Midwestern Monsters
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 17th, 2010
This article has nothing, really, to do with “Sea Serpents,” which only goes to show that media headlines over 50 years ago, as often happens today, had little connection to content either. Loren
Sandusky Register Star News
Sandusky, Ohio
September 26, 1946
Sea Serpents Products Of Imagination
CHICAGO, Sept. 26 (UP) – “Varmints and sea sarpints” still roam, but chiefly in lively imaginations, Talbott Denmead of the fish and wildlife service said today.
Denmead, chief of the permits and importations section of the federal agency, was commenting on recent reports of “monsters” in Illinois and Indiana.
The 2,500 residents of Momence, Ill., are keeping doors and windows locked against a mysterious animal described as about seven feet long and two feet tall which “laughs like a monkey” and “screams like a woman.”
Across the state, 150 of the 800 citizens of Oquawka went out with shotguns, hounds and three airplanes last Sunday [September 22] but failed to track down a remarkably similar monster in the heavily timbered Mississippi river bottoms.
Last month Lebanon, Ind., was terrified by a sort of land-going sea serpent that ate cows and wept instead of laughed while it worked.
Denmead, a spry gentleman of 70 who was a game law enforcement officer for years, enjoys these stories but is inclined to believe that the “varmint” in each case was a large dog.
“Of course,” he said, “lacking capture of the animal, the best way to tell is by its tracks. Any woodsman can tell if they show a member of the cat family, a dog or a wolf.”
The beast at Lebanon, Ind., after working up a good fright among nearby residents, was reported shot and killed early this month in a swamp, but its body was not recovered.
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Let’s see here: a reporter who does no actual reporting, an explainer who does no actual investigating. The stuff of great journalism, all right. — Jerome Clark
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.
