Folklorists Charles E. Brown was an inveterate collector of monster tales. Many of the following stories are derived from his classic work Sea Monsters.
Elkhart Lake
A creature with "big jaws" and "flashing eyes" pulled a fisherman end over end into Elkhart Lake in the mid-1890s.
Lake Mendota
The scales of a sea serpent were found on Lake Mendota's Picnic Point in 1917. That fall, a fisherman angling off the point was startled when a "large snake-like head, with large jaws and blazing eyes" popped up from the depths less than a hundred feet away from where he was standing. And in that same area, a University of Wisconsin coed tanning on a dock reacted with a speed she didn't know she possessed when she turned over to yell at her boyfriend to stop tickling her feet, but instead witnessed the head and neck of a huge serpent whose long tongue was lapping at her toes. Bozho, as the marine anomaly was known locally, had a reputation as a prankster, overturning canoes and piers, chasing sailboats, and scaring swimmers half to death. Back in 1899, a group of ladies had spotted Bozho while they were out boating on the lake. They reported that the serpent's head, which reared some distance out of the water, was ten inches in diameter and that the end of its tail, decorated with two big horns, lashed the water into a frothy foam as the creature dove beneath the waves.
Lake Michigan
During one winter in the late 1990s, Kim, thirtysomething, was riding on a bus near Grant Park in Milwaukee when a movement in Lake Michigan caught her eye. Weaving in and out of broken chunks of ice was a dark object resembling the submerged roof of a Volkswagen Beetle. Kim immediately signaled for the bus to stop. She got off and, despite wearing a skirt and inappropriate shoes, went running through the snow to the water's edge to get a better look. The object appeared to be feeding as it moved farther out from shore.
Lake Monona
In June 1897, Eugene Heath of the Garr-Scott Company fired two rifle shots at a twenty-foot serpent plying the waters of Lake Monona, near Madison. The marine monster may have been responsible for swallowing a swimming dog a few days earlier.
Lake Waubesa
An Illinois resident who went rowing on Lake Waubesa in the 1920s claimed to have seen a serpent "sixty-seventy feet in length and of a dark green color" apparently sunning itself on the surface of the lake. In the same period, a couple swimming off Waubesa Beach were terrified when a creature with glittering eyes surfaced near them.
Lake Kegonsa
A "dragon" was frequently sighted during the 1920s in the waters of Lake Kegonsa, off both Colladay and Williamson points. Unlike the mild-mannered Bozho, this habitué of the deep was characterized as vengeful and destructive.
Pewaukee Lake
In the 1890s, a "huge green thing traveling like a gray streak" and "spouting water" was frequently reported near the resort hotels that at the time dotted the shores of Waukesha County's Pewaukee Lake. One man claimed he'd tried to spear the green leviathan, but his "weapon bounded back as though it had struck a rock or iron plate."
Red Cedar Lake
The famous sea serpent of Red Cedar Lake in Jefferson County was first seen by fishermen in 1891. One witness said it had a "very large head with protuberances like saw teeth on its back." It was fifty feet long.
Rock Lake
Not to be outdone by other Wisconsin lakes, Rock Lake in Jefferson County is the lair of a monster named Rocky. Although he became more benign with age, Rocky started his career much like the vengeful dragon of Lake Kegonsa. It was August 1882 that rowboat racers Ed McKenzie and D. W. Seybert spied what they thought was a floating log. However, as they approached the "log," it suddenly "manifested life," thrusting its "head about three feet out of the water" and opening "it's huge jaws about a foot or more" before diving out of sight. McKenzie screamed in terror as the creature resurfaced near his boat. Seybert yelled, "Strike him with the oar!" But McKenzie, terrified out of his wits, called in desperation to the group onshore. A Captain Wilson, shotgun at the ready, came to the rescue, but by then the monster had vanished, leaving the air "heavy with a most sickening odor."
That was not to be Rocky's only sortie. Passing boaters reported being hissed at by the monster form the rushes near the shore.
It's something that cannot be, and yet, there it stands. The paradox quickly overwhelms any rational mind.
A quick drubbing of two heavy feet on the pavement behind you, an impossible movement of hairy limbs to one side, and suddenly two lemon eyes fearlessly search your own with uncanny, brazen mockery. You're transfixed, chilled, and completely bewildered. Once those lemon eyes have transfixed you with their cogent stare for a few eternal moments, the creature's head snaps away; fangs glinting, leaving you dazed as its hulking from leaps into the brambles or hurdles a stone fence to drop twenty feet onto a creek bed. After a parting glimpse of matted dark fur, all you want is to be anywhere else. As your foot jams on the accelerator or you stumble into a run, willing your legs to hightail it in the opposite direction, you are desperately grateful to have survived this unholy meeting of strangers in the night.
After the night really is stranger if you live in Walworth County or Jefferson County.
The dark hours, the witching hours, are when the creature dubbed the Beast of Bray Road most often shows itself. This enigmatic "thing," as most witnesses tend to call it, was named after a country lane east of Elkhorn, a small town squarely in the center of Walworth County, where it was seen by the first witnesses to go public. Over the past six decades, it has shocked as many as three dozen area residents with its sudden, sporadic appearances.
The first known sighting was in 1936, when a security watchman at a convent and home for the developmentally disabled in Jefferson County made an unsettling discovery one night as the clock neared midnight. Straining to see in the shadows, Mark Schackelman thought he made out something digging in an old Native American burial mound behind the main building. Thinking it must be a dog, he trained his flashlight on the animal. With a shock, he realized that it was not a dog but a man-size, shaggy creature with pointed ears and three long claws on each hand. Years later, he told his son, Joseph, he considered it to be a "demon from hell."
Other sightings occurred throughout the '60s, '70s, and '80s in Jefferson and Walworth counties, with puzzled and frightened witnesses sometimes calling local police in an effort to find out what exactly they had seen. Unbeknownst to one another, surrounding communities whispered for years about a creature known by the local names Bluff Monster or the Eddy.
The whisperings became public for the first time in December 1991, when rumors began to circulate around Elkhorn. People claimed that a shaggy, manlike wolf-headed creature was haunting the cornfields and woods around Bray Road, a country byway several miles long and lined with farms owned by the same families for decades. Eyewitnesses were calling this creature a werewolf.
Jon Fredrickson, the county's animal control officer, used the "W" word on the manila file folder in which he stored all the queries trickling into his office. One story was from witness Lori Endrizzi, who saw the "manimal" kneeling by the side of the road and holding what looked like roadkill in its paws. Fredrickson speculated that perhaps the witness were saying a "deformed coyote." But Endrizzi insisted that if werewolves existed, this creature would be one.
As other witnesses began to speak up, it became apparent that the hairy phenomenon was not limited to Bray Road. In fact, the sightings went back decades and crossed county lines, meaning either that a reproducing family of such creatures existed or that the "thing" was very long-lived and able to travel great distances.
The witnesses, with one or two exceptions, seemed trustworthy. Most were reluctant, and many felt fear when recalling their encounters. There was no single "type" of witness either. The witnesses were male and female, children and the elderly, white-collar and blue-collar, and local folks as well as those just passing through. Almost all said something like, "I Know what I saw, and nothing is going to change that."
This descriptions were similar: height between five and seven feet; hairy shaggy and often extremely wild; coloration dark brown, sometimes gray or silver streaks or tips. Those who had a good look usually reported the creatures being like a wolf or German shepherd, with pointy ears, although some have claimed the head was apelike. The creature was sometimes seen standing on two feet, other times being on all fours. The most compelling characteristic, however, was its aggressive stare.
One witness, Williams Bay businessman Marvin Kirschnik, who came forward in 2003, was able to corroborate the other sightings with one of his own in 1981. HIs was unusual in that it had happened in broad daylight. Driving along Highway 11 near Bray Road one August afternoon, Kirschnik became aware of a creature staring at him from behind a fallen tree. He pulled over and scrutinized the creature from the window of his van for a good minute, he estimated, as it returned his gaze. Finally, totally unnerved by its stare and by his inability to identify the beast, Kirschnik sped off. But he made a drawing of it as soon as he got home. Its resemblance to the descriptions of other witnesses is remarkable, although Kirschnik's drawing was made then years before the newspaper story broke.
Does the Beast still prowl? Stories keep rolling in. However, most of the recent sightings have been in places other places than Bray Road, which hasn't had one since the early '90s. A woman saw the creature in Washington County in the summer of 2003, and in May 2004, a Madison man saw a strange dog-ape beast prowling a sidewalk about one a.m. in a dimly lit residential area. Some Illinois have also reported seeing it in four different places in recent months.
One woman who regularly saw what she called the Bluff Monster while growing up in southern Jefferson County gave a description that makes the Beast sound more like Bigfoot than Wolfman. There have been other witnesses who felt that the creature bore Yeti-like traits. A professional couple from Kenosha both saw a seven-foot-tall, almost classic Sasquatch-type creature hurl a bridge rail into Honey Lake in eastern Walworth County. Some cryptozoologists-those who study unknown animals-have speculated that the Beast may indeed be a smaller species of Bigfoot.
Of course, there have been sightings of various bipedal canines around the world and elsewhere in the United States, including the Michigan Dog Man flap in the mid-1980s. But the Beast of Bray Road remains unique for the number of sightings and the worldwide attention it has received. As to the true nature of the Beast, probably only time and perhaps a video or a lucky capture will solve the mystery to everyone's satisfaction.
UFO sightings are so numerous in Wisconsin that there are three different towns battling over the title of "UFO capital of Wisconsin." This can get a little confusing for space pilgrims seeking the ET experience.
Each of the would-be capitals claims the honor of alien, visitations. Elmwood, in Pierce County, got started in 1975, when a local police officer observed a ball of fire as large as a football field over the town quarry. Belleville, on the southern edge of Dane County, also caught saucer fever after a police report came in about an object flashing red, white, and blue overhead in January 1987. Dundee, on Highway 67 in Fond du Lac County, officially entered the UFO capital trifecta with the first UFO Daze festival in 1991, but the area had a long tradition of weirdness to build upon. Nearby Dundee Hill was called Spirit Hill by Native Americans, says Bill Benson, owner of Benson's Holiday Hideaway tavern and host of the annual festival.
"We also had a sort of crop circles in '47 or '48 on the Jersey Flats, five or six miles southeast of here," he says. "My mother's cousin owned the property, and people saw a big ship come down there and take off again. In '89, a farmer east of us, on Vista Drive, saw a ship hovering to the southeast of his barn. A couple I know very well watched it, too, from the road. They said it was circle-shaped and had windows."
Then there was Benson's neighbor, a man in his eighties, who said he saw a UFO hovering over nearby Long Lake in 1959. He claimed it lit the water so clearly that he could see right to the bottom of the lake. "People have seen lights zipping up and down under the ice in the winter, too," adds Benson, who used to be called Martin Bill around town. "I think we have these [sightings] either because of the water, the way the magnetic energies are under the earth, or both."
As further evidence that this area has long been recognized as a place for spectral happenings, Benson tells of a farmer four miles south of Dundee who has an ancient formation of large red stones in one of his fields that archaeologists say had been set up to mark the solstices. And early settlers, from Ireland used to insist that the Dundee area, located in what is now the Kettle Moraine State Forest, was inhabited by "little people," much like the leprechauns they'd left behind in their homeland. Long Lake was even said to be home to a forty-five lake monster.
But the biggest boost to Dundee's UFO heritage has probably been UFO Bob, a retired landscape architect otherwise known as Bob Kuehne. Kuehne, seventy-three, claims to have undergone repeated alien abductions and says he frequently works with ETs on various projects, such as preventing the Y2K disaster. He hosts his own Fond du Lac radio show called-you guessed it-UFO Bob. And he was one of the featured guests at the 2004 UFO Daze seminar.
Speaking to a packed room in the back of Benson's tavern, UFO Bob held the rapt attention of the crowd of fifty or more, some of whom wore headbands sporting boingy antennae with silver balls on the ends. He had made a special request to the aliens to show up that night, he told the audience, and they told him they would. "They want recognition-I know that," said UFO Bob. "So take your flashlight outside tonight and shine them around at the sky."
The alien Bob talks to most is a female named Eve. "And an angel whose name is Max," he adds. "Angels and ETs don't hit it off that great. One woman met an ET, and she also had an angel. She asked the angel if the ETs would help us, and the angel said that remain to be seen."
Bob also sees other creatures besides aliens and angels. He noted that about a week before the festival, whele visiting his former hometown of Lomira, he had observed a two-foot chupacabra hanging onto a horse's neck, drawing blood. "They are more humanoid than animal," he declared. He also related the slightly comforting news that "ETs are not going to let a big terrorist attack happen again. If anyone is running around with a suitcase bomb, their mind will just go bonkers."
While UFO Bob galvanized his audience in the back room of the tavern on that warm July day, an equal number of people sat at tables outside chowing down on hamburgers served up by the local Lions Club and exchanging their own UFO stories. A tent had been up nearby specifically for those wanting to share their personal experiences. Noah Voss, owner and CEO of GetGhostGear.com and UFOwisconsin.com, did a brisk business selling T-shirts, books, and raffle tickets. The prize was an electromagnetic detection device designed for ghost inspections.
Meanwhile, inside Benson's, a third contingent filled the bar, taking time to examine the blend of alien-and fishing-themed decor, as well as the many framed photos and drawing of different types of aliens and spaceships. A few of the patrons were nervous about the future of the festival because Benson's tavern is for sale. However, Bill Benson, whose family also owns the state's oldest campground nearby, is hoping that whoever buys the bar will continue with the annual tradition.
He admits that even if they don't, people would still come. That's because the aliens seem to show up on cue over Long Lake. The faithful arrive with lawn chairs and cameras and sit outside long after dark, waiting to catch some ET action overhead. Many also observe local tradition, bringing boxes of aluminum foil, from which they create Hershey's Kiss-style hats to prevent the aliens from reading their minds. Dave Pait of Fond du Lac and Greg and Dee Calvey of Armstrong had their brains protected by eight p.m. for the UFO Daze event.
Over the years, attendees have been well rewarded with interplanetary flyovers. It happened again in 2002, when a string of enigmatic lights appeared directly over the lake and were captured on several home videotapes. The following year was a washout, but in 2004, UFO Bob proved that he still had some pull with the space invaders. They showed up at about eleven-thirty p.m., said Bill Benson, not too long after UFO Bob-as well as Weird Wisconsin-had unfortunately given up and gone home. "A big something came over the lake with a whole bunch of lights on it," Benson said. "I have it on video. You could see the star lights right through it. It was about seventy-five to a hundred feet wide and fifty to seventy-five feet long."
But thanks to the other two would-be UFO capitals of Wisconsin, the year's ET excitement wasn't completely over. The true enthusiasts could still visit Elmwood's festival on the third weekend in July and then stay on a few more months until Halloween weekend blowout in Belleville.
Benson's tavern has an advantage, however, in being open-literally and figurately-to UFO seekers all year round. Benson, who admits to having had a "missing time" experience that may mean he was beamed up somewhere between Plymouth and Kiel, is always ready to talk UFO turkey with interested customers. And he keeps well abreast of whatever is happening in the skies around Dundee. "There was a sighting on Artesian Road three weeks ago," he said. "A lot of people have seen things, but most won't divulge this unless they know you understand strange things."
Wisconsin's eminent folklorist Robert Gard once wrote, "Wisconsin has more ghosts per mile than any state in the nation." After surveying the spook scene, we have to conclude that he was absolutely correct. You can hardly swing a dead cat without hitting a ghost somewhere in the Badger State. In addition to Gard, the state owes a huge debt of gratitude to several other pioneers who gathered stories of nightwalkers, moon-flitters and other wispy death survivors. Charles E. Brown collected dozens of late-nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century stories, not only from the new European upstarts that took over the land, but from the people they displaced-the various Native American tribes.
In Haunted Wisconsin, by Beth Scott and Michael Norman, ghosts were taken out of dusty old archives and put into our living rooms where they belong. And Dennis Boyer has coaxed some amazing stories from saloon habitués, labor activists, and just plain Wisconsinites of all persuasions.
Paranormal researchers and organizations are keenly interested in investigating claims of hauntings and ghosts everywhere, from homes to businesses to abandoned buildings and cemeteries. Groups such as the Wisconsin Paranormal Research Center, the Wausau Paranormal Research Society, Wisconsin Ghost Investigations, and the Southern Wisconsin Paranormal Research Group and researchers such as Chad Lewis and Terry Fisk have all been active in scouring the state for haunted activity. These groups, if they've proven anything, have shown that Wisconsin is even more crowded with nonliving souls than Robert Gard could have imagined.
What follows is a selected survey, rather than an exhaustive assay of ghosts, featuring some lesser-known and surprising ones. To document all ghosts and haunted spots would require a book far longer than this. Talk to any group of people, and chances are, more than half of the group will have a story to share.
San Francisco Bay's barren Alcatraz Island, long nickname The Rock, was originally a fort and then served as a military prison from 1859 to 1934. With the arrival of social upheaval and rampant crime in the 1920s and '30s, the federal government chose Alcatraz as the perfect site for an escape-proof prison that would strike fear into the hearts of criminals thanks to the isolated location and the swift currents surrounding the island.
From the time Alcatraz became a federal prison in 1934 under the stern and watchful eye of Warden James A. Johnston until it closed in 1963, its steel doors clanged shut on then 1,000 hardened convicts, criminals, and would-be escape artists.
From the start, the most incorrigible inmates from across the country were sent to The Rock. Each train that arrived in San Francisco to dispense prisoners seem to have a "celebrity" of sorts on board. Among the first inmates were Al Capone, perhaps the most famous gangster of all; Doc Baker, the last surviving member of Ma Baker Gang; George "Machine Gun" Kelly, the privileged son of a wealthy Memphis family who became one of the Prohibition period's most notorious gangsters; Floyd Hamilton, a gang member and driver for Bonnie and Clyde, Alvin "Creepy" Karpis, a Canadian-born former Public Enemy No. 1 who arrested by J. Edgar Hoover himself; and Robert Stroud, the amateur ornithologist who would later become known as the Birdman of Alcatraz.
Noteworthy or not, the inmates found that Alcatraz was a place where they had but five rights-food, clothing, a private cell, a shower once a week, and access to a doctor. Their methodical daily routine never varied.
While the cells the prisoners lived in were barren at beast, they must have seemed like luxury hotel rooms compared to the punishment cells. In these, men were stripped of all but their basic rights to food-and even then, they barely survived. Confinement in the single Strip Cell was punishment for the most severe violations. In the Hole, the name for cells in the bottom tier of the main cellblock, the punishment usually included psychological torture, and sometimes physical torture as well. In D Block, inmates in cells above the Hole couldn't escape the screams of those imprisoned there. Prisoners who emerged from the Hole would often be senseless or sick and bound for the prison's hospital ward. Others never came out alive.
Even worse were the dungeons. A staircase in front of A Block led down to a large steel door, behind which were catacomb-like corridors and stone archways leading to the sealed-off gunports from the days when Alcatraz was a fort. In the dungeons off the corridor, the prisoners were chained to the walls, their screams unheard in the rest of the main cellblock. Food and sanitation in the dungeons were minimal, dignity nonexistent.
Early Ghost Activity
A number of guards who worked in Alcatraz between 1946 and 1963 experienced the strange and the unexplained. From the grounds of the prison to the caverns beneath the buildings, they heard people sobbing and moaning, smelled strange odors, discovered cold spots, and saw what they described as ghosts. Even families who lived on the island and the occasional guest claimed to have seen the ghostly forms of prisoners or phantom soldiers. The sound of what seemed to be gunshots mdae the guards think prisoners had escaped and obtained weapons.
A deserted laundry room would sometimes fill with the smell of smoke, though nothing was burning. The guards would be sent running from the room, only to return momentarily and find the air clear. Like the other mysterious happenings at Alcatraz, the phantom fires were never explained.
Even Warden Johnston, who had no time for those who believed in ghosts, once heard the unmistakable sound of a person sobbing in the dungeon as he led a group of guests on a tour. The sound was followed by an ice-cold wind felt by the entire group. Johnston could never arrive at an explanation for this weird occurrence.
During the twenty-nine years Alcatraz operated as a prison, there were at least fourteen escape attempts. Almost all the prisoners who tried to flee were either killed or recaptured, and only one is known to have made it ashore. The most traumatic and violent attempt, later dubbed the Battle of Alcatraz, took place over two days in May 1946.
What started as a well-planned breakout from the "escape-proof" prison turned into a disaster when the six inmates involved saw their plan fall apart. Realizing they couldn't succeed, they decided to fight it out. Before it was over, they had taken a number of guards hostage, killed three of them, and wounded several others; two of the guards were murdered in cold blood in cells 402 and 403 (later renamed C102 and C104). The failed escapees fared no better. Three of them climbed into a utility corridor to avoid the constant gunfire, only to die after being hit by bullets or shrapnel.
An escape attempt in 1962 was later documented by Hollywood in the film Escape from Alcatraz. Released in 1979, the movie was a big hit in the box office, but the prison had closed long before. Too expensive to renovate and properly secure, what could be called the world's most famous prison shut its doors for good in March 1963.
Mysteries of Cell 14D
In 1972, the federal government put Alcatraz Island under the purview of the National Park Service, and after opening to the public, it became one of the part service's most popular sites. While in the daylight hours the old prison teems with tour guides and visitors, at night it is filled with mystery. Many believe that the energy of those who served time on The Rock remains, making the Alcatraz complex one immense haunted house.
Night watchmen patrolling the main cell house, divided into A, B, C, and D blocks, say they've heard the sounds of what seems to be running coming from the upper tiers. Thinking an intruder has gained entry, the watchmen investigated the sounds but always found nothing.
One Park Service employee reported that on a rainy afternoon the sparse number of tourists allowed her some time off from guiding tours. She went for a walk in front of A Block and was just past the door leading down to the dungeons when she heard a loud scream from the bottom of the stairs. She ran away without looking to see if anyone where there.
Asked why she didn't report the incident, she replied, "The day before, everyone was ridiculing another worker who reported hearing men's voices coming from the hospital ward, and when he went to check the ward, it was empty. So I didn't dare mention what I heard."
Several guides and rangers felt something strange in one of the cells in the Hole: Cell 14D. "There's a feeling of sudden intensity that comes on when you spend more than a few minutes around that cell," one of them said.
Another guide described Cell 14D as "always cold. Sometimes it gets warm out here-so hot that you have to take your jacket off. The temperature inside the cell house can be in the seventies, and 14D is still cold."
The tour guides weren't the only ones to have strange experiences there. Several former guards at the prison have told of terrifying incidents that took place near the Hole, and in Cell 14D in particular.
During one guard's stint in the middle 1940s, an inmate was locked in 14D for some since forgotten infraction. According to the officer, the man began screaming within seconds of being locked in. He claimed that a creature with "glowing eyes" was locked in with him. Yet no one took the convict's cries of being "attacked" very seriously, probably because tales of ghostly presence wandering the nearby corridor were a continual inducement to practical jokes to the guards. The man's screaming continued into the night, until finally there was silence. The following day, guards inspected the cell and found the convict dead. A horrible expression was frozen on his face, and there were hand marks around his throat. An autopsy revealed that the strangulation couldn't have been self-inflicted. Some believed that the man might have been choked by one of the guards, who had been fed up with all the screaming, but no one ever confessed to the crime.
On the day following the tragedy, several guards who were performing a head count noticed that there were too many men in the lineup. Then, at the end of the line, they saw the face of the convict who had recently been strangled in the Hole. As they all looked on in stunned silence, the figure abruptly vanished.
Banjo Strains
A park service employee who worked at Alcatraz in the late 1970s had a weird experience in another of the main cellblock's chambers. He was down near the shower room when he heard something he couldn't explain.
"It was banjo music," he said. "The room was empty, but I definitely coming from there. Maybe back in the days when it was a fort or army stockade, there was some guy here who played that instrument."
What the employee didn't know was that during the most traumatic days of his life, Al Capone, rather rick going out to exercise yard with the other inmates, would sit in the shower room strumming on his banjo.
Perhaps this lonely and broken spirit still plucks at the strings of a spectral musical instrument that vanished decades ago. Even today, tour guides and rangers who walk the corridors of the prison alone occasionally building. Could Al Capone be its source? Or could it be another of the countless ghosts who continue to haunt Alcatraz year after year?
Unlike the relatively gentle (if frightening) fish-like monster of Lake Norman, “Messie,” the monster in Lake Murray, SC, has been described as a classic prehistoric-looking lake serpent, who often comes across as hostile or downright aggressive. Whether it’s a matter of too many water-skiers or just annoyance at having to spit out all those tiny fishing hooks, this monster has been known to attack people who are out on the lake in boats.
Gilbert Little of Ballentine, SC, first sighted Messie in 1933. Sightings have gradually increased over the years in proportion to the population settling around the lake. The beast gained even more notoriety in 1980 when it openly attacked Buddy and Shirley Browning, who had been out fishing with their friend Kord Brazell.
“it wasn’t an illusion; it wasn’t an eel or sturgeon,” said Buddy Browning. “It was unlike anything I ever saw before, and I have been fishing Lake Murray for over 20 years. . . .
“It came towards the boat like it wanted us to leave. Whenever we came up near where it was nesting or doing whatever it was doing, it just came up to us. it could’ve been mating. It was basically on top of the water where you could see it quite well. And leave is exactly what we did.”
The few photographs that have been taken of the monster show it to be snakelike and long-according to some descriptions, up to sixty feet-and a variety of colors. Credible witnesses claim to have been flippers, and many describe a long neck with a distinctive head, which is lifted out of the water. Army general Marvin B. Corder (Ret.) sent a letter to the South Carolina Fish, Wildlife & Parks Department saying he’d seen the creature on more than one occasion, and that it had a “head and body resembling a snake, with a tail of an eel.”
Whatever’s out there, it’s probably best to play things safe until it’s definitely identified. If you’re on the lake, keep your arms well inside the boat and don’t lean over too close to the water. And if you see a large wake or ripple headed your way, get outta there!
Just a few days after Christmas of 1953, a beast with a dark, rounded face was glimpsed near the town of Bladenboro, NC, in the act of dragging a dog off into the underbrush. The sighting was indistinct enough, but the creature appeared to have been at least as a man. When the dog’s body was found, all of its blood was sucked dry but none of its meat had been eaten. In the next two days, several more dogs were snatched and found later, drained in a similar fashion. Word quickly spread that some kind of Vampire Beast was apparently on the loose.
Bladenboro police chief Roy Fores rounded up a posse of armed men to search through the nearby Big Swamp for the monster, but found nothing but huge footprints with the marks of inch-long claws or fingernails. As the days passed and more dead animals were found, fear spread throughout the region. Parents were cautioned to keep children and pets indoors, to avoid going out at night, and to use cars for even the shortest of emergency trips after the sun went down.
Some of those who did venture out after dark lived to regret it. One man decided to hunt down the Beast and headed into the swamp at night with a pack of hunting dogs-only to hear the sound of one of his favorite hounds screaming as something grabbed it from the pack and made off with it back into the gloom of the swamp. Newspaper account of this and other incidents drew more than a thousand professional hunters and thrill seekers to the area.
Finally the crowds grew so large that Chief Fores worried that bystanders might get shot in the frenzy that feeding the hysteria. He declared a dusk-till-dawn curfew, and gradually the fear subsided along with the killings. Some stories say that a big game hunter from Asheville finally shot the beast, but others maintain that the Vampire was never found at all, and just chooses to relocate from time to time.
There is evidence this is true. In 1890, newspaper in Statesville, Wilkesboro, and Salisbury reported sightings of a creature they called the Santer, which similarly terrorized the region. “Even its likeness is dreadful to behold,” according to one report. The brute was described as having an abnormal capacity for food and a weakness for pigs, cows, and sheep. In 1897, it reappeared in Roaring River, and then in 1934 was seen near Shinnsville, in southern Iredell County.
Before dismissing these reports merely as cases of large bears or panthers misidentified, we should recall that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, hunters were very familiar with big game animals in the Carolinas, and none of these newspapers regularly reported attacks by rogue bears or large mountain lions. They placed the Santer-like the Vampire Beast-in a different category altogether. Which of course means that it could reappear.
Or perhaps it already has. In recent years, a creature closely fitting this description has began making appearances in the vicinity of Shoals Creek, in Surry County. -Thanks to Angelo Capparella III, Justin Lynn, and Abandoned NC
