsey, Needham and Deputy Sheriff Bob Scott returned to the
scene. This time they discovered fresh tracks, similar in general appearance to those
they has seen an hour earlier, but deeper and smaller. The police report reads:
“The prints in the mud were very iratic (sic) in that no two were the same distance
apart and some were five or six feet apart. Also prints were found very close together.”

Officer Lindsey left to get a camera to take pictures of the prints and while he was
gone the other three followed the tracks. While they were bending over to examine
some of them, there came “the most incredible shriek I’ve ever heard,” Nash recalled.
Apparently the creature was hidden in the trees less than 100 yards away. The trio
didn’t stick around to find out. They beat a hasty retreat to the squad car. In the hours
that followed officers did scour the area in pursuit of an elusive splashing sound but
found nothing.

When daylight came things quieted down but with darkness the creature returned.

The first to see it this time was four-year-old Christian Baril who told his parents
he had seen “a big white ghost in the yard.” they didn’t believe him – but 10 minutes
later, when Randy Creath and Cheryl Ray saw something very much like that in a
neighboring yard, parents and police reconsidered the youngster’s words.

About 10:30 P.M. Randy and Cheryl were sitting on the back porch of the Ray home when
they heard something moving in the trees along the river just beyond the lawn.
They they saw the creature standing in an opening in the trees, quietly watching them
through glowing pink eyes. Cheryl insists the eyes were glowing, not reflecting – there
was no light source nearby.

The creature was either the same one the other young couple has seen the night before
or one similar to it. It was white and dirty, weighed close to 350 pounds and stood
seven feet tall; it had a large round head. Cheryl thought its arms might be
“ape-length,” although she wasn’t certain because it ws standing in waist-high grass.

Finally the thing ambled off through the trees, makin considerable noise, making
considerable noise. Later, investigtors found a trail of crushed weeds and broken
brush, as well as imprints in the ground too vague and imperfect to be cast in plaster.

Cheryl’s mother Mrs. Harry Ray called the police. While waiting for them to arrive,
they suddenly began to smell a “real strong odor – like a sewer,” Cheryl said, but
the odor lasted only a short time.

Soon Officers Nash and Ronald Manwarin pulled up in their car. What happened then is
recounnted in their report:

“Officers inspected the area where the creature was seen and found weeds broken
down and somewhat of a path where something had walked through. Jerry Nellis was
notified to bring his dog to the area to see if the dog would track the creature.
Upon arrival of Nellis and his dog (a German shepherd trained to attack, search
buildings and track) the dog was led to the area where the creature was last seen.
The dog began tracking down the hill where the creature was reported to have gone.

As the dog started down the hill it kept stopping and sniffing at a slime substance
on the weeds; the slime appeared periodically as the dog tracked the creature. Nellis
put some of the slime between his fingers, rubbed it and it left a black coloring on
his fingers. Each time the dog found amounts of it, the dog would hesitate.

“The creature was tracked down the hill to a pond, around the pond to a wooded area
south of the pond where the dog attempted to pull Nellis down a steep embarkment. The
area where the dog tracked the creature to was too thick and bushy to walk through,
so the dog was pulled off the trail and returned to the car. Officers then searched the
area with flashlights.

“Officers Nash, Nellis and the dog then proceeded to the area directly south of where the
dog was pulled off the tracks. The area was at the end of the first road to the west past
Westwood Hills turnoff. The area is approximately one-half mile south of the area of
the pond behind 37 Westwood Lane.

“Nellis and the dog again began to search the area to see if the dog could again pick up
the scent. Nellis and the dog approached the abandoned barn and Nellis called to Officer
Nash to come to the area as the dog would not enter the barn. Nellis pushed the dog
inside and the dog immediately ran out. Nash and Nellis searched the barn and found
nothing inside. Nellis stated that the dog was trained to search buildings and had never
backed down from anything. Nellis could offer no explanation as to why the dog became
scared and would not bo inside the barn. Officers continued to search the area and were
unable to locate the creature.”

The Murphysboro creature was reported two more times. During an evening July Fourth
celebration in a city park near the river, carnival workers said they they had seen it
watching the Shetland ponies. And on July 7 Mrs. Nedra Green heard a shrill piercing
scream from near the shed of her isolated farm. She did not go out to investigate.

So what was this Murphysboro creature? The authorities admit they don’t know.

“A lot of things in life are unexplained,” Police Chief Toby Berber says, “and this
is another one. We don’t knnow what the creature is. But we do believe what these
people saw was real. . . These are good, honest people. They are seeing soemthing.
And who would walk through sewage tanks for a joke?”

Unfortunately not all law enforcement officers share Chief Berger’s enlighted attitude.
Earlier in the year Sheriff Roy Poshard, Jr. of White County in southeastern Illinois,
threatened to arrest a man who reported such a creature. But the witness, Henry
McDaniel of Enfield, sticks to his story.

He says that late in the evening of April 15, 1973, he heard something scratching on
his door. Upon opening the door he did a double take, for the “something” looked as
if it had stepped out of a nightmare.

“It had three legs on it,” he said, “a short body, two little short arms coming out of
its breast area and two pink eyes as big as flashlights. It stood four and a half to
five feet tall and was grayish-colored. It was trying to get into the house.”

McDaniel, in no mood to entertain the visitor, grabbed a pistol and opened fire.

“When I fired that first shot,” he said, “I know I hit it.” The creature hissed like
a wildcat and bounded away, covering 75 feet in three jumps, and disappeared into the
bursh along a railroad embankment that runs near the McDaniel home.

State police, summoned to McDaniel’s home soon afterward, found tracks “like a dog’s
except that (they) had six toe pads.” McDaniel told FATE that two of the prints
measured four inches around while the other measured three and one quarter inches.

Investigators subsequently discovered that 10 year old Greg Garrett, who lives just
behind McDaniel, had been playing in his backyard half an hour before when the creature
approached him and stepped on his feet, tearing his tennis shoes to shreds. The boy
had run inside crying hysterically.

On May 6 at 3: A.M. McDaniel was awakened by the howling of neighborhood dogs.
Looking out his front door he saw the monster again.

“I seen something moving out on the railroad track and there it stood,” he told a
reporter. “I didn’t shoot at it or anything. It started on down the railroad track.
It wasn’t in a hurry or anything.”

Referring to one of the explanations offered for his sightings, McDaniel told us,
“I’ve been all around the world. I’ve been through Africa and I’ve had a pet kangaroo.
This was not a kangaroo. I’ve never seen this type of creature or track before.”

The publicity McDaniel’s report received brought hordes of curiousity seekers, newsmen
and serious researchers to Enfield. Among them were five young men who Deputy Sheriff
Jim Clark arrest for hunting violations after they said they had seen and shot at a
gray hairy creature in some underbrush. Two of the ment thought they had hit it but
the thing had sped off, running faster than a man. This incident is supposed to have
occurred on May 8.

Another witness is Rick Rainbow, news director of Radio Station WWKI, Kokomo, Ind. On
May 6 he and three other persons saw the thing beside an old abandoned house near
McDaniel’s place. They didn’t get a good look at it because its back was to them and
it was running in the shadows but they later described it as about five and a half
feet tall, grayish, and stooped. Rainbow taped the cry it made.

Investigators Loren Coleman and Richard Crowe did not see the creature but they did
hear a high-pitched screech while they were searching the area around McDaniel’s home.

About a month later in Edwardsville, Ill. police received and checked three reports of
a musty-smelling, red-eyed, human-sized being said to be lurking in the woods on the
eastern edge of town. The creature reportedly was more than five and a half feet tall
and broad-shouldered, with eyes that apparently were sensitive to light. It made no
sound when it walked. The witnesses said the thing chased them and one man told
police the creature ripped his shirt and clawed his chest.

In many ways these events of 1973 were a replay of similar incidents from the summer
before. The Peoria Journal-Star for July 26, 1972, printed the claims of Randy Emert,
aged 18, who purportedly saw an unusual creature on two occasions in the preceding
two months. Emert said it was bipedal, hairy and between eight and 12 feet tall. It
was “kind of white and moves quick.” It brought with it a rancid odor and seemed to
scare the animals in the woods near Cole Hollow Road. Emert said, “It lets out a long
screech – like an old steam engine whistle only more human.”

Emert asserted that a number of his friends had seen either the creature or its
footprints. “I’m kind of a spokesman for the group,” he said. “The only one who has
the guts, I guess.”

Mrs. Ann Kammerer of Peoria corroborated Emert’s story, saying that all of her children,
friends of Emert, had seen the thing. “It sounds kind of weird,” she admitted. “At first
I didn’t believe it but them my daughter-in-law saw it.”

According to Emert an old abandoned house in the nearby woods had large footprints
all around it and a hole dug under the basement.

The Peoria Journal-Star for Jul 27, 1972, announced that two days perviously
“Creve Coeur authorities said a witness reported seeing ‘something big’ swimming in the
Illinois River.” (The Illinois River flows through Peoria.) On the night of the 27th
“two reliable citizens’ told police they had seen a 10-foot-tall figure that “looked
like a cross between an ape and a caveman.” A United Press International account
described it as having “a face with long gray U-shaped ears, a red mouth with sharp
teeth (and) thumbs with long second joints.” One witness said it smelled like a “musky
wet-down dog.” The East Peoria Police Department reported receiving more than 200
calls about the monster.

Leroy Summers of Cairo saw a 10-foot-tall, white, hairy creature standing erect near
the Ohio River levee during the evenin hours July 25, 1972. When the Cairo police
came to investigate they found nothing and Police Commissioner James dale warned that
henceforth anyone who made a monster report would have his breath tested for alcohol
content.

The rash of sightings in 1973, however, continued on into the fall. On the night of
October 16 four St. Joseph youths – Bill Duncan, Bob Summers Daryl Mowry and Craig
Flenniken – encountered a hairy “gorilla-like” creature on a road south of town.
The had stopped their car to investigate what they thought was a campfire near the
bridge on the Salt Fork. One of them lit a match and they all saw the creature,
standing five feet tall, about 15 feet away. They did not linger.

Duncan told the Champaign-Urbana Courier, “I wondered if I was nuts or something. I
thought it was a bear at first but I really couldn’t say.

This account raises two very obvious questions. What was the nature of the
mysterious light the boys took to be a campfire? And how could a match struck in an
outdoor setting generate enough light to reveal a presumably dark object 15 feet
away? Unfortunately we have no answers because our efforts to contact the witnesses
have been unsuccessful.

It is worth noting, however, that in recent years there has been a series of sightings
of “gorillas” in the area. In 1970 for example, witnesses reported such creatures at
Rantoul, Farmer City, Heyworth, Weldon and Decatur, all of the places within 50
miles of St. Joseph. In nearly every case the creature was seen in the woods near a
river or a creek and in one instance observers spotted it standing near a bridge on
Salt Creek.*

As fantastic as these stories seem they do form a certain pattern. Several features
consistently appear.

To start with, the Illinios incidents are clearly related to a growing body of reports
that come primarily from the south-central United States – Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma,
and Arkansas (although parallel tales have been recorded from time to time as far south
as Florida and as far north as Pennsylvania). The creatures reported are almost always
bipedal, hairy and sub-hominid in general appearance. Their color is variously
described as white, gray or dark brown. Their eyes are usually pink or red and glow in
the dark. The creatures emit an extremely unpleasant odor often compared to the smell
of garbage or sewage. They run fast and leap enormous distance – even from a sitting
position, according to one report.

Estimates of height range from four and a half to 12 feet. The creature is nocturnal
in its habits and lives in wooded areas bordering streams. It emits an ear-splitting,
nerve-shattering shriek. It apparently is not afraid of human beings and has been known
to chase and attack. Seldom is it seen in the company of another of its kind.

The one inconsistency concerns its tracks. They come in all sizes, some have four toe
prints, others have five or six. (All primates and hominids are five-toed.) A weird
inconsistency in the reports hints that on occasion our abominable swamp slobs are not
quite “real” – for at times they walk through underbrush without breaking twigs or
branches, leaving tracks or making noise. On other occasions, as we have seen they are
noisey and destructive.

Another disturbing feature is that the creatures occasionally appear in the company of
that other uninvited visitor, the UFO. So far as we know, no one actually has seen such
a creature enter or emerge from a flying saucer but some kind of relationship is implied
when strange flying objects are seenlanding in the area where a creature has been sighted.

So it goes with out abominable swamp slobs. What they really are is anyone’s guess. As
Chief Berger said, “A lot of things in life are unexplained.” For now we’ll have to
leave it at that.

*See Loren Coleman’s “Mystery Animals In Illinois” March 1971 p.48-54 Fate.