It is Mr. Lincoln’s intention to submit these animals to the inspection of the scientific for a few days, in order to ascertain what they are, and after that to dispose of them to some persons for exhibition. Mr. Lincoln himself will return to the Saint Peters in the course of two or three weeks.
P. S. Mr. Lincoln informs us that he will exhibit the Wild Man and his cubs, gratuitously, this forenoon, in the rear of No. 9 Elm Street. We presume our citizens will not be slow to take advantage of this offer.
This astonishing story was to foreshadow hundreds, if not thousands, of similar stories to be printed in newspapers in the US and Canada for the next 180 years. Like other captured apemen, we will probably never know what happened to this poor creature. What we do know is that this is not the last story of its—these creatures were to be spotted throughout the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. Locally, they would come to known as “the grassman.”
Early Reports from Ohio and the Midwest
Another early grassman incident was reported in the Minnesota Weekly Record on Saturday, January 23, 1869. The title of the story was “A Gorilla in Ohio.” The first gorilla was captured in Liberia in 1847. Said the article:
Gallipolis [Ohio] is excited over a wild man, who is reported to haunt the woods near that city. He goes naked, is covered with hair, is gigantic in height, and “his eyes start from their sockets.” A carriage, containing a man and daughter, was attacked by him a few days ago. He is said to have bounded at the father, catching him in a grip like that of a vice, hurling him to the earth, falling on him and endeavoring to bite and to scratch like a wild animal. The struggle was long and fearful, rolling and wallowing in the deep mud, [half] suffocated, sometimes beneath his adversary, whose burning and maniac eyes glared into his own with murderous and savage intensity. Just as he was about to become exhausted from his exertions, his daughter, taking courage at the imminent danger of her parent, snatched up a rock and hurling it at the head of her father’s would be murderer, was fortunate enough to put an end to the struggle by striking him somewhere about the ear. The creature was not stunned, but feeling unequal to further exertion, slowly got up and retired into the neighboring copse that skirted the road.44
Christopher Murphy, Joedy Cook and George Clappison record a number of interesting incidents in the Midwest in their book Bigfoot Encounters in Ohio: Quest for the Grassman.66 They report that on May 26, 1897 near Rome, Ohio in the very south of the state, Charles Lukins and Bob Forner claimed that they encountered a wildman while cutting timber out of town. After struggling with the “gorilla-like creature” they were able to drive it into retreat among the cliffs. They called the creature a “terror” and said it was about six feet tall. This report came from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 27, 1897.
The authors also chronicle several other events in the 1800s, such as farmers around Logan, Ohio reporting in May of 1897 that a strange animal had appeared in the vicinity and numerous sheep had disappeared. Several old pioneers who heard the beast crying at night thought it was a panther. They hunted for the strange animal but failed to kill or capture it.66
In the 1940s, the authors report that a family driving through Hanging Rock in Lawrence County saw a reddish-brown ape-like creature standing on Hanging Rock Hill looking down at the highway.66 The rest of the book is packed with grassman encounters from the latter half of the 20th century, and even some accounts from the new millennium.
Newspapers in Ohio have chronicled more grassman accounts than one might imagine, such as this one that ran in Dayton’s Ohio Daily News on June 24, 1980 with the headline, “’Bigfoot’ Sightings Scare Socks Off Pair”:
Beliefontaine, Ohio—Does Logan County have a “Big Foot” stalking its wooded hills between West Mansfield and the Union County line? Sheriff’s deputies are investigating a sighting by an off-duty Russell’s Point police officer who said he saw a “seven-feet-tall, hairy animal” in his barn yard Sunday night and a similar report from Union County last Tuesday. Ray Quay, a Russell’s Point police officer who owns a small farm on Twp. Road 132 near West Mansfield, said he was “surprised and dumbfounded” about what he saw Sunday night.
“I was unloading eight pigs I had bought about 11 p.m. I shut off the light in the barn and went around the corner to see what my two dogs were raising Cain about. They never bark when I’m around. I stepped around the corner of the barn and saw this hairy animal. I thought it was a man so I hollered at him. It took off and I’ve got some weeds out back I haven’t mowed and they are waist high or higher and the creature went through them with no problem,” Quay said.
Four deputies searched the area but found nothing. Deputies said that last Tuesday Patrick Poling, who lives on County Rd. 142 in Union County east of West Mansfield, was cultivating a field when he said he spotted a creature walking out of some woods and stride along a road near where the farmer was working.
Poling said he walked over to try to get a better look at the creature, but it ran back into the woods. Poling’s description was similar to that of the creature Quay said he saw. Poling said the creature walked up-right all the time. The Lima [bigfoot] research team, a non-profit organization, took measurements and a cast of three claw marks found on the Union County farm. The claw prints are about 40 inches apart. The claw mark has four toes and measures 16 inches by 4 inches, deputies said.
The grassman has shown up along rivers, sleeping on roads (such as the one seen by Donna Riegler of Marysville, Ohio on June 24, 1980—a hairy creature that hobbled away after she put the car in reverse) and in cornfields in rural areas. He even showed up on the Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course near Dublin, Ohio several times in 1973.
Nicklaus designed the Muirfield Village Golf Club in 1966, and it was apparently named after him for some years. In October of 1973 two security guards, plus other witnesses, said they saw an eight-foot “hairy monster” near the course. Later they saw the creature actually on the golf course. The spokesman for the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department said that the monster was spotted three times by the guards around the facility. A footprint about 12 inches long and seven inches wide was discovered alongside a creek, and the supervisor of the security firm for the course doubled the number of guards on duty.66
The Indiana Grassman of the Thickets
The grassman is not confined to Ohio by any means. As one would expect, he has been seen in Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and in nearly every other state in the US. On May 1, 1980, newspapers in Indiana carried the strange story of a young couple, Tom and Connie Courter, who, with a six-week-old baby in the back seat, had a grassman encounter in rural Ohio County, Indiana.
The Courters had left their mother’s house and were driving back up Henschen Road between the towns of Aurora and Rising Sun to their trailer. Once home, Tom got out of the car first so that he could get the diaper bag out of the back seat. As he turned back around, he heard a strong noise which sounded like an “UGH.” As he looked up, he saw a large hairy animal about “18 inches” away.
Tom said in an interview that the creature was about 12 feet tall, black and hairy, with large red eyes. He further stated that its head was shaped like a human’s and that its arms were hanging to the ground. Tom quickly jumped into his car and spun his tires, as the creature took a swing at him. Tom said that the creature hit his car. Both Tom and Connie were obviously very scared and they went directly back to their mother’s house.
On the next night, they stayed at their mother’s house until 11:45 before heading home. This time, Tom was prepared with his 16-shot .22. They had been parked in front of their trailer for a while when they saw the same animal standing next to a tree on the other side of the road. Tom fired one shot at the creature, but missed. He fired several more shots. He said that the animal seemed to dive to the ground and then vanish.
The Courters filed a police report, but the Ohio County Sheriff’s department were very skeptical, and said they could find no evidence of the creature. (This incident was report
ed by the Bigfoot Research Organization)
The next year the Vincennes, Indiana newspaper The Valley Advance (Vol. 18, No. 6, October 6, 1981) that several people had encountered a hairy apeman in the White River area of southwest Indiana.
Said the article with the headline, “White River Encounters: Area Residents See ‘Something Big and Hairy’”:
Jack Lankford is an avid fisherman and hunter who says he never left a fire unattended until the night of Aug. 22. That’s the night he saw a “creature” while fishing in the White River bottom land about six miles south of Highway 50. Roger and Barbara Crabtree say they live in fear of a “hairy creature” they have seen twice near their Decker Chapel home in southern Knox County close to the White River.
Terry and Mary Harper haven’t seen anything, but something attacked their house at 2002 South 15th Street, Vincennes. The unknown assailant ripped and apparently chewed on aluminum siding and tore away part of the metal trim around the backdoor of the house. It left behind teeth marks, blood and tufts of white hair about two inches long.
So far the incidents are unrelated. No evidence of a creature has been found in the areas where the sightings took place. However, Lankford says what he saw was no bear, and the Crabtrees know that people may not believe, but their fear is “very real.”
Lankford anticipated a “good bit of fishing” last Aug. 22 when he went to his favorite spot on the lower part of what is called Beaver Dam in eastern Knox County. The fisherman had built a campfire a few yards from the bank and was using a lantern to watch his lines.
The Washington, Ind., resident had been there a couple of hours when he started having an “eerie feeling” that someone was watching. About 20 minutes later Lankford looked up and saw two eyes, each about one-inch in diameter, glowing red from the lantern and nearby campfire glow and staring at him from about 50 yards away.
Lankford could see a hairy body sticking about four feet out of the water, but the light was too dim to reveal the face, he said. Lankford said the creature looked like a well-built, big-boned man with “extra” long forearms and covered with brown, matted hair. It apparently was standing in about four feet of water. “It just stared at me and me at it. It was trying to figure out if I was looking at what I was seeing,” he said.
The “booger,” as Lankford’s grandmother called it, appeared to study Lankford, tilting its head from side to side and making no noise, he said. After a short time, the creature turned away, reached to grab a tree limb, and pulled itself from the water.
As it walked away Lankford noticed that the arms extended to around the knees and that it had to weigh “well over 200 pounds.”
“It made a loud squeal or high-pitch shriek when it left, something like a young pig would make when you try to hold on to it.”
Lankford heard the sound again while he was hurriedly packing his fishing gear. He says he has heard the noise in that area three or four times since early spring, but didn’t think much of it.
Since seeing the creature, Lankford has not heard the noise. He said he would like to meet it again.
“The last time I didn’t think to follow it because it didn’t show any sign of wanting to harm me. I’m one person who respects other persons and beings, and I would like to see the creature captured unharmed and studied,” Lankford commented.
Lankford told only his family immediately after seeing the creature. He decided to report the incident to the Daviess County Sheriff’s Department after reading a newspaper article about the attack on the Harper house.
“I’ve talked to people who live in the area, and they said if it is someone trying to pull a hoax they are taking a big risk of getting shot. The sheriff’s deputy told me the same thing,” Lankford noted.
Terry and Mary Harper, their children and neighbors did not hear anything out of the ordinary between midnight and 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 26, but during that time about four or five feet of siding some three feet high was ripped and chewed, along with metal trim around the backdoor. One piece shows what looks like a claw mark.
“We had the house fans on all night and they can be noisy. We really didn’t hear anything,” she said.
Terry Harper was leaving for work when he saw the damaged siding. The damage amounted to about $500, Harper said, and included blood, large teeth marks and white hair. Blood was also found near the back light about six to seven feet above the ground, Mrs. Harper said.
The dog refused to come out of its house and had its paws over its eyes and whined when it was checked.
Officials from the Knox County Sheriff’s Department have told the Harpers that tests on the blood reveal that it is not human, and that a wolf or some other wild animal may have done the damage. Investigating officers told Mrs. Harper that hair taken from the scene has been lost.
“We don’t know what to be frightened of, and I can’t say that it is a ‘bigfoot’ or not,” Mrs. Harper said.
Harold Allison, an area naturalist and writer of a weekly nature column in The Valley Advance, studied pictures of the damage and believes no animal native to the area could have caused the damage.
“The only animal I can think of from my experience capable of that kind of damage would be a wolverine. But there are no wolverines within 500 miles of this part of Indiana,” Allison commented.
The incident has kept the Harpers busy on the telephone, talking with newspaper, television and radio reporters about the “house attack.” Mrs. Harper has been interviewed by radio stations from as far as Boston, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles. The incident received a brief mention on the ABC-TV World News program.
Through a United Press International news story, an investigator from S.I.T.U. Research Services, a private company in Little Silver, N.J., has contacted the Harpers and currently is looking into the incident.
“The investigator thinks it’s a bigfoot, but he can’t be sure because we didn’t have any blood stains left to send him. He said if we could get him a blood sample, he could tell us exactly what it was,” Mrs. Harper related. S.I.T.U., which reportedly specializes in unexplained phenomena investigations, sent the family a report of a 1977 attack in New Jersey.
The New Jersey incident involved a creature like the one described by Lankford, but with a human face covered by a beard and mustache. Wood panels on a barn were ripped up and chewed at about the same height as the Harpers’ house.
The most recent sighting of what one area newspaper has called the “Knox-ness monster,” occurred Sept. 26 at about 2:30 a.m., along the Decker Chapel Road, west of Highway 41.
Crabtree was returning with his family from Princeton and was less than two miles from home when he saw “something big” walking in the road.
As Crabtree came closer he noticed fur, long arms and a “skipping walk like an ape.” The headlights appeared to startle it, Crabtree recalls, and the creature swung its arm at the car. Crabtree swerved off and back onto the road to miss the creature and stopped to watch as it continued its walk down the road.
Crabtree’s wife, Barbara, who was awakened by the quick turn, persuaded her husband not to follow and to call the Knox County Sheriff’s Department. Mrs. Crabtree said she had seen it the day before in a cornfield near the family’s backyard, a “dirty, white-haired creature” not more than 50 feet away.
Mrs. Crabtree grabbed her two pre-school daughters and backed to the front porch, she said. The creature “took a couple of steps” toward her but stepped back when the family dog started barking and ran toward it.
She got her daughters and nine-year-old son, who was throwing rocks at it, into the house and locked all doors and windows. She tried to call the sheriff but was unable to get through because of a busy party telephone line, she said.
In her view the creature was about seven to eight feet tall and weighed around 500 pounds. It was covered with “fuzzy” dirty white hair except for its head, which was brown hair.
“It had a pinkish face and big, glassy eyes. The thing had an awful, sour smell,
something like dead meat that had set out for three or four days,” she said.
The creature also made a growling noise, which the family has heard at least two times since the second sighting, Crabtree said.
The sheriff’s deputies have been unable to find any evidence of the creature and consider the case closed, officer Jim Wilson said.
“The department is treating it as an unconfirmed sighting because the Crabtrees were the only ones to report it,” Wilson explained.
The family is now looking for another house and has purchased a shotgun.
“I don’t care what anyone thinks. I saw what I saw and no one has to believe me,” Roger began. “When nightfall comes around here, my family is plenty scared. I don’t even go out after dark.”
Gasman seen near Knoxville, IN.
Well, something going bump in the night in southern Indiana was definitely scaring the Crabtrees. It probably wasn’t a bear, as is often postulated as a solution to such events. This grassman also had white or gray hair, which has been described on various hairy giants, including yetis and certain desert bigfoot. Are these the grandfathers of these ultra shy apemen? As they get older does their hair turn from reddish-brown to white? As with humans, this would seem to be the case.
Kentucky Grasswoman
Kentucky is another state with its share of grassman accounts. According to the Bigfoot Research Organization (Bfro.net) there were several cases in 1980, including the reporting of a tall, white haired ape-like creature on October 7 near the town of Mayslick in Mason County.
According to the BFRO report, the witness, known as “C.F.,” was watching television with his family when they heard a loud noise on the front porch. C.F. said that he heard his son’s pet rooster squawking so he peered out the front door, where he saw a white, hairy creature with pink eyes. He said that the creature must have weighed about 400 pounds and was about seven feet tall. It was holding the rooster by the neck and then threw it against the side of the house. The white haired grassman then proceeded around the back of the house to a vacant lot. C.F. says he grabbed his .22 pistol and followed the apeman. He fired at the creature twice, as it ran out of sight. BFRO says that there was a small article concerning the incident in the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Yeti, Sasquatch & Hairy Giants Page 14