From the unexplained to the mundane, join us on our journey to the French.
Hello and welcome to Journey to the French, where oddities, obscurities, and omens convene on this lead-in to Halloween night.
We are your seasonally-app podcast host, Taylor and Chelsea, here today to regale you with our tales of creatures past and or present.
I'm not actually sure for certain with all of ours, but that's what we're going to do.
It is our annual Halloween creature feature.
And my goodness, did we find some good ones for you this time around?
Not that I would tell you that there were bad ones had we found bad ones, but nevertheless, they are good ones.
Promise.
Yeah, yeah, that's not suspicious at all.
No, Chelsea, I happen to have not one but two cryptids to go over in this fantastic tale of creature features.
No, Chelsea, prepare yourself for this one, because we are going to be talking not just about a Sasquatch, but what is in fact called the Bat Squatch?
Interesting.
Would that not be the Mothman?
See, you would think, but these sightings are significantly different from Mothman sightings.
And specifically, these are West Coast.
They are all from California to Washington.
Really?
Yeah.
Really?
It doesn't cross the border up?
Well, there are some, but I actually avoided those ones because I was like, ah, that might be a Mothman.
We got to keep those for the Mothman episodes or the Mothman episodes.
And most importantly-
Mothman up here?
Yes, there are.
I remember that from Mothman episodes.
Yes.
But most importantly, Chelsea, I need to make it very precise in that they did not gender this cryptid with wings, which is very good.
Thank God.
For once?
Yes.
This is the first?
Yes.
Outside of Penis Man, which I feel was aptly gendered.
Yes, I was just going to say that one was fitting.
Now somebody just needs to find him.
Anyhow, let's get back to Bat Squatch.
Now, Chelsea, you're going to notice a bit of a difference between Mothman and Bat Squatch when I talk about this.
Yes, it is a flying man-like creature.
However, it is just so different in many ways, particularly the fact that it's not man-like at all.
It is more ape than man.
Sightings of Bat Squatch began in about the 1980s, shortly after the eruption of Mount St. Helens.
Reports from this period describe it as a monkey-like creature with red eyes and wings that flew through the plume.
Now, I couldn't find any actual first-hand accounts of the 1980s, but all the stories say it goes back to that, so okay, whatever.
Now, in 1994, Brian Canfield was driving in Washington's Pierce County when his truck suddenly died.
Canfield said he saw a large creature land in front of him.
He said it was human-like, nine feet tall with bat wings, and also sported a coat of blue fur.
As Canfield's report became well-known, a series of news reports followed.
A person named Butch Whitaker reported that he was in a private plane in the vicinity of Canfield's encounter with the Bat Squatch and encountered a flying Bat Squatch.
And this is from an article right around this time.
Fear continues to dominate the men, women, and children of this town as a dark shadow looms overhead.
Suspicions persevere and rumors spread as far too many sightings of a winged, bat-like creature go unexplained.
It started as childish rumors after the May 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens and has spread to community horror as the truth.
Bat Squatch over Mount Rainier continues to emerge.
What an interesting starting point.
Starting with the eruption of it.
Yeah, and like, I saw nobody point out this, but I'm thinking he might have erupted out of the volcano.
That's what it sounds like. Well, that's what was implied.
They're implying it. They never specifically state it.
Yeah, well, because who wants to foolishly put their name on that?
So they come from inner earth.
While preparing for a climb in early 1994, a local Mountaineer and liquor store owner, Butch Whitaker, managed to take several pictures of the beast during a rare midday flight.
Butch Whitaker, expert in paranormal activity and unexplained phenomena, considers himself lucky to experience this encounter, but adds, quote, I'm not surprised.
These things happen to me all the time.
And quote, although government officials deny the existence of any photographic evidence, our staff experts closely scrutinized all photos and found no reasons to hold its position.
To date, four goats, five chickens, two cows and our prized pig are unaccounted for.
No humans are reported missing, but this is no measure of the never ending toll placed on this community's pride and mental well being.
All Pioneer Day festivities were canceled last week.
And with the recent loss of Priscilla Pig, scheduled dancing this Saturday presumably will fall prey to this monstrous being as well.
Neither police chief Durham nor our mayor will estimate potential long term effects of continued attacks, but both were obviously saddened by the loss of Priscilla, which apparently was a big hit on the community, Priscilla being the prized pig.
Yeah, no, I gathered as much and that's pretty sad for the community.
I mean, what community can withstand the loss of its prized pig?
Almost none of them.
No, it quiet down for a while.
And then in 1998, a driver of a truck calling logs in northern Oregon reported a collision with a bat's watch.
The bat's watch seen at this time, Chelsea is 15 feet tall with purple eyes and a nose and small wings.
This guy's story, he provided an account of it, but he's too long winded.
So I just cut to the chase of what he saw.
The creature stood 15 feet high when it was sitting hunched over in front of me.
I later discovered that this creature would measure an easy 30 feet from head to bottom once it was airborne.
I say bottom because it didn't really have a tail.
The head of the animal is unusually small compared to its massive body.
The beady purple eyes would remind anyone who has the misfortune of seeing them.
Believe that this creature could be of the Ratten family.
While other characteristics of the head also had many features of the Ratten family, being of noteworthy common is long pointed ears from which protruded from the top of the creature's head.
The nose was rather small, the most pronounced features of this nose being its unusual color of purple.
I believe this is the only creature in the world that has a purple nose.
The wingspan of the creature looked very small as if it couldn't fly with such small wing surface.
However, I later learned once the creature was airborne, the wings extend out to form a wingspan of a good 40 feet.
The most disturbing feature of the large beast was its hands.
It appeared to have four sets of them.
Perhaps I could clarify that to mean two sets of clawed hands on the wings.
About midway and another set on the torso, almost as if they were human.
And this is in brackets.
I hadn't noticed the hands near the torso until another encounter with the large animal the next day.
And brackets.
The creature was very frightening to look at and could almost be a cross between a large bat and an excessively large furry human.
I believe the most accurate description would be that given by some of the local townsfolk whom later had the misfortune of countering the beast and naming it Bat Squatch.
And you see how I say this is like fundamentally different than Mothman, but it's still a fly humanoid.
Yeah, I'm just taking this all in.
The guy has pictures of it, you say?
I looked at the pictures, they're not great pictures.
I think I'm looking at one right now and it looks very fake.
Is that the right one?
I would say yes.
Okay, yep.
That guy who just happens to constantly run into the paranormal had fake photos.
That was going to be my second comment.
I mean, I've never encountered one, but to encounter it twice in a very short amount of time.
I mean, that's pretty unlucky.
And so many hands.
Good comments.
That's what you get from me right now.
What other thing?
Did any talk?
No, genderless, right?
No, no, because like it's like Sasquatch, nobody talks about the penis.
People do talk about the boobs.
They do sometimes talk about the boobs, but not here.
Let's fuck you up, you're on the Bat Squatch.
Oh, I guess I can say both.
Okay, except for just then.
Yes.
Now, Chelsea, this, it again goes dormant for a little while, but in 2009, near Mount Shasta in California, there's another sighting.
This is a first hand account.
Me and my friend were hiking around Mount Shasta and out of one of the crevices flew out this big creature.
I mean, this thing was huge.
It was as tall as a man, as stocky as Hulk Hogan, and had leathery wings.
I believe the wingspan was at least 50 feet from one end to the other.
I was holding up my camera, but was paralyzed with fear that this thing flew by.
I didn't get a picture.
Sorry.
But do you think this might be?
Could it have been a pterodactyl?
It was flying or gliding fast.
It seemed to have a head of a bat.
Thinking about it, it doesn't have the head of a pterodactyl.
I just saw a picture of a pterodactyl and the heads are not similar.
I would think it had the head of a bat or maybe like a fox.
The damn thing finally flew into a clump of trees and vanished.
I heard you guys might be going back to Mount Shasta.
If you do, please look out for this thing.
If you see it, you will expletive all over yourself.
I kid you not.
I wouldn't normally just say expletive, but they put in XXXX, so I don't know what the expletive was.
Yeah, and I thought they're gonna say like, if you see it, you'd know it to see it.
So don't confuse it with like an actual bird or something.
And, okay, well at least they measured it from wingtip to wingtip.
Unlike the guy, I'm pretty sure he measured it from head to butt.
Yeah, he said head to butt because it didn't have a tail.
I really like that.
And Relysa synced up his story too, man.
He just went on with his story.
So are there lots of sightings of this still?
No, it's actually incredibly rare.
It seems to go about a decade in between sightings.
Oh, it's one of those guys.
Yeah.
And he comes out every 10 years.
Yeah, it's like a fucking Chikata.
So the last one was 2017?
No, no, there's actually, so 2009 was the story I just read.
Then in 2011, there was another sighting, this person by the name of Phoenix Tiaris,
who apparently is a pseudonym. I don't know why they pick such a horrible pseudonym
if they're picking a pseudonym.
You just go with like, Bat-Squatch-Seer.
I think that's what you say if you're saying it as pseudonym.
And unless you just use the random like generator, like reddit, and you can't make it,
because everything's taken.
Fair enough.
He was in his yard walking his dog, and he went to pick up the dog
when he saw something in the sky.
And he said, I saw something flying in the sky.
It had bat wings, blue fur, and had a face similar to eyes glowing red.
That doesn't make sense.
Blue fur and had a face similar to eyes glowing red.
That's what it says.
It was about nine feet tall at least after I watched it just flew away.
And there was another sighting after this in Ohio, which is really outside of the range of this thing.
So an entire Spanish high school class spotted this thing
and said that it was flying at an incredible speed,
and it was about nine feet tall with a 20 to 30 foot wingspan.
Oh, that's a cool one. Blue fur.
It doesn't say.
It seems to be a characteristic of it.
I would assume, or it wouldn't be included.
But yeah, those are the distinct characteristics of bat squash over mothman,
is it has much more coloring than a moth person.
Yeah, definitely.
And they seem like just fantastically huge compared to a mothman.
Yeah, because mothman, other than its wings, is taller.
Like eight feet.
Basically, I think, yeah, no, I think they can get pretty tall.
I've never heard them described as like 50 feet wide though.
No, never like Hulk Hogan, that's for sure.
Yeah, and they're never discovered as like big buff boys.
No, no, nobody ever described them as like particularly buff or ripped.
Or bat like, they're than the wings.
Never said bat face.
Okay, cool. Bat squash, I'd like to be a fan.
I'm a fan of him other than the wings.
I feel like no matter what, if I was to even see something that's regular every day.
Bat, bird, duck.
Anything with wings, yeah, you're not going to be good with.
No, not going to be good with it.
Now, Chelsea, bat squash, like I said, it's a very rare sighting,
but it still does hold a place in the modern culture with rogue brewing in Oregon
having a specific line of beer called bat squash.
I saw that.
Yeah.
But that is what we have on this friendly little dude.
Now, Chelsea, I will turn this over to you.
Yeah, so I'm just taking it all the way into left field for this.
My creature, a hope is a creature.
Doppelganger, humans are creatures, right?
We're a creature.
Yeah.
A doppelganger, oh no, I'm already fucking enough.
Is a biologically unrelated lookalike or double of a living person if you've never heard of a doppelganger before.
And goes super far back, like to the beginning of humanity, probably.
In mythology and folklore, they are or can be portrayed as paranormal phenomena.
That's where I'm filing it, by the way, in case you wanted to know.
And ghostly spirit vectors and apparitions of individuals that appear to those individuals
and their family and friends and can be seen as a harbinger of bad luck.
In other stories and traditions, they're equated with an evil twin.
And it actually traces its origins back to Germany.
The term itself, doppelganger, is a German lone-wear, literally translating to double goer or double walker,
depending on where you're getting your information from.
I got it from a lot of places.
That's why I came up with both.
Its first known use appeared in the 70s in the book See Ben Cast by Jean-Paul,
who defined doppelganger, then doppeltganger, in the book's footnotes as a term for those who see themselves.
Initially used for lookalikes in German folklore and literature,
the term now describes duplicates and doubles in an array of worldwide tradition.
The term doppelganger emerges in the 1700s and only recently was used to describe the phenomenon.
The idea of the doppelganger was already well established before then,
entails, you know, all over the place.
Catherine Crowe's book on Paranormal Phenomenon, The Nightside of Nature, 1848, helped make the German word well-known,
and the concept of alter egos and double spirits has appeared in folklore,
myths, religious concepts, and traditions of many cultures throughout human history.
German legend had spirits and specters of the living while English and Irish folklore featured fetches,
which are apparitions of a person living.
In Scandinavia, the vordodger had a habit of appearing in places prior to a person's actual arrival,
and the activities of the Finnish etiilnen, a first comer.
In ancient Egyptian mythology, a ka was a tangible spirit double,
and it was a person with the same memories and feelings as the person to whom the counterpart belongs.
You really see a wide range of what a doppelganger represents in all of these eight.
They each kind of have a different association with it.
And yet, all German, weirdly enough.
Yeah, I'm gonna go on. There's a ton of them, but even now, like in Scandinavia,
they appeared before the actual person came,
and then this one in Egypt apparently had like memories of the person.
Greek princess, presence, and Egyptian view of the Trojan War,
in which a ka of Helen misleads Paris helping to start the war.
Many majority Muslim countries have the concept of a Karen or a Karen.
One has a K, one has a Q. I don't know how that would be pronounced differently,
but is it potentially benevolent or harmful spirit double of the same sex, race,
and parallel temperament as the person it's connected to?
It bears children, which are the spirit doubles of the person's children.
In some places, the Karen is the opposite sex of the person it represents.
When malicious, it often tries to persuade the person it's connected to into following their bad whims.
Some Sufi mystics pictured the Karen as a devil residing in the blood and the hearts of humans.
It's more popular in some countries than others.
For example, it's more popular in Egypt than Sudan.
So there's a ton of superstitions that surround the doppelgangers.
Number one, seeing your doppelganger is an omen of death.
According to both English and German folklore, seeing your doppelganger often means that death will soon follow,
even more so if you see them more than once.
This idea is backed up by the many stories throughout the time that of Tolled Tales where someone died shortly after seeing their doppelganger multiple times, like Lincoln.
Soon after his election in 1860, Abraham Lincoln saw his reflection doubled in the mirror,
with one face beside the other with a ghostly pallor.
He tied to show his wife the apparition, I am assuming that should be tried,
which appeared two more times when she was not present.
While Mary Todd was at first worried about this behavior,
she took the vision as a sign that he would serve two terms, but would die before the end of the second.
What an odd way to take that.
That is a very weird way to take that.
I know, right?
That's a very specific way to take it.
I know.
We now know.
Okay, number two, we're back to another superstition around doppelgangers.
Doppelgangers give malicious advice.
They are generally seen as a bad omen if they don't specifically mean death.
Many have always believed that the doppelganger is basically an evil twin.
They supposedly attempt to purposely give you bad advice in a malicious way.
They might also try to plant sinister ideas in their victims' mind.
Number three, if someone else sees your doppelganger, it means you might be very sick.
Number four, your doppelganger is a ghostly double that lived before you.
Number five, it is your spirit double.
Number six, it is your evil double from the underworld, or maybe your their evil double from the underworld.
That has to be the most awkward thing, the fact that one of you has to be evil, and yeah, you might not actually be the nice one.
What would you think?
Like, if somebody saw it, I mean...
I've heard people tell me that, like, they saw somebody who looked like me before.
Like, that happens, like, fairly consistently.
I don't know what point you can say, no, they were your doppelganger.
Like, it was you, right?
Number seven, even a portrait of a doppelganger can be a bad omen.
How do you know it's a picture of a doppelganger, though?
I gotta read it now.
Today, it's pretty common to find old portraits in paintings of someone who looks exactly like someone living now.
Oh, I get it.
I think super old portraits of a person who looks just like a popular celebrity.
I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be a celebrity, probably.
This isn't a great sign either.
The Canalos Indians of South America hated portraiture and photography because they believed the pictures captured the soul of the person.
And this is still a belief today because many cultures see portraiture as a representation of the soul.
They believe that the soul pictures become the double.
Number eight, it's a sign of an alternate universe, and you can use your imagination on that.
So, there are a few examples other than Abraham Lincoln that we so nicely edited together for you.
So, it probably sound like I just had the information ready.
George Tye Trion.
A Victorian age example was the supposed appearance of Vice Admiral Sir George Trion.
He was said to have walked through the drawing room of his family home in Eaton Square, London,
looking straight ahead without exchanging a word to anyone.
In front of several guests at a party being given by his wife on 22nd of June 1893,
while he was supposed to be in a ship of the Mediterranean Fleet, maneuvering off the coast of Syria.
Subsequently, it was reported that he had gone down with a ship.
HMS Victoria the very same night after it collided with the HMS Camper Down,
following the unexplained and bizarre order to turn the ship in the direction of the other vessel.
Ooh, spooky.
That took a twist at the end.
And it also brings up a point to me at what point or where do we draw the line between ghost and doppelganger?
That's a good question.
Because that to me seems like a ghost if he had, you know, died around the same time.
Because it's his soul.
So maybe that's where you, I mean, you'd have to really draw a line on that one where it comes to souls.
Because you can't have the same soul as your doppelganger because it's evil, probably.
Or it's the good one and I'm the bad one.
Wouldn't they just both be bad and be the same person for that story?
Yeah, yeah, he's probably just a bad guy.
So they're both evil, obviously.
King Umberto the first of Italy, a popular story about King Umberto the first of Italy.
Tells of the king eating in a restaurant and discovering the owner was his dead ringer double.
The story goes that upon talking to the man, Umberto learned of a string of coincidences between their lives,
such as the two men had been born in the same town on the same day and had both married a woman in the same name.
And the restaurant had opened on the day of Umberto's coronation.
Umberto's assassination in 1900 is said to have happened the same day that he heard the news that the restaurant tour had died in a shooting.
Okay, I don't know that I would think doppelganger.
Some creepies going on there for sure.
I'm not really convinced of these examples, so I'm gonna jump over to Reddit.
Let's see.
User EGlamma.
I have a pretty interesting one.
My partner who passed away in 2020 had a VW van.
He decorated it with stickers on the side windows.
Last year I was driving through my village and at some point I looked in the rear view mirror to see a van that looked just like his following behind me.
It caught my attention because the van had been sold to a family who lived four hours away.
I slowed down for the van to catch up to me so I could get a better look.
My heart dropped when I noticed the driver looked exactly like my past partner.
Not only that, the passenger looked exactly like me.
We finally came to a crossroad where I turned left and they went straight on.
I could see the same stickers as they drove over.
I absolutely freaked out and pulled my car over to calm down.
Extremely weird and I think about it every day.
Okay.
So they just kind of saw somebody that looked like somebody they knew.
Well it seemed to like the stickers seemed to match in everything on the same exact van.
And the two passengers looked like her ex-boyfriend and her.
That one's kind of strange.
Yeah.
Do you think coincidence even like the same down to the same stickers on the van?
Yeah, I guess.
User hot heat 5042.
I've only ever had it happen in my dreams personally.
This treatment happened multiple times in different ways, but it's like something pretending to be my mother
and then she comes in the room and the other one attempts to kill me.
I think it's because there's some kind of thing in my house that pretends to be my mom sometimes
and it's visualized in my dreams.
That's fucking creepy.
Our hypnotic bacon 28.
That's a nice easier name.
I've had more than I care to.
Currently living at my dad's house and there's one here that seems to like the basement.
What?
A doppelganger that just takes like what lives in the basement?
Lives in your basement specifically.
I don't have a basement.
If I go into the furthest corner of the basement alone for any reason at night,
it's more likely to come upstairs that night to reveal itself usually by walking around so its footsteps are clear.
What the fuck is this guy talking about?
It used to mimic a specific cat.
This is not a doppelganger.
You got to be kidding me.
I got to go on.
Committed now.
I want to see what's happening.
It used to mimic a specific cat we used to have from that far corner of the basement.
What?
And only at night when I'm the only one still awake.
This stopped when the cat died.
It has mimicked my entire immediate family.
I was home alone early one morning when my dad got home from work when I heard it in my sister's room.
Sounded like her talking to one of the cats.
One night while I was still in high school and we had the computer in the kitchen,
I heard my dad talking to me and turned around to see nobody there.
The other night it decided to mimic a cat.
We had that like to jump on some cases of pop after I got up from the computer to grab a drink.
I saw no cat there but I watched the cardboard cave in from the wait as I passed by.
Maybe he's confused about what a doppelganger is?
I moved back to this house in late June this year.
My first Sunday back I woke up around 5am from a nightmare about a demon mimicking people.
Possessing the person it imitated walking their body into a secluded location.
Leaving their body and scaring them further into the location to kill them without their body being found.
It did this to hundreds throughout the nightmare.
After the last one I bolted upright in bed and heard from a couple of feet away my own heavy breathing out of pace with my own as though it mocked me.
It stayed invisible and walked through the bedroom door toward the kitchen.
I got up, unlocked the door and looked around the house to make sure those first steps weren't my dad.
He was sound asleep.
I think this guy is confused about what a doppelganger is.
Those are Reddit but I just want to share a few other ones.
I don't feel like any of the stories that I just told were actually doppelganger stories.
Maybe the Van one but they also didn't get anything bad from it.
Which makes it kind of not really a doppelganger story.
There's a couple I want to share.
I do have a personal friend that has said that they had an encounter where they're just sitting around and they actually saw themselves come into the room.
That I would say would be a doppelganger type scenario.
And I know they had said that the doppelganger entity kind of looked shocked to see them there.
And the second one I want to bring up is one that I've heard fairly often. I can't tell you if it's on coast to coast AM.
I want to say it's from there.
It's from some type of podcast that's fairly well known.
It might be Jim Harold's campfire actually.
It's about this guy.
He saw an entity when he was a kid.
And then he grows up and is in the exact opposite side of that situation. And it turns out that he saw like time got screwed up somehow.
And it was him that he saw when he was a kid.
Just the situation replayed but the other way around.
So I think both of those are way better doppelgangers situations than I provided in this.
As what might happen sometimes.
Because as I say I like to be as surprised as you when I tell some of my encounters.
So that's my doppelganger creature.
Well that's good and Chelsea.
I really like the fact that we learned throughout these stories that people do not have a firm grasp of what a doppelganger is.
Because it's a German word. We don't speak German.
No. And German you could it's a inferior language unfortunately English to German.
No sorry. No it's a superior language because it's the only way that the aliens will talk to us.
Yeah. German right. English is the inferior language.
And we just don't quite comprehend doppelganger German word.
It's an imperfect language. It just can't convey it.
Oh yeah. We just proved it.
I heard that you might have one more creature.
Yes I do and Chelsea this might be the most terrifying creature that I have ever done a story on.
Really.
Yes it is great.
I'm glad we're ending on this then for our Halloween episode.
And Chelsea let us learn about the Enfield horror.
Let us. Haven't we heard about this before.
I don't know for sure perhaps but I don't think so.
I think it came up briefly in the Warren episode.
Oh yes you know what that might be correct.
Yeah they showed up and got kicked out. That's all we talked about.
So this is how this story starts and this is like the most bizarre creature I've ever heard of.
I didn't know there's a creature.
Yes it's the horror.
I thought it was a poltergeist.
No oh god no.
Okay.
On the night of April 25th 1973 a young boy named Greg Garrett claimed to have been attacked by a beast while playing in his backyard.
He described the beast as having three legs grayish and slimy skin short claws and reddish eyes.
The creature apparently stamped on the boy's feet with his own three feet.
Okay.
Pairing his tennis shoes to shreds.
Greg then ran away from the feed and back into the relatively safe area of his parents house.
Now this is the first time anybody sees the Enfield horror but it's not the last and it keeps going from here.
That's its name.
The Enfield horror is what people call it yes.
The creature itself okay.
Yeah.
At about 9 30 that night the Garrett's neighbor Henry McDaniel and his wife returned home to find two of their children Henry Jr. and Lil terrified.
The children claimed that a thing had been trying to break into the house through the door and a window mounted air conditioner while their parents were gone.
It was then they start to hear scratching at the front door.
Now Henry assuming as a stray animal just goes and opens the door and he sees the exact same red eyed three-legged monstrosity that the Garrett's child had seen like an hour before staring him straight away.
McDaniel backs away slams the door stumbles to the nearby closet and grabs a 22 pistol.
While the Horrify family waits Henry returned to the door through it back open revealing the exact same thing that he has seen and he just opens fire on it.
He describes it as three legs on a short body two little short arms coming out of its breast area and two pink eyes as big as flashlights.
It's the four and a half feet tall and was grayish colored.
It was trying to get into the house.
McDaniel's open fire as I said hitting it immediately but instead of falling to the ground wounded or dead.
The creature merely hisses like a wildcat at the frightened homeowner and Henry who had fired four shots at the thing assured anyone who asked that he had not missed his quarry.
He would always say when I fired that first shot I know I hit it.
Henry McDaniel then claimed the beast went off into the night covering approximately 50 feet in a series of just three astonishing leaps before disappearing into the brush along the L and N railroad embankment in front of his house.
McDaniel's promptly calls to the local authorities but when Illinois State Troopers who responded to the call arrived seeing the only evidence of the counter that remained were a series of scratches in the siding of McDaniel's home and dog like prints in the yard.
What made the prints so unusual was the fact that they had six toe pads and even more intriguingly they represented a three-footed animal with one track being slightly smaller than the others.
There's actual physical evidence.
Yeah, if McDaniel believed that this encounter with the unknown were a thing of the past he would soon realize that he was mistaken.
On the eve of May 6th he was startled awake in the dead of the night by the howling of a neighborhood dog.
McDaniel pulled himself out of bed, once again claimed his firearm and with what must have been great trepidation opened the front door.
At the time his encounter with this creature would not be so intimate and he claims to have watched the thing at some distance languidly negotiating the trestles of the railroad tracks near his home.
And this is a direct quote from him.
I saw something moving on the railroad track and there it stood.
I didn't shoot at it or anything.
It started on down the railroad track and it wasn't in a hurry or anything.
It wasn't long before the press got wind of the weirdness and came out in full force, but it wasn't until McDaniel's second report the media frenzy truly kicked into overdrive.
White County Sheriff Roy Poshard Jr. was so perturbed by the sudden influx of press and curiosity seekers he threatened to incarcerate McDaniels if he didn't stop inciting panic by spreading his wildly terrifying tale.
To make matters worse, well-armed posseys of amateur monster hunters began patrolling the area near the LNN railroad track, citing,
It was on one such expedition that five young men allegedly had a run-in with a creature identical to the one that Garrett and McDaniel encountered,
with the notable addition being that they described the thing as being hairy.
They discovered the beast hiding in the underbush and proceeded to open fire on it, but their bullets again were unable to cause mortal injury and the monster bolted off at speeds that the eyewitnesses surmised was greatly in excess of any that a human being could achieve.
The final eyewitness to this improbable creature was Rick Rainbow, the news director of radio station WWKI in Kokomo, Indiana.
The three other unnamed individuals claimed to have seen a gray, stooping five-foot-tall entity lurking outside an abandoned house not far from Garrett and McDaniel's home.
Although they did not have nearly as close an encounter as the previous sets of eyewitnesses, Rainbow and his crew did manage to do one thing that the others had not.
They recorded the monster's disturbing scream, and this unfortunately I could not find the audio. I wish I could because it would be a great addition here, but apparently there is a recording of the screen that this thing gives off.
It was then that noted cryptozoologist Lauren Coleman arrived on the scene to investigate eyewitness claims, as well as the sound recordings.
Coleman also heard the haunting cry of the creature while searching an area where eyewitnesses claimed to have seen the thing, as a quote from them,
I traveled to Enfield, interviewed witnesses looked at the siding of the house, the Enfield monster had damaged, and heard some strange screeching banshee-like sounds and walked away bewildered.
In the July 1974 edition of Fate magazine, Lauren Coleman and Jerome Clark featured the Enfield horror in an article entitled Swamp Slops Invade Illinois.
Coleman even chronically discussing this intriguing case with famed paranormal investigator as well as best-selling author of the Mothman prophecies, John Keel, in his book Mothman and Other Curious Encounters, so maybe that's where we got it from.
Actually, if you want to discuss it now, I was confusing this. Apparently there's more than one place named Enfield. The one that I was thinking is, I quickly found out after you said that, is the Enfield haunting. That one is a poltergeist.
It's probably good that we're clarifying this, because I was also confused. I actually haven't heard of the Enfield horror, in which the Enfield haunting is the one that Ed and Lorraine Warren showed up for and were kicked off, not the Enfield horror.
So yeah, that's what that was. Very strange coincidence.
Yeah, it is a strange coincidence, and that there is another famous paranormal person involved in this too.
Anyhow, there's a direct quote here. This reminds me of my exchange with Keel in 1973 when we were discussing the news reports out of Illinois from Enfield.
On April 25th, 1973, Mr. and Mrs. Henry McDaniel returned to their home and Henry had an encounter with a thing that looked like it had three legs, two pink eyes, as big as flashlights, and in short arms on a four and a half foot tall, greyish-colored body along the LNN railroad tracks in front of his house.
A few months later, Coleman would contrast as the Enfield investigation with another he conducted regarding a legendary creature that many assume was also of alien origin.
A melon-headed monster known as the Dover Demon, which I believe we've done as a creature feature before.
The Enfield horror was my case investigation. It was much different than the Dover Demon, however, and was more like a combo phantom kangaroo, devil monkey, and swamp-aim situation.
The investigators have suggested that the monster was associated with a spat of UFO sightings that allegedly plagued the region during the same period, and those with the more supernatural bent have averted that this beast, with its tendencies to be aggressive towards humans and try to break it into their homes,
has all the airmarks of a classic demon attack.
This would not be the first time that it was suggested that there is an apparent ET occult connection with this area. This would not be the first time that it has been suggested that there is an apparent ET occult connection.
While the phenomenon are not directly related, the primary witness in the Northport Devil case, Michael Revely, also claims that the creatures that have been skulking around the house he shares with his son in the West Florida community of Northport
are of both extraditional demon origin, making them in effect aliens from hell.
It should be noted that between the years 1941 and 42 in the sleepy village of Mount Vernon, less than 40 miles away from Enfield, there was a similar spat of encounters involving an anomalous, leaping beast that terrorized the local populace and was reputedly responsible for numerous animal deaths in the region.
High witnesses claim that the Mount Vernon monster was vaguely baboon-like and able to leap 20-40 feet in a single bound. Is it possible that the Enfield horror help whatever it may be is working on 30 year cycles?
While there are no reputable accounts of the creature coming in the 21st century, one cannot entirely count out the possibility that the thing is a long, summering anatomical oddity that rears its head every so often to feed on animals and terrify locals.
Oh my god, that's the second one in this episode. Or stranger yet. Yeah. Yeah. That seems to have a cycle. There's too many coincidences in this episode.
But yeah, I absolutely love this. And unfortunately, Chelsea, like the... I heard an explanation for this that kind of makes sense. It's an escaped kangaroo.
Okay, it could.
It doesn't make sense with some of it. But just three legs, the fact that the kangaroos have such a sturdy tail to support themselves. They do have dog-like paws on the back. And there was an escaped kangaroo, however, it was like 100 miles away at the time.
So it doesn't necessarily get that fixed up.
Yes. Okay, so apparently there's some weird shake going on in Illinois, which is where this infield is because really they've had this happen in multiple locations. And then you got Chicago, who has a moth problem, mothman problem, mothperson problem, my bad.
Huh. I like that one. Yeah. And it's like, this is just like such a bizarre beast and it got shot like a lot. Yeah. It's just collecting bullets. Yeah.
That's pretty crazy. I don't know what I would do. I mean, I definitely wouldn't open my door if this was going on to see what would investigate a thing. I don't care what it is. I wouldn't be opening my door. I wouldn't be rolling down my window if I was in a car.
Huh. I quite like that one. Yeah. And I think it's a great one to leave these people with four Halloween days. I think we've had a pretty good Halloween season. And with that... Oh yeah. With always.
Yeah. With that. I have been Taylor, here with Chelsea. We are Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for listening. We'll see you next week.
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