Decatur County’s Monster Snake
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 8th, 2010
Brownwood Bulletin
Brownwood, Texas
October 8, 1920
REPORT THIS MONSTER SERPENT DITCHES “FLIVVERS” ALONG ROAD
By International News Service.
GREENSBURG, Indiana, October 8. – Prominent citizens in the southern part of Decatur County declare that stories regarding the depradations by a monster snake are not fables. They declare the reptile, reported to be from twenty-five to thirty-five feet long and proportionately large as to girth, has been seen several times in the community during the last few days.
Work has been virtually abandoned in some sections and men, armed with guns, are searching for the monster. A calf belonging to Robert Bishop is said to have been devoured by the snake and the entire community professes intense alarm.
Some residents advance the theory that the reptile escaped from some passing show. Others point to stories, emanating from Sullivan and Green counties, many miles distant, of a serpent of similar proportions which is declared to have ditched “flivvers” [Ford Model T automobiles] in encounters on the highways. The Sullivan-Green county reptile was described at widely separated points within a space of a few hours and it received much publicity – some of it more than half serious – in the newspapers.
Now the Decaturites are wondering if this monster donned figurative seven league boots and emigrated to this country.
Note – It will be observed that in the foregoing dispatch no mention is made of “white mule” [white corn whiskey].
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Very interesting.
Decatur county. Name game again.
An observation: It seems that a lot of these stories from the early days of America have the monsters showing up in the Mid-west somewhere. This one, from Indiana, was in the 1920s, but others from the 1850s also are based, it seems, on the edge of the wilderness from an east-coast urban view.
Is it because it’s the edge of the wilderness, or because some newspaper reporter needed a faraway place, so the facts couldn’t be checked easily? Jocko was found in British Columbia, not in downtown Vancouver, which is wild enough (then and now) but, several miles north where getting the facts was a tough row to hoe.
The newspaper articles are interesting but, because it’s a story, a grain of salt should be included.