In the previous column we explored around the South to see what kind of homegrown monsters we might run into during the month of October, especially during a full moon. It seems there’s an ongoing group of monster sightings that seem related to Bigfoot throughout the South, including some that go back to the 1800s, like the Arkansas Wildman.
Sightings of a creature like that have continued all the way to the present with a particularly harrying encounter in the early 1970s around Boggy Creek. What is the explanation for these Cryptids, or “hidden” creatures? Is it a misidentified animal that’s already out there? Or is there indeed something unknown that literally goes bump in the night?
Mystery cat
Let’s take a look at one of numerous “mystery black cat” stories that pop up this time of year. The most famous is over in England, the “Beast of Exmoor,” a reportedly large, black mystery cat. Huge and ferocious, one farmer in the early 1980s lost more than 100 sheep in three months. A large, black feline was briefly spotted here and there as local animals were dying.
But let’s head just a short distance up to North Carolina and travel back to the 1950s for a Southern creature that fits the mold. Beginning in December of 1953 pets near Bladenboro, mostly dogs, began dying in particularly grisly manners. They were drained of blood, and their heads were either crushed, the tops missing, or they were completely decapitated. Yikes! The killings continued on into the new year of 1954 around the swamps and forests of the area.
In one case, a farmer’s dog was killed by the beast around 10:30 at night. The mystery animal returned at 1:30 in the morning and killed his other dog, which they didn’t find for three days.
As the animal body count increased, hunters started going after it. It was reported to be five feet long, dark, and as one citizen who spotted it was quoted in the newspaper, “It had a face exactly like a cat. Only I ain’t ever seen a cat that big.”
According to some reports and evidence from footprints found near the scenes of the attacks, there may have been a smaller/younger one with the adult. There were several brief sightings, all of a large animal of some type and appearing to be like a cat. If you’ve ever seen the old horror movie “The Cat People” you may be wondering if it was an actual cat, or something more … The papers at the time were referring to it as a “vampire” since the blood of the dead animals were drained from them.
Like all good monster stories, the locals decided to try and track and capture the strange creature. On Jan. 3, 1954, the local sheriff went hunting for the beast with his dogs, but the dogs refused to follow the trail. On Jan. 4, three groups of hunters went out looking to solve the mystery and save the animals they loved. They came up empty-handed. By Jan. 5, 500 people with dogs showed up to hunt the countryside and swamps.
The next night 800 showed up and the sheriff was going to bait the beast by tying out dogs to lure the creature in. Because of so many people, the sheriff called off the hunt that night and the dogs weren’t used.
On Jan. 7 an estimated 1,000 people came in to join the hunt. That seems more than ever chased Frankenstein. That hunt was canceled as well for the fear of the people’s safety, not from the beast getting them, but from over-excited hunters shooting at each other in the cold, dark, winter night. Meanwhile, the sheriff was contacted by the Humane Society asking him not to use poor pooches as bait to trap the strange animal.
By the end of January, three large cats had been killed and the animal murders ended. One of the cats was a bobcat, too small to have done the damage to the dogs. The other two animals seem to have possibly been mountain lions, also known as “catamounts”! Others think the animal that was capable of such gruesome killings was never found, and others think perhaps the whole thing was a publicity stunt. Try telling that to the dozen or so animals that died at the hands … er, paws … of the “Beast of Bladenboro.” If you go to Bladenboro these days there’s an annual festival celebrating the beast, but be sure and leave your pets at home.
The legend of Altamaha-ha
Now down in the southeast corner of Georgia, as far away from Dalton as you can get in the state, there is a river called the Altamaha. It flows unimpeded for 137 miles and empties into the Atlantic Ocean between Brunswick and Darien. It drains off about a quarter of the state, and its watershed stretches all the way back to south Atlanta and Athens. It’s the largest free-flowing river on the East Coast.
Nothing very scary about a big river, right? Plenty of room for boating and fishing and other water sports. But if you study the map of the Altamaha, you’ll see that as it gets near the ocean it turns into an uncountable number of serpentine channels, turning from river to swamp to marsh. And with the interaction between the fresh water from upstream and the salt water from the ocean, who knows what type of life form an interface like that might support. It is in this, at places unnavigable, waterway that the legend of Georgia’s own sea monster (river monster?) lives … the legend of Altamaha-ha.
This creature is said to be from 15 feet long up to 70 feet long, with a head the size of a horse’s sticking up above the water. The head is sometimes described as snake-like and at other times like an alligator’s … but with the assurance of the witnesses that it’s neither.
In 1981 a newspaper publisher and his buddy reported seeing the monster while out in the water, and that it had two humps and swam fast enough and was big enough to leave a wake like a speedboat. When the news came out and was reported across the country, other witnesses who had kept quiet came out, some saying they had seen it back in the 1970s. But the 1981 story was not the first time the creature had shown up in the newspapers.
Some 150 years earlier, in the Savannah paper, The Georgian, reports of sea serpents off the coast of Georgia in the same area were printed. A primary witness was the schooner captain, Captain Delano, who spotted a 70-foot long creature with a head like an alligator’s that rose eight feet out of the water, off the coast of St. Simon’s Island, near the mouth of the Altamaha. He was familiar with all types of whales and knew that that’s not what it was.
Five other sailors on the schooner had also seen it. Others from the area spotted the creature during the next few weeks, sometimes spotting it using telescopes.
It turns out that Captain Delano had spotted the same creature, or one similar to it, four years earlier (1826) in a nearby sound that was at the mouth of the Altamaha. Going even further back, Creek Indians had their legends of giant river “snakes” recorded by early settlers and explorers who came into early contact with them.
Some folks were skeptical about the 1981 sighting as it had only been a few years before when the Loch Ness Monster had become so famous over in Scotland. From blurry photos, to strange radar signals, to men in submarines cruising the murky waters of the Loch, searching for “Nessie” was all the rage.
But it turns out there is a connection between the Loch Ness Monster, who resides near the city of Inverness in Scotland, and the town of Darien at the mouth of the Altamaha. In 1735, once Georgia was a royal colony, colonists were recruited from Inverness to establish the town of Darien. They literally came from the shores of Loch Ness to the shores of the Altamaha. Darien was originally called New Inverness. How’d you like to escape one sea monster by traveling half a world away, only to come face-to-face with the New World version of a similar creature? Substitute “Nessie” for “Altie” and you get the idea.
Sightings have kept up since the early 1980s, with even boy scouts having said they saw it. On YouTube, there is video footage of something splashing around in the water down there and, amateur that I am, it doesn’t look like a whale or a porpoise to me. I’ve certainly spent hours in front of the nature shows on TV dating back to the “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” days, so believe me when I tell you I kinda sorta might know what I’m talking about!
Well, there you have it, creepy creeps from around the South and right down to the coast of Georgia. Don’t think you’ve got to go all the way to Transylvania to get a good scare. There could be something unknown out in the woods … looking through the window and watching you read this right now.
Mark Hannah, a Dalton native, works in video and film production.