Monsters of Illinois: Mysterious Creatures in the Prairie State

By Troy Taylor

Find out about the strange and mysterious creatures living in Illinois.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stackpole Books
• Release date: Jul 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9780811745000

Troy Taylor

Troy Taylor is an occultist, supernatural historian and the author of seventy-five books on ghosts, hauntings, history, crime and the unexplained in America. He is also the founder of the American Ghost Society and the owner of the Illinois and American Hauntings Tour companies. Taylor shares a birthday with one of his favorite authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald, but instead of living in New York and Paris like Fitzgerald, Taylor grew up in Illinois. Raised on the prairies of the state, he developed an interest in "things that go bump in the night"? at an early age. As a young man, he channeled that interest into developing ghost tours and writing about haunts in Chicago and Central Illinois. Troy and his wife, Haven, currently reside in Chicago's West Loop neighborhood.

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Copyright ©2011 by Stackpole Books

Published by

STACKPOLE BOOKS

5067 Ritter Road

Mechanicsburg, PA 17055

www.stackpolebooks.com

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FIRST EDITION

Cover art by Mark Radle

Cover design by Tessa J. Sweigert

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Taylor, Troy.

Monsters of Illinois : mysterious creatures in the Prairie State / Troy

Taylor. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8117-3640-4 (pbk.)

ISBN-10: 0-8117-3640-7 (pbk.)

1. Monsters—Illinois. I. Title.

QL89.T355 2011

001.944—dc22

2011008647

Contents

Introduction

Bigfoot in Illinois

The Big Muddy Monster

The Enfield Horror

Mysterious Menagerie of Panthers, Lions, and Kangaroos

Nellie the Lion

Illinois’s Phantom Kangaroos

Illinois Water Creatures

The Legend of the Piasa Bird

Thunderbirds over Illinois

The Lawndale Thunderbird Attack

Phantom Attackers

The Mysterious Blue Phantom

Illinois Vampires

The Mad Gasser of Mattoon

Bibliography

About the Author

Introduction

Ihave had a lifelong fascination with the mysterious and the unexplained. I’ve also had an obsessive interest in the history and mystery of my home state of Illinois. Those interests combined during my childhood as I sought out stories of Illinois ghosts, unsolved crimes, and general weirdness. I was intrigued by just about any mysterious happenings but was particularly thrilled when I heard that someone spotted a big hairy monster somewhere in the state.

I grew up on a farm in rural Illinois and spent countless hours roaming the state’s fields and forests, once having a strange encounter of my own that will turn up later in this book. My brother and I often disappeared for hours—and sometimes days—at a time, always wondering if we might stumble across ancient burial mounds or mysterious structures in the hills and forests. One summer we spent weeks excavating a mound in the woods in search of ancient artifacts, only to find that the rise was nothing more than an oddly shaped hill. We were disappointed but undeterred.

As I got older, my explorations often found me in some of the state’s strangest places, from small towns in southern Illinois where unusual monsters had been reported to the Bigfoot-infested woods of the Illinois River Valley. I was able to relive some of those weird travels in writing this book. In the pages that follow, we’ll explore the mysteries that still linger in Illinois—a place stranger than many of us can imagine.

Did you know there are stories of a flying monster that plagued Illinois even before the first settlers arrived?

Did you know that Illinois boasts more Bigfoot sightings than any other state east of the Mississippi River?

Did you know that during the 1970s, Illinois was under attack by huge flying creatures that were never explained?

This book will delve into each of these stories, along with many others, and will hopefully introduce you to things about the state that you never knew before. Most important, though, I hope that this book will encourage you to get out and explore some of the Illinois places where monsters dwell. You will be following in my footsteps, just as I followed in those of others, and while it’s been a long, strange trip, it’s been a good one. Happy hunting!

Bigfoot in Illinois

Ihave always had a love for the wild regions of Illinois. Growing up, I spent every possible minute outdoors; my fascination with the forests, lakes, and rivers of the state went hand in hand with my interest in the unusual. For this reason, I always listened closely to the frequent reports of sightings of wild and mysterious creatures in the dark woods and remote regions of Illinois.

There is no greater mystery in the annals of the unexplained in America than Sasquatch, the creature more commonly known as Bigfoot. Reports of giant man- and apelike monsters have been documented all over the country. There are many tales of giant hairy figures in every state in America, including Illinois, which is said to have more Bigfoot sightings than any other state east of the Mississippi River.

According to scores of eyewitnesses, Sasquatch average around seven feet in height, sometimes taller and sometimes a little shorter. They are usually seen wandering alone, and dark, auburn-colored hair covers most of their bodies, although reports of brown, black, and even white and silver Bigfoot do occasionally pop up. Their limbs are usually powerful but are described as being proportioned more like those of people than those of apes. However, their broad shoulders, short necks, flat faces and noses, sloped foreheads, ridged brows, and cone-shaped heads make them appear more animal-like. They reportedly eat both meat and plants, are largely nocturnal, and are less active during cold weather. The footprints left behind by the monsters range in length from about twelve to twenty-two inches, with around eighteen inches being the most common. They are normally reported to be somewhere around seven inches in width.

The stories of Sasquatch and other hairy, man-like creatures have been part of American history since the days of the Native Americans. Even the term Sasquatch was taken from Native American mythology. The folkloric Sasquatch (the word is the Anglicized version of the Coast Salish Indian term from Canada) was introduced to the world in the writings of J. W. Burns, a schoolteacher at the Chehalis Indian Reservation near Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia. Burns’s Sasquatch was a legendary figure that he learned of through native informants. He was really more man than monster, an intelligent giant Indian who was endowed with supernatural powers. Somehow, the name managed to stick for the huge beings that came to be called Bigfoot.

Stories of Bigfoot began filtering out of the American West in the early 1900s, occasionally appearing in newspaper accounts and books. Bigfoot did not enter the American mainstream until 1958, when a series of footprints was found near a construction site in California. Over the course of the next thirty years or so, interest in the elusive creatures reached a fever pitch.

By the 1960s, Bigfoot had become firmly entrenched in the imaginations of Americans. Although scientists were skeptical that such creatures could exist, a number of investigators had begun seeking out witnesses and venturing into the forest, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the monsters. Books began to appear and articles generated even more interest among the readers of magazines like True and Saga.

Among the amateur investigators who went looking for Bigfoot was Roger Patterson, a onetime rodeo rider and hopeful documentary filmmaker. In 1967, Patterson was barely scraping by as an inventor and promoter but his interest was piqued by a True magazine article about Bigfoot. From then on, he devoted as much of his spare time as he could afford roaming the woods of the Pacific Northwest in search of the creature. Patterson always carried with him a motion-picture camera on his expeditions, hoping that he might be able to catch one of the monsters on film.

Around 1:15 in the afternoon on October 20, 1967, Patterson and a friend, Bob Gimlin, were riding north along a dry stretch of Bluff Creek in the Six Rivers National Forest of northern California. At one point, a large pile of logs in the middle of the streambed blocked their path and they had to maneuver their horses around to the east. As they rode along the logs, they veered left and resumed their original course, only to see something that still has investigators and researchers puzzled today.

What was believed to be a female Bigfoot stood up from the water where she had been squatting and hurried away from the approaching men and horses, moving briskly and swinging her arms as she walked toward the forest. At the same time this occurred, the horses began to panic. Patterson quickly reached for the 16mm camera in his saddlebag and began to follow the creature, filming as he went. Unfortunately, only twenty-eight feet of film remained in the camera, but Patterson managed to use it to record the Bigfoot’s escape from three different filming positions.

After he returned home, Patterson enlisted the help of researcher John Green to get some sort of scientific confirmation of the evidence that he had captured. The first investigator sent to the scene of the sighting was a man named Bob Titmus, who found tracks that matched the creature’s stride as depicted in the film. He made ten casts of them and discovered that the footprints led up a small hill where the creature had paused to look back on the men below. Patterson and Gimlin had elected to recover their horses rather than pursue the Bigfoot and risk being stranded in the wilderness.

After being ignored, then berated, by the established scientific community, Patterson took his evidence to the public in 1968. After padding his film footage with a documentary-style look at other evidence gathered in the search for Bigfoot, he went on a tour of the American West, renting small theaters and auditoriums for one-night shows and lectures. Since that time, the footage has gone on to become one of the most famous, and most controversial, pieces of Bigfoot evidence ever found.

Patterson’s life was cut short in 1972 when he died, nearly broke, from Hodgkin’s disease, but he swore to the end that the sighting and the film were authentic. Bob Gimlin also maintained that the events really took place and that his friend’s film was the genuine article. Gimlin did not start out as a believer in the creature, either. He was interested but unconvinced and only came along on his buddy’s expeditions out of friendship, rather than a belief that they would actually find anything. He’d talk about it around the campfire, Gimlin said in an interview. I didn’t care, but after a time you’d find yourself looking for the doggone thing too.

The legacy of Patterson’s film lives on. Unfortunately, it has never settled the question of whether or not Bigfoot exists in the forests of America. Bigfoot researchers remain divided about whether or not the creature in the film is genuine. They have argued about the speed of the film, the gait of the creature, the distance of its stride, and more. Most biologists and zoologists who have studied it remain noncommittal. Film experts and hoax investigators can find nothing to say that it’s not real, only that it’s hard to believe. To this day, it’s never successfully been debunked, creating a mystery much like the mystery of Bigfoot itself.

Tales of Bigfoot have long been a part of Illinois history and lend an air of mystery to the state that is unrivaled by any other region of the Midwest. For more than a century, reports have filtered out of rural and southern Illinois about strange beasts that resemble a cross between man and ape. Most witnesses talk of the beasts’ odd appearance and the horrible odor that seems to accompany them. The stories of these creatures have been passed along from generation to generation and have long been chronicled by both professional and amateur researchers.

The earliest documented Illinois sighting came in September 1883 and concerned a wild man that was seen in the woods near Centreville. This was a common term at the time, when a moniker like Bigfoot had not yet been coined and no reader was

Reviews for Monsters of Illinois

[nickhowes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A nice specialized look at monster sightings in the Land of Lincolm. Ignore Chicago and you have a lot farmland as well as plenty of forest. Southern Illinois is covered by the Shawnee National Forest. Read about the Pias a Bird, pretty much the trademark of Alton, my hometown overlooking the Mississippi. Also read up on the Big Muddy Monster (Bigfoot), alligators in the sewers, mysterious panther sightings, phantom kangaroos, thunferbirds, lake monsters, and more. Troy Taylor is the go-to guy in the subject, author of well over 100 books on ghosts and the paranormal, true crime, and natural disasters.