WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.480 --> 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 --> 00:00:32.320 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 00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:04.879 We've been on this road a long time now, and 14 00:01:04.920 --> 00:01:07.280 if you've been riding along with me through the backwoods 15 00:01:07.319 --> 00:01:09.879 of this country, you know how this works. By now, 16 00:01:10.480 --> 00:01:13.000 we pick a state, we pick a stretch of woods, 17 00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:15.200 and we go looking for the thing that lives in 18 00:01:15.239 --> 00:01:18.319 the stories people tell there. Some of those stops have 19 00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:21.680 been swamp country, some of them have been mountain country. 20 00:01:22.319 --> 00:01:25.200 This one is river country, and river country has its 21 00:01:25.239 --> 00:01:28.959 own rules. Missouri is state number twenty five for us, 22 00:01:29.439 --> 00:01:32.719 the halfway mark of this road trip. Twenty five states 23 00:01:32.719 --> 00:01:36.159 behind us and twenty five still ahead of us. Half 24 00:01:36.200 --> 00:01:38.640 the country's worth of back roads and bad smells and 25 00:01:38.680 --> 00:01:41.879 people who saw something they can't explain, and we're only 26 00:01:41.920 --> 00:01:45.079 now standing at the turn. The highway drops down out 27 00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:47.480 of the farmland and starts to bend the way the 28 00:01:47.519 --> 00:01:49.959 water bends, and the bluffs come up on the side 29 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:52.439 of the road like a wall somebody built and then 30 00:01:52.480 --> 00:01:55.959 walked away from. This isn't the Missouri that people picture 31 00:01:55.959 --> 00:01:59.439 when they think of Missouri. There's no flat corn horizon here, 32 00:01:59.760 --> 00:02:04.079 no long clean view. Northeast Missouri along the Mississippi is 33 00:02:04.079 --> 00:02:06.840 folded and wooded and cut through with creeks that run 34 00:02:06.920 --> 00:02:09.520 down out of the hills and go quiet in the summer, 35 00:02:09.879 --> 00:02:12.199 and the timber is thick enough that a man standing 36 00:02:12.240 --> 00:02:14.840 forty yards off the road can watch you go by 37 00:02:15.120 --> 00:02:18.120 and you'll never know he was there. The town we're 38 00:02:18.120 --> 00:02:22.159 stopping in is called Louisiana, not the state, the town. 39 00:02:23.039 --> 00:02:25.080 It sits on the west bank of the Mississippi in 40 00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:28.680 Pike County, about twenty five miles down the river from Hannibal, 41 00:02:29.120 --> 00:02:32.840 which is the town Mark Twain made famous. Louisiana never 42 00:02:32.879 --> 00:02:36.520 got that kind of famous. What Louisiana got was one 43 00:02:36.599 --> 00:02:39.159 summer and one hill and a name that stuck to 44 00:02:39.199 --> 00:02:42.319 it for more than fifty years. The hill is called 45 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:45.479 Marsof Hill, though most of the younger people in town 46 00:02:45.599 --> 00:02:48.719 now call it Star Hill, and the name change tells 47 00:02:48.719 --> 00:02:50.960 you something about how a place tries to move on. 48 00:02:52.199 --> 00:02:54.639 Marsof Hill runs along the western edge of the town 49 00:02:54.719 --> 00:02:57.879 like a spine. There's a water reservoir up on top 50 00:02:57.919 --> 00:03:00.639 of it, a big one holding something like a million 51 00:03:00.680 --> 00:03:03.400 and a half gallons, And in the summer of nineteen 52 00:03:03.479 --> 00:03:06.240 seventy two, the neighborhood kids played up there the way 53 00:03:06.319 --> 00:03:10.000 neighborhood kids play everywhere, throwing rocks at things that made 54 00:03:10.039 --> 00:03:12.639 a noise when you hit them. At the foot of 55 00:03:12.639 --> 00:03:15.479 that hill, on Allen Street, there was a house with 56 00:03:15.520 --> 00:03:18.800 a family in it, and on the afternoon of July eleventh, 57 00:03:19.080 --> 00:03:22.120 nineteen seventy two, two little boys were playing in the 58 00:03:22.159 --> 00:03:26.080 backyard of that house with the family dog. That's where 59 00:03:26.080 --> 00:03:29.120 this one starts. The kids saw it first, and that 60 00:03:29.159 --> 00:03:32.120 matters more than most people give it credit for. I 61 00:03:32.159 --> 00:03:35.439 spent sixteen years in law enforcement, taking statements from every 62 00:03:35.520 --> 00:03:38.400 kind of person there is, and children are a strange 63 00:03:38.479 --> 00:03:43.240 kind of witness. They're terrible with time, they're terrible with distance. 64 00:03:44.120 --> 00:03:45.960 They will tell you something was as big as a 65 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:49.280 house when it was as big as a refrigerator. But 66 00:03:49.439 --> 00:03:52.039 children are also the worst liars in the world when 67 00:03:52.039 --> 00:03:56.360 they're actually frightened, because a frightened child doesn't construct. A 68 00:03:56.400 --> 00:04:00.199 frightened child reports, and the report comes out sideways and 69 00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:03.240 messy and full of the wrong details. And that mess 70 00:04:03.599 --> 00:04:07.159 is exactly what makes it worth listening to. The town 71 00:04:07.199 --> 00:04:09.439 of Louisiana laughed at the kids for about a day 72 00:04:09.439 --> 00:04:12.919 and a half. Then the adults started seeing it too. 73 00:04:13.120 --> 00:04:15.000 This didn't come out of nowhere, And the people who 74 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:17.040 tell you this story as a bolt from the blue 75 00:04:17.120 --> 00:04:21.279 are skipping the part I find most interesting. Northeast Missouri 76 00:04:21.319 --> 00:04:24.480 had quiet talk about something in the timber going back decades. 77 00:04:25.120 --> 00:04:28.000 There are references in the older accounts to reports around 78 00:04:28.040 --> 00:04:31.560 Louisiana in the middle nineteen forties, and what survives of 79 00:04:31.600 --> 00:04:35.680 them is thin. What we have is mostly recollection collected 80 00:04:35.759 --> 00:04:38.879 later people saying that their parents or their neighbors had 81 00:04:38.920 --> 00:04:42.040 talked about a big, hairy thing along the river. Before 82 00:04:42.079 --> 00:04:46.319 the war and just after it. That's not documentation. That's 83 00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:49.240 oral history. And oral history is a real thing that 84 00:04:49.360 --> 00:04:52.439 historians use, but it isn't the same animal as a 85 00:04:52.480 --> 00:04:56.600 police report, and it doesn't get to wear the same clothes. Still, 86 00:04:57.079 --> 00:04:59.480 when a thing shows up in a town's mouth thirty 87 00:04:59.560 --> 00:05:02.519 years for it shows up in the newspaper, that's a 88 00:05:02.560 --> 00:05:06.600 pattern worth noticing, because towns tend to invent their monsters 89 00:05:06.639 --> 00:05:11.240 after the newspapers arrive, not before. The first account with 90 00:05:11.319 --> 00:05:13.680 real names attached to it comes from the summer of 91 00:05:13.800 --> 00:05:18.399 nineteen seventy one, and it happened north of town. Two women, 92 00:05:18.680 --> 00:05:21.639 Joon Mills and Mary Ryan, were driving back towards Saint 93 00:05:21.639 --> 00:05:24.519 Louis on Highway seventy nine, which is the road that 94 00:05:24.600 --> 00:05:27.079 runs along the river and through some of the prettiest 95 00:05:27.120 --> 00:05:29.079 and loneliest country in that part. 96 00:05:28.920 --> 00:05:29.399 Of the state. 97 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:32.959 They stopped to eat. That's the whole beginning of it. 98 00:05:33.720 --> 00:05:36.079 Two women pulled off the highway at a wooded spot 99 00:05:36.120 --> 00:05:38.399 to have a picnic lunch on a summer day, the 100 00:05:38.439 --> 00:05:42.000 most ordinary thing two people can do. According to the 101 00:05:42.040 --> 00:05:45.680 account kept by the local Historical Society in Louisiana, and 102 00:05:45.720 --> 00:05:49.439 according to the newspaper coverage that followed. They started hearing 103 00:05:49.480 --> 00:05:52.240 something out of the trees. They didn't call it a 104 00:05:52.360 --> 00:05:55.800 roar or a growl or a scream. They called it gurgling. 105 00:05:56.240 --> 00:05:58.360 And it was coming from the timber a few yards 106 00:05:58.399 --> 00:06:00.319 off from where they were sitting with their lung lunch. 107 00:06:01.079 --> 00:06:03.319 Then it came out of the woods, and the description 108 00:06:03.439 --> 00:06:07.959 they gave was half ape and half man, dark upright 109 00:06:08.839 --> 00:06:12.399 somewhere around six feet, though estimates in these accounts drift 110 00:06:12.439 --> 00:06:15.920 around the way estimates always do. And with it came 111 00:06:15.959 --> 00:06:19.240 the smell, the one that's going to follow this entire story, 112 00:06:19.319 --> 00:06:22.560 like a dog following a truck. The women got into 113 00:06:22.600 --> 00:06:25.040 their car and locked the doors, and the thing came 114 00:06:25.079 --> 00:06:28.680 in close, close enough that the distance in the retelling 115 00:06:28.680 --> 00:06:31.680 gets measured in a few paces rather than a few yards. 116 00:06:32.439 --> 00:06:35.199 And then it did the single most animal thing in 117 00:06:35.240 --> 00:06:38.639 the entire account, the detail that always stops me. 118 00:06:39.519 --> 00:06:40.439 It went for the food. 119 00:06:41.240 --> 00:06:43.600 Their lunch was still sitting out where they had left it, 120 00:06:44.040 --> 00:06:47.120 and by the accounts that survived, the creature helped itself 121 00:06:47.439 --> 00:06:49.120 and then went back into the trees. 122 00:06:49.920 --> 00:06:51.639 There's a version of this story where. 123 00:06:51.439 --> 00:06:54.839 The monster menaces two women on a Lonely Highway, and 124 00:06:54.839 --> 00:06:58.120 that's the whole point. And that version is a campfire story. 125 00:06:58.959 --> 00:07:01.399 The version where it eats the sandwiches is a different 126 00:07:01.480 --> 00:07:04.560 kind of story. A thing that raids a picnic isn't 127 00:07:04.560 --> 00:07:07.519 a nightmare. A thing that raids a picnic is hungry, 128 00:07:07.800 --> 00:07:11.360 and hunger is a very ordinary motive, and ordinary motives 129 00:07:11.399 --> 00:07:14.519 are what real animals have. I don't know what Joan 130 00:07:14.600 --> 00:07:18.360 Mills and Mary Ryan saw. I wasn't there, and neither 131 00:07:18.439 --> 00:07:21.399 was anybody else with a camera. What I know is 132 00:07:21.439 --> 00:07:23.839 that the account entered the record a full year before 133 00:07:23.879 --> 00:07:26.879 the town of Louisiana had any reason to be primed 134 00:07:26.920 --> 00:07:29.639 for it, which means when the thing on Marsov Hill 135 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:32.560 showed up the following July, it didn't arrive as a 136 00:07:32.600 --> 00:07:36.079 brand new idea. It arrived as a second data point. 137 00:07:36.519 --> 00:07:39.399 And in nineteen seventy two, the second data point came 138 00:07:39.399 --> 00:07:42.879 from a fifteen year old girl standing at a bathroom window. 139 00:07:43.680 --> 00:07:47.120 On the afternoon of Tuesday, July eleventh, nineteen seventy two. 140 00:07:47.560 --> 00:07:50.519 Both parents were at work. Edgar Harrison was at the 141 00:07:50.519 --> 00:07:53.920 Department of Public Works, where he'd put in twenty one years, 142 00:07:54.360 --> 00:07:56.680 and Betty was down at the cafe the family ran 143 00:07:56.800 --> 00:08:00.920 on Main Street. Doris was home minding her brother. She 144 00:08:01.079 --> 00:08:04.759 was fifteen, Terry was eight, and Wally was five, and 145 00:08:04.839 --> 00:08:07.920 the house was at ten o four Allen Street, right 146 00:08:07.920 --> 00:08:11.199 at the bottom of mars Off Hill. Doris was cleaning 147 00:08:11.199 --> 00:08:13.920 the bathroom sink. The boys were out back with the 148 00:08:13.959 --> 00:08:17.600 family dog, a dog they called Chubby. The back of 149 00:08:17.600 --> 00:08:19.759 that yard runs right up into the timber at the 150 00:08:19.759 --> 00:08:22.480 base of the hill, so there's no real line between 151 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:25.360 the mode grass and the woods, just the place where 152 00:08:25.399 --> 00:08:28.879 one stops being one and starts being the other. Sometime 153 00:08:28.920 --> 00:08:32.679 around half past three, Terry started screaming. Doris told the 154 00:08:32.679 --> 00:08:35.559 Saint Louis Post Dispatch that Terry and Wally Paul were 155 00:08:35.559 --> 00:08:37.600 out in the back with Chubby when she heard Terry 156 00:08:37.639 --> 00:08:40.720 start screaming, and that she looked out the bathroom window 157 00:08:40.759 --> 00:08:43.399 and saw it and started crying and ran into the 158 00:08:43.399 --> 00:08:45.840 other room to call her mother on the telephone, and 159 00:08:45.879 --> 00:08:48.919 then her parents came home. What she saw was standing 160 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:52.200 right by a tree, six or seven feet tall, black 161 00:08:52.240 --> 00:08:54.799 and hairy, and she said it stood like a man, 162 00:08:54.879 --> 00:08:57.679 but that it didn't look like one to her. Both 163 00:08:57.759 --> 00:08:59.799 Doris and Terry got a look at it and both 164 00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:02.480 of them said the same thing about the head, which 165 00:09:02.559 --> 00:09:05.519 was that they couldn't see a face because hair covered 166 00:09:05.559 --> 00:09:08.879 the whole animal from the crown down. It didn't appear 167 00:09:08.960 --> 00:09:12.559 to have a neck. The head sat directly on the shoulders, 168 00:09:12.679 --> 00:09:15.080 and I believe that's where the pumpkin description in the 169 00:09:15.159 --> 00:09:19.799 later coverage comes from. Some accounts add glowing orange eyes, 170 00:09:20.240 --> 00:09:22.840 and the eyes are the piece that moves around, depending 171 00:09:22.840 --> 00:09:25.960 on which witness is talking and what year they were talking, 172 00:09:26.039 --> 00:09:29.600 in running orange in some teilings and red or green 173 00:09:29.720 --> 00:09:33.799 in others. It was carrying something under one arm, a 174 00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:37.039 dead dog, by every account, and the hair of the 175 00:09:37.080 --> 00:09:39.759 creature was flecked with blood from whatever it was holding. 176 00:09:40.519 --> 00:09:43.279 The dead dog and the family dog are two different animals, 177 00:09:43.600 --> 00:09:46.559 and nearly every short version of this case runs them together. 178 00:09:47.360 --> 00:09:49.960 Chubby was the Harrison's dog, and he was out in 179 00:09:49.960 --> 00:09:52.480 that yard with those two boys, and he came back. 180 00:09:53.320 --> 00:09:56.360 Whatever the creature was carrying was some other dog, and 181 00:09:56.440 --> 00:10:00.720 that dog was never identified and never recovered. Nobody in 182 00:10:00.759 --> 00:10:04.279 Louisiana produced a carcass, and no owner ever came forward 183 00:10:04.279 --> 00:10:07.960 to claim one. What happened to Chubby after the incident 184 00:10:08.240 --> 00:10:11.480 is that he got sick. His eyes went bloodshot, and 185 00:10:11.519 --> 00:10:14.679 he started vomiting violently, and by the accounts, he stayed 186 00:10:14.720 --> 00:10:17.440 that way for hours before he came around, and what 187 00:10:17.600 --> 00:10:20.000 finally settled him was a meal of bread and milk. 188 00:10:20.960 --> 00:10:23.720 There's a long standing assumption in the reporting that the 189 00:10:23.720 --> 00:10:26.399 smell was what did it to him, And my own 190 00:10:26.480 --> 00:10:29.240 view is that a badly frightened dog can present the 191 00:10:29.279 --> 00:10:32.080 same way, and that both of those roads lead back 192 00:10:32.120 --> 00:10:34.919 to the same place, which is that something was in 193 00:10:34.919 --> 00:10:38.960 that yard. Edgar Harrison got home around four. He didn't 194 00:10:38.960 --> 00:10:42.000 find a monster. What he found was brush beaten down 195 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:44.720 where his children said the thing had been standing, faint 196 00:10:44.720 --> 00:10:48.159 footprints in the dust, and black hair stuck to some twigs. 197 00:10:48.720 --> 00:10:50.879 Then he told his kids it was probably a hobo 198 00:10:50.960 --> 00:10:54.120 who had already moved on. That's the part I keep 199 00:10:54.120 --> 00:10:57.320 coming back to, because it's the last ordinary thing anybody 200 00:10:57.320 --> 00:10:59.960 in that family got to say about it. It didn't 201 00:11:00.120 --> 00:11:03.799 stay contained to that one yard. That same afternoon, a 202 00:11:03.840 --> 00:11:06.600 woman who lived a few blocks from the Harrisons, listed 203 00:11:06.600 --> 00:11:09.399 in the papers of that era as Missus Clarence Lee, 204 00:11:09.960 --> 00:11:13.639 reported animal sounds outside her house. She never claimed to 205 00:11:13.639 --> 00:11:16.759 see anything. What she reported was a creature carrying on 206 00:11:16.799 --> 00:11:20.600 something terrible somewhere off toward the hill. And not long 207 00:11:20.639 --> 00:11:23.480 after that she reportedly spoke with a local farmer whose 208 00:11:23.519 --> 00:11:26.879 dog had gone missing. Missing dogs run all the way 209 00:11:26.879 --> 00:11:29.639 through this case, and they come back in a serious way. 210 00:11:29.720 --> 00:11:30.639 About a week later. 211 00:11:31.639 --> 00:11:35.159 The next Friday was July fourteenth. Edgar was hosting the 212 00:11:35.200 --> 00:11:38.360 regular Pentecostal prayer meeting at the house, and this was 213 00:11:38.399 --> 00:11:41.320 not four people in a living room. By the accounts 214 00:11:41.360 --> 00:11:43.519 of the time. There were something like fifty people there 215 00:11:43.559 --> 00:11:46.639 that evening. Around half past eight. The meeting broke up 216 00:11:46.639 --> 00:11:49.960 and most of the congregation started for home. Edgar and 217 00:11:50.039 --> 00:11:53.320 about a dozen of them stayed outside talking. Betty and 218 00:11:53.360 --> 00:11:56.480 the children were in the house. That's when the fireballs 219 00:11:56.480 --> 00:11:59.240 came over the hill. Lauren Coleman, who has done as 220 00:11:59.320 --> 00:12:02.639 much careful war on American monster cases as anybody alive, 221 00:12:03.240 --> 00:12:07.080 preserved the account. Two objects came over Marsov Hill and 222 00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:10.519 dropped down into the trees behind an abandoned school across 223 00:12:10.519 --> 00:12:13.799 the street. They came about five minutes apart, and the 224 00:12:13.799 --> 00:12:16.399 first one was white and the second one was green. 225 00:12:17.360 --> 00:12:19.720 This is the seam in the Momo case where a 226 00:12:19.720 --> 00:12:23.240 hairy animal story turns into something else, and depending on 227 00:12:23.240 --> 00:12:26.039 which investigator you follow, it's either the most important part 228 00:12:26.039 --> 00:12:28.960 of the file or the thing that ruined it. About 229 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:31.320 a quarter past nine, Edgar heard a ringing off the 230 00:12:31.360 --> 00:12:34.159 top of the hill, the sound rocks make hitting a 231 00:12:34.200 --> 00:12:37.639 metal water reservoir. That tank holds a million and a 232 00:12:37.679 --> 00:12:40.799 half gallons, and neighborhood kids were up around it constantly. 233 00:12:41.559 --> 00:12:45.600 After one especially loud ring, he heard a growl. In 234 00:12:45.679 --> 00:12:48.279 his own words, it got louder and louder and kept 235 00:12:48.279 --> 00:12:51.159 coming closer. He wanted to find out what was making 236 00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:53.919 the noise, so he and his family hopped in the 237 00:12:53.919 --> 00:12:56.879 car and drove down Allen Street and across Town Branch, 238 00:12:57.639 --> 00:12:59.919 which is the creek that cuts through that part of town, 239 00:13:00.360 --> 00:13:03.039 and he stopped the car. By then the noise had 240 00:13:03.080 --> 00:13:05.600 pulled people out of their houses all down that street. 241 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:09.000 Edgar put the number at forty. Some of them were 242 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:11.679 carrying guns. Some of them were headed up toward the 243 00:13:11.720 --> 00:13:15.320 reservoir to see for themselves. Then somebody yelled that here 244 00:13:15.360 --> 00:13:19.159 it comes. In Edgar's version, his wife and children shouted 245 00:13:19.200 --> 00:13:21.279 it from the car to the people in the street. 246 00:13:22.039 --> 00:13:24.200 In the version that ran in the local paper, it 247 00:13:24.279 --> 00:13:26.919 was one of the neighbors who yelled it either way. 248 00:13:27.240 --> 00:13:30.159 Forty people turned around and ran back down Allen Street 249 00:13:30.159 --> 00:13:33.679 in the dark. Police officers Jerry Floyd and John Whittaker 250 00:13:33.720 --> 00:13:36.360 came out to the house, searched the residence and the 251 00:13:36.440 --> 00:13:40.200 area around it, and found nothing. Edgar and Betty gave 252 00:13:40.200 --> 00:13:43.360 the Post Dispatch a planer account. They were having their 253 00:13:43.399 --> 00:13:46.399 regular church meeting when they all heard it, a loud 254 00:13:46.399 --> 00:13:50.240 growling noise three separate times, and then a sound like 255 00:13:50.279 --> 00:13:53.759 the thing was hurt, a large yelp. Betty said it 256 00:13:53.799 --> 00:13:56.720 sounded like a gorilla. Then she went further than her 257 00:13:56.759 --> 00:14:00.480 husband ever did and named it, saying that's what it was, 258 00:14:01.120 --> 00:14:03.559 a bigfoot, and that she'd heard they had one in 259 00:14:03.559 --> 00:14:05.440 California and up in Canada. 260 00:14:06.399 --> 00:14:07.240 That's the moment the. 261 00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:12.240 Vocabulary arrives in Louisiana, Missouri. Nineteen seventy two is five 262 00:14:12.320 --> 00:14:15.240 years after the Patterson Gimlin film got into the culture. 263 00:14:15.840 --> 00:14:19.080 Bigfoot was on television and in paperbacks and in men's 264 00:14:19.120 --> 00:14:23.279 adventure magazines by then, and Betty Harrison, reaching for the word, 265 00:14:23.600 --> 00:14:26.120 tells us the frame was sitting there and the town 266 00:14:26.159 --> 00:14:29.559 knew it. Later that same night, Edgar went up the 267 00:14:29.639 --> 00:14:32.000 hill with several other men and found the old building, 268 00:14:32.559 --> 00:14:34.919 a vacant shack with a pile of leaves and debris 269 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:37.440 in one corner, and a stench coming out of it 270 00:14:37.519 --> 00:14:40.000 that the men compared to rotten flesh and to foul, 271 00:14:40.080 --> 00:14:43.960 stagnant water. Edgar described it as a moldy horse smell 272 00:14:44.360 --> 00:14:47.639 or a strong garbage smell. The smell runs through this 273 00:14:47.759 --> 00:14:51.600 whole case. It's in the nineteen seventy one picnic account, 274 00:14:52.120 --> 00:14:55.240 it's in that shack, it's on the hill during the searches, 275 00:14:55.559 --> 00:14:58.639 and it's in half the sightings that came after. Of 276 00:14:58.679 --> 00:15:01.320 everything in the Momo fire, well, the odor is the 277 00:15:01.360 --> 00:15:05.000 part that stays the same, more than the height, more 278 00:15:05.039 --> 00:15:08.600 than the eyes, more than anything about the head. Stay 279 00:15:08.639 --> 00:15:12.159 tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after 280 00:15:12.200 --> 00:15:17.639 these messages. Betty had had enough. She took the children 281 00:15:17.639 --> 00:15:21.320 and moved in with Edgar's brother, Vivian Howchins and his wife, 282 00:15:21.759 --> 00:15:24.039 and told her reporter she'd never go back up there. 283 00:15:24.759 --> 00:15:27.799 Houchins never saw it. He was fifty six years old, 284 00:15:27.840 --> 00:15:30.120 and what he got was the odor and the sound. 285 00:15:30.840 --> 00:15:33.039 He said, the odor was worse than any old goat 286 00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:35.519 you ever smelled, and then he said the line that 287 00:15:35.559 --> 00:15:38.519 has stuck with me for years, that the growl was 288 00:15:38.559 --> 00:15:41.120 like a bear's growl, but that a bear doesn't run 289 00:15:41.120 --> 00:15:44.600 on two feet. Edgar was doing something I respect and 290 00:15:44.639 --> 00:15:48.200 would probably not do myself. He hung fish and hamskin 291 00:15:48.320 --> 00:15:50.960 on a tree behind the house for bait. He tied 292 00:15:51.000 --> 00:15:53.840 his own dog up on the hill. He sat outside 293 00:15:53.879 --> 00:15:56.519 in the dark and waited. He eventually took a leave 294 00:15:56.519 --> 00:15:59.000 of absence from the waterworks and camped at the foot 295 00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:02.720 of Marsof Hill for twenty one night's running. Nothing took 296 00:16:02.720 --> 00:16:05.879 the bait. His position, as he gave it to the press, 297 00:16:06.399 --> 00:16:08.279 was that there was something up there and they hadn't 298 00:16:08.320 --> 00:16:13.000 found it yet. Around five the next morning, Saturday the fifteenth, 299 00:16:13.039 --> 00:16:16.720 a Louisiana man named Pat Howard watched something man like 300 00:16:17.120 --> 00:16:20.440 cross the road near Marsof Hill. He wouldn't go past, 301 00:16:20.480 --> 00:16:24.000 calling it a dark object running like a man. I'll 302 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:25.720 take an unglamorous report like. 303 00:16:25.679 --> 00:16:27.960 That any day of the week. The man who had. 304 00:16:27.879 --> 00:16:30.399 To deal with all of it was the Louisiana Chief 305 00:16:30.399 --> 00:16:34.080 of Police, Shelby Ward. I've been on the other end 306 00:16:34.080 --> 00:16:36.320 of that radio, so I know what his week looked like. 307 00:16:37.200 --> 00:16:40.159 By the middle of July, Ward's department was rolling night 308 00:16:40.240 --> 00:16:43.399 after night on things people had heard, rather than things 309 00:16:43.399 --> 00:16:46.240 people had seen. That's the worst kind of call a 310 00:16:46.279 --> 00:16:49.679 small department can catch. There's nothing to process and nothing 311 00:16:49.679 --> 00:16:53.480 to photograph, nothing to put in a report except a time, 312 00:16:53.879 --> 00:16:55.399 an address, and the. 313 00:16:55.279 --> 00:16:56.840 Words the caller used. 314 00:16:57.679 --> 00:17:00.240 Every one of them still has to be answered, because 315 00:17:00.279 --> 00:17:02.799 the night of department decides not to roll is the 316 00:17:02.919 --> 00:17:07.359 night something is actually out there. On Wednesday, the nineteenth 317 00:17:07.519 --> 00:17:10.119 Ward quit answering calls one at a time and put 318 00:17:10.119 --> 00:17:14.240 together a posse. Twenty men spread out with walkie talkies, 319 00:17:14.440 --> 00:17:16.920 and they combed that ridge end to end and made 320 00:17:16.920 --> 00:17:19.880 three passes up the hill. They found an old dump 321 00:17:19.920 --> 00:17:22.880 that had been dug up recently, with rubbish strewn around. 322 00:17:23.519 --> 00:17:26.480 And they found two dog graves that had been opened, 323 00:17:26.799 --> 00:17:31.039 with the bones scattered. Nobody has ever explained that dogs 324 00:17:31.119 --> 00:17:35.119 dig sure, and Missouri has never had a shortage of coyotes. 325 00:17:35.799 --> 00:17:37.559 A man with a shovel and a bad sense of 326 00:17:37.599 --> 00:17:39.720 humor is never off the table in the middle of 327 00:17:39.759 --> 00:17:42.559 a monster flap. But that town had just spent a 328 00:17:42.599 --> 00:17:45.839 week talking about missing dogs and about a creature carrying 329 00:17:45.920 --> 00:17:48.599 a dead one, and then a search party walked up 330 00:17:48.599 --> 00:17:51.480 the hill and found two dog graves opened, and I've 331 00:17:51.519 --> 00:17:53.720 never been able to file that anywhere comfortable. 332 00:17:54.440 --> 00:17:55.640 Ward told the press. 333 00:17:55.400 --> 00:17:58.240 They hadn't found a thing, and he hoped that ended it, 334 00:17:58.960 --> 00:18:01.720 but it didn't end it. Searchers went back over the 335 00:18:01.720 --> 00:18:04.880 same ground the next day and found trampled brush, signs 336 00:18:04.920 --> 00:18:08.680 of digging tracks better than ten inches long, and handprints 337 00:18:08.720 --> 00:18:11.720 pressed into hard, dry soil that the men out there 338 00:18:11.759 --> 00:18:15.200 figured would have taken enormous pressure to make. They got 339 00:18:15.240 --> 00:18:17.920 the smell again, close enough that they thought the thing 340 00:18:18.039 --> 00:18:22.079 was standing right there with them, and they saw nothing around. 341 00:18:22.079 --> 00:18:25.079 Then Edgar took a Chicago reporter named Richard Crow up 342 00:18:25.119 --> 00:18:27.519 the hill, and Crow rode up a set of tracks. 343 00:18:27.559 --> 00:18:31.000 The two of them found together human looking prints, one 344 00:18:31.000 --> 00:18:33.920 of them ten inches long and five wide, even with 345 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:37.720 the heel impression incomplete. There had been no rain in 346 00:18:37.759 --> 00:18:40.200 ten days, and the two of them figured better than 347 00:18:40.200 --> 00:18:42.640 two hundred pounds of pressure would have been needed to 348 00:18:42.640 --> 00:18:46.799 make a print in ground that hard. By the twenty third, 349 00:18:46.839 --> 00:18:49.559 the Post Dispatch was reporting that police had sealed off 350 00:18:49.559 --> 00:18:52.720 two hundred acres of woods while about twenty five hunters 351 00:18:52.720 --> 00:18:55.279 went through it. A good many of them expecting to 352 00:18:55.319 --> 00:18:58.480 turn up a black bear. Some accounts put one hundred 353 00:18:58.559 --> 00:18:59.759 armed men on that hill. 354 00:18:59.559 --> 00:19:00.319 At the peak of it. 355 00:19:00.880 --> 00:19:03.039 The creature in the town's mouth was getting bigger the 356 00:19:03.119 --> 00:19:06.519 whole time. It went from six or seven feet to twelve. 357 00:19:07.079 --> 00:19:10.599 It picked up clawed hands. Its eyes were red in 358 00:19:10.680 --> 00:19:14.960 one telling, orange in another, green in a third, and 359 00:19:15.039 --> 00:19:17.400 somebody started a story that the thing had lifted the 360 00:19:17.400 --> 00:19:20.200 back end of an automobile and dragged it into a ditch. 361 00:19:21.039 --> 00:19:23.599 Eight days in and the town was producing a tall 362 00:19:23.640 --> 00:19:27.880 tail rumor was out running report. Ward was worried about 363 00:19:27.920 --> 00:19:30.960 something more immediate than the record. He said out loud 364 00:19:31.039 --> 00:19:32.759 that people were going to go up that hill with 365 00:19:32.799 --> 00:19:35.279 guns looking for this thing, and somebody was going to 366 00:19:35.279 --> 00:19:35.799 get shot. 367 00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:37.519 Gus Artists. 368 00:19:37.799 --> 00:19:41.079 The state conservation agent working with him, said much the same, 369 00:19:41.720 --> 00:19:43.640 that he hoped it would die down before a bunch 370 00:19:43.680 --> 00:19:47.319 of adventure seekers overran the place. They were both right 371 00:19:47.359 --> 00:19:50.519 to worry. That's not a monster problem. That's a Tuesday 372 00:19:50.599 --> 00:19:53.960 night problem, and it's why law enforcement hates a public 373 00:19:54.000 --> 00:19:58.480 panic more than almost anything. Ward had an unknown number 374 00:19:58.559 --> 00:20:01.839 of armed civilians moving through dark timber at night on 375 00:20:01.920 --> 00:20:04.839 a hill above a town all of them looking for 376 00:20:04.920 --> 00:20:09.000 a large dark shape, so Ward barricaded the hill. He 377 00:20:09.079 --> 00:20:11.119 said they'd been up there and were convinced there was 378 00:20:11.160 --> 00:20:14.400 nothing there. Now he allowed that kids would get up 379 00:20:14.440 --> 00:20:17.200 there at night anyway, and then he gave his own 380 00:20:17.279 --> 00:20:20.319 theory of the case that kids making noises was more 381 00:20:20.359 --> 00:20:24.039 than likely. How the whole thing started. Friday night, July 382 00:20:24.119 --> 00:20:28.119 twenty first, Elis Minor, sixty three years old, was sitting 383 00:20:28.200 --> 00:20:30.160 alone in front of his cabin on the River Road 384 00:20:30.240 --> 00:20:33.200 north of town when his bird dog started to growl. 385 00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:36.599 Miner got his big hunting flashlight and put the beam 386 00:20:36.640 --> 00:20:39.920 out toward the road, and it was standing there. He 387 00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:43.119 told a United Press International reporter he couldn't see its 388 00:20:43.119 --> 00:20:46.240 eyes or its face because the hair came down about 389 00:20:46.240 --> 00:20:48.960 to its hind parts. As soon as he threw the 390 00:20:49.039 --> 00:20:51.960 light on it, it whirled and took off. He didn't 391 00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:55.759 call the police, He called GUS artists the conservation officer. 392 00:20:56.559 --> 00:20:59.680 Another sighting from that stretch belongs to Richard Allan Murray, 393 00:21:00.319 --> 00:21:02.519 chief of the local fire department and a member of 394 00:21:02.519 --> 00:21:06.759 the city council. Murray reported driving along a creek bed 395 00:21:06.759 --> 00:21:10.240 and putting his headlights on a large, upright creature he 396 00:21:10.279 --> 00:21:12.319 had to go to work the next morning. He had 397 00:21:12.319 --> 00:21:14.559 to sit in meetings with people who'd needle him about 398 00:21:14.559 --> 00:21:16.599 it for the rest of his life, and he told 399 00:21:16.640 --> 00:21:21.160 it anyway. Then the investigators arrived. Hayden Hughes ran an 400 00:21:21.160 --> 00:21:25.079 outfit out of Oklahoma City called the International Unidentified Flying 401 00:21:25.160 --> 00:21:28.359