The Tuttle Bottoms Monster

 The Tuttle Bottoms Monster

By Cole Herrold

Cryptozoology is chock full of strange beasts, and even when you think you've heard it all, another beast is sure to come across your radar. It was 2019, and I had traversed to the Mecca of the Cryptozoology world and entered the Hallowed Halls of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine. I had spent several hours in pure ecstasy examining the many exhibits that founder and hero Loren Coleman had put together. On the way out, I easily spent over two hundred dollars in the gift shop purchasing bigfoot recast prints, figurines, t-shirts, and of course, books. One book which I had the chance to purchase and to my excitement was signed was Chad Lewis, Noah Voss, and Kevin Lee Nelson's amazing book The Big Muddy Monster: Legends, Sightings, and Other Strange Encounters. Reading the book, I had, however, found a delightful chapter chocked to the gills in other creatures from the "Prairie State." It was in this relatively small section that I encountered an extremely bizarre beast that I had never hear of—the long-nosed beast known locally as the Tuttle Bottoms Monster.

This creature was something I had no memory of, and of course, I began trying to find some mention of it in all the Cryptozoology oriented books I owned. This creature is listed in only one other source, which is Chasing American Monsters by Jason Offutt but the section on this strange beast is even slimmer than what was listed in Lewis, Voss, and Nelson's Book. My quest for finding any information in printed format proved to be almost fruitless. It wasn't until I had searched the world wide web that a few unique websites, including a news station, had been caught in the spiderlike strings. Yet even still, accounts of this beast are exceptionally scant.

Harrisburg, Illinois, the main epicenter for this creature, is similar to a lot of other towns with a monster connected with it. A once-booming coal and railroad town, the current town has approximately 9,000 people, which is a sharp drop from the original population that was around during the heyday. An area near Harrisburg known as the Tuttle Bottoms is located near the Saline River, which is located in Saline County. The Saline River forks three times, and the middle fork is where the Tuttle Bottoms is located. The Tuttle Bottoms is a very flat area of land with darting areas of open farmland.  The area has a bridge, which is supposedly the troll-esque lair of the Tuttle Bottoms beast. Allegedly if one parks at this location long enough, the beast will begin to growl and make unearthly sounds from its lair. This, while reminiscent of a variety of other supernatural legends, more than likely, at least in the origin of the creature, have a grain of truth.

The first known report of what would become known as the Tuttle Bottoms Monster which alternatively has been dubbed the Mo Mo Monster (it is important to note that there is also two other figures with this name. one a hairy hominid reported from Louisiana, Missouri, and an internet urban legend figure based on a sculpture) occurred on August 6^th, 1963. While the exact details of the sighting of the beast are not known aside from the description, it is how the creature was chronicled that makes it interesting. It was at 11 pm when Sheriff James Thompson was driving around the area of the Tuttle Bottoms when his attention was drawn to movement coming from the woods. Pulling his car off to the side of the road and turning on his flashlight. His eye caught in the forested darkness was a young boy with a rifle. The boy stared up at the law officer and as the Sheriff wondering whether this could be a boy out poaching or possibly something more insidious like a man with a murderous mind. The Sheriff, though, decides to leave his speculations behind and ask this armed individual what he was up to at this hour of night so heavily armed when the boy looked up and cinematically replied, "There's a monster loose in the Bottoms!" The Sheriff, perplexed by this response, asked the boy to describe what this beast looked like, and the boy was placing his arms down, described in the following way. The creature was 8ft long and 4ft high. It could walk both bipedally and quadrupedally and curiously enough had a nose like an anteater. The Sheriff intrigued by this account, but no doubt skeptical of the boy's claim, decided to go and persuade the boy to go home and said that he would look into it. The boy returned to his truck, which was close by to where the Sheriff had pulled off. The boy placed his rifle in the back and began to drive away as the Sheriff watched the boy drive off into the darkness. Little did he know this would not be the end of his night.

As the Sheriff continued down the road, he was drawn to even more shapes moving in the darkness. Clearly perturbed by this, he pulled off to the side again, and once parked, he saw to his surprise not one, but a legion of individuals armed with shotguns, rifles, and other various weapons. The Sheriff looked at this mob in absolute surprise and approached the group. He asked the group what they were doing, and they all said in a clamor of voices that they were hunting a monster that was living in the Tuttle Bottoms. The Sheriff once more asked what this creature looked like, and the group all described it in the same way as the boy who he had encountered earlier. The Sheriff had once again dissuaded the individuals from stopping their pursuit and returning home. The individuals proceeded to go and return to their cars and drive off into the night. The Sheriff curious by their claims spent the rest of his shift driving the dark roads of the Tuttle Bottoms searching for the beast until 4:30 am when his shift finally came to a close, and he returned home with more questions than answers.

Unlike many Monster Hunts that would later occur, like that which took place in Grafton almost a year later. This occurrence happened before even the majority of both law enforcement, and newspaper accounts occurred. Usually, in monster hunt cases, the account comes out in the paper, and the reported area proceeded to become the area that becomes searched by the community and any who heard of this creature. From this, many tales and folkloric tropes would emerge about the creature making it difficult to figure the facts from the fiction in this case.

It was in this uproar and extracurricular attention to the Tuttle Bottoms that more legends and accounts would occur. The Tuttle Bottom Monster gained a reputation as one of many “Lovers Lane” type monsters. Similar to the Goatman or Orange Eyes of Ohio, this creature reportedly would come out of the woods poking around with its long snout and glare in cars or lumber around the cars as pubescent teens would enact the rituals of amore. As the teens would "make out," the beast would come lumbering around quite unconcerned or curious at what was going on inside the vehicles.

Another old trope was that people out driving late at night would see the large unknown animal cross the road as its eyes glowed or reflected the headlight of the car. This would be one of the most common ways to encounter this long-nosed mystery. Hunters would report seeing a similar creature while out searching for deer or other game. Strange tracks would be found around this time, many of which were believed to be connected to the beast.

This creature, however, unlike most cryptids, was rarely reported in any newspaper. The Tuttle Bottoms Monster, even from a research standpoint, is difficult to study because of the lack of written accounts. In 1999 Sheriff Gary Crabtree would report that their office had received almost 50 reports of some kind of strange creature dwelling in the Tuttle Bottoms. However, when Chad Lewis and his coauthors of the Big Muddy Monster went searching for these accounts in the local police station of Harrisburg, no accounts could be found. This implies that they either were never recorded or none of the files survived or remained. This, unfortunately, has left a major gap in the history of the creature resulting in newer information and those from dubious sources to be the only strain of context in reports of this beast.

The reports and written material we do have on the creature comes primarily from Brian DeNeal, whose journalistic integrity has been the only reason this creature has been documented at all. Brian DeNeal, who has written for the Harrisburg Register several times on this unknown beast, has been the only researcher who has managed to get several single sightings that have detailed a variety of features and elements that both enlighten and add to the mystery of the beast. Some of these accounts seem to be contradictory in some ways to each other, but they are interesting, to say the least.

One thing I noticed when researching this creature is that the Tuttle Bottoms Monster is either not alone or is a name used to describe a multitude of creatures. I noticed that this is a common occurrence. Many bigfoot researchers will include non-bigfoot like creatures in their files and say it's a bigfoot. When I went in search of the Jersey Devil in 2018 that was something else that I noticed is that the historical Jersey Devil, particularly with sighting in the early 1900s, was of a bunch of creatures, some thunderbird like, others bigfoot like, some dragon-like, and then others the chimeral beast which we now completely associated with the Devil. Even with Mothman, this kind of mixed inclusion can be seen as there are giant owl-like creatures, flying humanoids, and thunderbird like creatures that all have been described as the same creature.

There are at least four different kinds of creatures associated with the Tuttle Bottoms Monster name. The first and most common case being the long-nosed giant anteater like creature that many of the witnesses from the 60s and 70s described. This is one of not only the most interesting of the bunch by the bizarre appearance but also the one most likely to have a logical explanation as to why it is there and also what could be the most likely answer to the riddle for giant anteaters are a known species. Just one of this size and magnitude is not known.

I have argued that a variety of flying cryptids could be descended from Pteranodons or pterodactyls—even those of an esoteric nature like those seen fluttering around Lake Michigan currently. When researching the Jersey Devil, I came to that conclusion after listening to a variety of accounts that seemed incredibly credible and reading a ton of accounts that do, in fact, with a little hypothetical speculation do seem to be indicative of a descendent of a Pterodactyl or Pteranodon type creature. With the Tuttle Bottoms Monster, there is an account that always seems to be brought up in connection to the beast, and that is a potentially horrifying account that was seen by Bruce Cline in the 1960s.

It was on a bright sunny day that a young Bruce cline and his babysitter had decided to go and take a nice quiet drive through the Tuttle Bottoms. As the caregiver had begun to pass the bridge, a large form seemed to come from the Saline River. The winged figure began to chase the car and dive down in an attempt to attack the mechanical vehicle. Turmoil arose as the babysitter hit the gas and attempted to drive away from the avian anomaly. The beast missing its target continued to follow the wheeled device circling it until the car drove farther than their prehistoric pursuer cared to follow. The antediluvian aerial assassin returned to the forested realm it came, and the babysitter and her charge left the forested area.

In cryptozoology, chimera beasts are a common occurrence. In Vermont and Georgia, reports of a pigman can be heard. Throughout the United States and, in fact, the world, there are reports of werewolf or Dogman type creatures that are extremely aggressive. Even bigfoot is described as a half-man, half-ape type creature that lurks in the forests and untamed woodlands of the world. A more dubious type of creature mixed with folklore is the Goatman type creatures reported in Kentucky, Maryland, California, and Pennsylvania. Yet there are reports of something even more bizarre with reports of Catman like creatures. The most famous of these being the Wampus Cat, which was based on a legend of a Native American woman who, upon hearing forbidden knowledge, was changed into a half human half-cat creature. This legend is a part of the mystery big cat sightings and lumberjack folklore of the Appalachia mountains area. In Wicomico, Maryland, however, there was once an occurrence of a strange half man-half cat creature that dwelt in a dump and proceeded to attack a group of kids.

The Tuttle Bottoms Monster has one account that seems to indicate this kind of creature. This account appeared in the Harrisburg Register on November 5^th, 2010. The account was written by a woman from Eldorado, another city in Saline County, about her interactions with a creature she believes to be the Tuttle Bottoms Monster not once but on at least three occasions.

It was on a dark night the first time they encountered the beast. The witness and her two friends, as teens tend to do, would go and drive around the wooded areas of the Tuttle Bottoms. It was on one of those adventures that the menagerie of teens would encounter a strange beast. As the teens were honking the horn and flashing the lights of the car as they were driving over the infamous Tuttle Bottoms Bridge when as the teens crossed the bridge, the driver noticed that there was some shape now in the road behind them. The creature seemed to be lumbering around and slowly following the car, whether because it was annoyed by the ruckus of the teens in their car or curious at what was making the noise. The witnesses would see in the semi-lit darkness a towering human-like form. The witness's eyes widened, and they saw a figure that instantly made them think of the lycanthropic marauder from the 1940s, the Wolfman. They would go and note features about it; however, that would seem much less like a canine and something much more feline. It was in the illuminated darkness that they saw the beast. It was, in their estimate, 6ft tall on its two hind legs, and its ears were pointed upwards like a cat. The creature, interestingly, however, had a face like a man and did not have the large snout reported in other cases. The creature had hands with elongated fingers attached to extremely long arms. They would watch in understandable awe and possible terror as this unknown feline fiend ran off into the woods and proceeded to leap into the forest as it crossed the paved road on extremely long legs. The teens drove off as the creature rummaged into the foliaged lair that this creature called home. They would continue to see the beast’s blue eyes and hear loud noises coming from the woods.

These teens would later claim to of seen this beast on several other occasions. On one occasion, they saw the creature down in the water of a creek in the Tuttle Bottoms. They noticed several features about this creature as it can walk and run on both four legs and two legs, something interesting enough that has been reported in some Bigfoot cases and Dogman cases. The teens would also notice that the creature's eyes either shone naturally or by the aid of eyeshine, but unlike the classic yellowish hough of many animals, this creature had white glowing eyes with a bluish tint. The witnesses would eventually view the creature as a natural member of the native flora and fauna. Yet they still treated this particular beast with the utmost interest noting the creature was intelligent, extremely swift, and that based on other accounts that this creature could climb. It was in several other accounts where they could see a form in the tree with eyes too large to be from a bird and the same bluish-white color. The teens would believe that the creature was in a weird way connected or drawn to them as several of their friends would go to the area and never be seen, but they had multiple sightings of the beast. The sightings were so numerous that they even developed their own name for the beast calling it the Tuttle Bottoms Pussy, because of the creature’s cat-like appearance.

Many researchers seem to lump this particular creature in with Sasquatch type sightings, and while Illinois does have a rich history with Bigfoot-type creatures, the Tuttle Bottoms monster does not exactly match. That said, some of the reports of accounts described to Virgil Smith of Shadows of Shawnee indicate a primate type creature as opposed to an anteater like creature. It is possible that with most unknowns that several creatures are described as the same name because of the location in which they occur or because of connection to an area's legend. Aside from the Tuttle Bottoms Monster's anteater like snout or nose, in many ways, its height and hairy body, as well as its bipedal nature, seem to indicate a bigfoot-like creature. So possibly some accounts could be a misidentified sasquatch.

With all these creatures, several answers could be used to try to understand what people could be seeing, and most are common from misidentified birds and bears (in fact, in some cases, the monster is often described as bear-like) in the case of all the creatures. Yet the vast detail is given to the Catman, and anteater variety of cases seem to indicate some other type of creatures aside from the usual suspects. Yet of the four beasts, only three could possibly be the same creature, namely the Catman, anteater beast, and bigfoot. Since they are all hairy bipedal beasts and as in many cases with witnesses, there is always the possibility of embellishment to explain the slight differences of appearance, but this seems unlikely. For even if this is the case, there still seems to be three different creatures a giant anteater like beast, a pterosaur of some kind, and a bigfoot like creature.

There are several supposed answers to this creature’s origin. one of the most popular is the belief that a zoo located in Mt. Vernon released a bunch of its occupants, and the species began to either reproduce or be solely sighted, resulting in not only the Tuttle Bottoms Monster but a variety of other reportedly unknown beasts. This hypothesis led to the idea of a giant anteater escaping or being released and now residing in the Tuttle Bottoms. There are mixed reports about the authenticity of this zoo as some sources claim that the zoo either did not exist or did exist. Yet, I need to mention that even if a zoo did exist in Mt. Vernon that this answer is similar to the circus train; it is a common answer to these kinds of phenomena. True, there are authentic cases of animals from private collections or private zoos that have escaped, but still, the amount of reports of such occurrences is deeply rooted in folklore. It is interesting, though, to note that many who encounter this creature do note that this animal is not intimidated or afraid of people, something that many zoo or domesticated animals have developed.

Another interesting answer but something that also appears a ton in folklore is that the Government had created and subsequently released their creatures. A scientific experiment gone awry is something commonly described in many cryptid and folklore stories, specifically that of the Maryland Goatman. However, Virgil Smith of research group the Shadows of Shawnee, when searching for this creature, came across an ex-employee of the US. Department of Agriculture claimed that not only was there an investigation into the beast but that the Government released the creature for some unknown reason. This anonymous ex-employee also said that another creature known as the Massac County Creature had a similar origin. Yet finding out about this creature has proven to be impossible as the only hits on any sources are of bigfoot or primate-like creature and nothing like what was reported with the Tuttle Bottoms Monster.

If the Government did release the Tuttle Bottoms Monster into the Illinois wilderness, it raises more questions than answers. It almost seems careless that our Government would do such a thing unless there was some individual who felt sorry for the mutated beasts and released them into the wilderness to live out the rest of their lives in peace. Yet this is mere speculation.

Another possible answer to the Tuttle Bottoms Monster mystery is that this long-nosed creature might very well be a surviving prehistoric anteater type creature. Anteaters are related to both sloths and armadillos, and the largest surviving species is the giant anteater. These animals are all parts of the Xenarthra family. These animals are unique and had during the early and latter part of the Cenozoic era had become gigantic in many cases. The ever-wonderful giant ground sloths could reach the size of an elephant, and the Glyptodon was a giant armadillo with a club like tail. Interestingly enough, the anteater's ancestors are less recorded in the fossil record, the main members discovered being the Protamandua, yet these animals reached only a size of only three feet. These animals originally lived in Argentina and other countries of the Patagonia area. The animals, while interesting and similar to the long-nosed variety of Tuttle Bottoms Monster, do not match the size of the mysterious beast and would have to be an extremely descended species whose grand-ancestor made its way to the United States.

The aspect of folklore for the Tuttle Bottoms Monster is something that also cannot be ignored. The Tuttle Bottoms have been allegedly home to satanic cults and devil worshippers, as well as a slew of alleged murders, something that many areas allegedly home to monsters, have been reported to have. Areas like Point Pleasant and Elkhorn, for example, are other areas where supposed cults have been reported. Some have connected the mysterious creatures seen there to be the cause of these satanic sabbaticals, yet the aspect of Satanists and their supposed actions are themselves rooted in folklore. For very rarely is there any truth behind these tales. In years later, the Tuttle Bottoms Monster was used as a boogeyman figure by the people of Harrisburg and other areas of Saline County.

One possibility for this beast goes deep into the writings of John Keel. John Keel wrote of areas known as window areas where a variety of strange phenomena would be free to roam and romp. These window areas are believed to be, for lack of a better word, portals to another dimension. This could explain why so many strange creatures are seen and reported in this particular stretch of land. While I feel this not to be the case, it is a possibility that does need to be expressed.

Even with all these possibilities, however, there is still no answer to this mystery. It is a subject that I feel needs to be researched more thoroughly, and I would love to be apart of it. This creature is a unique case that, in many ways, is like the Grafton Monster, a tale that had a monster hunt that shook a town, had a bizarre appearance unlike anything seen beforehand, and yet remained extremely unknown until recently. It is fascinating that this case has been so obscure, especially with how bizarre this beast and its cohorts are. Yet until more research can be done or until more reports come to light, we are left with the few witnesses who have come forward and a ton of speculation, but who knows, maybe some days a strange beast will lumber out from under the Tuttle Bottom's Bridge, and we will, in fact, know the truth of this strange legend.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Multiple Described Two Mammals and one Flying Reptile most likely a Pterosaur

Location: Tuttle Bottoms, Saline County, Illinois

Sighted: August 6, 1963- Present Day

Works Cited

DeNeal, Brian. “An Incredible Tuttle Bottoms Monster Account”. Harrisburg Register November 5, 2010. https://www.dailyregister.com/article/20101105/blogs/701249540/. Accessed December 22, 2020.

Lewis, Chad, Noah Voss, and Kevin Lee Nelson. The Big Muddy Monsters: Legends, Sightings, & Other Strange Encounters. On the Road Publications. 2019.

Offutt, Jason. Chasing American Monsters. Llewellyn. 2019.

Swancer, Brent “Not Quite Bigfoot: The Strange Tale of the Tuttle Bottoms Monster”. Mysterious Universe. October 19, 2019. https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/10/not-quite-bigfoot-the-strange-tale-of-the-tuttle-bottoms-monster/. Accessed December 22, 2020.

Woolheater, Craig “The Tuttle Bottoms Monster of Illinois”. Cryptomundo. November 5, 2010. http://cryptomundo.com/bigfoot-report/tuttle-bottoms-monster/. Accessed December 22, 2020.

Blair, “The Tuttle Bottoms Monster”. Mysterious Heartland. https://mysteriousheartland.com/the-tuttle-bottoms/. Accessed December 22, 2020

rkcunningham “200 Years of Illinois: They Haunt By Night”. University of Illinois Press Blog. August 31, 2017.https://www.press.uillinois.edu/wordpress/200-years-of-illinois-they-haunt-by-night/. Accessed December 22, 2020.

pinkspectre. “Tuttle Bottoms Monster: North American Folklore”. Steemit. 2018. https://steemit.com/folklore/@pinkspectre/tuttle-bottoms-monster-north-american-folklore. Accessed December 22, 2020.

WoofDriver.” Tuttle Bottoms monster”. WereWoofs. https://www.werewoofs.com/monster-stories/tuttle-bottoms-monster/. Accessed December 22^, 2020.

“First Tuttle Bottoms Monster report?”. Harrisburg Register. August 6, 2013. https://www.dailyregister.com/article/20130806/blogs/701222924/. Accessed December 22, 2020.

“Monster hunting in southern Illinois at Alton, Murphysboro, Harrisburg, Enfield, Mt. Vernon and more … and why not Bigfoot while we’re at it?” The Wytchery A Gothic Curiosity Cabinet. https://www.gothichorrorstories.com/haunted-travels/ohio-river-valley/southern-illinois-hauntings-and-legends/the-creature-feature-rambles-across-southern-illinois-in-search-of-prehistoric-birds-beasts-and-why-not-bigfoot-while-were-at-it/. Accessed December 22, 2020.

“Protamandua” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. November 18, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protamandua. Accessed December 26, 2020.