by
Cole Herrold
Boonville, Indiana is located in Warrick County and
has an estimated population of around 6,300. It is approximately 17 miles from
Evansville, one of the state's largest cities, and is known interestingly enough,
named after folk hero Daniel Boon's cousin Ratliff Boon who was predominate in
the area. Boonville also has some presidential history too as the town was
where Abraham Lincoln had gone to study law. While the town has a rich history,
it is also home to a legend that is just as interesting. For it was in August
of 1936 and 1937 when a large unknown shambling beast was both seen and, to the
terror of those around heard, in the forested regions known as the Cyprus Beach
area of Boonville, Indiana.
The first official sighting of this creature occurred on
August 1936 and was covered in the Hammond Times article “Sounds like a
Bear Yarn” It was on a dark night that Ralph Duff, a professional fisherman had first begun to hear loud unearthly screams that came from the woods outside
of his property. These bellowing cries echoed through the night air filling his
house with the unearthly clamor of the strange creature. These noises, however,
would not be the end to the strange creature that would soon plague and
terrorize his residence and family. This creature's cacophony could be heard
ringing out on one fateful night when the ferocious din was not the only
presence of the beast. The shrouded darkness clothed the beast as it lumbered
its way onto Ralph's property. His police dog had begun to act up as the
creature came ever closer to the homestead. The animal, whether annoyed by the
family pet or fearful of an attack, proceeded to commit a heinous action that
would result in the dismemberment of the militarized mutt. The fisherman would
find the severed remains of his family friend dead on the lawn the next morning
with large footprints bigger than a human's around the dead pup. Yet this was
still not the finale of this family's encounter with the beast.
Soon after, Duff and his wife outside one night had
heard the bloodcurdling screams once more. The sound of heavy footfalls slowly
in tow as the creature’s horrible racket only grew in intensity. Ralph and his
wife looked and saw a creature larger than a bear, ape-like in appearance and
terrifying in form. The creature looked and released an unholy scream from its
ape-like maw. His wife, whether out of fear or finally tired of the constant
confrontations she and her husband have suffered at the hands and cries of this
nocturnal assailant, released a gigantic scream. The creature stepped back
after hearing this and, whether out of fright or just tired of the skirmish,
returned to the forest, never to be encountered by them, at least to our
knowledge again. To be sure, however, that this creature would no longer plague
his family, he set up a string of traps around the area. Yet no creature,
either known or unknown, had managed to set them off. When asked about what he
thought about the strange creature seen around his property, he described it as
a large ape that probably lived in a cave around the river. Yet nothing has
reportedly been found around that area.
The next year a man stumbled into the office around the
Hammond Times who claimed to have full knowledge of the origin of this
ostensibly hairy creature. The man claimed that, in a way, he was responsible
for this creature's appearance. The creature he would claim came from sunny
Mexico and that he and his uncle had managed to capture the beast on a game
hunting trip two years prior. The creature was contained till they reached
Evansville, where subsequently the creature somehow managed to escape making
its way to the surrounding woods. The previous owner was unsure whether the
creature bore two or three claws and stated that when the creature was hungry,
it would release a loud, sharp scream not unlike what was reported in the woods
of Boonville.
A short time later, a circus troop would show up in
Boonville with their own agenda to search for the beast. They would go and
continue the search for some time, but assumedly nothing was ever found. The
true reason for their search, whether it was to reclaim some lost specimen or
to capture the strange beast reported in the area, is undetermined. It is
poignant to note that circus escapees to most familiar with cryptozoology are a
common explanation as to why many cryptids are reported. This is often steeped
in folklore and legend and appears as a constant answer to a lot of locals when
asked where their monster came from.
While the Boonville Monster itself, as far as
documented reports go, had concluded sometime in the 1940s, but it was not
alone for other strange animals were reported in and around the area. An orangutan
was reported in Anderson near the Rose Hill Gravel pit. In Sullivan County, the
police and others had gone to look for an ape around the Busseron Creek Bottom.
A William Alsop and his wife reported seeing this secret simian near the
highway. When the creature realized it was seen, it rose up on its back legs
and raised its arms in the air running off into the woods. This sighting was
later reported to Deputy Sheriff Hubert Seiver, leading to a full-on
investigation that came out empty-handed.
The Boonville Monster is a phenomenon that has an
interesting aroma to it. The creature is in behavior and in most descriptions,
either directly or implied to be something more akin to a bigfoot. Yet, at the
same time, if you take into consideration the report of a released sloth, it
adds something entirely new to the already mysterious beast. Both creatures are
unknown animals, at least from a modern standpoint ground sloths went extinct
around 10,000 years ago, often believed to be caused by human interaction and
other biological factors. The idea that the ground sloths are still living is
one of my most cherished hopes, for I love those bucolic giants. There are
reports of such creatures still living in New York, California, Mexico, Alaska,
as well as Central and South America, and I hope they do. With this case,
however, it seems to be the latter option when it comes to plausibility. The
Boonville Monster is something that is very bigfoot like and the only time a
sloth is even brought into the picture is with the Hammond Time’s report
of an alleged captured one. The man who described his captured beast, though,
was anonymous, which does raise a skeptical eyebrow. Some could argue for fear
of the response that would come when the townsfolk would discover he was potentially
the cause of their distress; there is no way of fact-checking such an
expedition and or shipping such a creature into the United States. Another
element about this is the nondescript number of toes of the creature. The man
claimed not to know how many digits his prized beast had. This is very much
unbelievable since a creature the size of what was reported in Boonville if a
sloth would have obvious numbered ones. This raises the question of whether or
not it actually was the common three-toed or two-toed sloths that the man was
talking about since the article referred to more of the noises the creature
made in relation to the sightings than a description of the creature.
The most likely option for the Boonville Monster is
that it is, in fact, just one of the countless regional names for bigfoot found
in the United States. While I desperately want this to be another giant sloth,
there is very little evidence supporting that claim. There is a ton of
evidence, however, pointing to a bigfoot like creature. The fact that this
creature attacked dogs and vocalized and was described as ape-like is something
we see more in bigfoot, Nape, and devil monkey reports. The fact that this
creature was also larger than a bear also seems to indicate that it is a local
sasquatch or even a sasquatch that migrated through the area hence why sightings,
at least to my knowledge, tapered off at the end of the 1940s. In fact, the
Bigfoot Field and Research Organization, aka BFRO, when looking at
their sightings log for Warrick County for similar creature reports, includes
the newspaper report featuring Ralph Duff and his wife’s encounter.
Accounts like these are extremely interesting not only
because of the age of the case but also the newspaper reports of the creature.
Newspaper accounts of cryptids have always been relevant, but they are
fascinating reads and usually published the day after or a few days after a
sighting, which makes it one of the earliest ways to fill out a sighting report
before the internet. In the newspaper sources, there are several interesting
features that could include embellishment, the author's or editor's bias, as
seen in the Grafton Monster Case. It is really interesting to read, even if,
like in the Grafton case, it is infuriating to read how dismissive the writer
or editor is of the case. With this beast, that's all we have to go on, though,
is what has been written and hypothesized about in the paper. There is a chance
it could be the ground sloth I so desperately want it to be and what is
reported is someone's interpretation of the creature seen, or alternatively, it
could be exactly what it seems to be a large bigfoot like creature. Either way,
it's a curious case that left one fisherman's dog torn apart, and his wife
terrified, and one sloth supposedly missing.
Quick facts:
Species/Potential species: Hairy Hominid/Prehistoric Relic
Location: Boonville, Indiana
Year: 1936-1937
Works
Cited:
Coleman, Loren. “Giant Sloth in Ohio River Valley?”. Cryptomundo.
November 26, 2011. http://cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/giant-sloth/. Accessed
January 7, 2021
Weatherly, David. Monsters at the Crossroads: Cryptids
and Legends of Indiana. Eerie Lights. 2020.
“Sounds Like a Bear Yarn”, Hammond Times,
Hammond, Indiana, Monday,
“Sloth Scares the Boonville Natives,” Hammond Times,
Hammond, Indiana, Wednesday, August 18, 1937.
“Beast of Boonville” Cryptid Wiki. https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Beast_of_Boonville.
“Report # 14336 (Class A)”. BFRO. April 7,
2006. http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=14336.
Accessed January 7, 2021.
“City History” City of Boonville. http://www.cityofboonvilleindiana.com/residents/city_history/index.php.
Accessed January 7, 2021.
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