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Monday, August 29, 2022

Medford Shmoos

 Medford Shmoos

By Cole Herrold

Cryptids and aliens come in all shapes and sizes, but some of these beings are so peculiar in form that one has to wonder whether some evolutionary joke was pulled by the cosmos. Some look like sloppy space brains, others look like living tombstones and coke machines or Michelin men, yet some are even weirder not because of their details but because of their simplicity of form. In Medford, Oregon, in the 50s, a trio of creatures that to the witnesses seemed to be ripped from the pages of a family-friendly comic were encountered, and their bizarre appearance has led many to wonder just what these entities are.

An unnamed woman, her husband, and their 12-year-old daughter were driving at about 10 o clock one night in the summer of 1953. The trio who lived in the wooded outskirts of Medford were on their way home. They had turned off Old Stage Road to Scenic Avenue, which was near their home, when they noticed something strange moving along the side of the road. There illuminated by the car's headlights was much like them, a trio of figures, but unlike them, these figures were anything but human. The family stopped their car upon seeing them and watched in awe as the creatures, instead of walking as one would expect, seemed to glide across the road in front of them. It was at that moment that they were able to get a clear look at these enigmatic entities; they were white and shaped very much like geese with a long neck and small "head" but were unlike a bird covered in a satiny white fur. The creatures also were missing wings, arms, legs, or anything else that would appear to be an appendage. The creatures were about 6ft away from their car, and as the group looked, they noticed something else odd about these creatures; as the trio looked at the creature's head, they noticed that it had no beak or muzzle, and they could not see any additional facial features. As the trio of beings crossed the road, the family gauged that their size was about 4ft high, with the last creature trailing behind being just slightly smaller than the other two. The family watched as the creatures moved into the surrounding woodlands, and the family continued to stay stopped in their car for a little longer until finally starting again and driving the ¼ of a mile to their home. Upon returning home, the group discussed their sighting, and the family agreed that these shaggy bowling pin-like beings very much resembled the Shmoo characters from the Lil’ Abner comics and associated stories, except that they were much larger and bore longer necks than the Shmoos of the comic world. The following day they searched the area for any evidence of the creatures but found nothing, and upon asking the neighbors on whether they had seen any strange creatures in the area, the group only managed to scare them and found that no one else in the area had seen the creatures. The family, after that, kept their encounter to themselves until they moved to Galt, California, and sent a letter to CUFOs in July of 1983. In the letter, the wife of the family sent both a sketch of the creatures, which appeared in the April-May edition of the 1984 CUFOS Associate Newsletter, and a map of the area where the creatures were seen, which CUFOS did not publish in the article. The sighting had such an effect that upon writing to CUFOS, the wife stated the following "My daughter is 42 years old now and still remembers the incident plainly" and "But, I've always wondered who or what they were, and from where?".

Eyewitness Sketch of the Shmoos

These creatures are perhaps some of the most perplexing entities out there. With these entities, there are a lot of things to discuss, but perhaps the best way to do so is to speculate as to just what they are. Skeptically speaking, there is always the possibility of a hoax; while we don't know who the witnesses are in this case, as they were anonymous for the article, one could venture and say that someone is pulling a gag and using a known comic book character as a template to fake an encounter claim. This added to the fact that there is no evidence for the Shmoos in Medford, such as matted down grass where the creatures were, tracks, hair, photographs, etc. there's nothing to prove that anything did occur. Now an interesting thing about the encounter based on the information given by the wife in the article is that there are specific roads listed and a general idea of where the house would be where the witnesses lived, and perhaps it may be possible to check and see who lived in the area at the time of the sighting and see if one may be able to find the witness and verify whether this was a hoax or a real event. Yet it's also from this that these little references to roads and such tend to seem, at least from the article, that the encounter did occur as it was not some generic tale of driving down a nameless road at night or something along those lines in the account.

Shmoos

Another possibility I feel I need to mention is the possibility of misidentification. In an article on the Shmoos by Martin Kottmeyer, he proposes that what was seen by the witnesses was actually the white underbelly and flank of a deer with the white tail sticking up. He describes how he came up with what he feels to be the answer to the mystery in the following: "I was driving down the lane leading from my home, and four deer jumped out of a neighbor's cornfield across the road. They ran across 80 acres of open field towards a forest following a curved arc. As I watched, the viewing angle gradually changed so that I was seeing them directly from the rear. Two of the deer had white haunches and white tails which were short and sticking straight up. The light brown portion of the hide, including the legs, blended into the color of the open field and suddenly I was observing a pair of white blobby smoos gliding sideways across the landscape. The smoos even tilted off the vertical as in the drawing. This was because of the curved nature of their path across the field and their leaning into the curve as they ran. What seemed so unexpected was how the haunches did not bounce up and down, but simply glided. Everything fit: the shape, the color, the motion, the size, the satiny fur, the direction to a wooded area, and the brevity of the experience. Only two things were different. The Medford witnesses were closer. The deer were over a hundred yards away when I recognized the smoo shape. But their encounter was also at night, where mine was during the day. Presumably the darkness would have been conducive to such an illusion at closer quarters". This is an interesting point to the mystery of the Shmoos, but it does have a problem the witnesses, when they saw the Shmoos saw them some 6ft away this makes mistaking a deer in a field much less possible. Plus, these creatures crossed the road in front of the witnesses, so at least one should have been able to see the full deer as it was not blending in with the color of a surrounding brown-colored field. So it's an interesting possibility but, again, unlikely.

When first reading about these creatures, it's easy to initially want to jump into the cryptid category; they have white fur, something relatively common in unknown animal reports like Sheepsquatch, the Albino Giant Ground Sloths of Sherman, or the Murphysboro Mud Monster cases. Yet things get difficult when one sees that these creatures are devoid of appendages that would allow some sort of locomotion. These creatures possess no arms or legs, and they are not even described as having other features such as eyes, ears, a nose, or mouth. They seem to simply be hairy bowling pins. Yet they move and not by hopping like some sort of overgrown jumping bean or hoppity hop, but they glide above the ground. This is something one does not necessarily associate with cryptids. Cryptids are, by and large, animals, and they are supposed to behave as such. Yet Gliding cryptids or floating cryptids, or flying cryptids without the aid of wings or skin flaps are reported, and perhaps the Shmoos are some species that are capable of this motion. It is important to point out that the Shmoos do bear interestingly enough to a flying white-haired shaggy cryptid from West Virginia called the Abominable Albino Aerobeasts. These creatures are described as large white shaggy-haired creatures with the ability to seemingly fly without any form of propulsion. They are often by eyewitnesses mistaken for clouds until those brief occurrences when they come relatively close to vehicles. Perhaps the Shmoos are a population of these creatures that made their way from the Mountain State to Oregon. The biggest problem with the shmoos being Abominable Albino Aerobeasts is that the Shmoos are small and hover a little bit off the ground; seemingly based on the report, Aerobeasts are described as having heads some 3ft wide and flying high off the ground rather than hovering or gliding. Yet with the unknown nature of all these creatures, anything is technically possible, so perhaps the shmoos could be juveniles or that Aerobeasts can come closer to the ground than previously thought; again, however, this is all speculation.

Another Cryptid that interestingly bears some resemblance to the Shmoos is the Fresno Nightcrawler. These creatures, which appear as white entities with small heads attached to long legs, have taken the cryptozoology world by storm due to the several pieces of footage captured over the years. While one originally would not think to compare a floating pinball-shaped creature to a jolly bounding two-legged head creature, there is a possible connection. In the original video of the Fresno Nightcrawlers, there are two creatures reported, one of which is the one most are familiar with or have ingrained in memory, but many forget that before that creature walked along the lawn, there was a strange entity best described as a living Q-Tip which slowly seemed to move across the yard. It did not do the long strides as associated with the Nightcrawlers but instead seemed to move with either its legs together or by hovering. Another thing to note is that the Shmoos might not have actually glided, but they may have simply seemed to do so; as the witness said when describing their motion that they "seemed to glide," there was no official confirmation of that particular ability that means that they could have had feet unseen under their bulbous lower half or that the witness did not focus in on that section of the body as much or that they did legitimately glide. Shmoos and Nightcrawlers also are also both white in color, and California and Oregon are not relatively far from each other, so what the Shmoos might have been was the very first Nightcrawler report.

First Fresno Nightcrawler (Center) Recorded Bears a Strong Resemblance to the Shmoos

While I've strongly brought up the possibility that the Shmoos might have been a cryptid, one cannot also ignore the possible Extraterrestrial possibility. These creatures, while no UFO was reported in the case or in the area, could still have been from another world, be it another dimension or another planet. With many similar cases, there is always the chance that a craft of some sort was nestled in a nearby brush or that it was located somewhere further, and these are some visitors. The bizarre anatomy and possible abilities that are described could completely be possible in a world where evolution occurred differently than here, and in fact, it would seem that if the Shmoos were ETs, they perhaps would be some of the most possible and authentic as they are so alien and not humanoid like in the slightest.

Other possibilities of just what the Shmoos could have been seems unlikely. There’s nothing exactly similar in faerie lore to the Shmoos except for when one looks at Japan's Yokai, and even then, there are none that are the right color or behave the same way, and most of the Yokai that are similar have eyes or other features that the Shmoos as far as can be perceived do not. In spiritualistic studies and demonology, there again is nothing similar, so it seems unlikely that it would be an example of this. It's from this that if this is an authentic encounter, it would have to be either a cryptid, extraterrestrial, or interdimensional being.

The Shmoos are an interesting case, albeit an exceptionally brief one. With so many bizarre, overly designed creatures reported, its kind of refreshing to have a creature that seems exceedingly simple as though it had escaped from the imaginative scribblings and doodles of a toddlers piece of paper or as if some sort of bean bag chair suddenly came to life and stretched itself out. It's something that is so simple and so weird that a creature like this is truly unforgettable in the pages of Forteana.

Species/Potential Species: Mammal/ Paranormal Entity

Location: Medford, Oregon

Sighted: Summer 1953

Works Cited:

CUFOs Associate Newsletter April-May 1984

Martin Kottmeyer "TRN - Mar/Apr 1996 - What's Smoo?" - REALL. http://reall.org/newsletter/v04/n03/smoo.html

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