by Tyler Houck
On December 12, 1967, Henry Madrid saw a black panther while installing a fence around the Ventura County sewer plant in California. He kept an eye on the panther with fellow workers while the sheriff was called. The sheriffs went to the cat’s location as soon as they arrived. They chased the cat towards what appeared to be a flat field, but the field was really a crust over an area of sludge. The car got stuck, and by the time a tow truck arrived, the cat was gone.
Kenneth French and his wife saw the cat soon after that, on January 9, 1968. Kenneth watched the cat while his wife went to phone the sheriff. When she returned, the cat was gone. “It’s pretty embarrassing to have people think you go around seeing black panthers!” Mrs. French said. “Whatever kind of black cat that was, it was bad luck.”
The black panther in California had also trapped a man on a 600 foot cliff on December 23 of the previous year. He had gone hunting for the panther, and it took rescuers four hours to get him down.
Panthers are not the only out of place cats in the United States. What was described as an “African Lion”(like Nellie) was seen in California in 1979. On November 10 of that year, at 5:27 P.M., Fremont residents reported to police that there was a large male lion roaming the area. One man said he had heard it roaring.
At 6:28 several people saw the lion near Alvarado Boulevard and Whitehead lane. A huge hunt was organized. More than forty people, including police, firefighters, and animal control officers searched for the cat.
A male lion. One of these cats was hunted in California on November 10, 1979 Around 9 P.M. that night, police officer William Fontes confronted the cat under a freeway overpass. He shined his flashlight onto the lion’s face. The cat growled at him, but did not attack. A few days later, a local owner of a 40-pound chow-chow puppy came forward saying that his dog was the “Lion.” Fontes denied that claim, saying that a puppy “in no way resembled the 300 to 400 pound animal” he had run into under the overpass.
The hunt was called off at around 10 PM because of darkness. The lion was not spotted again.
There was one lion that lived in North America, Panthera atrox, but it lived during the Pleistocene epoch, about .34 million to 11,000 years ago. P. atrox was larger than the African Lions of today, and weighed about 520 pounds. That’s one big cat!
Reconstruction of Panthera atrox,
the American Lion
P. atrox skull Nellie, the mystery cat seen near Decatur, Illinois in 1917, and described as a lioness, had a male lion with her. Nellie seems to have been the more aggressive of the two, as she attacked a few people.
A “panther” was seen on March 1, 1941, and the witnesses said the hair on its neck made it “appear thicker than the head.” It seems that this cat was really a maned lion.
Four adults and two children fishing in the Elkhorn Falls, Indiana region on August 5, 1948, reported that a “lion with a long tail” had leaped at their car and then plowed through a fence.
Two days later, two boys saw strange animals near their barnyard in Richmond, Indiana. One of the boys raised his rifle and fired at the cats, which jumped a gate and disappeared. They said that one of the cats looked like a lion, and that the other looked like a black panther. Some think they saw a male and a female P. atrox.
The next day, the two cats were seen again. The morning after that, they were spotted by several people in Wayne County. The cats then moved into Ohio.
More lions were seen in the following years. An M. McDonald saw a cat “exactly like an African Lion” on October 20, 1964.
In May 1979, the Delaware (Ohio) County Sheriff Bill Lavery began to get calls from frightened residents who had spotted a “cougar.” The cat had also killed some sheep in Delaware, and had been spotted in Sunbury. The cat’s footprints were later discovered.
Another cougar was seen in Ohio on September 21, 2003. The police had gotten several reports of the cat before it met its doom after it attacked Brian Conway’s dog. The farmer saw the cat, which lunged at him, causing him to shoot it in self-defense. When the body was looked at, it was discovered that the cat had been declawed, meaning it had escaped, or worse, had been let loose by some unknown owner.
In July 2004, residents of Zanesville met a wild cougar. The animal mauled a pony, and was later spotted by a retired police officer who said “it looked like a mountain lion.”
The cat was seen a few more times in the coming months, but then vanished, like most phantom panthers do.
Leopards have also been seen in Ohio in 1877, 1895, and 1906. Tigers joined the list in 1994, when Debbie Couch saw a “large orange animal” run across State Route 471, and again in 2001.
What do we make of the reports of big cats? It is a scientific fact that these cats are real, but how did they get into the United States? Some of the cats do live here, like panthers, but they are supposed to be extinct on the eastern half of the country. The others (lions, tigers, leopards,) don’t live here. It is possible that they escaped from a circus (a common explanation for lots of cryptids) or were released by an exotic pet owner. Perhaps the “African Lions” being seen are really surviving Panthera atrox, the American Lion?
The big mystery cats still continue to be seen. Two of the best books listing ABC reports I have read are Loren Coleman’s Mysterious America and Michael Newton’s Strange Ohio Monsters.
Kangaroos on the Loose! Everyone knows what a kangaroo is. You’d think the only
place to see them in the US would be zoos, but that would be
wrong. Just like the Alien Big Cats,
kangaroos are seen hop’n all over the
states.
One kangaroo caused quite a disturbance in Chicago in 1974. It was October 18th, 3:30 A.M. A few hours earlier, Leonard Ciagi and Michael Byrne of the Chicago Police Force had responded to a call from a man claiming to have seen a kangaroo, on his porch, of all places. They laughed the report off, until they found the rouge marsupial and cornered it in an alley.
The kangaroo they had cornered was about five feet tall, and was growling at them. Byrne approached the animal in an attempt to handcuff it, and later said that the animal suddenly “started to scream” and “get vicious.” The kangaroo then kicked Byrne in the legs. The officers retaliated. “We got in a few good punches to the head and he must have felt it.” Ciagi said.
The officers did not have their nightsticks or any other weapons to fight the raging animal, so they backed off. When other officers arrived, the kangaroo jumped over a fence and bolted down the street.
An earlier report of a phantom kangaroo occurred near South Pittsburg, Tennessee over a five-day period in 1934. The “kangaroo-like beast” was seen by several people and killed several animals, which included ducks, geese, a German Shepherd, and other dogs. The kangaroo ate portions of some of the animals it killed. This is very odd, because kangaroos are usually unaggressive, and they are vegetarian. The kangaroos seen in America, however, seem very aggressive. In his book Monster Spotter’s Guide to North America, Scott Francis describes phantom kangaroos in this way:
Characteristics: Resemble a kangaroo or wallaby, but seem to be more ferocious
Precautions: These animals are incredibly aggressive and capable of hopping at great speeds. In 1900, Amanda Sutts, who was ten at the time, saw an animal about the size of a calf in New Jersey. She guessed it weighed about 150 pounds. It was the sound it made that really scared her, though. She said “It sounded like a woman screaming.” Some say this is a report of the Jersey Devil (see previous chapter), but others say it is a phantom kangaroo report. Mrs. Sutts also found strange tracks around the family barn several times. The tracks were eight to ten feet apart and always led to a cedar swamp by the farm.
In 1949, Louis Staub encountered a kangaroo while driving a greyhound bus near Grove City, Ohio. He described it as “about 5 ½ feet tall, hairy, and brownish in color.” The animal leaped over a barbed wire fence and disappeared. “It resembled a kangaroo, but appeared to jump on all fours. I’m certain it was
not a deer.” Staub said.
Charles Wetzel saw a strange animal chasing some dogs near Grand Island, Nebraska, on July 28, 1958. He thought the animal was a deer at first, but when he got within ten feet of it, he said it looked like a kangaroo. He said it jumped in ten-foot leaps, was about six feet tall, and was brown in color. It had long hind legs and short forelegs. The forelegs barely touched the ground as it jumped. The kangaroo stayed around Wetzel’s house for several minutes and then disappeared into an alfalfa field.
Other sightings of kangaroos were reported in Nebraska that year.
From 1957 to 1967, kangaroos were seen around the woods in Coon Rapids, Minnesota. At one time, two boys saw two kangaroos hopping through the woods. The animals came out of some trees, moved across a clearing, and then disappeared in more trees. The boys were certain that the animals they saw were kangaroos.
Later, Linda Brodie saw what she was certain was a kangaroo. That occurred in 1958. Two other people also saw a creature in 1958 that they described as a “big rabbit.” Mr. and Mrs. Willard L. Hays saw two “oversized bunnies” on April 24, 1967.
During the time of the Minnesota sightings, kangaroos were also being seen in Kansas. Another was encountered in Washington in 1967. A man traveling along Ohio Route 63 told the Ohio State Patrol that he had seen a kangaroo at 2:30 a.m. in 1968. A patrolman went to check out the area, and saw the animal hop across the road. “It sure looked like a kangaroo to me.” He said.
A “monster that looks like a huge monkey and hops like a kangaroo” was seen in Oklahoma in 1975. Anthony and Steve Ketchum and their friend Allen Herrin saw an animal “taller than a man, with hair all over it. It looked like a big monkey and made a growling noise. It then hopped towards us, like a kangaroo.”
The creature in that report almost sounds like another American monster called the “Devil Monkey.” These creatures are described as being three to five feet tall, with grey fur, and long tails. They also have short front limbs and long back limbs, like a kangaroo. They are carnivorous and very aggressive. Some reports say the Devil Monkeys covered a distance of 75 feet in a few hops. They are known to attack dogs and livestock and have even tried to break into homes.
Devil Monkey Devil Monkeys have also been seen for many years. One encounter
occurred near Mount
Vernon, Illinois, in the summer of 1941. Marsh Harpole was hunting
squirrels along Gum Creek when he saw a large animal “that looked something like a baboon.” The creature jumped out of a tree and came up behind Harpole, who hit it with his barrel.
He fired a few shots into the air and the beast left. Other families in the area reported hearing screams
coming from the woods at night. Hunters sometimes found
strange tracks in the woods. The next year, a dog was killed
on a farm near Bonnie. That caused a group of hunters with
guns, nets and ropes to go hunting for the monster. They
did not find the creature, and it then disappeared. On April 25, 1973, Mr. and Mrs. Henry McDaniel
came home to their children who had almost been attacked
by a Devil Monkey in Enfield, Illinois. The children said
the “thing” had tried to get into the house by scratching at
the air conditioner.
The creature returned a short time later, only to be greeted by Mr. McDaniel, a flashlight, and a .22 pistol. Mr. McDaniel fired at it four times as it hopped across the yard. It covered a distance of 50 feet in only three jumps. It then ran into the brush and out of sight. “It had three legs on it.” Mr. McDaniel said. “It had pink eyes as big as flashlights. It had grey fur and was 4 ½ feet tall. When I fired the first shot, I know I hit it.”
Are reports of Devil Monkeys and phantom kangaroos related? The report of a “kangaroo-like beast” from 1934 almost sounds like a Devil Monkey report. The animal in question is said to have killed several animals, and it partially ate several of them. Devil Monkeys are said to be carnivorous; kangaroos are not.
Some reports of phantom kangaroos have occurred quite recently. A kangaroo was reportedly recorded on video by two hunters in Oklahoma in 2013. The hunters posted their video on YouTube, and some speculated that the kangaroo they filmed was a pet kangaroo that had gone missing in the state the year before.
Another possible kangaroo was caught on video in North Salem, New York. This also occurred in 2013. The Ridgefield Press did a story on the sighting and posted the video on their website. The man who filmed the animal, Rich Lechner, was on his way to work at 5:30 a.m. on Route 116 when he saw it “standing directly in the middle of the road.”
Some have speculated that the kangaroo filmed by Lechner is really an escaped wallaby. Some of these animals have been kept as pets in Westchester County (where North Salem is located) and some have escaped. Wallabies are nocturnal animals, so you probably would be likely to spot one in the early morning hours.
Sewer ‘Gators Do alligators live in the sewers of New York City? This is one popular urban legend that has circulated for years. Some people say exotic pet owners got baby alligators as pets- and then released them in the sewers once they got too big to take care of. After that, the animals reportedly survived and reproduced in the sewers. The New York City officials deny that alligators live under the city.
Some people think alligators live in New York City sewers On June 28, 1932, “swarms” of alligators were seen in the Bronx River. A three-foot specimen was found dead on the riverbank. In 1935 and 1937, live and dead gators were discovered.
One well-known sewer gator incident occurred on February 10, 1935. A group of teenage boys were shoveling snow into the sewer when they saw something moving in the water ten feet below them. They then realized it was an alligator. The boys lowered a rope down into the sewer and lassoed the animal. They managed to pull it out of the sewer, but, when the animal snapped at them, they beat it to death with their shovels.
The boys took the body to a repair shop nearby, where it was determined that the alligator weighed 125 pounds and was 7 ½ feet long. The police were notified, and came to get the body to incinerate it.
Headline from the February 10, 1935 New York
Times describing the teenager’s encounter with the
sewer ‘gator
Teddy May, New York City’s superintendent of sewers, began getting complaints about alligators in the city’s sewers around that same time. May went down into the sewers with a flashlight and saw the gators. He had them all killed. Or maybe not. Some say May is not credible.
Other alligators were found before the 1900s. One supposedly fell from a thunderstorm on July 2, 1843. More were found in 1877. One gator was found frozen in February 1892. A 54-inch alligator was found in November of 1901. One was spotted in Massachusetts in 1922. Another was seen in Maryland in 1926.
So, do alligators hide out in sewers of United States cities? Some people say yes. Others say no. Salvatore Condoluci, one of the teenagers who roped the alligator in 1935, said in 2009: “I don’t know, I really don’t know” when he was asked if he thought other alligators hide below the pavement.
Mysterious Snakes It was September, 1959. William Hayden from Bronx, New York, walked out into his yard to find a reptilian monster. A five-foot long black snake was slithering around in his backyard! Hayden grabbed the snake and put it in his bathtub. The next day, he found a five-foot boa constrictor outside of his apartment! A man in Virginia also had a large snake he had run over stuffed because no one would believe his story.
Those are just three examples of encounters with mysterious (and sometimes giant) snakes in North America. Snakes like these (of many different species) are seen all over the United States. Some of the snakes are completely normal, but just out of place. Others are a little more mysterious, like the Snow Snake and Hoop Snake.
The Hoop Snake is said to live in the Southwestern United States, and is also said to live in Canada and Australia. The snake is said to grow to
about 10 or 15 feet long. The venom of this snake is said to be very deadly. The strangest thing about this snake, however is how it moves. When the snake chases its prey, it grabs the end of its tail in its mouth and rolls like a tire on a car! It is said that if you jump through the center of the hoop while the snake is rolling, it can confuse it long enough for you to escape. Keep that in mind the next time you run into a Hoop Snake!
Hoop Snake drawing from “Fearsome Critters”
The Snow Snake is a creature said to live in the Northern United States. This snake is said to be snow white in color and, like the Hoop Snake, is extremely venomous. (Its venom is said to kill in a matter of seconds!) The snake is almost invisible in snow and thrives in a cold climate, unlike other
reptiles. The best way to avoid being killed by a Snow Snake is to look for
its eyes when you are out in the snow. The eyes of the snake are pink, and are the only thing that will give it away in the snow.
Another snake of lumberjack legend is the Joint Snake. This snake is said to live in the Southern United States and is supposed to have the ability to break itself into pieces that will resemble the original snake. If a knife is used to cut the snake and then laid down by it, the knife will join up with the snake. Many think the myth surrounding this creature is probably based on legless lizards that can regenerate their tails.
A Legless Lizard
Other, known snakes are also spotted in the United States. One of these snakes, however, was not entirely normal. Randi Hanson, her sister, and two other girls were walking down a gravel road in 1983 in Wisconsin. The girls were walking towards two ponds on Randi’s parent’s property when she saw a giant snake only five feet ahead of her! The snake was as thick of her arms and fifteen to eighteen feet long! Despite the reptile’s size, Randi was sure that it was a garter snake. Randi got nervous at this point, and jumped over the snake and ran down to the pond. When the others caught up with her, she asked them if they had seen any snakes. Not necessarily giant snakes, but just any snakes in general. They had not.