Monsters You Never Heard Of

by Daniel Cohen

  The young man was the faster runner. He bolted on ahead into the village. Mary Crane was left alone. The thing got close enough to rip at her dress with its claws. That was too much, and she fainted.

  When she woke up she was on the ground, and something was licking her face. She just kept her eyes shut and prayed. Soon she heard voices coming from the village. The creature let out a shriek, and bounded back into the woods.

  The thing was hunted for days afterward. But nothing was found except the footprints of an unknown animal.

  In 1917 a mysterious big cat was reported in central Illinois. Local people nicknamed it "Nellie the Lion." Several people had reported seeing something that looked like "an African lion." The most dramatic incident took place on July 29. Two families from Decatur, Illinois, were driving west on Springfield Road at about 10:30 in the evening. The lion jumped from the tall grass alongside the road onto the car. Then it slid off and ran away.

  There were a number of hunts conducted for Nellie. Several dogs were shot by accident. One man shot at a car, when he mistook the headlights for Nellie's glowing eyes. But Nellie herself vanished as mysteriously as she had appeared.

  Phantom lions have often been reported in the United States and Great Britain.

  On April 10, 1970, a man named Mike Busby of Cairo, Illinois, claimed that he was actually attacked by a giant black cat, probably a black panther. There were other reports of a black panther in the region. A local newspaper noted that reports of a strange black panther in the area had been coming in for years. No one had ever been able to find the creature, however.

  Drawing of a puma, or mountain lion. Is it the phantom cat?

  Now, about this time you may be thinking, perhaps these people did meet real, large cats. The mountain lion or puma is native to the United States. The puma, however, either never lived in, or has long been gone from, the places where these phantom cat reports have been made. Of course, it is always possible that a stray puma could account for some of the reports. But the possibility is a small one.

  African lions, tigers, and black panthers are not at all native to the United States. But what if one escaped from a nearby zoo or circus? Whenever a phantom cat is reported, that suggestion comes up at once. Local authorities always check out the possibility. But escaped lions and tigers are very rare. There is no case in which an escaped animal can be linked to the phantom cat sightings.

  Phantom cat sightings are perhaps even more common in Great Britain than in the United States. The best known of these is the Surrey puma or Surrey lion. The thing has been sighted regularly in the district of Surrey since the early 1960s. The sightings have been so frequent that one local newspaper complained recently about the "summer ritual of puma spotting."

  Usually the Surrey puma has been reported as a large growling and menacing creature. But there is one odd report in which the creature is said to have behaved like—well, like a real pussycat. On September 1, 1966, a woman was walking through a thistle patch in Hampshire (near Surrey). She stepped on the tail of a puma. The animal reared up on its hind legs and struck out at her with both its paws. The woman was not frightened. She picked up a stick and hit the creature on the nose. That so frightened the beast that it ran up a tree. The woman went for help, but when she came back the thing was gone.

  The Surrey puma is Britain's most persistent phantom animal. This is a real puma.

  On October 14, 1977, a group of workers near Reigate in Surrey saw the thing repeatedly. One of them even managed to take a picture of it. But the creature was too far away for a good picture. It might have been a puma in the photograph. On the other hand, it might only have been a large house cat.

  The Surrey puma has never been found. But since it seems to be a regular visitor, it will almost certainly be back again.

  Not to be outdone, the district of Nottingham has its own phantom cat. It is called the Nottingham lion.

  The story of the Nottingham lion began early in the morning of July 29, 1976. Two milkmen were making their rounds near the entrance to the Nottingham airport. They both saw what they were sure was a lion ". . . its head down and its long tail had a bushy end. It was walking slowly away from us."

  They watched it walk around the edge of a field and then called the police. The story got in the newspapers. Over the next week or so there were sixty or more sightings of the Nottingham lion.

  The police checked all the zoos and private animal collections within a hundred miles. No one had lost a lion. A massive search was carried out. Dogs and even a helicopter were used in the search.

  At first, the police were quite sure there was a loose lion. But as the search went on and they found nothing, they became discouraged. Finally, the police became convinced that the whole thing was a mistake.

  It wasn't a real lion at all. It was just another one of the world's phantom cats.

  America is not only infested by phantom cats, it also has phantom kangaroos. Mysterious kangaroos have regularly been reported hopping around various parts of the United States for nearly a century now.

  The first known account of a phantom kangaroo comes from the town of New Richmond, Wisconsin, in 1900. There, a Mrs. Glovet said that she saw a kangaroo hopping through a neighbor's backyard in the middle of a storm.

  Local people remembered that the year before a circus stopping in the town had nearly been destroyed by a tornado. At first, everyone assumed that the kangaroo was an escaped circus animal. But the circus owners denied that they had lost a kangaroo. In fact, they said they never even owned a kangaroo. Besides, it is unlikely that any kangaroo could have survived a Wisconsin winter.

  That same year, in Mays Landing, New Jersey, a woman named Amanda Sutts saw "this thing that looked like a kangaroo. It wasn't such a big animal it was about the size of a small calf and weighed about 150 pounds." Mrs. Sutts thought she had seen the famous Jersey Devil. If you will recall, the Jersey Devil was often described as looking like a kangaroo. When a showman wanted to display a phony Jersey Devil, he used a kangaroo with wings attached to its back.

  In January, 1934, a strange creature was seen in the small community of South Pittsburgh, Tennessee. Reverend W. J. Handcock said, "It was fast as lightning and looked like a giant kangaroo running and leaping across the field."

  The thing may have looked like a kangaroo, but it didn't act like one. It was said to have killed and eaten a large dog. There were also reports that the thing had killed and eaten a number of chickens. A search was organized to find this killer kangaroo, but, as usual, the searchers found nothing.

  In January, 1949, Louis Staub was driving his bus outside of Grove City, Ohio. He saw something strange in his headlights.

  "It's about 5 1/2 feet high, hairy and brownish in color. It had a long pointed head. It leaped a barbed-wire fence and disappeared. It looked like a kangaroo but it appeared to jump on all fours. I'm certain it wasn't a deer."

  For many years children in the area of Coon Rapids, Minnesota, reported seeing "a very big bunny." Sometimes the "bunny" was as tall as they were. A woman named Barbara Battmer said that she got a very clear view of two of the creatures hopping through the woods. She said they were not bunnies at all, they were kangaroos.

  Phantom kangaroos have been reported in many places in the Midwest.

  In most of these reported close encounters with kangaroos, the creature seems pretty harmless. But if you corner it, and try to capture it, then it can turn nasty. At least, that is what a couple of Chicago policemen said in 1974.

  Early on the morning of October 18, 1974, a man called the police. He reported that a kangaroo was jumping around on his front porch. The police didn't take the call too seriously. Still, two patrolmen were sent out to investigate.

  Not only did the policemen see the kangaroo, they cornered it up a dark alley on Chicago's northwest side. The kangaroo didn't want to be captured and began kicking. The policemen said that they didn't want to shoot the thing, so they just backed off. The kangaroo then
hopped over a fence and disappeared down the street.

  A kangaroo in a zoo is not very frightening. A phantom kangaroo is another matter.

  Over the next few days a lot of people in the area reported a kangaroo. A newsboy selling papers on a corner turned around and saw a kangaroo standing just a few feet away. "He looked at me, I looked at him, and then away he hopped," the boy said.

  The Chicago police got a lot of calls from people who said that the kangaroo was out in their backyards rummaging through their garbage cans. Most of these calls were probably the result of mistaken identity. People heard something—a dog or cat or raccoon rummaging around in the garbage. But with all the kangaroo excitement they assumed it was the kangaroo, and called the police.

  The newspapers didn't take the whole thing too seriously. They reported the kangaroo's doings under such headlines as KANGAROO STAYS A JUMP AHEAD OF THE POLICE. But still, people kept right on reporting the thing. Not only that, it began to look as if there was more than one kangaroo around.

  While kangaroo sightings continued on Chicago's northwest side, people also began reporting the thing in towns to the west of Chicago.

  On the evening of November 2, three young men were driving along Shafer Road in Piano, Illinois. Plano is about fifty miles west of Chicago. They nearly hit the thing.

  "We almost ran over it," one of them said. "It jumped onto the road about twenty feet ahead of us . . . It landed on the road near the intersection with the main road and there was no traffic. It sat up on its haunches as kangaroos do, and then jumped over a fence about five feet high and disappeared into the woods."

  At almost the same time a couple walking along a Chicago street spotted what they thought was a large dog. Only after it hopped away did they realize it was the kangaroo.

  A man in Rensselaer, Indiana, saw the thing on the morning of November 12. It hopped out of a cornfield and up to the drugstore in which he was working. Then it hopped down the street and off into another cornfield. The sighting touched off a search, but no trace of the beast was found.

  The man said, "I hope some farmer or somebody else sees it or everybody'll think I'm a nut. But it was a kangaroo . . . I know it was." Within a few days several other people reported seeing the kangaroo in the same area.

  By the end of November, the great kangaroo flap had died down. But sightings started up again in Illinois in 1975 and 1976. And in 1976 a Colorado policeman was checking out a kangaroo report, and said that he spotted the creature around some clay pits near Golden, Colorado. As usual, it got away.

  Every time there is a rash of kangaroo sightings reporters call the local zoo. Zoo directors get pretty tired of saying that none of their kangaroos have escaped.

  There was a 1968 kangaroo flap in Ohio. The director of the Cincinnati Zoo told reporters, "I doubt there's a kangaroo around here on the loose. We had a kangaroo story about two years ago. Never found one. Down the years we've chased after reported black leopards, panthers, and even a polar bear. Anyone seeing the kangaroo, which I doubt exists, should try to keep it in sight and call the zoo."

  CHAPTER 5

  THE HAIRY HANDS

  Dartmoor is a rather wild and remote part of England. The people of Dartmoor have many legends about headless ghosts and spectral hounds. Most of these legends are centuries old. But not all of the strange tales go back hundreds of years. Some are fairly recent. One of the most mysterious is the story of the Hairy Hands.

  There is a stretch of road between the villages of Postbridge and Two Bridges. It is a rather ordinary piece of road. It runs through slightly rolling moors, and for the most part is fairly straight. Yet during the early years of this century there seem to have been an unusual number of accidents on that road, particularly in the vicinity of the village of Archerton.

  At first, the main means of transportation along the road was horsepower. Riders would describe how, suddenly and for an unknown reason, their horses would panic and dash off, often throwing the rider. Pony carts were often used by local farmers. Ponies would veer off without warning, and the farmer would find himself in a ditch with his cart overturned. There were many injuries as the result of such mishaps.

  After the bicycle become popular cyclists too seemed to fall victim to unusual accidents on this road. Some said that it felt as if the handlebars were torn out of their control. Bicycles plunged into ditches or crashed into the stone walls which border much of the road.

  Cars and buses had more serious accidents. They skidded off the road and into walls. People were sometimes killed in such accidents. A local doctor was riding along the road on a motorcycle. His two children were riding in the sidecar. Then suddenly the motorcycle went out of control. No one is sure why. There was a terrible crash. The two children were thrown clear, but the doctor was killed.

  That piece of road was getting a very bad reputation. Something was wrong with it—but what?

  The Hairy Hands, from a woodcut by Theo Brown.

  In 1921 a young Army officer was seriously injured when his motorcycle crashed along that same stretch of road. He seemed to have suddenly veered off the road for no reason at ail. Later, he recalled what had happened just before the crash. He said that he distinctly saw a pair of large hairy hands clamp down over his own. The hands twisted the motorcycle's handlebars, forcing it off the road.

  That story caught the attention of reporters for the London Daily Mail. They came down to Dartmoor. The reporters talked to a lot of people who said that they felt the presence of "something" when they went down that stretch of road.

  The Hairy Hands became front-page news. Interest was so high that local road authorities felt that they had to do something. They investigated the road. Then they decided that there was indeed something wrong with the road. According to the authorities, there were too many little ups and downs in the road. These could cause vehicles to go out of control. Road repairs were made. But what about the Hairy Hands? The authorities said that was all nonsense.

  But the story didn't end with the road repairs. Three years later a woman and her husband parked their trailer near the spot where the Hairy Hands had been reported. That night the woman was awakened by a scratching noise on the window. She said that she saw a large hairy hand clawing at the window. She sensed something evil. The woman slipped out of her bunk and fell to her knees. She made the sign of the cross, and the hand disappeared. But the feeling of evil lingered on. She said that she and her husband never again went to that part of the country.

  The stretch of road haunted by the Hairy Hands.

  In the early 1960s rumors about the Hairy Hands were back. Ruth E. St. Leger-Gordon, a collector of Dartmoor folklore, reported she had heard of a strange accident near the fatal spot on the road. A young man was found dead beneath his overturned car. Police could find no reason for the accident to have happened at all.

  There were also more rumors about people seeing the Hairy Hands, at a different place on the road.

  The Dartmoor folklorist reports that most local people now laugh at tales of the Hairy Hands. But there are still a fair number who insist that there must be "something" to the story. A genuine fear of that section of the road has grown over the years.

  CHAPTER 6

  DEMON DOGS

  The most famous of all the Sherlock Holmes stories is the story of "The Hound of the Baskervilles." It is a story about a dog of monstrous size. The dog seems to have supernatural powers. According to legend, it had killed one of the ancestors of the Baskerville family. Many years later it appeared to be on the prowl again, stalking another member of the family.

  The great detective Holmes proved that the legendary dog was really a fake. It was large and vicious, but otherwise quite a normal dog. It had been used by the villain to frighten the Baskervilles.

  Sir Arthur Corian Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories. But the idea of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" is not a completely original one. Legends about such a dog are very common in the British Isles. Many peop
le think that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got his idea from legends about the Black Dog of Dartmoor It was supposed to be a huge black creature with blazing eyes. It roamed the lonely roads and moors. If a traveler happened to meet the monster, his only chance was to run for his life. If the demon dog caught him, it would tear him to bits.

  The Hound of the Baskervilles

  Dartmoor isn't the only part of England that was supposed to be visited by demon dogs. There were many legends about the animal seen at a place called Tring in Hartford, England. It was said that the demon dog appeared near a spot where a woman had been hanged for witchcraft. About 150 years ago a man published a report of his meeting with this monster.

  The man and his companion were riding home in a cart at night. They were just passing the spot where the hanging had taken place. There was a sudden flash of light.

  "What's that?" the man cried out.

  "Hush," said his companion. He pulled the horse to a stop.

  "I then saw an immense black dog just in front of our horse. It was the strangest-looking creature I ever saw. He was as big as a Newfoundland dog, but very thin and shaggy. He had long ears, a long tail, and eyes like balls of fire. When he opened his mouth we could see long teeth. He seemed to grin at us. In a few minutes the dog disappeared, seeming to vanish like a shadow, or to sink into the earth . . ."

  Collectors of folklore have heard many similar stories from English country people. There was a Mrs. Jewell who told of her meeting with the Black Dog of Torrington. She said it happened in the 1870s, when she was only about ten years old.