Episode 222: Outsider

This is the story of the one.

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Oh,

hear that?

That's the spam brand singing you a love song.

Spam, sizzle, pork, and mmm.

This will probably sound all too familiar to you, but let's explore it anyway.

People had always had this thing, but some enterprising individuals a while back decided that people needed a new version of it.

This version was better, then because the public began to be attracted to it, it also became more and more expensive.

At the peak of its popularity, some of these things had become so expensive that to buy one, one would need to pay roughly 12 times their annual salary.

Not for a bunch, mind you, but for one single example.

All sorts of variations were created too, with all sorts sorts of creative names, and people went nuts for them.

Investors got involved too, and all of a sudden there were a lot of fortunes riding on this wave.

And then it collapsed.

All those ledgers that were swimming in extra zeros were suddenly in the red.

That bright new economic hope, the investment of the future, had been reduced to just another mundane curiosity.

Lives were ruined, businesses failed, and an entire culture was left with a bitter taste in its mouth.

This thing, this object of desire, was not some cryptocurrency as you might have assumed.

No, it was a humble flower, the tulip, brought to the Netherlands at the end of the 16th century.

But even though the event known as tulip mania only lasted a little more than three years before it crashed in 1637, it has stuck around as proof of something undeniable.

Whether you travel into the great unknown or the distant past, no culture is immune to fads.

Sometimes they are simple and fun, while others, like the tulips, are a bit more expensive.

But regardless, people everywhere are always looking for a new one.

But centuries later and across the Atlantic, a new fad would rage in America.

Although no one went looking for this particular thing, it was vastly more terrifying than a tulip bulb because of one special detail.

This thing came looking for us.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

It was the sort of scene that you'd expect from a horror film.

Two lovers were parked between the river and the woods in a boat ramp parking lot.

Her name was Judy Johnson, and he was Randy.

Randy Needham, that is.

Maybe Desperado by the Eagles was playing on the radio.

Maybe the stars were shining in the night sky.

We can make all sorts of guesses about the setting for this story.

But what we know for certain is that sometime around 11.30 p.m., a sound outside sent a sharp chill down their spines.

They would later compare it to an eagle shrieking into a microphone, a sound that no human could possibly make.

And when they looked out through the windshield, they spotted the thing that had made it.

Something covered in pale fur, standing roughly eight feet tall, just at the edge of the tree line.

And it was headed toward them.

The lovers thankfully drove away, speeding in fact, as you or I would have done as well.

And what's important to point out is that their relationship was meant to be a secret.

And yet despite that, their fear was so powerful that they drove straight to the police to get their sighting on record together.

A brave move in such a small town.

They both lived in the Illinois town of Murfreesboro, which back in June of 1973 at least, had roughly 10,000 people living there.

But thankfully, there were three officers on duty, and after listening to the panicked couple, they all climbed into a cruiser, along with Randy, to go check it out.

Back at the boat dock along the big muddy river, the men began searching the woods for evidence by flashlight.

They found strange marks in the mud, maybe 12 inches long and 3 inches wide, but the stride was weird, with the footprints sometimes 6 feet apart.

And then, the shriek returned.

Instantly, they fled back to the police car, but one of the officers, Jim Nash, was so startled that he even dropped his gun.

They would return later that night to photograph the tracks and do more searching, but as far as June 25th of 1973 was concerned, that was the end of the drama.

Unfortunately, Others would have a similar experience the following night, around 10 p.m.

That's when a local teen named Cheryl Ray, who was sitting on the patio with her boyfriend who was also Randy, Randy Crete, that is, and spotted something in the field behind the house.

Like the creature from the night before, this one was also tall and human-shaped and covered head to toe in pale fur.

But along with the visual element, there was also a strong odor, so strong that it could be smelled from over 40 feet away.

The police were called, including Officer Nash from the night before, and a German shepherd was put on the trail to find the mysterious creature.

They followed the scent into the nearby woods, all the way to an abandoned barn, but that's where the trail went cold.

And before you wonder why they didn't search the barn, I should mention that they did try, but the highly trained police dog refused to step inside.

There were more sightings after that.

The same night, a neighbor who lived nearby claimed that his child had been outside catching fireflies in a jar when they ran back into the house, worried about a large ghost they spotted in the nearby field.

Two weeks later, in an area fairly close to the boat dock the two lovers had made their sighting at, some carnival workers claimed to spot a creature fitting the description lurking around the area where they stabled the ponies.

Not a single footprint was located, though.

Three years later, a group of local boys went looking for a foul ball in the woods near their home when an enormous human-like creature covered in gray fur appeared nearby.

Officer Nash made another appearance as well, but nothing definitive was discovered to prove the story.

And eight days after that, another group of kids spotted a similar mysterious figure in the woods, which their father reported to Officer Nash.

As you'd imagine, locals were swept up in the panic.

Letters flooded into the police department, and while some described other sightings, many were from curious individuals, including locals proclaiming themselves to be monster hunters who wanted to help bring it down.

One guy simply begged to be able to dissect the monster's corpse if it were captured.

Cheerful stuff, for sure.

And I do need to read you from one of my favorite letters, written by a little girl with a wonderful recommendation.

Dear sir, we read in the Fresno Bee about your monster.

My mom can catch it.

She is good.

Please let her try.

She loves big adventures like this one.

Write her.

Her name is Georgie Supnet.

Where there is terror, she loves to solve.

She is good with guns and knives also.

It's delightful, I know.

But despite letters like this and even million-dollar rewards for the creature's capture, nothing has ever turned up beyond the sights and smells of those small-town woods.

And the big muddy monster has been a mystery ever since.

We started our journey today with the idea of fads, and I don't want you to think that I've forgotten that.

We just need a few more stories before we can safely call this thing a national trend.

But don't worry, the odds are looking good.

The town of Louisiana, Missouri had around 4,500 people living there back in the 1970s.

It's a small community, maybe four square miles in total, but it has its fair share of legends and rumors.

The screams of a ghostly woman near the old lime kiln, a phantom man along River Road, even ghost lights.

But few stories there are more popular than those about the Missouri monster.

The first sighting took place in July of 1971.

Joan Mills and Mary Ryan had driven out to a field alongside a dirt road on the outskirts of town to have a picnic together and enjoy the summer sun.

But just as they'd begun to eat, they noticed a powerful smell.

In fact, it was so bad that they set their food down and started to look around them for the source.

And then they spotted it at the edge of the trees.

It was a tall, human-like creature covered from head to toe in dark fur or hair.

And just as they noticed it, the thing stepped out of the field and began to approach them.

Both of the women panicked and they bolted for their car, climbing in and locking the doors.

There was just one problem.

They'd left their keys in Joan's purse, which was still on the picnic blanket.

After a frightening moment where the creature tried to open the car door, Joan honked the horn, eventually frightening it away.

Once out of sight, she sprinted to her purse, grabbed it, and returned so that they could drive away, straight to the state police to make a report.

Nothing, however, was ever tracked down.

A year later, two brothers were out playing at the edge of their yard when they spotted something and screamed for help.

Their older sister heard the shout and looked out the window just in time to see a very tall, fur-covered creature, roughly the shape of a human being, and she spotted what had frightened her brothers so much.

The creature was holding a dead, bloody dog under one of its enormous arms.

It was, they would later discover, their neighbor's dog, which had gone missing earlier in the day.

Now their father, Edgar Harrison, was a man who liked to take charge.

He was a deacon in his local Pentecostal church and frequently organized groups and led discussions.

And on July 14th of 1972, he apparently had around 50 people at his home for a prayer meeting when all of them heard a sound of large stones being thrown at a nearby metal water tank, along with loud, animal-like growls.

It was enough to drive everyone away, putting an end to Edgar's meeting.

But after that night, he managed to talk a few friends into walking over to the location of those sounds to do a bit of investigating.

No one spotted anything unusual, but they all claimed to smell it, a horrible odor that was impossible to describe.

But Edgar refused to give up.

He started to put bait out around the property in hopes of luring the creature in for a closer look, things like fish and ham.

It's even said that he tied his own dog up outside, just to see if it would work.

There were more searches of the surrounding area, too.

The hunt on July 19th consisted of about 20 men and even included the local police chief and a state conservation officer, and reporters traveled to the house to chat with Edgar and help him look for more evidence, although all they managed to find were a few dog bones and some sketchy footprints that have since been disproved.

There were other sightings in the area as well.

On July 21st, a neighbor reported that he went outside to see what his dog was growling at, only to find a tall, human-like creature covered in dark fur standing at the edge of his yard.

And a couple of weeks after that, a local farmer reported hearing high-pitched howls and finding odd tracks on his property.

By the way, one interesting feature of Louisiana, Missouri is that it sits along the Mississippi River, which is connected less than 200 miles to the south to the Big Muddy River.

I offer that up as a bit of evidence we should keep in mind.

Whether it was an actual creature traveling the river or just the rumors of one.

I'll let you be the judge.

But interesting, nonetheless.

But there's one more story with eerie similarities that I want to share with you next.

And while it's far outside the network of rivers that connect to the mighty Mississippi, it still delivers something that will sound very familiar by now: stories of a mysterious outsider who put a community into a panic.

The town of Minerva, Ohio, is in the eastern part of the state.

It is, oddly enough, not named after the Roman goddess of wisdom, but the town's founder's niece.

So, there's that.

Back in 1978, though, there were a little over 4,000 people in Minerva, and one of those families was the Claytons.

Evelyn Clayton was 55 at the time and had just been released from the hospital following treatment for some medical issues.

One of the instructions the doctors gave her was to avoid stress.

But if you've listened so far, I'm guessing that you know that wasn't in the cards for poor Evelyn.

The first stressful thing that happened was the discovery of one of the family's dogs dead out in the yard one day.

Its neck appeared to have been broken, and then after that it had been pulled free from its leash outside.

In early August of that year, Evelyn's grandchildren were over at her house playing with some neighborhood kids when all of a sudden they ran into the house screaming about a monster they had spotted at the nearby gravel pit.

So Evelyn and a friend went out to investigate.

And you know what?

They spotted the creature as well and ran home out of fear.

On August 21st, they saw it again.

The Clayton family had gathered on their front porch with a few friends and everyone heard a strange noise coming from the nearby chicken coop.

Looking toward the tree line they spotted the strangest thing.

There were two small creatures that they said were similar to cougars squatting in the shadows.

And then a moment later, a tall humanoid creature stepped out of the trees to stand in front of them as if protecting them.

If you guessed that every single person dashed inside to get away, you'd be right and Evelyn called for the sheriff to come help but while they waited for that help to arrive the creature actually crossed the yard walked up to the house and started looking through the kitchen window at them and it did so for over 10 minutes.

In fact, it was in the window so long that Evelyn and another friend pulled a couple of rifles out of storage and loaded them, believing it was only a matter of time before the creature tried to come inside.

Instead, it turned around and left on its own, about five minutes before the sheriff pulled into the drive.

Stepping outside, everyone noticed a horrible stench in the air, like sulfur or some other rancid odor.

Oh, and they noticed one other small thing as well.

Their surviving dog Missy had been so nervous for the days leading up to this encounter that she had dug a tunnel in the ground to hide.

A tunnel over eight feet deep.

The next day, Evelyn's daughter Mary drove over to pick up her own daughter and spotted the creature off in the distance.

It was simply standing at the top of the hill that overlooked the property, watching everything down below.

Once it spotted Mary though, the thing turned and disappeared down the hill.

On August 23rd, they caught sight of it again, this time around 11 p.m.

Worried about what might happen, one of the family members fired a warning shot into the night sky.

A moment later, the creature fled.

And finally, on September 8th, Evelyn's daughter Mary made the most disturbing discovery of all.

She had wandered out past the property to look around and was approaching the old strip mine nearby when movement caught her eye.

This was after dinner, so the hour was getting late and the daylight had begun to disappear.

But squinting through the dusk, she could clearly make out movement.

It was a small version of the larger creature they had all been seeing.

And it wasn't alone either.

There,

right beside it, was another equally small humanoid beast.

And to some, that meant that the stories had just transformed from bad to worse.

Why?

Because the Minerva monster had not only stalked its way into their lives, but it had brought along multiple offspring with it, ensuring that the sightings and the legends could live on for generations to come.

Most communities love to get in on a good fad.

Whether that was bell bottoms, friendship bracelets, the ice bucket challenge, or some new viral video craze, it's almost like we're hardwired to connect with bizarre things, bringing us all together in the process.

And to be honest, it's easy to miss the smaller fads inside the larger, longer-running obsessions.

The stories of Bigfoot describe the creature as very tall, human-like, and covered in fur from head to toe.

A lot of those stories even describe powerful odors.

So in one sense, the stories we explore today are just some of the countless chapters in that larger tale.

But examined more closely, our three bipedal mystery monsters today all seem to have been part of an early 1970s wave of sightings.

Between their eerily similar descriptions, right down to the smells they left behind and the creature's obsession with dogs, it feels to me like a little fad in the middle of a larger wave.

For the Claytons, that sort of popularity didn't sit well.

If someone was faking it, you'd think that they would enjoy the attention, but not Evelyn and her family.

Newspapers across the nation picked up their story, and it led to all sorts of visits and requests for interviews.

Evelyn's daughter Mary expressed their frustration best in a later interview when she said, If I'd known my mother was going to get such harassment, I never would have reported it.

If I ever see it again, I won't.

One person who became intrigued by the stories was a man named John Nutter.

He had grown up in West Virginia and had seen all sorts of wildlife out there, including hundreds of bears.

And even after moving to Texas, he remained deeply connected to the outdoor lifestyle.

A little while after the stories of the Minerva monster spread across the country, John and his brother passed through town and stayed a while to explore for themselves.

They even headed out to the same old strip mine that the Claytons lived near, and they understood what was at stake.

If the Claytons had made up the story, there was no chance at all that they would spot their own version of the beast.

Yet they actually did.

John and his brother were in the woods when they heard sounds that were not quite human, but also very much not from any animal they knew.

And when the creature stepped out from behind a tree and howled in a powerful screeching sound, both men were so frightened that they ran for safety.

What these people were seeing back in the early 1970s, we honestly have no idea.

There was very little evidence recovered, few signs that anything actually took place, just the stories they left behind and the fear that followed.

But perhaps these sightings revealed something else.

Considering how many similarities and witnesses there were, maybe they were real.

And even more concerning, maybe they're all connected.

One single species living among us.

An outsider looking for a way back in.

I hope you enjoyed today's exploration of the mysterious inhabitants of the woods around our homes.

Clearly, there are a lot of stories that resonate with each other, and those coincidences make it really difficult to dismiss them all completely.

But as hard as it is to believe, there are even more.

In fact, we've tracked down one last tale from my old stomping grounds of central Illinois.

And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it.

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Like I mentioned before, the three creatures we explored today were just some of many that seemed to pop up throughout the early 1970s.

Almost all of them were spotted during the summer months, mostly in the mid to eastern United States, and they all pretty much shared the same physical descriptions.

And one other thing, all of the sightings were in rural settings, along dirt roads or near abandoned gravel mines and that sort of thing.

Which is why I need to tell you about one more sighting from that era, because its setting was oh so very different.

The city of Peoria is exactly that, a city.

Rather than being a town of a few thousand people, Peoria is home to over 110,000 and it was even bigger back in the 1970s.

And more than that, the city covers roughly 50 square miles.

I guess my point is that Peoria isn't rural.

And I think that's what makes July of 1972 so unusual.

That's when a group of teenagers noticed unusual footprints around an abandoned house near Coal Hollow Road.

Not tracks, mind you, footprints.

And after exploring a bit more around the property, they found the source.

The creature they described measured anywhere from 8 to 12 feet tall.

It stood on two legs like a human, but was covered entirely in pale fur or hair.

And when it spotted them, it ran quickly away while screeching like an old train whistle.

Now, maybe I've read too many reported encounters in preparation for this episode, but all of those howls have started to sound the same in my mind.

Train whistles, an eagle screeching into a microphone, an elephant, a trumpet.

I know they're all different sources, but I can also sort of hear the overlapping similarities.

So this one fits.

One of the teens would claim to spot the creature two more times that summer, but they weren't the only ones noticing odd things.

Immediately after their story was published in the local newspaper, the police department received over 200 calls with reports of more sightings.

And those 200 calls, by the way, took place in a single day.

And Peoria wasn't alone.

In late July of 1972, a whole bunch of witnesses across the Mississippi in the Missouri town of Creekor came forward with stories of their own.

Many of them centered around the sighting of an ape-like creature swimming in the river, and those who got close enough to it also reported another familiar feature, a very horrible and very memorable odor.

And way down in the southernmost tip of Illinois, in the town of Cairo, one resident spotted a 10-foot-tall creature covered in white fur that was standing on two legs near the Ohio River.

And of course, that many reports in one summer was bound to get annoying for local officials.

One town even declared that all monster sightings needed to be accompanied by a breathalyzer test.

And when it was suggested that the creatures were really an alien species, the Chicago office of the IRS expressed hope that these newcomers would at least pay their taxes.

Even today, We're not quite sure what it was that people were spotting all over the central and southern Illinois area back in the 1970s.

But the tales are sure entertaining.

And if they prove anything, it's just how powerful folklore can be, how it can spread, how it can link up with other communities and unite them under one dark and sometimes frightening umbrella.

And how, no matter how much we've explored this world, there will always be some people who think there's one more mystery to solve.

This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Jenna Rose Nethercott and music by Chad Lawson.

From time to time, we recommend certain books for listeners who want to dive deeper into a topic.

So if today's subject matter makes you hungry for more, please check out Mysterious America by Lauren Coleman.

He's basically the godfather of 20th century cryptozoology, and the book is a wonderful resource for curious minds.

Of course, lore is much more than just a podcast.

There is a book series available in bookstores and online and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

You can find information about all of that and more over at lorepodcast.com.

And for fans of video, lore is also on YouTube.

Each new episode is released alongside the podcast, but in talking head style video format.

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