Cryptid Sighting: The Enfield Monster

Enfield, Illinois

In April of 1973 there were reports of an unidentified creature sighted around Enfield, Illinois. At the time, the news media suggested they may have been a wild ape. Alternatively, they considered the possibility of an escaped kangaroo.

These sightings were used as a case study for a paper on social contagion in 1978. The sociologists cite these as an example of collective behavior. A group or crowd can be affected by the spread of “group emotions.” These include “panics, hysterias.” They also include “collective visions, and extreme instances of suggestibility.”

At about 10:00pm on the night of April 25, 1973, Henry McDaniel heard a scratching sound at his front door. He looked out and saw something that he thought might be a bear. Taking a gun and flashlight, he headed outside into a strong wind and saw a creature between two rosebushes. He later said “It had three legs on it, a short body, and two little short arms. It also had two pink eyes as big as flashlights. It stood four and a half feet tall and was grayish-colored.” He added later that it was “almost like a human body”.

McDaniel fired four shots at the creature, one shot hitting it and causing it to make a hiss “much like a wildcat’s”, before fleeing towards a nearby railway embankment, covering 50 feet in three jumps. McDaniel called the local authorities who discovered footprints in the soft earth near the house, which McDaniel described as dog-like in shape, with six toe pads. The police considered McDaniel to be “rational and sober” in his reporting of the incident. In a later press interview, McDaniel said “If they do find it, they will find more than one and they won’t be from this planet, I can tell you that.”

Investigators interviewing nearby residents were told about Greg Garrett, a 10-year-old neighbor of McDaniel. He claimed to have encountered the creature half an hour before McDaniel did. Greg said the creature stepped on his feet, tearing his tennis shoes to shreds. The boy later told Western Illinois University researchers that his report was a hoax “to tease Mr. M and have fun with an out of town newsman.”

Two weeks later on May 6, McDaniel called the radio station WWKI. He claimed to have seen the creature again. This happened at 3:00 am that morning. The creature was negotiating the trestles of the railroad tracks near his home. McDaniel said, “I saw something moving out on the railroad track. There it stood. I didn’t shoot at it or anything. It started on down the railroad track. It wasn’t in a hurry or anything.” A search party, which included WWKI’s news director Rick Rainbow, explored the area later that day. They reported observing an “apelike” creature standing in an abandoned building near McDaniel’s house. They claimed to have made a recording of the creature’s cries, and fired a shot at it before it fled. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman investigated the case and the sound recording.

Two days later, a day after McDaniel was interviewed on local radio, the local press reported an incident. Police were called to investigate reports of gunfire. They arrested five young men from out of town. The men had come to Enfield to photograph the creature. They carried shotguns and rifles “for protection.” The men claimed to have sighted the creature. The White County sheriff dismissed reports of this “monster hunting expedition” as an exaggeration. He said that the men were just “out drinking and raising hell.” He mentioned the monster only briefly during questioning. The men were charged with hunting violations.

The incidents were reported widely in the press at the time. It appeared in newspapers throughout the state on 27 April 1973. On 7 May, there was an interview on radio station WGN in Chicago. There were also articles in the Chicago Daily News, the Moline Dispatch, Champaign-Urbana Courier, and the Alton Telegraph. Articles appeared earlier in the Carmi Times. An updated summary of the events was published in Pennsylvania’s Reading Eagle in August 1973. After the arrest of the five men who had arrived to hunt the creature, residents of Enfield expressed fears that press coverage would lead to further “monster hunters”, who might inadvertently shoot citizens or livestock.

The creature may have been a kangaroo that escaped from a nearby zoo. This suggestion explains the “three legs” description. The tails of kangaroos look like a third leg. McDaniel was adamant that the creature “wasn’t no kangaroo”. He had owned such a creature as a pet while on military service in Australia. He noted that kangaroos have narrow faces. Kangaroo tracks leave claw marks. After media reported on the creature, an Ohio man contacted a local newspaper. He stated that the creature may have been his pet kangaroo, Macey. The kangaroo had been lost or stolen a year earlier.

A few days after the event, United Press International quoted an anthropology student. The student suggested that the creature may have been a wild ape. The student noted that such animals had been reported throughout the Mississippi area since 1941.