Cryptid Profile: The Lockridge Monster
When the month of October gets close to the end of its 31 day run, many people prepare themselves to deal with a variety of costumed monsters approaching their doors, ringing their bells, and asking for candy. What most people don’t expect though, is to have to deal with a real life monster. Especially one that causes its costumed rivals to stay inside on the one night where monsters should truly be roaming the streets. But, that’s exactly what happened in October of 1975 just north of Lockridge, Iowa.
The first official reported sighting of the unknown creature that would go on to be known as the Lockridge Monster, took place on October 3rd, 1975. Herbert Peiffer, a turkey farmer along with his wife and son, went out as the sun was setting to tend to his turkeys before retiring for the day. While driving out to the pens his birds were kept in, Mr. Peiffer caught sight of something on four legs passing in front of the headlights on his tractor. Assuming it was the predator that had repeatedly broken into his turkey pens the past few nights and killed multiple birds each time, Herbert kept driving forward. Suddenly, the unknown creature stood up onto its hind legs and darted out of the way of the approaching tractor. Shocked, Mr. Peiffer returned to his home to inform his wife of what he had just encountered. The man stated that he saw a bushy, dark haired creature that stood nearly 5ft tall, ran like a man, had the body shape of a bear, and had an ape like face.
The following morning, the Peiffer family went out to inspect the turkey pens. While they did not encounter the creature again, they did find a series of odd 10in tracks around the bodies of four freshly killed turkeys. After helping clean up the dead birds, Mrs. Peiffer made her way back to the home, but as she passed an apple tree on her property, she noticed something odd. There in front her, still attached to their branches, were multiple apples with bites taken out of them. While it was understandably strange to find half eaten apples still on the tree, what made it even more strange was fact that the apples were hanging on branches nearly 7ft off the ground.
The Peiffer’s, obviously upset about what they had witnessed and experienced, reported their sighting as one would expect. But what they didn’t expect was that in doing so, other witnesses to strange events in the area would come forward as well. Many hunters in the area reported finding strange looking tracks along stream edges and on sand bars along Turkey Creek. One even claimed to have been hunting close to the edge of the Peiffers property a few weeks prior to the incident when he saw an unknown creature in their fields. The man, who carried a camera with him while hunting, tried to snap a photo of the beast but was unsuccessful in doing so as it disappeared from view as he was focusing the lens. Others who came forward spoke of hearing odd sounds while in the woods around the property.
While a hunting party was set up to try and flush the creature out of the surrounding woods, no progress was ever made in doing so. Tracks continued to be found, but no monster was ever captured. The creature was never seen in the area again.
Now while many believe the above encounter to be the first official sighting of the Lockridge Monster, few know of a possible sighting that took place only months before in July. In the same general area as the Peiffer’s, there lived a couple by the names of Wendell and Gloria Olson. While out in the area, the couple claimed to have seen an upright, bushy haired creature with the face of a monkey lurking around the buildings of a deserted farm. From a distance, the couple watched as the creature went in and out of dilapidated structures before walking back into the woods. Oddly, this sighting did not become as popular as the one that took place on October 3rd.
So what could that Lockridge Monster be? Many feel that it was nothing more than a black bear that had travelled down from Wisconsin and made its temporary home in the area around the Peiffer’s turkey farm. While not native to Iowa, it is not unheard of for a rogue bear to travel from an adjacent state, take advantage of a plentiful food source, and then move on again. This may explain why the reported tracks and sounds from the area were not easily identifiable to the hunters in the area. But, what is not so easily explained, are the apples found eaten at 7ft on the tree, the described ape like face of the creature, and its reported ability to run like a man.
The mystery of The Lockridge Monster has never been solved.
-The Pine Barrens Institute
*Image Credit: Public Domain
"…Calling for the Captain once again, the Second Mate began to knock on the door just as he had done just moments ago, but still, there was no answer. Concerned that the Captain could not hear him for some reason, the Second Mate made the decision to enter the room, but when he attempted to turn the handle, it would not move. The door it appeared, was locked from the inside…”
“…You first must soak three wrought iron nails in the same water in which the nymph dwells. These nails must remain submerged the entire duration of one new moon to the next. After the specific length of time has passed, you remove the nails and drive them into a piece of driftwood removed from the same body of water. You place the newly nailed piece of wood on the shore at night and place some sort of shiny object on top of it…”
“The first hour passed by with nothing out of the ordinary, then the second came and went just as uneventfully. The deputies were beginning to fall asleep at their posts and Chief Marlowe started to think that whatever was bothering the three members of the old home had decided to leave them be. Content that the matter was now resolved, Chief Marlowe decided to follow in his men’s steps and get a little bit of shut eye. But no sooner did he shut his eyes and tilt his head back when a bang loud enough and hard enough to shake the whole house slammed into the walls from the outside.”
“…Dr. Gridley continued to assist the mother and daughter for quite some time, and over the course of his assistance, it is said that he removed enough objects to fill a normal-sized teacup. The objects, which ranged in size from a few millimeters to nearly an inch, were always organic and never confined themselves to one specific type.”
“We had two more cars on U.S. 2 in the northern part of Ashland County and I was transmitting to the deputies in that location. Two deputies were watching from a fire tower on Birch Hill and another, Drolson, was northwest of them on Lake Superior when one of these objects we were watching took off at a very high rate of speed. I radioed to Drolson and told him, ‘It’s going your way,’ and all of a sudden he said, ‘I see it coming-’ and then his radio went blank.”
Not long after the Mary Jane went missing, talk started to filter out around the area speculating what could have happened. Lakemen from all over gave their two cents and provided insight into what the ship could have encountered or dealt with while out in the water. The lake was a dangerous place, and the men who worked it had first-hand experience on just what those dangers were. So when the well-weathered dock workers who saw the strange black dog started talking, people listened. And as with most bizarre occurrences, once the door was opened for stories of the Great Lakes Black Dog to be told, others came forward to tell their stories involving the paranormal pooch as well.
Concerned that something may have happened to the old man, a group of men decided to take a trip out to Hermit Island to perform an 1800s wellness check. When the group arrived, it appeared to them that no activity had taken place on the island for quite some time. It was beginning to look unkempt and abandoned. Sensing something was wrong, the group proceeded towards the cabin to find Wilson. When they arrived at the dwelling they found the door was unlocked, the fire had not been lit in quite some time, and the unmistakable stench of death hung in the air all around them…
It is believed that there are upwards of 6,000+ shipwrecks within the five lakes known as Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario. Their beds have become the final resting place for an estimated 30,000+ mariners, many of which have never been recovered. The sheer number of souls that have been lost within these waters can easily get one thinking of the possibility that there may be something more going on within these lakes than originally thought. That there may be a force at work under the water that decides the fate of those who dare to interact with it. Something magical, something supernatural, something Godlike. Something, as crazy as it is to believe, like a Merman.
While nobody ever wants a case involving a missing individual to grow cold and go unsolved, it must be recognized that there is something inherently fascinating about the ones that do eventually get designated as such. To know that there is an individual out there who has remained missing regardless of the consistent efforts made by multiple people and agencies to find them and bring them home, well, it’s just downright spooky and unsettling. What happened to these people and where did they go? Did some choose to vanish and start a new life somewhere else? Or did they meet a tragic end at the hands of some vile individual? Only the missing knows the truth.
What did Mr. Cady and Mr. Peterson encounter that day on the 23rd of March, 1887, was it truly a ghost as they believed? Could it really have been the spiritual echo of an old French logger from back in the day who died nearly a century before? Or could this have been a perfect storm of random occurrences that made a run of the mill encounter between strangers ultimately seem supernatural?
Originally thinking the sound was coming from the sky above, John looked all around for the source but was unable to find one. As the noise continued to grow louder, the young man stood motionless and focused his hearing on the direction in which he believed it was coming from. Not long after doing so, he discovered that the sound appeared to be moving up the very path he had just walked. In an instant after that realization, everything he had ever heard about The Night Rider flooded back into his head.
Way back in the 1800s and well into the early 1900s, Wisconsin offered some of the nations best lakeside resorts outside of those on the coasts. Many historically recognized families of wealth and power, as well as many infamous mobsters and crime bosses, flocked to Wisconsin in order to relax, fish, swim, camp, hunt, and of course, spot a lake monster or two. You know, the typical stuff one does while on a vacation.
In 1904, in a community located halfway between the towns of Warrens and Scott, both of which are located within Monroe County, WI, an abandoned farmhouse began to exhibit multiple forms of strange phenomena.
Some residents in the area reported seeing odd lights emanating through the broken windows late at night, while others claim to have heard spine-tingling sounds echoing throughout the empty dwelling. Some even went as far as to state that upon investigating the bizarre lights and sounds, they had witnessed the nearly full human form of a ghostly woman running through the home.
“…that famous “sea serpent” has bobbed up in Lake Michigan. ‘We were about four miles off shore,’ said Capt. G.E. Stufflebeam of the S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, Friday night, ‘when Donald Steele, the lookout saw it.’ ‘I ordered two floodlights thrown on the creature, and there he was wriggling and twisting around and going faster than the ship. We kept it in sight for five minutes. The passengers on deck cried out, ‘what is it,’ but I didn’t know nor did H.J. Cook, former steamship line official who was with me. ‘It flipped its tail and the creature - about 60 feet long - started toward Benton Harbor, Mich.’ That’s Captain Stufflebeam’s story and he said he’ll stick to it…”
Spotted roughly a mile away from the farm, one of the men spotted what appeared to be the back of a large creature slowly moving through the water. Immediately recognizing that what he was witnessing was not a normal animal, the lone gunman shouted for every available man to hurry towards his location. With rifles loaded and aim taken, several men fired multiple shots at the creatures back as it moved slowly through the water. Yet after the smoke had cleared, it was apparent that none of the shots had managed to pierce the thick skin of the creature. What it did do though, was cause the large creature to change direction and move slowly towards the bank of the river. The same bank in which they were all standing.
What if everything we know about the Mastodon was true just up until the end when it is believed to have gone extinct? Would people be able to accept that? Maybe they didn’t go extinct nearly 110 centuries ago as scientists believe. Maybe they changed with the times and kept on evolving to bypass their fate. Is it possible that they were able to change so much, that they literally slipped into the cracks of our world and disappeared into the unknown?
“…There within the darkness of the lake was a bright green light, moving slowly and spreading out nearly thirty feet in diameter. While the sight was both beautiful and mesmerizing to most of the men, causing them to rise and move as close to the water as possible, one of the members in the group remembered stories he had heard told by the tribes living around the lake. The ones about a powerful creature living within the water, a creature that could easily snatch unsuspecting men right from the shore and drag them down to the bottom in order to consume them…”
As they progressed farther into the sea of trees, completely alone and miles away from any area of habitation, Bert caught sight of an odd-looking spot beneath a lone hemlock tree in the middle of nowhere. Unknown to them at the time, this spot which they had come across and noticed completely by chance, would soon be responsible for a mystery neither of them saw coming.
“…As the rider charged his horse forward, the doctor watched as he raised a rifle high in the air and swung it forward like a club. A large pumpkin, speared through the center by the barrel, smashed into the doctor’s head and knocked him from his horse. He fell to the ground with a hard thud and landed in the dirt. With his head pounding and his eyes beginning to gloss over, he recognized that he was starting to lose consciousness….”
The sun was starting to rise and scant traces of light were beginning to fill the area. Allen's eyes darted across the area with focused determination, hoping to quickly lock on to the culprit. The dog raced through and around the large cows moving across the path upwards. Finally, the canine stopped and the barks grew louder. Allen's eyes focused on his companion within the ravine and moved them along the invisible path in which the barks were directed. There within his gaze, he had finally found the cause of the dog's anger.
When Great Eagle and his one hundred men reached the cave, they were already mentally prepared for what they would encounter. While they didn't know the specifics of what was causing it, they knew that the cave was making people disappear. So to combat this terrible thing from happening again, the men grabbed hands and marched forward as a human chain into the mouth of the cavern. As the light grew dim for those in front and the echoes of footsteps hit the ears of those in back, it seemed as if the human chain was unbreakable. That is until the second man in front realized the leader who at one moment was holding his hand, seemed to have completely vanished.
Imagine a full sized hippo slowly lumbering along through a forest, now imagine a large musk ox walking along in the opposite direction towards the hippo. When the two giants meet head to head in the middle of the swamp, merge them together into one large abomination. What you have just created in your mind is what one witness of the Whatsit claimed it looked like.
On the cool and crisp Monday night of November 10, 1975, Anne Eilbes and her husband Peter began the standard processes every homeowner goes through prior to turning in for the night. They were closing curtains, locking doors, and just generally relaxing. As the clock ticked by, inching ever closer to eight pm, the couple chatted about their day and discussed the upcoming plans for the week. In all sense, it was just a typical Monday evening, one that would fade from memory as quickly as it had arrived. That is until the clock struck 7:50 pm.
It goes without saying that monster stories are an interesting thing. They can be found anywhere in the world, from the most heavily populated areas, all the way to the most barren places with the fewest people on the planet. It seems that wherever people gather, stories of monsters pop up as well. These can range from the terrifying and haunting, to the amusing and comical. It seems there are no set guidelines on how a monster story is supposed to go, what requirements it needs to be considered memorable, and what boxes it needs to check in order to be thought of as possibly true. But sometimes, the story of the monster is overshadowed by an even bigger story, one that involves tragedy, and one that gets rid of the monster forever.
“Now the Water Man is not a devil, but he will try also to get your soul. He is not a ghost, for there are villagers who have actually seen him. My grandfather, who transported timber on the river, talked and walked with him. He told me that the Water Man looks like any other man. He dresses in a long cloak, slit into tails. You may recognize him by the water dripping from his handkerchief thrust into the slit tails.”
Here at the Pine Barrens Institute, we are always on the look out for the most bizarre and obscure folklore the state of Wisconsin has to offer. We want the stuff that nobody has ever heard of, the homespun stories and legends that you just cant stop thinking about after you are done reading them. We want the weird, the spooky, and the only told once and never again kind of stories that make you realize just how interesting the Midwest truly is. Well readers, I think we have one for you that hits every single one of those targets.
I can't exactly tell you how I came across this story, but I think it was fate. I know I originally set out to find extremely obscure monster legends from the state of Wisconsin, and somehow ended up going down a proverbial rabbit hole that was filled with Native American folklore, ghosts, lake monsters, UFO's, haunted bars, and even Men In Black. But among all those topics, the last thing I ever expected was to come across an encounter with Trolls from over 100yrs ago, but here we are. So sit back, get comfortable, and let me share with you all what I so strangely stumbled across.
When it comes to investigating cryptid creatures, the investigative camps are usually split into two sides; those who believe these creatures are strictly flesh and blood, and those who feel they possess a more supernatural quality. Typically the the creatures that fall into a specific category are easy to sort, but every so often, you get a creature that hangs out equally on both sides.
Upon completion of the dam, 775 acres of land were flooded and five small lakes around the area of the soon to be mill became one giant lake. The resulting body of water was given the name Manitou and almost immediately, a monster by the name of Meshekenabek took up residence within it.
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“…many people were in their homes enjoying what they thought was just a normal evening. But when they ran outside to see what was the matter, and heard the ever-growing roar steadily moving closer towards them, they also caught sight of a strange object both rotating and moving through the sky above the trees.”