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 --> 00:00:32.320 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 00:01:02.920 --> 00:01:05.640 The road into southern Illinois drops off flat and goes 14 00:01:05.680 --> 00:01:08.159 green in a hurry. You come down out of the 15 00:01:08.159 --> 00:01:11.439 corn country, up north, and somewhere past Carbondale, the land 16 00:01:11.480 --> 00:01:15.519 stops behaving like the Midwest you pictured. It buckles, it 17 00:01:15.560 --> 00:01:19.560 grows timber. The Shawnee National Forest sprawls across the bottom 18 00:01:19.560 --> 00:01:22.040 of the state like a thumb pressed into wet clay, 19 00:01:22.640 --> 00:01:25.760 and the rivers down there run slow and brown and old. 20 00:01:26.359 --> 00:01:30.760 The big Muddy, the Ohio, the Mississippi, folding everything together 21 00:01:30.840 --> 00:01:35.719 at the southern tip. This is bottomland floodplain, the kind 22 00:01:35.760 --> 00:01:37.640 of country where the trees come right up to the 23 00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:40.879 back of a man's house and the dark starts about 24 00:01:40.879 --> 00:01:44.280 four feet past his porch light. Most of the cryptid 25 00:01:44.280 --> 00:01:46.599 country we've driven through on this trip has handed us 26 00:01:46.599 --> 00:01:50.040 the usual goods. A shape in the fog, a track 27 00:01:50.120 --> 00:01:53.359 that washes out by morning, a sound nobody can place, 28 00:01:53.400 --> 00:01:58.599 and nobody can prove good campfire material, thin evidence. Illinois 29 00:01:58.680 --> 00:02:01.319 is going to be different. What happened in this state 30 00:02:01.359 --> 00:02:03.280 across a few short years at the start of the 31 00:02:03.359 --> 00:02:07.959 nineteen seventies doesn't fit the fog in shadow mold in Illinois, 32 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:11.199 the creatures came up onto porches. One of them scratched 33 00:02:11.240 --> 00:02:14.639 the siding off a man's house out in the river bottoms. 34 00:02:14.639 --> 00:02:18.080 They left footprints that state troopers and game wardens measured 35 00:02:18.080 --> 00:02:21.719 and photographed. More than one of them took gunfire from 36 00:02:21.759 --> 00:02:25.840 more than one shooter and walked off anyway. Armed men 37 00:02:25.879 --> 00:02:29.039 poured into the woods after them by the hundreds. A 38 00:02:29.159 --> 00:02:32.280 radio newsman got one on tape, and a trained police 39 00:02:32.319 --> 00:02:34.840 dog tracked another one to the door of an empty barn, 40 00:02:35.479 --> 00:02:38.800 and the strangest of the whole bunch came on three legs. 41 00:02:39.240 --> 00:02:40.840 We've got a lot of ground to cover here, so 42 00:02:40.879 --> 00:02:43.879 I'll tell you up front where we're going. The headliner 43 00:02:43.960 --> 00:02:45.560 is the thing that came out of the dark in 44 00:02:45.599 --> 00:02:49.000 a little farm town called Enfield, a creature so far 45 00:02:49.159 --> 00:02:51.240 off the map of anything we have a name for 46 00:02:51.360 --> 00:02:53.800 that the people who saw it could only describe it 47 00:02:53.840 --> 00:02:58.360 by counting its legs. But Enfield didn't happen in a vacuum. 48 00:02:58.599 --> 00:03:00.919 For a stretch of about four years, on either side 49 00:03:00.919 --> 00:03:03.319 of it, this whole state caught a kind of fever, 50 00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:07.319 and town after town reported a big, hairy, upright thing 51 00:03:07.439 --> 00:03:11.319 walking out of its river bottoms. After we're done in Enfield, 52 00:03:11.319 --> 00:03:13.719 we'll back up to where that fever started, in a 53 00:03:13.759 --> 00:03:16.560 town called Farmer City, and then we'll run the way 54 00:03:16.639 --> 00:03:19.280 forward through two more panics that wrote themselves into the 55 00:03:19.319 --> 00:03:21.919 police record while the rest of the country was busy 56 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:25.599 losing its mind over Watergate. So pull off the highway 57 00:03:25.639 --> 00:03:28.680 with me. We're rolling into White County, Illinois in the 58 00:03:28.680 --> 00:03:31.800 spring of nineteen seventy three, and a man named Henry 59 00:03:32.039 --> 00:03:34.439 is about to hear something scratching at his front door. 60 00:03:35.360 --> 00:03:38.719 Enfield sits in White County, down in the southeastern corner 61 00:03:38.759 --> 00:03:41.479 of the state, close enough to the Indiana line that 62 00:03:41.520 --> 00:03:43.599 you could throw a rock at it on a clear day. 63 00:03:44.520 --> 00:03:46.680 In nineteen seventy three, it was a town of a 64 00:03:46.719 --> 00:03:49.560 few hundred people, the kind of place built around a 65 00:03:49.560 --> 00:03:52.599 grain elevator and a couple of churches, and the railroad 66 00:03:52.599 --> 00:03:55.599 that ran through the middle of it. The Louisville and 67 00:03:55.680 --> 00:03:58.680 Nashville line cut right past the houses on the edge 68 00:03:58.680 --> 00:04:01.560 of town, and on the side of those tracks, the 69 00:04:01.560 --> 00:04:05.319 brush went thick and the timber closed in. People down 70 00:04:05.319 --> 00:04:09.000 there hunted, they farmed. They knew their woods the way 71 00:04:09.039 --> 00:04:11.400 you know the layout of your own kitchen in the dark, 72 00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:14.800 which is to say they didn't spook easy, and they 73 00:04:14.840 --> 00:04:17.480 didn't generally call the state police on account of a noise. 74 00:04:18.519 --> 00:04:21.040 The first instinct with the story this strange is to 75 00:04:21.079 --> 00:04:24.759 assume the witnesses were just excitable or looking for attention. 76 00:04:25.680 --> 00:04:28.240 But the country they lived in didn't typically grow those 77 00:04:28.279 --> 00:04:31.600 types of people. The other thing to understand is the 78 00:04:31.680 --> 00:04:36.240 year nineteen seventy three was a strange season in American life. 79 00:04:36.600 --> 00:04:38.480 And I don't just mean the long hair and the 80 00:04:38.480 --> 00:04:42.120 gas lines. The country was coming apart at the seams 81 00:04:42.160 --> 00:04:46.160 of its own trust. The Watergate hearings were on every 82 00:04:46.199 --> 00:04:50.040 television in America that summer. People had stopped believing the 83 00:04:50.079 --> 00:04:53.319 men in charge, and once a population stops believing the 84 00:04:53.319 --> 00:04:56.600 official version of reality, it gets a lot more willing 85 00:04:56.639 --> 00:05:00.639 to believe in the unofficial one. Across the River Missouri, 86 00:05:00.759 --> 00:05:03.800 just the year before, a creature called Momo had panicked 87 00:05:03.800 --> 00:05:06.800 the little town of Louisiana, Missouri, with a string of 88 00:05:06.839 --> 00:05:10.800 sightings of a big, foul smelling, hairy thing. A few 89 00:05:10.879 --> 00:05:13.839 years before that, down the Ohio River in West Virginia, 90 00:05:14.319 --> 00:05:18.000 there'd been the mothman business. The Midwest in those years 91 00:05:18.079 --> 00:05:21.399 was primed for a monster. The soil was ready, and 92 00:05:21.519 --> 00:05:24.000 an infield on the evening of April twenty fifth, it 93 00:05:24.079 --> 00:05:27.079 grew one. The first person to meet it was a boy. 94 00:05:27.600 --> 00:05:29.800 His name was Greg Garrett, and he was about ten 95 00:05:29.920 --> 00:05:32.199 years old, and on that evening he was out in 96 00:05:32.199 --> 00:05:36.000 his own backyard doing an ordinary chore. Most accounts have 97 00:05:36.079 --> 00:05:38.759 him out feeding the family dogs as the light went down. 98 00:05:39.399 --> 00:05:41.680 He was a child finishing a task he'd finished one 99 00:05:41.720 --> 00:05:45.519 hundred times before. In a yard he could have crossed, blindfolded. 100 00:05:46.279 --> 00:05:49.000 Something came at him out of the dusk. Greg said 101 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:52.319 it stepped on his feet, not pushed him, not grabbed him, 102 00:05:52.639 --> 00:05:55.240 not bit him. It came up to him and it 103 00:05:55.279 --> 00:05:57.120 put its weight down on his feet with what he 104 00:05:57.199 --> 00:06:00.920 described as clawed foot like appendages, and the pressure of 105 00:06:00.959 --> 00:06:04.079 it tore his tennis shoes apart. He looked down at 106 00:06:04.120 --> 00:06:06.680 a thing that did not match anything in his ten 107 00:06:06.800 --> 00:06:11.600 years of being alive. Grayish skin, by his account, slick 108 00:06:12.120 --> 00:06:14.920 like it had come up out of water, short claws, 109 00:06:15.560 --> 00:06:18.319 reddish eyes, and legs that didn't add up to a 110 00:06:18.399 --> 00:06:21.920 number a person expects an animal to have. He got loose. 111 00:06:22.480 --> 00:06:25.399 He ran for the house, screaming, and he made it inside, 112 00:06:25.720 --> 00:06:28.399 and his ruined shoes came in with him. A ten 113 00:06:28.480 --> 00:06:30.720 year old comes through the door with shredded sneakers and 114 00:06:30.759 --> 00:06:33.399 a story about a three legged thing with red eyes, 115 00:06:33.600 --> 00:06:36.279 and at first blush, that's not a tale a kid 116 00:06:36.319 --> 00:06:39.519 tells to get praised. At first blush. It reads like 117 00:06:39.560 --> 00:06:41.959 a kid who's had something happen to him that he 118 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:45.160 can't find better words for. Except here's where I have 119 00:06:45.199 --> 00:06:47.000 to put both feet on the ground and tell you 120 00:06:47.040 --> 00:06:51.040 the part. The legend usually skips. Greg Garrett later took 121 00:06:51.079 --> 00:06:55.240 it back when researchers from Western Illinois University came around 122 00:06:55.240 --> 00:06:57.519 and talked to him. The boy told them his report 123 00:06:57.560 --> 00:06:59.759 had been a put on, a way to tease mister 124 00:07:00.160 --> 00:07:02.160 Daniel and have a little fun at the expense of 125 00:07:02.160 --> 00:07:05.040 an out of town newsman who'd come sniffing for a story. 126 00:07:06.040 --> 00:07:08.920 So the first encounter in the most famous monster case 127 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:12.079 in Illinois history comes to us from a child who, 128 00:07:12.319 --> 00:07:15.639 by his own later account, made it up. As a 129 00:07:15.680 --> 00:07:18.160 man who took statements for a living, I'll tell you, 130 00:07:18.240 --> 00:07:22.560 a recantation is its own slippery animal. Kids recant true 131 00:07:22.600 --> 00:07:26.120 things all the time when the attention turns scary, when 132 00:07:26.120 --> 00:07:29.199 a parent gets angry, when a serious faced adult from 133 00:07:29.240 --> 00:07:31.839 a university makes it clear there's a right answer and 134 00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:35.360 a wrong one. I've watched real victims take back real 135 00:07:35.399 --> 00:07:38.480 accounts just to make the question stop. So a kid 136 00:07:38.560 --> 00:07:40.600 saying he made it up is not the same as 137 00:07:40.720 --> 00:07:44.079 proof he made it up. But it's not nothing, and 138 00:07:44.160 --> 00:07:47.519 an honest man weighs it as what it is. What 139 00:07:47.560 --> 00:07:50.879 it does, in my book is knock the Garrett encounter 140 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:54.279 down from evidence to a question mark. I can't lean 141 00:07:54.319 --> 00:07:57.360 on those shredded shoes the way I wanted to, which 142 00:07:57.399 --> 00:07:59.879 is fine, because the case for something real and in 143 00:08:00.079 --> 00:08:02.600 field doesn't just rest on a ten year old. It 144 00:08:02.639 --> 00:08:05.000 also rests on the grown man half a mile away 145 00:08:05.480 --> 00:08:09.439 who half an hour later opened his front door. That's right, 146 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:12.560 the thing came back, and this time it picked the 147 00:08:12.560 --> 00:08:16.759 wrong house. Henry McDaniel was, by every account I've read, 148 00:08:17.040 --> 00:08:19.279 about the dullest man you could pick for the center 149 00:08:19.319 --> 00:08:22.720 of a monster story. He was a straight laced, quiet 150 00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:25.279 fellow who didn't drink and didn't spin yarns and had 151 00:08:25.319 --> 00:08:28.199 nothing to sell. The police who dealt with him put 152 00:08:28.199 --> 00:08:30.360 it on the record that they found him rational and 153 00:08:30.480 --> 00:08:33.639 sober in how he gave his account, which is the 154 00:08:33.720 --> 00:08:36.240 kind of line a department writes down when they're a 155 00:08:36.240 --> 00:08:39.000 little surprised that the man telling them about a monster 156 00:08:39.320 --> 00:08:42.360 seems so ordinary. He and his wife had been out 157 00:08:42.360 --> 00:08:45.080 that evening, and they came home to find their two kids, 158 00:08:45.480 --> 00:08:48.399 Lil and the younger Henry, worked up about something that 159 00:08:48.440 --> 00:08:50.799 had been scratching and clawing at the door while they 160 00:08:50.799 --> 00:08:54.360 were alone in the house. Kids get worked up. Henry 161 00:08:54.360 --> 00:08:57.759 probably told them to settle down. Then he heard it himself. 162 00:08:58.279 --> 00:09:01.679 A scratching at the front door. He figured a stray dog, 163 00:09:02.120 --> 00:09:05.039 maybe a cat. He went and opened the door the 164 00:09:05.080 --> 00:09:08.679 way any of us would expecting an animal, expecting to 165 00:09:08.679 --> 00:09:11.399 show it off and get back to his evening. What 166 00:09:11.519 --> 00:09:13.679 stood there was about four and a half feet tall, 167 00:09:13.919 --> 00:09:18.440 grayish and built wrong. Henry counted three legs, a short 168 00:09:18.480 --> 00:09:22.279 squat body, two stubby little arms held up close the 169 00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:25.559 way a smaller animal holds its fore paws, and two 170 00:09:25.639 --> 00:09:29.320 eyes the size of flashlight lenses, glowing a pinkish red 171 00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:31.879 back at him out of the dark. He had the 172 00:09:31.879 --> 00:09:34.240 presence of mind to do exactly what you'd hope a 173 00:09:34.279 --> 00:09:36.360 man would do. With his wife and his children in 174 00:09:36.360 --> 00:09:39.679 the house behind him. He slammed the door. He didn't 175 00:09:39.679 --> 00:09:43.159 stand there frozen. He went to the bedroom, came back 176 00:09:43.159 --> 00:09:45.960 with a flashlight and a twenty two caliber pistol, and 177 00:09:46.039 --> 00:09:49.120 opened the door again. The thing was still out there, 178 00:09:49.559 --> 00:09:52.960 maybe twelve feet off the house. Now. Henry raised the 179 00:09:52.960 --> 00:09:56.720 pistol and fired four times. He said afterward, flat as 180 00:09:56.759 --> 00:09:59.279 you please, that on the first shot he was sure 181 00:09:59.279 --> 00:10:03.240 he'd hit it. He'd grown up with guns at twelve 182 00:10:03.240 --> 00:10:05.639 feet A man like Henry does not miss a target 183 00:10:05.879 --> 00:10:09.080 the size of a large dog four times running. The 184 00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:12.320 creature did not fall. It did not bleed that anybody 185 00:10:12.399 --> 00:10:16.000 could find. What it did was hiss at him, a 186 00:10:16.039 --> 00:10:19.120 sound he compared to a wildcat. And then it turned 187 00:10:19.159 --> 00:10:22.960 and left in a way no wildcat moves. Henry watched 188 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:25.879 it cover the distance toward the railroad embankment in long 189 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:30.080 bounding leaps. By his measurement, it crossed about fifty feet 190 00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:33.279 in three jumps. Then it was gone into the brush, 191 00:10:33.360 --> 00:10:36.360 past the L and N tracks, the same line that 192 00:10:36.519 --> 00:10:38.879 ran behind half the houses on that edge of town. 193 00:10:39.600 --> 00:10:42.759 Henry called the state police. Here's where the story earns 194 00:10:42.799 --> 00:10:45.720 its keep, and here's where my old training starts pulling 195 00:10:45.759 --> 00:10:49.320 at me. The Illinois State Police came out. This is 196 00:10:49.360 --> 00:10:51.600 not a sheriff's deputy from down the road taking a 197 00:10:51.639 --> 00:10:55.360 neighbor's word for it. These were troopers, and troopers in 198 00:10:55.440 --> 00:10:57.960 nineteen seventy three were not in the habit of riding 199 00:10:58.039 --> 00:11:01.600 up monster reports for fun. They walked the scene with 200 00:11:01.639 --> 00:11:05.879 flashlights and they found two things. The first was the sighting. 201 00:11:06.399 --> 00:11:09.440 There were fresh scratch marks gouged into the outside of 202 00:11:09.480 --> 00:11:13.720 McDaniel's house, consistent with claws, located where Henry said the 203 00:11:13.759 --> 00:11:16.120 thing had been working at the wall before he ever 204 00:11:16.159 --> 00:11:20.200 opened the door. The second was the tracks in the 205 00:11:20.200 --> 00:11:23.639 soft ground around the house. The troopers found prints. They 206 00:11:23.679 --> 00:11:26.799 were described as resembling a dog's but wrong in a 207 00:11:26.840 --> 00:11:31.279 specific way. Where a dog leaves four toes. These prints 208 00:11:31.320 --> 00:11:34.759 showed six toepads. Two of the prints measured about four 209 00:11:34.759 --> 00:11:38.200 inches across, and the third print, the one you'd expect 210 00:11:38.200 --> 00:11:41.320 from that strange third leg, came in smaller than the 211 00:11:41.360 --> 00:11:44.840 other two. Sit with that detail for a second, because 212 00:11:44.840 --> 00:11:48.320 it's the kind of thing a liar doesn't think to include. 213 00:11:48.360 --> 00:11:51.799 A man inventing a monster gives it symmetry, he gives 214 00:11:51.799 --> 00:11:54.759 it a matched set of feet. He doesn't think to 215 00:11:54.840 --> 00:11:58.039 make the third footprint a different size from the other two, 216 00:11:58.440 --> 00:12:01.559 because that's an awkward, specif hard to explain piece of 217 00:12:01.600 --> 00:12:04.960 evidence that doesn't make the story prettier, It only makes 218 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:09.320 it weirder. In my experience, the weird specific detail that 219 00:12:09.360 --> 00:12:12.519 doesn't help the storyteller is usually the detail that's real. 220 00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:16.360 I'm not telling you the troopers found bigfoot. I'm telling 221 00:12:16.360 --> 00:12:19.840 you that trained law enforcement officers documented physical damage to 222 00:12:19.879 --> 00:12:22.759 a structure and anomaloust tracks in the ground at the 223 00:12:22.799 --> 00:12:25.440 scene of a reported attack, and that the attack had 224 00:12:25.480 --> 00:12:28.120 already produced a second piece of physical evidence half an 225 00:12:28.120 --> 00:12:31.320 hour earlier, in the form of a child's shredded shoes 226 00:12:31.399 --> 00:12:34.840 a few houses over. As a former officer, I can 227 00:12:34.840 --> 00:12:36.919 tell you that if you handed me that case file 228 00:12:37.000 --> 00:12:40.080 with the word monster stripped out of it, I'd still 229 00:12:40.080 --> 00:12:42.879 have to write down that something physical was present at 230 00:12:42.879 --> 00:12:46.360 that location that night. The trouble is the word monster 231 00:12:46.679 --> 00:12:49.360 doesn't strip out, and once it was in the air, 232 00:12:49.799 --> 00:12:53.600 Infield stopped being a quiet farm town. The thing about 233 00:12:53.600 --> 00:12:55.919 a small town monster panic is that it runs on 234 00:12:55.960 --> 00:12:59.320 its own fuel once you light it. Henry McDaniel could 235 00:12:59.320 --> 00:13:02.519 not keep his mouth shut, and you can't really blame him. 236 00:13:02.879 --> 00:13:05.279 A man has the strangest night of his life and 237 00:13:05.360 --> 00:13:07.960 he wants to be believed, so he tells the story. 238 00:13:08.480 --> 00:13:11.080 He told it to the newspapers, He told it to 239 00:13:11.120 --> 00:13:14.840 anybody who'd listen. He told one reporter that if anybody 240 00:13:14.879 --> 00:13:17.639 ever did catch the thing, they'd find more than one 241 00:13:17.639 --> 00:13:19.559 of them, and they wouldn't turn out to be from 242 00:13:19.600 --> 00:13:23.639 this planet. And the story traveled because a three legged, 243 00:13:23.679 --> 00:13:26.080 red eyed thing that shrugs off twenty two rounds is 244 00:13:26.159 --> 00:13:29.840 exactly the kind of story that travels. The White County 245 00:13:29.879 --> 00:13:33.000 sheriff at the time was a man named Roy Pochard Junior, 246 00:13:33.480 --> 00:13:35.840 and he watched his county fill up with strangers, and 247 00:13:35.879 --> 00:13:39.399 he got fed up fast. At one point, Postchard threatened 248 00:13:39.399 --> 00:13:41.639 to have McDaniel locked up if he didn't quit telling 249 00:13:41.679 --> 00:13:44.799 people about the creature. So the official response to a 250 00:13:44.840 --> 00:13:47.639 citizen who'd been attacked at his own front door was 251 00:13:47.679 --> 00:13:50.799 a threat of arrest for talking about it. The sheriff 252 00:13:50.879 --> 00:13:54.120 wasn't accusing Henry of lying exactly. He was trying to 253 00:13:54.159 --> 00:13:56.360 put the lid back on a town that was boiling over. 254 00:13:56.919 --> 00:13:59.919 It didn't work. By then, the lid was long gone 255 00:14:00.240 --> 00:14:03.600 because the creature wasn't done. About two weeks after the 256 00:14:03.639 --> 00:14:06.360 first encounter, on the night that most accounts place around 257 00:14:06.399 --> 00:14:09.440 May sixth, Henry was woken up in the small hours 258 00:14:09.840 --> 00:14:12.399 around three in the morning by every dog in the 259 00:14:12.440 --> 00:14:15.519 neighborhood going off at once. He got up and looked 260 00:14:15.519 --> 00:14:18.320 out toward the railroad tracks, and there it was again, 261 00:14:18.879 --> 00:14:22.240 out in the dark, moving along the rail line. This 262 00:14:22.360 --> 00:14:26.000 time Henry didn't shoot, He just watched it. In his 263 00:14:26.039 --> 00:14:29.639 own words, it wasn't in any hurry. It started on 264 00:14:29.679 --> 00:14:33.240 down the railroad track and walked off unbothered, the way 265 00:14:33.279 --> 00:14:35.799 you or I might stroll home from a late shift. 266 00:14:36.720 --> 00:14:39.200 There's something about that image that I find sticks with 267 00:14:39.240 --> 00:14:42.000 you more than the attack does. The first time it 268 00:14:42.039 --> 00:14:44.679 came at a man's house and took fire. The second 269 00:14:44.679 --> 00:14:46.519 time it just walked the tracks in the middle of 270 00:14:46.519 --> 00:14:49.159 the night like it owned them. By now the town 271 00:14:49.279 --> 00:14:54.559 was overrun. Reporters, curiosity seekers, and armed men poured into Enfield, 272 00:14:55.440 --> 00:14:57.720 and on the night of May eighth, the armed men 273 00:14:57.799 --> 00:15:00.600 became the problem the sheriff had been worried about. Stay 274 00:15:00.600 --> 00:15:04.159 tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after 275 00:15:04.200 --> 00:15:08.759 these messages. A group of five young men were out 276 00:15:08.840 --> 00:15:11.639 hunting the creature in the underbrush when they opened fire 277 00:15:11.720 --> 00:15:15.279 on something they described as a gray, hairy shape. Two 278 00:15:15.360 --> 00:15:18.000 of them were sure they hit it. Whatever it was, 279 00:15:18.080 --> 00:15:21.440 took off faster than a man could run, and got away. 280 00:15:22.279 --> 00:15:25.559 Deputy Sheriff Jim Clark arrested all five of them, charging 281 00:15:25.639 --> 00:15:28.440 them as threats to public safety and tacking on hunting 282 00:15:28.559 --> 00:15:32.159 violations for good measure. The judge who heard it didn't 283 00:15:32.200 --> 00:15:35.399 mince words. He figured the five of them were mostly 284 00:15:35.440 --> 00:15:38.919 out to raise hell and maybe they were. But here's 285 00:15:38.919 --> 00:15:41.159 the part that doesn't get explained away by a couple 286 00:15:41.159 --> 00:15:44.200 of board kids with rifles. They were the second and 287 00:15:44.279 --> 00:15:47.000 third shooters in two weeks to claim they'd hit the 288 00:15:47.039 --> 00:15:49.480 thing and watched it leave under its own power. Anyway, 289 00:15:50.279 --> 00:15:52.679 out of all the people who chased the Infield horror, 290 00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:55.799 the one with the most interesting evidence was a radio man. 291 00:15:56.519 --> 00:15:58.919 His name was Rick Rainbow, and he was the news 292 00:15:58.919 --> 00:16:02.120 director for a station out of Kocomo, Indiana, a place 293 00:16:02.159 --> 00:16:07.200 called WWKI. Rainbow drove down into Illinois to cover the story, 294 00:16:07.559 --> 00:16:09.559 and like a lot of newsmen, he ended up part 295 00:16:09.600 --> 00:16:12.240 of it. He and three other people went searching the 296 00:16:12.320 --> 00:16:15.559 area where the creature had been reported, near an abandoned 297 00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:19.080 house not far from the McDaniel place, and they saw something. 298 00:16:19.879 --> 00:16:23.240 What Rainbow and his companions described was a gray figure 299 00:16:23.639 --> 00:16:26.759 stooped over somewhere around five and a half feet tall, 300 00:16:27.159 --> 00:16:29.799 moving fast through the woods and the brush near that 301 00:16:29.840 --> 00:16:33.120 empty house. It didn't move like a person caught out 302 00:16:33.159 --> 00:16:35.879 where he shouldn't be. It moved with a speed that 303 00:16:35.960 --> 00:16:39.279 put four grown witnesses on edge, and then it was gone. 304 00:16:40.159 --> 00:16:42.759 But Rainbow had a tape recorder running and he came 305 00:16:42.759 --> 00:16:46.120 away with audio. The sound he captured has been described 306 00:16:46.159 --> 00:16:48.200 a few different ways by the people who've heard it, 307 00:16:48.639 --> 00:16:51.639 and none of the descriptions are comfortable. Some say it 308 00:16:51.679 --> 00:16:54.720 was like a woman screaming. Some say it sat right 309 00:16:54.759 --> 00:16:57.559 between a woman's scream and the giggle of an infant, 310 00:16:57.759 --> 00:17:00.320 which is about as weird a combination of sound as 311 00:17:00.360 --> 00:17:04.039 you can put together in your head. A wailing, screeching 312 00:17:04.119 --> 00:17:08.000 cry that didn't have a known animal behind it. Rainbow 313 00:17:08.079 --> 00:17:11.319 believed he'd recorded the thing itself. Now, I want to 314 00:17:11.319 --> 00:17:14.759 be honest about what a recording is and isn't. A 315 00:17:14.839 --> 00:17:18.039 tape doesn't show you a three legged creature. A tape 316 00:17:18.079 --> 00:17:21.920 shows you a sound. Sounds get misidentified all the time. 317 00:17:22.720 --> 00:17:26.240 Foxes screamed like murder victims. A screech owl in the 318 00:17:26.319 --> 00:17:29.480 dark will stand the hair up on your arms. I've 319 00:17:29.519 --> 00:17:31.720 spent enough nights in the woods to know the forest 320 00:17:31.759 --> 00:17:34.960 is full of noises that sound impossible until somebody tells 321 00:17:34.960 --> 00:17:37.240 you what made them. So I'm not going to stand 322 00:17:37.279 --> 00:17:40.319 here and tell you Rick Rainbow taped to monster. What 323 00:17:40.400 --> 00:17:42.680 I'll tell you is that a working news professional on 324 00:17:42.759 --> 00:17:46.119 the record with witnesses, went looking for this thing, saw 325 00:17:46.160 --> 00:17:49.359 a fast, gray figure near the location and brought back 326 00:17:49.440 --> 00:17:52.960 audio that nobody since has been able to comfortably file 327 00:17:53.319 --> 00:17:56.720 under any animal that's supposed to live in southern Illinois. 328 00:17:57.160 --> 00:17:59.640 That tape is part of why the most credentialed monster 329 00:17:59.720 --> 00:18:02.839 hunt in America got in his car and drove to Enfield. 330 00:18:03.720 --> 00:18:06.000 Lauren Coleman is a name you'll hear a lot if 331 00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:09.039 you spend any time in this field. He spent his 332 00:18:09.119 --> 00:18:12.920 life cataloging exactly these kinds of reports, and he founded 333 00:18:12.960 --> 00:18:18.200 the International Cryptozoology Museum up in Maine in nineteen seventy three. 334 00:18:18.240 --> 00:18:20.759 He was a young researcher, and he took the Enfield 335 00:18:20.799 --> 00:18:23.920 case seriously enough to travel there himself and work it 336 00:18:24.039 --> 00:18:27.720 like a case instead of a campfire story. Coleman did 337 00:18:27.720 --> 00:18:31.839 the legwork. He interviewed the witnesses, He examined the siding 338 00:18:31.880 --> 00:18:35.240 on McDaniel's house where the claw marks were. He walked 339 00:18:35.240 --> 00:18:38.279 the ground, and while he was out searching one of 340 00:18:38.319 --> 00:18:41.079 the areas where the creature had been reported, he heard 341 00:18:41.079 --> 00:18:45.720 something for himself. He's described hearing strange screeching, banshee like 342 00:18:45.799 --> 00:18:48.759 sounds out in that country, the same general kind of 343 00:18:48.799 --> 00:18:52.960 cry Rainbow had taped Coleman's own summary of his investigation 344 00:18:53.039 --> 00:18:55.880 has stuck with me because it's so honest. He said, 345 00:18:55.880 --> 00:18:59.319 he traveled to Enfield, interviewed the witnesses, looked at the 346 00:18:59.400 --> 00:19:04.240 damaged siding, heard the strange sounds, and walked away bewildered. 347 00:19:05.119 --> 00:19:08.000 That's a man who studies monsters for a living telling 348 00:19:08.039 --> 00:19:11.519 you he left without an answer. I respect that more 349 00:19:11.559 --> 00:19:15.279 than i'd respect a confident one. Coleman did flow to theory, 350 00:19:15.400 --> 00:19:17.799 and it's worth laying out because it's the most grounded 351 00:19:17.799 --> 00:19:20.960 one on the table. He's talked about a category of 352 00:19:21.000 --> 00:19:24.519 reports he calls bottom land apes smaller than the eight 353 00:19:24.559 --> 00:19:27.839 foot big Foot of the Pacific Northwest. These are creatures 354 00:19:27.880 --> 00:19:31.039 reported again and again out of the river bottom country 355 00:19:31.039 --> 00:19:34.680 of the American South and lower Midwest. Coleman has been 356 00:19:34.680 --> 00:19:37.440 careful to point out that Enfield's creature was reported at 357 00:19:37.440 --> 00:19:40.440 about four and a half feet, not the towering height 358 00:19:40.480 --> 00:19:43.839 people associate with sasquatch, which is one reason he didn't 359 00:19:43.880 --> 00:19:47.279 think the Infield horror was a bigfoot at all. He 360 00:19:47.400 --> 00:19:50.519 suggested it might have been a wild ape, possibly even 361 00:19:50.559 --> 00:19:54.480 an escape chimpanzee, something flesh and blood and out of place, 362 00:19:54.599 --> 00:19:57.799 rather than something out of another world. And that brings 363 00:19:57.880 --> 00:20:00.759 us to the rest of the theories, because Field collected 364 00:20:00.759 --> 00:20:05.160 them like burrs. One camp said, kangaroo, It sounds like 365 00:20:05.200 --> 00:20:07.480 a joke until you learn there was a genuine rash 366 00:20:07.480 --> 00:20:10.160 of out of place kangaroo sightings in the Midwest in 367 00:20:10.240 --> 00:20:13.599 that era, and a startled person seeing a gray, bounding 368 00:20:13.720 --> 00:20:16.240 upright animal in the dark could land on the wrong 369 00:20:16.279 --> 00:20:20.680 identification fast. A kangaroo covers ground and exactly the kind 370 00:20:20.720 --> 00:20:25.079 of long leaps Henry described. The trouble is a kangaroo 371 00:20:25.119 --> 00:20:28.480 has two legs and a tail, not three legs, and 372 00:20:28.519 --> 00:20:31.279 it doesn't scratch claw marks into siding or hiss like 373 00:20:31.279 --> 00:20:34.640 a wildcat, and it certainly isn't shrugging off pistol fire 374 00:20:34.680 --> 00:20:38.119 from twelve feet. Another camp said the whole thing was 375 00:20:38.240 --> 00:20:43.440 mass hysteria, what folkloret call social contagion. The idea is 376 00:20:43.480 --> 00:20:46.759 that one strange report in a primed community spreads like 377 00:20:46.799 --> 00:20:51.440 a cold People start interpreting ordinary nighttime sights and sounds 378 00:20:51.480 --> 00:20:54.279 through the new template, and pretty soon the whole town 379 00:20:54.359 --> 00:20:57.079 is seeing the monster because the whole town is looking 380 00:20:57.119 --> 00:21:00.880 for it. I'll give that theory. It's due. It explains 381 00:21:00.920 --> 00:21:04.039 the flood of reports that came after McDaniel went public. 382 00:21:04.720 --> 00:21:07.640 It explains the armed men in the brush shooting at shapes. 383 00:21:08.279 --> 00:21:11.480 What it doesn't explain is the start of it. Greg 384 00:21:11.519 --> 00:21:15.880 Garrett's shredded shoes and Henry McDaniel's gouged siding came before 385 00:21:15.920 --> 00:21:19.000 there was any contagion to catch. You can't blame a 386 00:21:19.039 --> 00:21:21.680 panic for the evidence that existed before the panic began. 387 00:21:22.480 --> 00:21:24.359 And then there was the camp that went all the 388 00:21:24.359 --> 00:21:28.039 way out. There were UFO sidings reported in the same region, 389 00:21:28.079 --> 00:21:31.119 in the same window, strange lights in the sky over 390 00:21:31.160 --> 00:21:34.000 that part of Illinois, and the people who track such 391 00:21:34.079 --> 00:21:36.599 things tied the creature to them and called it a 392 00:21:36.680 --> 00:21:41.079 visitor from somewhere else. Others working in much older tradition 393 00:21:41.440 --> 00:21:43.759 noticed that the things apparent habit of trying to get 394 00:21:43.799 --> 00:21:46.480 into people's homes lined up with what they considered the 395 00:21:46.519 --> 00:21:49.799 behavior of something demonic, and they read the whole affair 396 00:21:49.920 --> 00:21:53.079 as a spiritual attack. There was even a piece of 397 00:21:53.119 --> 00:21:56.839 local geography that fed all this. Not far off there's 398 00:21:56.839 --> 00:21:59.880 a stretch of country some folks called the Devil's Kitchen, 399 00:22:00.359 --> 00:22:03.640 tied in older tellings to bad ground and evil spirits. 400 00:22:04.079 --> 00:22:07.039 I'll tell you plainly where I land on that last category, 401 00:22:07.480 --> 00:22:09.640