The Yellow What-Is-It

by Cole Herrold

In October of 1879, Berks County, Pennsylvania was home to one of the strangest creatures that have ever been reported. This creature which has no comparison to any known animal or hominid is something that has mystified all those who have come across it. Over the course of several days, several witnesses came forth to describe in vivid detail a creature that has gone unnoticed by a majority of paranormal researchers and cryptozoologists. The creature has been recorded only a few times in literature, making it one of the most obscure accounts in not just Pennsylvania history but Fortean history in general.

The Yellow-What-Is-It, as the creature has been called, was sighted in Ruscombmanor and Muhlenberg Townships which is nestled on the east side of Berks County. The Sightings of the creature were initially reported in The Indiana Progress on October 16th, 1879. The paper describes three eyewitnesses to the beast and in which two of the witnesses actually seeing the beast twice on the same day. The Yellow-What-Is-It was first brought to the world’s attention by the prison inspector’s son Schmehl and his friend Jared Rissmiller who was helping Schmehl in driving some cattle. While out driving the cattle in towards the property, they noticed near a particular gate a strange form bunkered down in the grass. Thinking maybe this was a stray cat, dog, or some other local resident animal, they were not too concerned with this creature as it would seem unlikely that something predatory would be napping in an area full of potential prey. Yet as the two came closer to the creature, they began to notice that it seemed off; it seemed weird and not like anything they knew to hang out around the area. The pair stopped right by the strange sleeper when as they looked, they could tell this was not anything they had ever seen in their countless years on the farm and woods.  The creature, apparently feeling the stare of the two men and thereby also realizing its discovery reared up, and it was at that moment the two cattle drivers saw the beast completely. The creature was about four feet tall with a dirty yellowish colored skin. Which the men felt was due to the creature rolling around in clay. The beast had long arms that jutted it out into hands with two fingers which sported long talon-like claws. The feet of the creature was large and flattened and had no toes. The creatures head was covered in what the men described as "furrows", yet the rest of the body was smooth. The men took note that the creature was naked, and some sources describe the creature as being male. This obviously implied the creature bore some kind of noticeable genitalia. Whether it bore a resemblance to a human's or another species is anyone's speculation.

The creature stared at the men and, obviously being disturbed, proceeded to stretch its arms out and began to run towards the men. The men, obviously both in a state of shock or just stupidity, waited for the creature to slash its way into them, but as the creature got about halfway between the men, it changed direction and fled into a nearby cornfield. The men being dutiful, proceeded in making sure their animals were safe and then proceeded to chase the beast. They noticed the great path that was cut through the corn leading out towards the nearby woodlands. It was there in the hilly area before the outcropping of trees that they found the beast once again curled up on the ground attempting to either rest from its frightful encounter with the men or to simply try to fall back to sleep. As the men approached, it seems that the creature noticed them and again rose up on its hind legs. At that moment, Rissmiller took note of the creature's face and features. He described the creature similarly to Schmehl in that it was a yellowish-brown creature with arms approximately fourteen inches long with legs about the same or a little bit longer. He said the creature had a small face with small eyes and unlike Schmehl said the beast bore two horns on the top of its head. Another slight difference in their reports is the description of the hands and feet, as Rissmiller describes them as like those of a human. He makes no distinction of digit count, which is interesting because the creature in his account could have normal digits or normal looking formed hands but with two digits similar in comparison to a human's. The feet being human is also slightly different from the elephant-like feet described by Schmehl. Whether they have toes or have no toes, however, is similar to the possibilities with the hands.

Their encounter with the beast, however, did not end there. The two men, now fueled by an enigmatic curiosity, decided to try to capture the strange beast. In a wild romp, the two men tried to encircle the creature; the exact method in which the two men had thought to try to capture the creature is anyone’s guess, but as is the case with most monster hunts, the two men came up empty-handed as their quarry proceeded to run off into the nearby woods. That is the end of the Schmehl and Rissmiller encounters, but not the end of their involvement in the case. After their failed attempt to contain the beast, they travelled to Topton Station, where they discussed their harrowing encounter with the beast. O.H. Hinnershitz, the owner of a hotel in the area, listened with intrigue to their encounter. This led Hinnershitz and several other patrons to follow in that classic Universal Studios mob to form with the sole goal to go and hunt down the strange beast.

While for several days and nights, the group with hunting dogs searched for this jaundiced entity but to no avail. They searched cornfields, woodlands, swamps; they searched every nook and cranny as the community was both terrified and concerned that something so unusual and potentially dangerous was residing in their communal backyards. While there was no capture of the beast, there was, however, throughout that time, strange, harrowing cries could be heard in the nearby woodlands at night. And after one particular rainstorm, several bizarre footprints believed to of been connected to the beast had been found.

During this time as well, a Mr Heckman confirmed that a strange creature was prowling through the area. For while out one day, he too would claim to of encountered the creature that Rissmiller and Schmehl had seen. Mr Heckman said the creature, however, was most likely an escaped primate of some kind or another, most likely a gorilla. At the time of the sightings, however, there were no escaped primates near the area. While there are no other detailed accounts of the creature, other sightings were supposedly reported during this time. Unfortunately, further details of these other encounters are lost to time or lost due to a lack of investigative reporting. Hopefully, someday a journal or diary of a local eyewitness will be unearthed to possibly explaining what the Yellow What-Is-It was or to tell another tale of the Yellow What-Is-It. To this day, several strange humanlike but non-human creatures are reported in Pennsylvania, but the Yellow What-Is-It has not been seen since.

With this account, there is a lot to break down. This creature is clearly something we have never seen before, and nothing even comes close to be comparable. When focusing on this creature from a biological standpoint which seems to be the best start off point of analysis, this creature is extremely unique. If this creature is a mammal, there's a lot of features that seem to be seen in other organisms; the horns, elephant-like feet, flappy furrowy skin, and of course, the subtle reference to genitalia are all features that we see on known animals. Ungulates like cows and bison have large horns, furrowy skin is something we see on naked mole rats, the elephant-like feet are something that obviously are seen on elephants and rhinoceros. Now the problem with this is the arms which are features that are more dinosaurian or birdlike in quality than something you would see in a mammal. This then raises the question, well, could this be an example of maybe some kind of surviving species of Theropod dinosaur. When they describe the horns, one can instantly imagine Carnosaurs theropod dinosaurs that had bull-like horns on some of the species. Many of these dinosaurs had small, crumpled hands as well. In fact, one particular species of Carnosaur is almost a dead ringer for the Yellow What-Is-It, and that is the Carnotaurus. It had a shorter snout compared to most dinosaurs and had two horns, so facially, it is not far off from what had been seen. However, when looking at the feet of the Carnosaur compared to the What-Is-It and the obvious lack of a description of a tail, something that more than likely would have been described when the creature ran away, this does not seem to be a dinosaur or even a reptile. Also, there are minor inconsistencies in the descriptions of the creature, but a lot of this has to do with the feet, as they are also described as being humanlike, a feature usually not associated with reptiles.

As for the nature of the creature, it seems to be non-dangerous. The creature ran towards Schmehl but later changed direction. This could be that the creature felt threatened or cornered and was looking to protect itself. Realizing that Schmehl was not a threat or was an opponent, it could not beat led it to retreat. No other attempted attacks from the beast were reported. During the flap of the sighting, no animals were found killed or missing that were reported, so the creature most likely is not carnivorous. If the creature is a carnivore, it most likely will eat smaller creatures like mice, squirrels, birds, or other animals of that size. The Schmehl and Rissmiller sightings show that the creature tends to be more docile or timid and, on both accounts, was seen lying in the grass at rest. So, comparing it to other known animals, this creature appears to be id one were likely to guess just based on description or behavior a mammal of some kind, but of course, there is nothing like it in the known zoological archives nor in the fossil record and therefore cannot be the only possibility out there.

The next most likely possibility is one that, on occasion, has been brought up when people who are familiar with this creature talk about it, and that is that the creature kind of bears some resemblance to a faun or satyr. While I personally don't see it exactly in the description, it does point to this creature possibly being a member of the faerie troop of some kind or another. The fact that the creature seems humanoid and almost lackadaisical in its habits brings to mind tales of faerie folk who spend all their days napping under old oaks or curled up in some area of peaceful woodland. This could be the case here now granted one could argue that this creature seriously screwed up when deciding where to take its nap in pure goldilocks fashion, but it nevertheless is the kind of story we would expect from a faerie. Now obviously, there's very little water other than its behavior to back it up, and even then, it might just be a super exhausted animal, but its vaguely humanoid appearance is what also puts it in this camp, for faerie folk are always weird chimeras of animals and humans which the Yellow What-Is-It definitely seems to be.

The next most probable possibilities in an interdimensional traveller of some kind while there's nothing outside of the creature itself that one would consider anomalous with this flap of sightings, it is just the fact that much like the faerie hypothesis that this creature might have just zipped into our dimension for the time during 1879 and zipped back out again whether intelligently or in some Twilight Zone-style accident. If it's the latter, however, our world would have to be very similar to its or this creature, if intelligent clearly does not care about anything to the point that it would hunker down for a nap by a fence and later after sighted and escaping again in a nearby field. With interdimensional beings, it's often implied that they have control over the ability to do so, and this is often the mindset of many in the interdimensional bigfoot camp, but I offer this counterargument based on other cases found in books such as Fairies: Real Life Encounters With the Little People or even the Children of Woolpit case where both humans and other entities seem thrusted from one dimension to the next by the whims of some force or some accident even beyond our speculative understanding. With this creature and, for that matter, plenty of other cryptid and entity accounts, it would explain a lot more of the encounters but, of course, would just cause more questions to be asked.

The least fun hypothesis of this creature hence why it is the last, is that the stories yellow journalism. Now, this is the possibility with a bunch of older newspaper accounts which is unfortunate because in most cases, we are left as researchers and readers wondering well did it happen or not. Obviously, these are the only two options, but with these older accounts, it paints a gray cloud over our history and is just irritating. It, in many ways, is part of the problem with modern cryptid accounts, for it gives skeptics something to point to when someone encounters something anomalous. It causes more harm with archival research, for it's almost like flipping a coin on did it happen or not. With this case, I feel it is a more authentic account as they have specific individuals, locations, even family members of important political members that add a layer of authenticity to it compared to other newspaper accounts of the time. However, the fact that this account might be completely bogus is also something that we cannot dismiss altogether.

While this account is almost 143 years old, I am completely transfixed by it. The creature is an anomaly of an entirely different class, a yellow t-rex armed, horned, elephant legged nude creature that just wanted to take a nap only to be harassed by the locals. It's almost like a bad comedy-horror sketch that Abbott and Costello or the Three Stooges would do. It's that cryptid absurdity that you can believe could happen but just seems so unbelievable. I have no clear answers to this case, nor do I expect anyone to, unless some diary or journal is uncovered in the years to come detailing more sightings or even an entire history of sightings predating those in 1879. All I know is Pennsylvania is a weird state, and with Butler Gargoyles and Faeries, lake and river monsters, bigfoot, thunderbirds, lizard and frogmen, the Yellow What-Is-It is a more than welcome member to the states overly bizarre menagerie.

Original Articles (Upper Helena Weekly Herald/ Lower The Indiana Progress)

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Mammal/Reptile/Unknown

Location: Ruscombmanor Township and Muhlenberg Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania

Sighted: October 1879

Works Cited

Monsters of Pennsylvania: Mysterious Creatures in the Keystone State By Patty A. Wilson

The Indiana Progress Indiana, Pennsylvania Thu, October 16, 1879, ·

Helena Weekly Herald Helena, Montana, December 11, 1879