WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:05.759 For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace. 2 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:10.279 Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world 3 00:00:10.359 --> 00:00:14.160 refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they 4 00:00:14.199 --> 00:00:18.679 know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we 5 00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:22.879 share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot, 6 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:28.239 dog man UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make 7 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:32.280 it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because 8 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:34.640 once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the 9 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.920 woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and 10 00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:41.840 remember some things in the woods don't want to be found. 11 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:46.240 Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads, 12 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.399 and let's head off into the woods if you dare. 13 00:01:02.560 --> 00:01:04.480 There's a giant turtle grinning at me from. 14 00:01:04.319 --> 00:01:05.200 The side of the road. 15 00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:08.760 He's about fifteen feet long, painted a green that doesn't 16 00:01:08.760 --> 00:01:11.400 exist in nature, and he's been standing at the edge 17 00:01:11.400 --> 00:01:13.640 of town for longer than most of the people driving 18 00:01:13.680 --> 00:01:17.640 past him have been alive. He's not scary. That's the 19 00:01:17.640 --> 00:01:21.200 first thing you notice every other stop on this road trip. 20 00:01:21.480 --> 00:01:24.239 The local monster wants to eat you. The thing in 21 00:01:24.280 --> 00:01:27.200 the trees up north wants your livestock. The thing in 22 00:01:27.239 --> 00:01:30.719 the swamp down south wants your dog. This one wants 23 00:01:30.760 --> 00:01:33.599 you to slow down, take a picture, and maybe buy 24 00:01:33.640 --> 00:01:37.239 a t shirt. The town built him on purpose. They 25 00:01:37.239 --> 00:01:39.680 put him right where you can't miss him, the way 26 00:01:39.719 --> 00:01:42.359 other towns put up a war memorial or a sign 27 00:01:42.439 --> 00:01:46.719 about a famous son who went off and did something. Churubusco, Indiana, 28 00:01:47.079 --> 00:01:49.400 did all of that for a snapping turtle that nobody 29 00:01:49.439 --> 00:01:54.000 ever caught, nobody ever photographed clearly, and nobody can prove existed. 30 00:01:54.560 --> 00:01:57.719 Welcome to the strangest stop yet. I'll be straight with 31 00:01:57.799 --> 00:02:00.959 you before we drive in, because I've close to forty 32 00:02:01.040 --> 00:02:04.480 years chasing things that leave footprints and not much else, 33 00:02:05.040 --> 00:02:07.239 and I've learned to say out loud where I stand. 34 00:02:08.039 --> 00:02:10.199 I don't believe a four hundred pound turtle the size 35 00:02:10.199 --> 00:02:12.240 of a kitchen table was living in a seven acre 36 00:02:12.280 --> 00:02:15.719 pond in northern Indiana. I'll walk you through why by 37 00:02:15.719 --> 00:02:18.400 the end of this. But here's the thing that keeps 38 00:02:18.439 --> 00:02:21.039 me coming back to this case, the thing that makes 39 00:02:21.039 --> 00:02:24.360 it worth a whole episode instead of a footnote. The 40 00:02:24.400 --> 00:02:27.759 turtle isn't the interesting part. The turtle was never the 41 00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:31.719 interesting part. The interesting part is what one stubborn farmer 42 00:02:31.800 --> 00:02:34.560 did to a small town, and what that small town 43 00:02:34.639 --> 00:02:37.639 did right back, and how a year of one man's 44 00:02:37.680 --> 00:02:40.280 life got swallowed whole by something he was sure was 45 00:02:40.280 --> 00:02:43.319 sitting at the bottom of his own lake. So let's 46 00:02:43.319 --> 00:02:45.599 take a break from the upright things in the woods. 47 00:02:46.120 --> 00:02:48.759 Let's go to Whitley County and let's talk about Oscar. 48 00:02:49.639 --> 00:02:52.719 You find you're a busco northwest of Fort Wayne, sitting 49 00:02:52.759 --> 00:02:55.280 flat in the kind of farmland that goes on until 50 00:02:55.280 --> 00:02:58.319 it hits the sky. In nineteen forty nine, when this 51 00:02:58.360 --> 00:03:02.560 story detonates, population was somewhere around twelve hundred people. 52 00:03:02.919 --> 00:03:04.159 Everybody knew everybody. 53 00:03:05.080 --> 00:03:06.879 The town got its name from a battle in the 54 00:03:06.919 --> 00:03:09.639 Mexican War, which is a strange and bloody thing to 55 00:03:09.759 --> 00:03:12.840 name a quiet Indiana farmtown after. But that's how it 56 00:03:12.879 --> 00:03:15.719 went in that era. And here's a detail I love, 57 00:03:16.280 --> 00:03:18.479 one of those things that's too perfect to make up. 58 00:03:19.280 --> 00:03:21.960 The town sits near the birthplace of Chief Little Turtle, 59 00:03:22.360 --> 00:03:25.000 the war leader of the Miami People, one of the 60 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:29.159 most formidable military minds this continent produced. So this patch 61 00:03:29.199 --> 00:03:32.400 of Indiana was tied to a Turtle, a little one 62 00:03:32.400 --> 00:03:35.120 more than one hundred and fifty years before anybody started 63 00:03:35.120 --> 00:03:38.719 screaming about a big one. I'm not saying that means anything. 64 00:03:39.120 --> 00:03:41.639 I'm a skeptic, but I'd be lying if I said 65 00:03:41.639 --> 00:03:44.879 I didn't smile when I found it. The land around 66 00:03:44.879 --> 00:03:48.039 there is glacier country. When the ice sheets pulled back, 67 00:03:48.120 --> 00:03:51.159 they left the whole Upper Midwest pock marked with kettle 68 00:03:51.240 --> 00:03:54.719 lakes and ponds and bogs, little bowls of water sitting 69 00:03:54.759 --> 00:03:57.280 in the middle of fields. Some of them are deep, 70 00:03:57.800 --> 00:03:59.639 a lot of them are muddy and dark and full 71 00:03:59.639 --> 00:04:02.319 of wheats. And when you stand at the edge of 72 00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:05.400 one on a gray day, the water doesn't tell you anything. 73 00:04:06.120 --> 00:04:09.680 You can't see two feet down. That matters. Hold on 74 00:04:09.759 --> 00:04:12.520 to that, because every single thing that happens in this 75 00:04:12.599 --> 00:04:16.639 story happens in water. You can't see into. The particular 76 00:04:16.680 --> 00:04:19.319 pond that makes this whole town famous is about two 77 00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:22.839 miles out off Madden Road. Seven acres. 78 00:04:23.240 --> 00:04:23.879 That's the number. 79 00:04:23.920 --> 00:04:26.839 Everybody uses, seven acres, And I want you to really 80 00:04:26.839 --> 00:04:30.120 sit with how small that is. Seven acres of water 81 00:04:30.240 --> 00:04:33.560 is not a great lake. It's not loch ness. You 82 00:04:33.560 --> 00:04:35.600 could walk all the way around it in the time 83 00:04:35.639 --> 00:04:38.639 it takes to listen to this episode it's a farm pond, 84 00:04:39.439 --> 00:04:41.920 and the legend asks you to believe that a creature 85 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:44.839 the size of a small car lived in that farm pond, 86 00:04:45.160 --> 00:04:48.759 undetected for half a century, with people fishing it the 87 00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:49.480 whole time. 88 00:04:50.240 --> 00:04:51.480 It was called Folk Lake. 89 00:04:51.959 --> 00:04:54.360 And to understand why it was called that, we have 90 00:04:54.439 --> 00:04:57.160 to go back to eighteen ninety eight, to the first 91 00:04:57.199 --> 00:05:00.439 man who ever said the words out loud. His name 92 00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:04.199 was Oscar Fulk, and he owned the farm. The story, 93 00:05:04.360 --> 00:05:07.480 as it comes down to us, is thin because it's 94 00:05:07.480 --> 00:05:10.680 one hundred and twenty some years old, and there's no paperwork, 95 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:15.959 no photograph, no sign statement, just the tale. Oscar Folk 96 00:05:16.040 --> 00:05:18.199 is out at his pond one day and he sees 97 00:05:18.199 --> 00:05:21.439 something in the water that stops him cold. A turtle, 98 00:05:22.040 --> 00:05:24.079 but not a turtle the size of a dinner plate, 99 00:05:24.480 --> 00:05:27.439 the kind you'd see sunning on a log. A turtle 100 00:05:27.480 --> 00:05:29.360 the size of a thing that shouldn't be in an 101 00:05:29.399 --> 00:05:33.079 Indiana pond at all. Some versions say he described it 102 00:05:33.120 --> 00:05:35.959 as being like a small dinosaur, which is the kind 103 00:05:35.959 --> 00:05:39.319 of phrase that should make any honest investigator narrow his eyes, 104 00:05:39.959 --> 00:05:43.000 because in eighteen ninety eight, the word dinosaur was doing 105 00:05:43.040 --> 00:05:46.920 a lot of imaginative work in the public mind. Folk 106 00:05:47.040 --> 00:05:49.959 runs back and tells people. And here's the part that 107 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:53.120 tells you everything about how this kind of story actually 108 00:05:53.160 --> 00:05:57.639 lives and dies. Nobody believed him. Think about that. The 109 00:05:57.720 --> 00:06:00.439 very first witness the man the lake is no for 110 00:06:00.879 --> 00:06:04.720 the man the monster is arguably named for, got laughed off. 111 00:06:05.240 --> 00:06:07.720 There was no second sighting to back him up. There 112 00:06:07.759 --> 00:06:11.040 was no evidence. So Oscar Folk did the reasonable thing. 113 00:06:11.519 --> 00:06:14.319 He let it go, He dropped it. He went back 114 00:06:14.360 --> 00:06:17.040 to farming, and the turtle, if there was a turtle, 115 00:06:17.519 --> 00:06:19.639 went back to the bottom of the pond, and for 116 00:06:19.720 --> 00:06:23.519 fifty years, the whole thing simply did not exist. That's 117 00:06:23.560 --> 00:06:27.279 important because when the story comes roaring back to life 118 00:06:27.319 --> 00:06:30.240 half a century later, it comes back through people who, 119 00:06:30.560 --> 00:06:33.800 for the most part, had never heard Oscar Falk's version. 120 00:06:34.399 --> 00:06:37.639 The lake kept his name, the turtle eventually borrowed it. 121 00:06:38.120 --> 00:06:41.120 But the fifty year silence is the strongest argument against 122 00:06:41.120 --> 00:06:41.720 the whole thing. 123 00:06:42.319 --> 00:06:43.120 And I wanted on. 124 00:06:43.079 --> 00:06:46.040 The table early before we get swept up in the carnival. 125 00:06:46.839 --> 00:06:51.480 One man, one sighting, no proof, fifty years of nothing. 126 00:06:52.279 --> 00:06:54.959 If a giant turtle is living in your pond, you'd 127 00:06:54.959 --> 00:06:58.199 expect more than that. You'd expect a body of evidence 128 00:06:58.240 --> 00:07:02.560 to build over decades. Instead you get a single anecdote 129 00:07:02.600 --> 00:07:06.279 and a long, long quiet. Before we get to nineteen 130 00:07:06.319 --> 00:07:08.199 forty eight, let me tell you about the animal we're 131 00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:12.079 actually arguing over, because most people picture the wrong thing. 132 00:07:12.879 --> 00:07:15.519 A snapping turtle is not a pond turtle. It's not 133 00:07:15.600 --> 00:07:18.160 the little domed thing sunning itself on a log that 134 00:07:18.199 --> 00:07:21.560 pulls its head in when you walk by. A snapper 135 00:07:21.639 --> 00:07:24.360 is an ambush predator, and it's one of the oldest 136 00:07:24.399 --> 00:07:27.759 designs still swimming, a body plan that's been doing the 137 00:07:27.759 --> 00:07:30.160 same job since before there were people around to be 138 00:07:30.199 --> 00:07:33.160 scared of it. It spends most of its life on 139 00:07:33.199 --> 00:07:36.720 the bottom in the mud, in the dark, not moving. 140 00:07:37.519 --> 00:07:40.800 It doesn't bask much because it doesn't need to. It 141 00:07:40.879 --> 00:07:43.560 lies in the muck with its shell crusted in algae 142 00:07:43.600 --> 00:07:46.160 and silt until it looks like part of the lake bed, 143 00:07:46.639 --> 00:07:49.279 and it waits, and when a fish or a frog 144 00:07:49.439 --> 00:07:53.079 or a duck gets close enough, it strikes. The neck 145 00:07:53.160 --> 00:07:55.600 is longer than you'd ever guess from the shell, and 146 00:07:55.680 --> 00:07:58.639 it comes out fast, and the jaws are built to shear. 147 00:07:59.480 --> 00:08:02.319 A big one can take your fingers off. They're not 148 00:08:02.360 --> 00:08:05.279 aggressive in the water, where they'd rather sink and hide 149 00:08:05.279 --> 00:08:08.879 than fight. But on land cornered they'll come at you, 150 00:08:09.439 --> 00:08:12.040 and a person who's only ever met one on a road, 151 00:08:12.360 --> 00:08:16.040 hissing with its mouth gaped wide, walks away, half believing 152 00:08:16.040 --> 00:08:19.240 in monsters. Here's the part that matters for this case. 153 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:23.120 A snapping turtle can stay underwater for a long stretch 154 00:08:23.360 --> 00:08:26.399 without ever surfacing, and it can bury itself in the 155 00:08:26.399 --> 00:08:29.519 bottom and go dormant for months through an Indiana winter. 156 00:08:30.360 --> 00:08:33.879 It is, in other words, an animal almost perfectly built 157 00:08:33.919 --> 00:08:36.519 to live in a seven acre pond for fifty years 158 00:08:36.840 --> 00:08:40.399 and almost never be seen. Clearly, you'd get glimpses and 159 00:08:40.440 --> 00:08:44.120 nothing more. A head breaking the surface for a breath, 160 00:08:44.720 --> 00:08:47.919 a dark shape, a swirl of water, and then nothing, 161 00:08:48.679 --> 00:08:52.399 which is exactly every single time what people at Folk 162 00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:56.679 Lake reported. The behavior of a perfectly ordinary snapping turtle 163 00:08:56.960 --> 00:08:59.799 and the behavior of a legendary lake monster turn out 164 00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:03.200 to the same behavior. The only thing in dispute is 165 00:09:03.200 --> 00:09:06.679 the size. Keep that in your back pocket, because it's 166 00:09:06.679 --> 00:09:09.759 going to matter twice before we're done, Once when two 167 00:09:09.799 --> 00:09:12.559 men see a head come up like a submarine, and 168 00:09:12.600 --> 00:09:15.000 once when a whole town wonders where the thing went 169 00:09:15.320 --> 00:09:18.919 after the lake was drained. Then comes July of nineteen 170 00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:22.000 forty eight, and two men go fishing. Their names were 171 00:09:22.039 --> 00:09:25.679 our Blue and Charlie Wilson, and they were locals, the 172 00:09:25.799 --> 00:09:28.120 kind of men everybody in a town that size could 173 00:09:28.120 --> 00:09:32.360 place by family and reputation. They had Gale Harris's permission 174 00:09:32.399 --> 00:09:35.279 to fish the lake because Harris owned the land now, 175 00:09:35.840 --> 00:09:39.440 the farm having changed hands across the decades. It was 176 00:09:39.519 --> 00:09:43.480 July twenty seventh, a regular afternoon, and by every account 177 00:09:43.559 --> 00:09:46.320 it was supposed to be nothing. Two guys in a 178 00:09:46.320 --> 00:09:49.799 boat on a small pond. What they said happened was this. 179 00:09:50.519 --> 00:09:54.320 The water started moving, not little ripples, not a fish 180 00:09:54.360 --> 00:09:59.240 breaking the surface, big waves rolling, the way water moves 181 00:09:59.279 --> 00:10:02.759 when something large, just pushing through it. And then it surfaced, 182 00:10:03.480 --> 00:10:05.480 or a Blue described it later in a way that 183 00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:09.320 stuck to this story like tar. He said, the waves 184 00:10:09.320 --> 00:10:12.039 came rolling, and up came that turtle, and he saw 185 00:10:12.080 --> 00:10:14.799 the big head sticking up, and the water moved away 186 00:10:14.799 --> 00:10:18.200 from it like a submarine. That's the image he reached for. 187 00:10:18.840 --> 00:10:22.360 Not a log, not a fish, not a beaver, a 188 00:10:22.399 --> 00:10:26.200 submarine surfacing in a seven acre farm pond. They said 189 00:10:26.200 --> 00:10:29.080 the head was the size of a child's head. They 190 00:10:29.080 --> 00:10:31.720 said the body was as big as the boat. And 191 00:10:31.759 --> 00:10:34.200 when they got back to shore, they took that story 192 00:10:34.240 --> 00:10:36.840 straight to Gail Harris, and then they took it into 193 00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:40.759 town and they told it and people listened, and people laughed. 194 00:10:41.240 --> 00:10:43.639 Here's why they laughed. And this is the part the 195 00:10:43.720 --> 00:10:46.679 legend likes to skip over because as a guy who 196 00:10:46.679 --> 00:10:51.000 spent sixteen years carrying a badge, witness reliability is the 197 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:51.960 whole ball game. 198 00:10:52.639 --> 00:10:54.200 You don't get to just take the statement. 199 00:10:54.519 --> 00:10:56.879 You have to know who's given it or A Blue 200 00:10:56.879 --> 00:11:00.960 and Charlie Wilson were known around Churubusco as pranksters. Charlie 201 00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:03.639 Wilson in particular, had a reputation as a teller of 202 00:11:03.720 --> 00:11:06.519 tall tales. He was the guy who'd spin you a 203 00:11:06.600 --> 00:11:09.080 story for the fun of watching you decide whether to 204 00:11:09.120 --> 00:11:12.200 believe it. So when these two specific men come back 205 00:11:12.240 --> 00:11:15.879 from a fishing trip claiming they saw a submarine sized turtle, 206 00:11:16.279 --> 00:11:20.799 the town's reaction was not awe, it was, oh, here 207 00:11:20.840 --> 00:11:24.279 we go. There was a local man named Rusty Red 208 00:11:24.720 --> 00:11:27.960 who actually knew turtles, who bred and studied them, an 209 00:11:27.960 --> 00:11:30.879 honest to god turtle expert. In a town of twelve 210 00:11:30.960 --> 00:11:33.679 hundred people, and Reid talked to our Blue about what 211 00:11:33.759 --> 00:11:36.600 he'd seen, and Reid came away thinking the whole thing 212 00:11:36.679 --> 00:11:39.879 was a hoax, a put on, a couple of jokers 213 00:11:39.879 --> 00:11:43.000 having a laugh. That's where this story should have ended 214 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:47.919 for the second time, same as eighteen ninety eight. Unbelievable claim, 215 00:11:48.200 --> 00:11:52.399 no evidence, unreliable narrators, and a town that knows better. 216 00:11:53.200 --> 00:11:55.519 The natural life span of a tall tale is about 217 00:11:55.559 --> 00:11:58.440 a week at the barber shop, and that's exactly where 218 00:11:58.480 --> 00:12:02.080 this one went to get told and retold, the local 219 00:12:02.080 --> 00:12:05.480 barbershop being the social media of its day, the place 220 00:12:05.480 --> 00:12:09.360 where a story either grew legs or got buried. By 221 00:12:09.360 --> 00:12:11.480 all rights, the Beast of Busco should have died in 222 00:12:11.519 --> 00:12:14.039 a barber's chair in the summer of nineteen forty eight. 223 00:12:14.759 --> 00:12:17.399 It didn't, and the reason it didn't has a name, 224 00:12:18.159 --> 00:12:21.600 Gail Harris. I've thought about Gail Harris more than I've 225 00:12:21.600 --> 00:12:24.720 thought about the turtle, because Harris is the actual engine 226 00:12:24.759 --> 00:12:27.559 of this entire thing, and Harris is where the story 227 00:12:27.559 --> 00:12:30.960 stops being funny and starts being something closer to tragic. 228 00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:34.480 He was a farmer. He owned the land and the lake, 229 00:12:35.279 --> 00:12:37.840 and by the accounts that survive. He was a man 230 00:12:37.960 --> 00:12:41.679 inclined to believe. One source I came across put it 231 00:12:41.679 --> 00:12:44.720 bluntly that Harris was known around town for being willing 232 00:12:44.759 --> 00:12:47.600 to believe just about anything. And I want to handle 233 00:12:47.639 --> 00:12:50.519 that fairly, because it's easy to turn a real person 234 00:12:50.600 --> 00:12:54.240 into a punchline a half century after he's gone. So 235 00:12:54.360 --> 00:12:57.600 let me put it this way instead, Gail Harris was 236 00:12:57.679 --> 00:13:00.000 not a cynic. He was not the kind of man 237 00:13:00.120 --> 00:13:02.639 who needed three forms of proof before he'd accept that 238 00:13:02.679 --> 00:13:05.759 the world was stranger than it looked. And in this 239 00:13:05.840 --> 00:13:09.000 particular story, that turned out to be the most dangerous 240 00:13:09.039 --> 00:13:12.559 quality a man could have. For a while, Harris didn't 241 00:13:12.600 --> 00:13:15.720 do much with what Blew and Wilson told him. It sat. 242 00:13:16.559 --> 00:13:19.679 Then came March of nineteen forty nine, and Harris saw 243 00:13:19.759 --> 00:13:22.679 it for himself, or at least he said he did. 244 00:13:23.399 --> 00:13:25.759 He was up on the roof of his barn doing repairs, 245 00:13:26.120 --> 00:13:29.320 and he had company up there, a friend named Orville Reyes, 246 00:13:29.639 --> 00:13:32.440 who happened to be a reverend. Two men on a 247 00:13:32.480 --> 00:13:36.120 barn roof, looking out over the pond, and according to them, 248 00:13:36.320 --> 00:13:39.639 the turtle surfaced. Now the first time they did the 249 00:13:39.679 --> 00:13:43.159 sensible thing. They shrugged it off. You're up on a 250 00:13:43.240 --> 00:13:46.639 roof the lights, playing tricks on the water. You saw something, 251 00:13:46.679 --> 00:13:49.399 who knows. But then it came back the next day, 252 00:13:49.919 --> 00:13:53.840 and the second time the shrug didn't hold. Curiosity got 253 00:13:53.840 --> 00:13:56.559 its hooks in. They got a rowboat and they went 254 00:13:56.600 --> 00:13:59.279 out onto the pond to look, and the story says 255 00:13:59.320 --> 00:14:02.480 the thing surfed again, this time on both sides of 256 00:14:02.519 --> 00:14:05.759 the boat, like it was circling them. That's the moment 257 00:14:05.799 --> 00:14:08.960 the whole thing turns, because now it isn't two jokers. 258 00:14:09.559 --> 00:14:12.399 Now it's the landowner himself and a man of the cloth. 259 00:14:12.879 --> 00:14:16.320 And the landowner has had it with being doubted. Harris 260 00:14:16.320 --> 00:14:19.000 had been hearing it for months. The turtle on his 261 00:14:19.080 --> 00:14:22.120 land was a joke, and by extension, so was he. 262 00:14:22.840 --> 00:14:25.600 And Gail Harris decided he was done being laughed at. 263 00:14:26.240 --> 00:14:29.080 He said it plainly, and the line has outlived him. 264 00:14:29.559 --> 00:14:31.279 He said he was going to get that turtle out 265 00:14:31.279 --> 00:14:32.879 of there, if he had to drain the whole lake 266 00:14:32.960 --> 00:14:35.919 to do it. He'd been called a liar long enough. 267 00:14:36.919 --> 00:14:38.480 I want you to hear that for what it is. 268 00:14:38.960 --> 00:14:42.960 Because everything that follows, every trap and net and harpoon 269 00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:46.399 and crane and dollar, and finally, his own health. All 270 00:14:46.440 --> 00:14:49.720 of it pours out of that one sentence. This stopped 271 00:14:49.720 --> 00:14:52.399 being about a turtle the second Gail Harris's name got 272 00:14:52.480 --> 00:14:56.360 attached to the doubt. It became about the man. It 273 00:14:56.399 --> 00:14:59.799 became about proving the town wrong, and a man trying 274 00:14:59.840 --> 00:15:01.919 to prove he isn't a liar will do things a 275 00:15:01.960 --> 00:15:05.279 man hunting an animal would never do. He'll keep going 276 00:15:05.360 --> 00:15:08.799 long after a rational person would quit. He'll spend money 277 00:15:08.799 --> 00:15:11.639 he doesn't have. He'll dig a hole and climb in 278 00:15:11.720 --> 00:15:15.639 after it. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll 279 00:15:15.639 --> 00:15:20.399 be back after these messages. The other thing that happened 280 00:15:20.440 --> 00:15:23.320 in early March of nineteen forty nine, the thing that 281 00:15:23.399 --> 00:15:26.120 took this from a local grudge to a national. 282 00:15:25.799 --> 00:15:27.480 Circus, was the press. 283 00:15:28.320 --> 00:15:31.840 A newspaper over in Columbia City, the County Seat ran 284 00:15:31.919 --> 00:15:35.519 the story first around the seventh of March, just a 285 00:15:35.559 --> 00:15:38.960 small item about a giant turtle on a farm near Churubusco. 286 00:15:39.840 --> 00:15:42.559 But this was the era of the wire services, and 287 00:15:42.639 --> 00:15:45.120 a reporter put it on the wire, and the wire 288 00:15:45.159 --> 00:15:48.200 didn't care that it was a turtle. The wire cared 289 00:15:48.200 --> 00:15:49.480 that it was a good story on. 290 00:15:49.440 --> 00:15:50.240 A slow week. 291 00:15:50.840 --> 00:15:52.919 One of the History Center fellows who lived through it 292 00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:55.559 said it best decades later that it must have just 293 00:15:55.639 --> 00:15:58.480 been a slow news week, and the story went, in 294 00:15:58.600 --> 00:16:02.720 his words, viral before anybody used that word for anything. 295 00:16:03.559 --> 00:16:05.559 By the next day, it was front page news and 296 00:16:05.639 --> 00:16:08.799 places that had never heard of Churubusco and never would 297 00:16:08.799 --> 00:16:13.279 again except for this. The local Churubusco weekly, a paper 298 00:16:13.320 --> 00:16:16.600 called The Truth, got absolutely scooped on the biggest story 299 00:16:16.639 --> 00:16:19.559 to ever happen in its own backyard because it only 300 00:16:19.559 --> 00:16:22.399 came out on Thursdays, and the daily papers all over 301 00:16:22.440 --> 00:16:25.559 the country had run. At first, the town's own paper 302 00:16:25.600 --> 00:16:28.879 missed the town's own monster. And you have to understand 303 00:16:28.919 --> 00:16:32.600 the timing of it, the why now of it. Nineteen 304 00:16:32.679 --> 00:16:35.720 forty nine. The country had just come out of the 305 00:16:35.720 --> 00:16:40.200 Second World War, the depression before that, two decades of 306 00:16:40.240 --> 00:16:44.879 bad news, of telegrams nobody wanted, of rationing and worry 307 00:16:44.919 --> 00:16:45.440 and grief. 308 00:16:46.200 --> 00:16:47.080 And here, out of. 309 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:50.720 A cornfield in Indiana comes a story that's just plain fun. 310 00:16:51.519 --> 00:16:55.559 A monster, but a friendly one, a turtle, a small town, 311 00:16:55.639 --> 00:16:57.639 and a stubborn farmer, and a thing in a pond. 312 00:16:58.360 --> 00:17:02.000 People were starved for exactly this. The reporters knew it. 313 00:17:02.559 --> 00:17:05.640 The editors knew it, so the wire kept feeding it, 314 00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:09.359 and the country kept eating, and Cherubusco woke up famous, 315 00:17:09.880 --> 00:17:13.440 and as the story traveled, it grew, the way stories 316 00:17:13.480 --> 00:17:16.039 do when they get passed hand to hand across a wire. 317 00:17:16.839 --> 00:17:19.680 The descriptions never quite agreed with each other, and they 318 00:17:19.680 --> 00:17:22.480 got bigger and stranger the farther they got from the 319 00:17:22.559 --> 00:17:26.559 actual pond. In some tellings, the turtle's neck was as 320 00:17:26.640 --> 00:17:29.799 thick as a stovepipe. Its head was the size of 321 00:17:29.799 --> 00:17:32.880 a child's or a man's, depending on which paper you 322 00:17:32.920 --> 00:17:36.039 picked up. Its shell was as big as the top 323 00:17:36.079 --> 00:17:38.839 of a car, or as wide as a dining room. 324 00:17:38.640 --> 00:17:40.279 Table, six feet across. 325 00:17:40.559 --> 00:17:44.279 Spiked along the back, the weight floated somewhere between four 326 00:17:44.359 --> 00:17:47.319 hundred and five hundred pounds, and not one person who 327 00:17:47.319 --> 00:17:50.319 printed those numbers had ever put the animal on a scale, 328 00:17:50.839 --> 00:17:54.200 because not one person had ever had the animal. Each 329 00:17:54.240 --> 00:17:56.759 paper took the wire copy and gave it a little extra, 330 00:17:57.279 --> 00:17:59.920 the way a fish gets longer every time. The fisherman tells, 331 00:18:00.519 --> 00:18:03.599 and radio carried it out past the newspapers all the 332 00:18:03.599 --> 00:18:07.119 way overseas, so that people on other continents were hearing 333 00:18:07.160 --> 00:18:09.759 about a turtle in a pond in Whitley County, Indiana. 334 00:18:10.799 --> 00:18:12.960 By the time the tale had bounced around the world 335 00:18:12.960 --> 00:18:16.400 a few times, the modest, murky, second hand siding of 336 00:18:16.440 --> 00:18:21.279 two known pranksters had hardened into established fact, a confirmed 337 00:18:21.359 --> 00:18:25.240 monster with confirmed measurements, none of which anybody had ever 338 00:18:25.319 --> 00:18:29.079 actually confirmed. That's the machinery of a legend running at 339 00:18:29.119 --> 00:18:32.359 full speed. It doesn't need one new piece of evidence. 340 00:18:32.640 --> 00:18:36.319 It needs repetition, a slow newsweek, and a country that 341 00:18:36.400 --> 00:18:39.680 wants the story to be true. Now Gail Harris has 342 00:18:39.680 --> 00:18:43.599 an audience, and that changes a man's behavior. It's one 343 00:18:43.640 --> 00:18:46.039 thing to chase a turtle when the only witnesses are 344 00:18:46.079 --> 00:18:49.400 your barn and your reverend. It's another thing when there 345 00:18:49.440 --> 00:18:52.640 are cars stacked up on Madden Road and a photographer 346 00:18:52.680 --> 00:18:56.359 from a national magazine standing in your field. The hunt 347 00:18:56.359 --> 00:18:59.440 gets bigger because the stage gets bigger, and the stage 348 00:18:59.480 --> 00:19:03.599 got a normeds fast. His first real attempt was about 349 00:19:03.599 --> 00:19:06.640 the most homespun thing you can imagine. He built a 350 00:19:06.680 --> 00:19:10.000 trap wood and chicken wire, set out in the lake, 351 00:19:10.279 --> 00:19:13.680 baited to draw the turtle in, and word had spread 352 00:19:13.960 --> 00:19:16.559 so people came to watch, and they stood around that 353 00:19:16.640 --> 00:19:20.119 pond for hours waiting for a four hundred pound reptile 354 00:19:20.200 --> 00:19:23.359 to wander into a chicken wire box on queue, and 355 00:19:23.400 --> 00:19:27.039 the legend says it actually showed up. The story goes 356 00:19:27.079 --> 00:19:30.440 that Oscar came and Oscar got into it or near it, 357 00:19:30.960 --> 00:19:34.720 and then Oscar simply broke through chicken wire against a 358 00:19:34.759 --> 00:19:37.400 creature that's supposed to weigh as much as two grown men. 359 00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:41.440 It didn't stand a chance. The turtle burst out and 360 00:19:41.559 --> 00:19:44.240 was gone back into the dark water, and the crowd 361 00:19:44.279 --> 00:19:46.440 had its first taste of the thing that would define 362 00:19:46.480 --> 00:19:50.079 the entire hunt. They almost had him, and then they didn't. 363 00:19:50.960 --> 00:19:54.720 That phrase is the whole structure of this story. Almost 364 00:19:55.119 --> 00:19:58.279 over and over. The crowds tell you how big this got, 365 00:19:58.480 --> 00:20:00.920 and the numbers are documented in the timeline the town 366 00:20:01.039 --> 00:20:04.960 itself put together. Later on the twelfth of March, three 367 00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:07.480 thousand people came out to watch attempts to catch the 368 00:20:07.480 --> 00:20:11.319 turtle in a town of twelve hundred. The next day, 369 00:20:11.519 --> 00:20:15.119 the thirteenth, the turtle slipped another makeshift trap, and the 370 00:20:15.160 --> 00:20:18.880 crowd grew to five thousand. By the twentieth of March, 371 00:20:18.920 --> 00:20:21.920 four hundred cars an hour were rolling past the Harris home. 372 00:20:22.359 --> 00:20:24.960 There were planes flying overhead so people could look down 373 00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:28.480 at the pond. There were traffic jams on rural roads 374 00:20:28.640 --> 00:20:31.599 that had probably never seen a traffic jam in their existence. 375 00:20:32.359 --> 00:20:35.720 The town was completely overrun, and it was overrun by 376 00:20:35.759 --> 00:20:37.920 people who came to see a turtle that to that 377 00:20:38.039 --> 00:20:42.039 point had never been clearly seen by anybody. The town, 378 00:20:42.119 --> 00:20:45.359 to its credit, tried to get organized about it. The 379 00:20:45.400 --> 00:20:48.519 community club met in special session, because what else do 380 00:20:48.599 --> 00:20:51.160 you do when ten thousand strangers descend on you in 381 00:20:51.160 --> 00:20:54.319 a week. They put together what they actually called a 382 00:20:54.359 --> 00:20:57.680 Turtle Committee, whose job was to oversee the safe capture 383 00:20:57.680 --> 00:21:00.519 of Oscar, and they pledged to provide a upper home 384 00:21:00.559 --> 00:21:03.599 for him once he was caught. They brought in boats 385 00:21:03.599 --> 00:21:06.319 and lumber and pipe to help with the hunt. So 386 00:21:06.400 --> 00:21:09.480 now it's not just one obsessed farmer. Now there's an 387 00:21:09.480 --> 00:21:13.400 institution behind it. The town has officially decided that the 388 00:21:13.400 --> 00:21:16.519 turtle is real enough to plan around, real enough to 389 00:21:16.519 --> 00:21:20.799 build a home for. The legend got an administrative structure. 390 00:21:21.160 --> 00:21:22.960 That's how you know a thing has stopped being a 391 00:21:23.039 --> 00:21:26.279 rumor and started being a project, And a project that 392 00:21:26.440 --> 00:21:29.400 size does things to a small town, things that have 393 00:21:29.519 --> 00:21:32.039 nothing to do with whether the turtle was ever real. 394 00:21:32.880 --> 00:21:35.240 For a few weeks in the spring of nineteen forty nine, 395 00:21:35.640 --> 00:21:40.119 Churubusco ran hot. The roads couldn't hold the cars. People 396 00:21:40.160 --> 00:21:42.319 parked in fields and walked the rest of the way. 397 00:21:43.119 --> 00:21:46.359 The town's handful of restaurants and filling stations did business 398 00:21:46.359 --> 00:21:50.000 they'd never seen, feeding and fueling thousands of strangers who 399 00:21:50.160 --> 00:21:52.400 driven in from three states over to stand at the 400 00:21:52.480 --> 00:21:57.680 edge of a pond. Somebody was always selling something, sandwiches, soda, 401 00:21:58.240 --> 00:22:00.599