By Eddie Middleton

Memphis UFO Examiner

My correspondent who lives very near Hartford, Illinois and who used to play around the old Hartford Castle grounds when he was a kid went down there yesterday and took a photograph of the blackberry thicket where the Bigfoot mentioned in the last article disappeared into. This will be posted in a few days along with a pair of red eyes glaring out from behind a growth of blackberries [not the real BF folks! Just some graphics enhancement].

The woman who works at the guard gate at the large warehouse across from the field where she spotted the Bigfoot about three weeks ago has updated me on other recent BF acitvity around the warehouse. She says that over the last month she and other co-workers have during the late night hours caught whiffs of an awful odor like that of rotted meat on three or four occasions. This extremely disgusting smell sometimes is wafted directly towards them from the field across the road from the guard gate. At other times it seems to be coming from some where on the property of the warehouse itself. This may be a deliberate attack by these creatures on the human olfactory sensibility. Anyone familiar with Bigfoot encounter stories knows that this creature has often given evidence of a strong resentment of what it perceives as an unwarranted encroachment of man into its territory.

Another example of this kind of Bigfoot protest of man’s presence is furnished by something else the lady security guard told me last week. She said she has been hearing loud, metallic clanking sounds at different times throughout the night coming from the field across from her guard gate. This is caused by someone banging on the large earth-moving machines and bulldoziers parked out in that area. Apparently these powerfully strong creatures are using logs or large tree limbs to batter the sides of these machines. This would be a way to register a loud complaint against these manmade monsters that are a clear threat to their harmonious habitat. This horrible racket might also be intended to firghten the humans off. One of the securtiy guards at the warehouse was scared off. The next morning after the night before when one of these Bigfoots had stood confrontationally facing him on the other side of the road from the guard-gate and scolded him with a series of nerve rending howls, he quit his job. As the news announcer on “Saturday Night Live” used to say, “I’m out of here”!

By Eddie Middleton

Memphis UFO Examiner

Update on little-known Illinois Bigfoot hotspot

Big Foot activity in the environs of the old castle grounds outside of Hartford, Illinois has not abated since my first report on some astounding sightings occurring in this area back in late June and early July of this year [see previous article].  My key correspondent is the lady who works guard duty at the gate of a large warehouse right across the road from the area adjacent to the old castle grounds.

For a long time now she has been hearing throughout the wee hours of the night all kinds of Bigfoot related sounds and getting strong whiffs of the famous foul odor often associated with him, but now she herself has just recently had her own first ocular encounter with one of these creatures. And this happened in broad daylight. This lady works day and night shifts, and her sighting occurred at approximately 10:30 am about three weeks ago during her morning shift.

She was standing outside of her guard gate and happened to look across the road at the long field that extends to a wooded area that’s about a couple of hundred yards southeast of the old Hartford Castle. About a hundred yards straight ahead she saw a humanoid-looking creature at the very edge of the woods standing on his or her two legs directly confronting her gaze. This “Bigfoot” was covered in gray/black hair but was mostly gray in appearance. The witness estimated he was about five and a half feet tall. A short Bigfoot! This is practically an oxymoron. But she could have been wrong about this because at that distance, it would have been hard to estimate the height of someone standing. And conceivably this could have been a young Bigfoot. Apparently a whole family of them lives in this area. He was not moving, just standing very still and staring back at her. Then after about a minute or two, he suddenly turned and went back into the woods.

The exact location where he re-entered the woods just happens to harbor possibly the largest, lushest, motherload of blackberries in the world! My correspondent who had discovered huge footprints around the mote area of the old castle [see previous article] has seen this blackberry paradise with his own eyes and assures me it contains such an astonishing abundance of this sweet/tart fruit that it is no exaggeration to estimate that it exceeds the million mark in numbers.

And it is a well-known fact that BF’s are great lovers of fruits and berries. There have been numerous sightings of these big hairy fellows shaking apples out of trees and raiding people’s private gardens and orchards for other fruits and vegetables. Being at the very spot he was sighted, and in the middle of the summer growing season, one has only to put two and two together here to come up with the very plausible deduction that the creature our witness saw that day was out on a picking expedition into what must be a sacred precinct for them.

All the more reason these Bigfoots would be jealous to protect this habitat of their’s. Some strong indications of their dislike of man’s presence in this area will be pointed out in my next update tomorrow on the encounters with these beings, both direct and indirect, that continue to this day in the area of the Old Harford Castle.

Tuesday, 4 October 2011

Mountain Lion Thought To Have Attacked Teenage Deer Hunter

Springfield Journal Register

BAYLIS — A 14-year-old deer hunter said he was attacked by a mountain lion Sunday evening, just a minute’s walk from his family’s Pike County home.

His father, a Baptist minister, said his son was fortunate.

“If God had not protected that boy, it would have been over,” said Gary Dice, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Pittsfield.

The young hunter, Jeremiah Dice, managed to fend off the attack with a knife and then ran home.

Jeremiah was taken to the emergency room out of fear of rabies, according to his mother, Pam Dice. He had no puncture wounds and was treated for scratches on his face and released.

Jeremiah described the mountain lion to a “t,” Gary Dice said.

The family was waiting Monday afternoon for representatives from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to arrive and examine Jeremiah’s clothing and knife.

“DNR is concerned I can’t prove it,” Gary said. “I trust my son, and I want the truth.

“Regardless of what it was, it is still out there, and it attacked a human being.”

‘It’s big … I’m scared’

The attack occurred near Baylis, northwest of Pittsfield. There are only three confirmed reports of mountain lions in Illinois since they were eliminated from the state in the late 1800s. Missouri, however, has confirmed the big cats 26 times since 1994.

Gary Dice said his son was hunting in his stand when the boy heard a flock of turkeys take flight nearby.

“Then the deer started snorting,” Gary Dice said.

Jeremiah saw a large animal standing near a flag placed 20 yards from the deer stand to help hunters distance. Jeremiah then radioed his mother to alert her to what was going on.

The big cat walked out in the open, not far from a flag placed 30 yards out.

After hearing it leave the area, the boy radioed to tell her he was coming home.

“He said, ‘Mom, there’s a big cat back here,’” Gary said, relating Jeremiah’s words. “He said, ‘It’s big… he ran away, so I’m going to get down and go to the house. … I’m scared.’

“He took three steps, and it was on his back,” Gary said.

Jeremiah elbowed the animal in the ribs, throwing the animal off of him.

“He got to his knees, and there it was face to face with him,” Gary said. “He told me, ‘It just got real still, and I didn’t know what to do.’”

Jeremiah reported the animal’s breath smelled like “dead rabbits.”

“His fangs were out, and he looked eyeball to eyeball to me and lunged,” Gary said, retelling his son’s story.

The attack shredded the bill of Jeremiah’s cap and pushed it down over his face — providing some protection. His heavy camouflage coat was shredded down to the boy’s belt.

Verification sought

Jeremiah is already an experienced hunter at age 14.

“I’ve taught him to hunt since he was old enough to sit still,” Gary said. “He is about six feet tall and over 200 pounds. He is not just a kid.”

Jeremiah told his parents he starting swinging his hunting knife in an attempt to get the animal to leave. He cut it, but not deeply, and the animal knocked him backwards again. Jeremiah hit it in the ribs again and let go of his knife.

The big cat rolled off Jeremiah and ran off into the woods.

Gary Dice said his son started to run — backwards at first, to be sure the animal would not follow.

He grabbed his knife and ran for the house, “the fastest he had run in his life.”

When the elder Dice first heard the report of a mountain lion, he was a few minutes from home and skeptical.

“But then I saw him and the look on his face of terror and fear,” he said.

Gary Dice said Jeremiah’s description of the big cat was that it was as large as a Great Dane, with a long tail that curled.

Depending upon the sex, mountain lions range on average from 75 pounds for a female to 160 pounds for a male.

Gary Dice found the shredded cap, but never did find Jeremiah’s bow.

As for Jeremiah: “He’s fine,” his father said. “But he hasn’t slept since.”

Chris Young can be reached at 788-1528.

Identification

According to the website Living with Wildlife in Illinois, domestic dogs and bobcats are most likely to be misidentified as a mountain lion in Illinois.

Bobcats weigh 10-40 pounds, while mountain lions weigh 75-240 pounds. Both are secretive and elusive.

Most sightings are fleeting.

Mountain lions once were found throughout the United States, according to The Cougar Network.

Conversion of prairies to agriculture, logging of forests, elimination of prey species like white-tailed deer and predator-reduction programs led to their extirpation from Illinois by the 1870s.

Mountain lions

*”Mountain lion,” “cougar,” “puma,” “catamount” and “panther” all are names for the same animal: Puma concolor.

*There have only been three confirmed sightings of mountain lions in Illinois since the late 1800s.

*Missouri has had 26 confirmed reports since 1994.

Friday, July 31, 1998

St.Louis Post-Dispatch

Kevin McDermott

On the Iron Horse Triathlon Web page the conversation lately has been more medical
than athletic. “Thought it was a sinus problem and ended up on my back for six days
with massive frontal headaches, chills . . . 103-degree fever,” reads one athlete’s
message on the Springfield-based Internet site. Another: “Six days without food has
left me extremely weak. . . . My liver enzymes are still off the charts.” And
another: “Severe backache, high fever, nausea, extreme fatigue, etc. I tried to
treat the fever for three days while laying in bed the whole time. . . . This has
been an alarming last two weeks.”

Health officials say those victims and scores of others are part of what might be the biggest outbreak recorded in the United States of leptospirosis, or “swamp fever.”

The infection apparently began in Lake Springfield and has hit victims from all over the country who swam there June 21 as part of the Iron Horse Triathlon. No one has died, but 84 people in Illinois have reported symptoms, with at least three more in St. Louis County.

Officials know the waterborne _Leptospira_ bacterium originates in the urine of animals, and that it can infect humans by seeping through the membranes of the mouth and eyes. But how it got into Lake Springfield in high enough concentrations to cause an outbreak is a mystery. “It’s the largest point-source of leptospirosis that we’ve ever seen,” said epidemiologist David Ashford of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which is coordinating the effort to track everyone who might have been infected.

Ashford said that each year about 80 to 150 cases of leptospirosis are reported nationwide, usually from many limited, unrelated infections caused by small ponds or swimming pools. (The infection cannot be spread by humans.)

It’s still unknown how many might have been infected in Lake Springfield – “That number is changing every hour,” Ashford said – but officials have found symptoms in about 12 percent of the people who were exposed to Lake Springfield last month. There were more than 850 registered participants from 42 states in the triathlon, including 72 from Missouri, 19 of those from St. Louis. That means more than 100 participants might be infected, based on the CDC averages. [Note: 87 have reported symptoms which would be within the standard error. MHJ] And that doesn’t include people who swam in the lake but weren’t affiliated with the event.

Lake Springfield remains under an advisory to residents to refrain from swimming, and most of the beaches are closed. One test by the CDC has indicated some presence of Leptospira bacteria in the lake, but it’s still unclear whether the concentration is higher than normal. Among the mysteries facing investigators is how an infection usually associated with small, stagnant bodies of water could occur in an open, free-flowing lake. They’re also wondering why a recreational lake that has been heavily used for years with no reported health problems suddenly would spawn such a widespread infection. State health officials have been testing the tributaries that feed the lake but have been hampered by dry weather. A moderate rain early Thursday might have helped the investigation, said Clint Mudgett, environmental health chief for the Illinois Department of Public Health, because it allowed scientists to finally gather watershed runoff samples in conditions similar to those on the morning of the race.

One focus of the investigation is to try to link the infection to a specific kind of animal urine – a daunting challenge, because the bacteria can be transmitted by both wild and domestic animals, and the lake is surrounded by wildlife and farmland.

“There’s no shortage of theories,” said Mudgett. His own theory – centered on a large dose of unlucky coincidences – goes like this: “This year, the wild animal population around the lake is reported to be heavier than it’s ever been. Then you have (almost) 900 swimmers in exactly the same part of the lake at the same time. There was a very heavy rain that morning (possibly washing unusually high levels of animal waste into the lake all at once). You might have just had all these factors coming together.”

The triathlon organizer said Thursday there is a new element to the case: a civil suit by one of the leptospirosis victims, naming the event “and others” as defendants. “I was served (with notice of a suit) yesterday,” said Paul McDevitt, who is in his first year as director of the 13-year-old annual triathlon, in which amateur athletes bicycle, run and swim.

“At the very first sign (of an outbreak) we moved quickly” to work with health officials, McDevitt said, but added: “The whole tenor of the thing has changed (with the lawsuit). I have to be careful what I say from here on out.” McDevitt said he couldn’t provide more details about the suit. An employee of the Cook County Circuit Clerk’s office couldn’t confirm that it had been filed.

The CDC also is investigating whether a lake used for a Wisconsin triathlon July 5 might have been another source of infection. Many of the Springfield triathlon participants who have reported symptoms swam in both lakes. But officials haven’t confirmed that any leptospirosis cases originated in Wisconsin.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Bear Out There?  Hikers say Creature Spotted Near Kaolin

Anna Gazette-Democrat

A midday hike on Tuesday led two Union County residents to a surprising and totally unexpected discovery.

Cole Kilman and Carla Chackleford, both of Anna were hiking near the Kaolin Pit when they met up with an animal not normally associated with Union County.

“There was no doubt. It was a bear,” Kilman said during a telaphone Tuesday afternoon.

Kaolin Pit is located in a very isolated area west of Cobden. The area is popular among those who like to hike.

The two hikers were looking for an old cemetery. they had been hiking for about 45 minutes.

“I smelled something.” Kilman recalled. Initially, he thought what he smelled might have been a skunk.

Then, he saw something ahead. “I wasn’t exactly sure what it was,” Kilman said. Initially, he said, “I didn’t know it was a bear.”

“I thought it was a dog at first, Kilman said. As they got within about 30 to 40 feet of the animal, Kilman said it became clear what they were seeing: “It was a black bear.”

“It  got close enough for me to know it was a bear,” Kilman said.

“We took off running,” Kilman said. At one point, Kilmas said he hollered and clapped his hands in an attempt to scare off the animal.

The bear was about 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall, Kilman siad.

Kilman said he contacted the U.S. Forest Service’s Mississippi bluffs District Ranger Station in Jonesboro to share his story.

Representatives from the U.S.Forest Service and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources have been contacted about the sighting.