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The True Story Behind The Changeling & The Enfield Monster
25 Plays2 years ago
In this week's episode, Felicia dives into the true story behind the horror movie classic, The Changeling. In the late 1960s, composer Russell Hunter experienced strange paranormal activity in an old home in Denver. This story has hidden staircases, ghost little boys, and of course, a red rubber ball.
Lauren covers a freaky cryptid with more first hand sightings than most. The Enfield Monster was first seen in April 1973 in Enfield, Illinois. These early sightings blew up in the media and led to a wave of hysteria and panic in the small town. Could it be an alien, an escaped zoo animal, or perhaps just social contagion at its finest?
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Transcript
Introduction and Movie Reactions
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Felicia. I'm Lauren. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff. And the spooky stuff of the week is we both actually watched the same horror movie this week, which was The Black Phone. Beautiful. Yeah. And we didn't even mean to. We didn't even talk about it. I thought it was so good. Did you like it? Yeah, I really liked it. There was like, there were so many aspects of what I liked. First of all,
00:00:42
Speaker
Ethan Hawke is horrifying. I also watched it late at night and it was one of those things where I was like, I can't tell if I'm really scared because it's late at night or if like this movie is actually really scary. And I think it was a combination of both. I totally agree. I think I was not actually that excited to see it. Like I like sinister, so I should have known, but I think seeing the trailers, I was like, well, this is like one room.
Child Actors and Ghostly Themes
00:01:08
Speaker
It's a little boy. I don't know how much I'm going to really feel it. It wasn't like, I don't know, when I saw the trailer for Watcher, I was like, oh my God, I'm going to relate to this so much, blah, blah, blah. This I was kind of like, who knows? But I actually thought it had so much heart too. It was a really well done scary movie and the performances were really good.
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah, the little girl actually both the little boy and the little girl. I was just like amazed by both of them as actors. They were so good and so good together. I totally agree. I literally just got chills when you said the thing about the little girl because she was like her performance was so good. And the scene I don't know there's they have an abusive dad in it. That's not really a spoiler. So there's some really tough stuff that she had to act that I just thought was really powerful.
00:02:04
Speaker
Oh, my God. Absolutely. And weirdly, like never made me like sometimes I get in my head about like, oh, no, we're making these kids do this, like really intense acting. And I get I don't know, I get like worried that they're OK. But for some reason, I felt like it was all handled really well and it was still really intense, but not like in a way that I I felt like they couldn't handle it. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. And I also like this is something
00:02:36
Speaker
that at first I was like, I wasn't sure how I felt about the look of the ghost kid children. And then I had this like realization that I was like, right, like, this is this kid's perception of what a ghost kid would look like. And it's like, that's exactly what it looks like to him, because it's, you know, like his visions he's having. And then I was like, Oh, wait, no, they're perfect. Yes, totally. I think, yeah, I thought they were
00:03:03
Speaker
And all those little actors were so good. Yeah, I will say odd. Yeah, definitely.
Themes of Bullying and Family Bonds
00:03:10
Speaker
I was for some reason really impacted by the like early bullying stuff really like bothered me. I've been having new recent maybe I should talk about in therapy. It's because you're around an eight year old now. Probably. That's what it is. It's like worried about bullying.
00:03:27
Speaker
Yeah, bullying stuff has really gotten under my skin in a new way and gun violence obviously has got like there's some things in horror movies that all of a sudden I'm not just like okay with and I don't know what it is. But I think that's also like an aging thing like the things that scare you when you're young are different than the things that scare you when you get older. That's so smart. That's so true.
00:03:52
Speaker
where I guess in some ways you're like, oh, who cares about these little kids? And now that I see an eight-year-old, I'm like, I know that she gets bullied. I hope no one punches her. Yeah, it's scary. Oh my god, absolutely.
00:04:03
Speaker
And the little girl just like jumping in for her brother. I think I texted both of my brothers right after I saw it. And I just said there is like a beautiful brother-sister relationship. Obviously, you know, we had we had wonderful parents, but like there's such a great bond between them. And like I thought about both of my brothers where it does feel like that just like you do anything for them. Absolutely. You jump in the line of fire because like that's your that's your family. And you do like and especially like for siblings in particular, it's like
00:04:34
Speaker
there is a camaraderie of whatever you're going through, you're going through it together because your rooms are next to each other, right? I don't know. There's something magical about that. They did portray that really, really well in this. Totally. And that there's nobody except your siblings that understands the concept of being parented by these two people. It's crazy. Absolutely. No one's going to get it in the same way.
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah. So good. So good. Okay.
Villain Mysteries in Horror
00:05:03
Speaker
So we recommend black phone. Yeah. Well, apparently we do. Oh, wait. The other thing I really wanted to say about it was I thought it was so good that they didn't, Ethan Hawke's amazing. He's so good in it. But they don't do that annoying thing of like telling you too much about the villain. Like sometimes I think horror movies like go into the backstory and they're like, this happened to them and then this and then
00:05:23
Speaker
Show flashbacks and like this is why he's doing things and you're like we get it like he's messed up because of the things that happen in his past But they don't like rub your nose in it in this one, which I thought was so good I totally agree and that's like the serial killer obsession situation where it's like people are obsessed with finding out why people do evil things and It actually sometimes puts way too much focus on
00:05:50
Speaker
on the evil person and not enough focus on like the victim, right? Like I feel like we've been hearing about that sort of in like these true crime craze that we've been going through the last however many years. And yeah, and you're totally right. And this it's like, no, he's just bad.
Movie Availability and Anticipation
00:06:02
Speaker
He's just a terrible person. And it doesn't actually matter why because the story is not about him. No. And it's like you get enough like you get enough of like, this is why he's doing it maybe or like, maybe he was like abused as a kid, but it's like not
00:06:17
Speaker
Yeah, not too much or not over explaining or making you feel bad for him or any of those things. Absolutely. Just so good. So good. So good. Yeah. It's, and you can rinse it on Amazon now. It might still be in some theaters, but it's on VOD now for, for rental. Yeah. I saw it in a theater right before, I guess maybe, I don't know. It's, it's probably still in theaters too, but I think it probably is. Oh my gosh. Are you going to see nope this week?
00:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to go on Thursday. Yes. Okay. We'll text about it. I know it's going to be great. Especially because what they've done with the trailer and the marketing where it's like, I really know so little, which means my expectation is not even high because I don't know anything, which I actually think is going to be great.
00:07:05
Speaker
I think I've seen too many trailers. Maybe I don't know. Maybe I just. Yeah, but none of them really tell you what's going on. No, that's true. That's true. I want like nothing. I always am like I love seeing movie trailers, but then sometimes I just don't want to know anything. Yeah, I go back and forth, honestly, like sometimes I'm in the mood and we're just like, yeah, I'm just going to watch all this because I'm excited. And sometimes I definitely want like the surprise. But yeah, amazing.
00:07:34
Speaker
Should we jump in after we talked about black phone for so long? Yes.
True Story Horror: The Changeling
00:07:40
Speaker
Unfortunately, this is not an episode about black phone, but yeah, so my but mine is one of the horror movie based on a true story situation that we did very early on in our podcast. And I found another one. So this past week,
00:07:59
Speaker
on my horror movie club, we talked about the changeling from 1980. And really solid horror movie. Good. People don't really talk about it. Yeah, I guess they do. Obviously, it's a great horror movie. But I just feel like nowadays, it's not like you hear too much. Absolutely.
00:08:19
Speaker
And I think, I mean, I think there's been a remake in the talks for the last couple of years. So I'm not really sure where that is, but I'm sure whenever that remake starts to happen, the original film will get like a lot of hype again. But dang it, like it is a really great haunted house movie and there's so much depth in it of the characters and it's just amazing. But so I quickly learned on the Wikipedia page.
00:08:45
Speaker
that it is based on a true story. I'm excited. Let's get into it. Yeah. So this guy Russell Hunter, he was a writer. He wrote music for CBS back in like the 1950s. And
00:09:11
Speaker
50s and 60s. And so he's a composer, just like our character in the movie. And he actually had this crazy paranormal experience that we'll talk about in a second, and then became a writer on this film to help tell his story. That's so cool.
00:09:32
Speaker
I think his credit is like story by Russell Hunter. But yeah, so it's based on his experience that he had living in the Henry Treat Rogers mansion in Cheeseman Park, which is a neighborhood in Denver, Colorado.
00:09:51
Speaker
So here we go. Denver, Colorado. This also gave me shining vibes, too. And I was starting to look into the story, but it doesn't get there. So Russell Hunter, as I said, he was working for CBS television in the 50s and 60s as a composer.
00:10:09
Speaker
And at some point he wanted to move back to Denver to be close to his parents. His parents ran some sort of business that he felt like he needed to go home and help with. And he just wanted to be closer to them as he got older. And so he moved out there and then eventually, I think he was like staying with them. And then eventually he wanted his own space.
00:10:30
Speaker
So he moved into 1739 East 13th Street, and it's this freaking haunted mansion. He did not know that at the time of moving in. But before we even talk about the house itself, we of course have to talk about the land the house sits on, because that's typically where a lot of our hauntings start.
00:10:52
Speaker
And it just couldn't be more classic. Oh, no. So the Henry Treat Rogers mansion sits on top of an old cemetery called Prospect Hill Cemetery. No, it was. Yeah, it was founded in 1858. And then at some point, a lot of very wealthy families started moving into the area.
00:11:18
Speaker
And they were like, oh God, this unsightly cemetery in our neighborhood, please somebody do something about that.
00:11:24
Speaker
So in 1872, the government decided to get rid of the cemetery because it was built on federal land, I guess. I guess they had the power to do that. They basically told everyone to come move their bodies. So families, they were given 90 days. They were like, come, get your bones of your family members. And if you don't do that within 90 days, we're just going to throw them away.
00:11:52
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I had so crazy that they do that with bodies.
00:11:56
Speaker
I don't like come get your lamp. Just don't get your loved ones. Get the bones of your great great grandmother. So so basically the construction officially started in like the 1890s. They removed any other remaining bodies that people hadn't come to get. And as they were digging up the graves, like they were not careful in any way. So they're just digging up graves and third to the point where they're like,
00:12:26
Speaker
basically hacking up the bodies and loading up the pieces and taking them away. Why did they have to hack them up? Just not very transportable. No, I guess. I guess not. So this area called Cheeseman Park, after that, pretty much people were like, boom, boom, it's haunted. Visitors in that area talked about this uneasy feeling when walking through the area, cold spots, the classics,
00:12:55
Speaker
you take a photo and there's a floating orb in it. And they say to this day, whenever they're doing work on something, there's still a possibility of finding some human remains because all of them were not removed completely. They kind of just did a half hazard job, which is bad. Yeah, so I don't think you should be. I don't think you should be. But yeah, so
00:13:23
Speaker
Russell Hunter, he was in his house not knowing any of this. And the only thing he knew about it was that the mansion was named after this attorney that had lived there for 20 some years. Him and his wife, they didn't have any children, but they did have a niece and a nephew that lived with them for some period of time. And they don't really know, there's not like great records of who was there before that, or at least not that I could find on the internet. So that's kind of all they knew about like the history of the house itself.
00:13:53
Speaker
And he wanted this property in particular because there was a solid amount of land around it and he was a composer. And so he wanted the ability to basically be able to write in peace and make a lot of noise and not disturb anyone. Got it. I was like, where does land and composer? I'm like, he wants to run around in his yard and sing.
00:14:13
Speaker
and sing. But that is like, I totally get that because that's someone that lives in an apartment and likes to sing. It's like, you can't sing in the same way that you did like growing up in a, like my, for example, my parents house in suburbia where it's like, I could just be belting in the basement and no one could hear me. Now it's like, right now my neighbors can hear me doing this right now. Sorry, guys. I'll try to be quieter. But yeah, so
Unveiling the Haunting's Mystery
00:14:44
Speaker
Into the haunting itself, Russell said, starting on February 9th, 1969, when he moved in, the thing that he started to notice immediately is every single morning when he woke up, he would hear this stomping happening somewhere in the house. It's like a lot of ruckus. And whenever he would step out of bed to go check it out, the moment his foot hit the floor, the noise would stop.
00:15:16
Speaker
And this would happen every morning, which to me just feels like a little silly ghost. Just playing a little prank. Just messing around. Just messing around. Some classic things happen. The faucets turn on and off by themselves. The doors opening and slamming by themselves. And then one thing that I hadn't heard before.
00:15:36
Speaker
was the biggest complaint he had is that the walls in the house would shake and like vibrate basically. And this would happen sometimes and it would basically knock down paintings or whatever art he had on the wall.
00:15:50
Speaker
And at first he thought it was just some sort of like construction issue with like the pipes or something were like rattling in the walls. And so he had some people come check out the house and they checked everywhere and they didn't find any issues. But as they were about to leave, they found one closet they had not checked. And Russell was like, ah, it's probably nothing. Nothing's going on here. And they were like, ah, well, let's just check it so we can check out the boxes.
00:16:19
Speaker
They opened the closet and sort of behind not a fake wall, but just like a piece of wood that had been put up. They found a small staircase that led up to a third floor annex. That's crazy. I know it's like my dream. That's my dream is to buy an old house and to find a secret staircase. Is it really your dream? You would love that.
00:16:45
Speaker
Yes, I would pee my pants. I love that. And I thankfully, because, you know, your phone's always listening. I tick tock. I get that sometimes where people find like secret spaces.
00:16:57
Speaker
And they're really old homes. And I was just I can't get enough. Can't get enough. But yeah, so they go up there. And so the story is about to you know, if you see the movie, the story I'm going to tell is going to sound very familiar. And there's not a ton of proof around these things, except for Russell's account.
00:17:22
Speaker
I just want to make that clear. We don't have any word from the other construction workers. I don't even think we have the objects that I'm about to talk about to prove any of this, but this is what he said. He got up there and the only thing in the room was an old trunk. They opened it up and they found a journal. They start to read the journal and they realize it was written by a disabled boy.
00:17:49
Speaker
who was forced to live alone up on the third floor by himself out of sight of the public, just like in the changing and basically like pages and pages of like how he hated his life there. It wasn't fair. He wished he could do more like, you know. And just like how terrible his life was. One other thing that he mentioned in the book was that his favorite toy was a red ball.
00:18:18
Speaker
which is kind of one of the classic images from the movie of The Changeling, is this red ball that bounces down the stairs and rolls to our main character.
00:18:28
Speaker
So they find this, they, uh, Russell still experiencing all these paranormal occurrences in the home. And apparently it got so bad to a point that he started staying with a friend and wasn't staying in the house anymore and decided that he wanted to organize some sort of seance because he believes that it was the spirit of the boy and that he needed a medium to kind of like talk to the spirit and flush it out and, you know, get, get it all out of the house, cleanse the house.
00:18:59
Speaker
So they have the seance apparently. And basically what they find or what the mediums tells him is that this child was the heir to a very large inheritance.
00:19:10
Speaker
but ended up getting very sick, very young and died at a very young age. So there is a difference here that this child in Russell's story died sort of of his illness and of natural causes versus in the movie of the changeling, the disabled child is murdered by his father.
00:19:32
Speaker
in like the most brutal drowning scene I've ever seen. It's like horrifying. But great. And basically that then after the child died, the parents were very worried about the inheritance no longer being passed down to them. Like maybe it was gonna be passed by another family member because their child had died. And so they covered up their own child's death.
00:19:56
Speaker
went to an orphanage, found another child that looked very similar to their recently deceased, and had that child take over the role to secure this part of the family's inheritance. That's pretty messed up. Oh, it's not good. It's not good.
00:20:17
Speaker
Then, okay, so basically after this, so the medium tells Russell all this, and they decide or they say that the way to prove this is that the boy says that I was buried in an unmarked grave.
00:20:35
Speaker
that is located basically in a slightly different part of the area called South Delilah Street, also in Denver, and that his family had buried him there. And he said, like, you need to go dig up my bones, basically. So they go to this house. They're like, hi, we need to dig under your house. Apparently, the family said, go for it, which is like, what? Yeah, they're like, please, dig on our land.
00:21:05
Speaker
No problem. Please go for it. And it says that Russell Hunter and I don't know himself, a friend, I don't know who was with him on Earth Human Remains that looked like a child and came along wearing a golden medallion inscribed with the dead child's name, which I'm like, why don't we know the dead child's name? Why is that not in my research? But it's fine. It's a great story. It doesn't matter. The boy. The boy.
00:21:35
Speaker
So of course, after they dig up these bones, Russell thinks this is it. Okay, I've solved the mystery. Everything's gonna be fine.
Ethical Concerns in Storytelling
00:21:44
Speaker
And then he moves back into the house and the haunting just gets a lot worse. Basically climaxing to a set of glass doors that exploded in Russell's face.
00:22:00
Speaker
And even injured, it severed an artery in his wrist and he had all this horrible bleeding and he had to go to the hospital. So we know that that part's true. Probably. I mean, according to the internet, yeah. That he had to go into the hospital and after that he never went back to the house.
00:22:22
Speaker
So once he healed up, he completely moved out. And he never went back to that house until the 1980s when the house was demolished. And he basically went to watch them tear it down. And I don't know why they tore it down. I think they had just been standing empty and they were just, I don't know.
00:22:47
Speaker
He didn't pay for it to be demolished. It wasn't because of the hauntings. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's that's basically the story of Russell Hunter, who then, you know, I'm assuming sold his story so they could write the changeling. So he worked with. Yeah. So Russell Hunter provided the story, William Gray and Diana Maddox.
00:23:10
Speaker
wrote the screenplay together based on his story and then the movie The Changeling came out in 1980 and was directed by Peter Medic and starred the one and only George C. Scott.
00:23:26
Speaker
He's so good. In the title role. So good. Once again, just to recap, there are some differences from Russell's story to the movie. One being that the tragedy in the film The Changeling is really about the murder of this child. And then the changing out of the child and Russell's story that he kind of died of being sick.
00:23:53
Speaker
And yeah, and also they added a tragic background story to George C. Scott's character in the movie where he lost his wife and child, which made him like the ghost connected with him very easily in the movie, like through that shared trauma of like children dying, I guess. And that was made up for the movie. But they did keep him a composer in the film, just like Russell Howard was, which I thought was cool. Oh, Russell Hunter. Sorry.
00:24:23
Speaker
At some point if I said Russell Howard, that's not it. It's Russell Hunter. And that's just my bad. But yeah, that's the story. That's the story of the changeling. Amazing. I never knew the whole thing. So that's so, I mean, that was so interesting and such a, I don't know. I always am like, you know what? Even if that person made it up completely, good on them.
00:24:47
Speaker
they made a really good story. And it's nice to have a horror movie that's based, you know, in quotations based on a true story, involving the person's story, who it is in the writing process, giving them credit to their story. I feel like you don't really see that a lot. So I thought no.
00:25:05
Speaker
No, I was just actually, I've been like sort of lazily watching the staircase with Tony Collette, the whatever, the HBO, right? HBO telling of it. And I just read something not like today that was like, yeah, he didn't have any part and like, it was totally stolen from him. Like Michael Peterson's not involved at all. And I mean, not that I don't know, I don't know that he should, but
00:25:33
Speaker
I don't know, just such a weird concept. And same with we talked about this with Pam and Tommy, where like Pamela Anderson was like, Hey, what the F this is my story. And like, I'm not involved at all. It's, it's weird. And we see I feel like I see that come up
00:25:49
Speaker
particularly a lot with true crime stories where it's like, or true crime documentaries where they didn't involve the victim's family at all in the documentary. And it's a little like, ooh, like there's something about that that feels exploitative, right?
00:26:04
Speaker
And I had never really thought about that for like a biopic, but that makes a lot of sense too. I don't know. What was the one, I just watched the girl in the picture. Did you see that?
00:26:19
Speaker
I think you told me you watched that. Yeah. And it was so, so good. But now, like, I feel like this is going to be a thing that's like crossing my mind now every time I watch one of those, you know, Netflix or whatever true crime documentary things where I'm just like, wait, is this exploitative? Like, wait, why am I addicted to watching these? I don't know. Yeah. And yeah, it's really sad when they're not involved at all. And it's like, oh, you just like took all the terrible things that happened to them.
00:26:46
Speaker
And now you are profiting on it. Yeah, it's it doesn't seem right. Yeah. But amazing job on that story. Oh, thank you.
Legend of the Enfield Monster
00:27:09
Speaker
So I'm taking us a different direction. This week, I'm doing another one of my favorite
00:27:16
Speaker
Favorite things now. I feel like I'm in like a real cryptid
00:27:19
Speaker
sighting mood. But I just... Oh, for some reason I thought it was gonna be dolls. No, no. I was like, actually, we haven't done a doll in a while. No, no, no. I should maybe come back to dolls though. I just feel like I saw something about some creepy doll the other day. But this week I'm doing the Enfield Monster, which is one of those situations where it kind of turned into like a Salem Witch Trials kind of thing where it was
00:27:47
Speaker
You know, mass hysteria riled up a small town, that kind of thing. So it began on April 25, 1973, when a 10-year-old boy named Greg Garrett was attacked. And this was in Enfield, Illinois.
00:28:06
Speaker
And he was just playing in his backyard when this strange beast attacked him. So the boy described it as a three-legged grayish creature that had slimy skin, short claws, and red eyes. The monster stamped on the boy with his, you know, clawed feet, tore up his tennis shoes, and he ran screaming into his parents' house and told them what had happened to him.
00:28:35
Speaker
So this was the first encounter, but not really the one that like brought it to the, you know, broader public. So just a half hour after this attack, his neighbor, Henry McDaniel and his family saw the creature. This was like at 9.30 PM, the McDaniel's came home to find two of their children just sitting terrified in the house. They said that a thing,
00:29:03
Speaker
had tried to break into the house through the door and then had tried to come in through the window that had one of those mounted air conditioners. And then while they were describing the story, the whole family heard scratching at the front door, assuming it was just something that his kids had made up. The father went to the front door, threw it open, and saw this same freaky-looking monster.
00:29:31
Speaker
So he backed away, I know, it's like many sightings. So he backed away, slammed the door, got his flashlight, and because we're in a small town, he got his 22 pistol. So he went back to the door, opened it again, saw the creature one more time, saw that it had three legs, a short body, two little arms, and two pink eyes.
00:29:59
Speaker
And it was about four and a half feet tall, grayish, very similar to Greg's depiction. And it was trying to get into the house. So it was kind of like chart or, you know, coming towards the front door. So he started shooting at the creature. He hit it immediately, but the creature hissed and still kept coming. He shot it four more times and insisted later that he did hit it all four of those times.
00:30:28
Speaker
But it ran away so quickly that it supposedly covered 50 feet in just three leaps before it disappeared. Oh, if only I had any perception of 50, what did you say, 50 feet? 50 feet in three leaps. So I'm like doing some quick math. That's definitely far. Yeah, almost 20 feet in each leap.
00:30:54
Speaker
Wow. Okay. Yeah, that's a lot fast. So he called because it's only four feet tall. It's four feet tall. It was just flying basically. This is actually a math podcast. So if the animal covers, so this man Henry, he called the authorities, local Illinois state troopers came and they did find evidence. So we do know that there was some kind of creature at the very least.
00:31:20
Speaker
So there was, or there were scratches in the siding of the McDaniel's home. There were dog-like prints in the yard, but the prints were, in fact, unusual. So they had six tow pads on each of the footprints and they did, in fact, represent a three-legged creature. So all of that is true.
00:31:47
Speaker
On the eve of May 6th, so right after, I guess not quite right after. So that was April 25th. So what is that? Like two weeks almost after that account? Henry McDaniel was again awoken by the howling of some neighborhood dogs. So he got out of bed with his gun again, opened the front door, claimed to have seen the creature again, but it was just kind of slowly moving relatively far away. So he didn't shoot at it.
00:32:18
Speaker
And now here's where like the press kind of gets involved. So they heard this story and it came out in full force. So turning into kind of this like media frenzy that I talked about. So White County Sheriff, his name was Roy Poshard Jr. He was so angry about this like
00:32:40
Speaker
influx of press and knowing that it was going to bring all these new people to the town. So he threatened to put Henry in prison if he kept spreading his story. But Henry just seemingly just kept talking or maybe that was enough to kind of get people to come. So people eventually just started flooding the town. You know, obviously, as we always talk about, like paranormal investigators, monster seekers, all those kinds of groups.
00:33:10
Speaker
And there was this group of five young men who allegedly saw the creature and it looked just like Garrett and Henry McDaniel had described. They also said that it looked hairy, but they found it hiding in the bush, opened fire on it. But again, the bullets didn't kill it or seemingly hurt it too badly. It ran off at a great speed again.
00:33:35
Speaker
I will say I think this encounter has pretty much been disproved. The police when they brought the men in, they arrested the men because of hunting violations basically. You can't just shoot
00:33:51
Speaker
in random areas, can't just shoot off a gun randomly. So they had, it turns out they were visitors from out of town and they were just like seemingly out drinking and messing around and shooting at things. And then just like kind of brought up the monster, like very briefly in questioning.
00:34:11
Speaker
So that one doesn't seem quite as real as the other ones. But the final eyewitness was Rick Rainbow, who was the news director of radio station WWKI in Kokomo, Indiana. So he and three other individuals claimed to have seen a gray stooping about four to five feet tall creature.
00:34:35
Speaker
wandering around this abandoned house that was pretty close to Garrett and the McDaniel's home. So they weren't quite as close to the creature to be able to get anything on tape, but they did get the sound that this creature was making. So again, you know, not like a ton of evidence, but still to me, like four people saw this crazy creature. They got it recorded on tape, the audio.
00:35:04
Speaker
So after this encounter, a cryptozoologist who basically is, you know, exactly what that sounds like, a person that studies cryptids named Lauren Coleman came to investigate it. He interviewed witnesses, heard the cry of the creature. He wrote about it in some of his books, believes it to have been a real thing. And investigators that
00:35:30
Speaker
that kind of looked into it have suggested that there was also this is crazy to me. There was also a series of UFO sightings in the town right around that same period. So we love an alien. I know there's a little bit of alien talks about it. There's also some people that say, you know, because it was like aggressively trying to get into homes that they felt it was more like along the demon track.
00:35:59
Speaker
I will say the sad truth is that Greg Garrett, the little boy, later told Western Illinois University researchers that his report was totally made up. A complete hoax that he created just to mess with Henry McDaniel who is his neighbor and said he saw this creature. I still will say
00:36:26
Speaker
I feel a little bit like if I'm a 10 year old boy, and I did have this experience, like maybe his parents said, stop talking about this. Like, you need to like we need to move on. Yeah, so I don't know. Maybe it's or maybe as he grew up, he like was like, maybe I did imagine it. Like, I don't know, I was 10. Exactly. So I don't know. I'm not convinced that that's not. I don't know. I'm still just like, weren't his tennis shoes torn up?
00:36:54
Speaker
Didn't his parents see his torn up tennis shoes? I don't know. But the, the theory that I like the best, there's a theory that the creature might've been a kangaroo that escaped from a nearby zoo. Yes. Where. Oh, three legs, the tail, the tail. Yes. So people think maybe the tail and the two legs, so it looked like a third leg, but McDaniel, this is also a random tidbit.
00:37:23
Speaker
Henry McDaniel had a pet kangaroo while on military service in Australia. So he insists that he really knew about kangaroos and that was not a kangaroo that he was seeing. He's like, I'm an expert in kangaroos. Wait, in Australia, okay. Do they have pet kangaroos? Can you have a pet for kang- That just doesn't feel right. That feels like a kangaroo type. Is it a kangaroo, like a wild animal? Yeah. Yeah.
00:37:52
Speaker
Interesting. Okay. I don't know. I mean, I really want to look into whether if you're on military service in Australia, you can have pet kangaroos. He's like, I do a kangaroo once, this was no kangaroosa. Yeah. I just think it's so funny. The other kind of little piece of that too is following all this media coverage. There was a man from Ohio, so not Illinois exactly, but close.
00:38:18
Speaker
He contacted one of the local newspapers and said that he did have a pet kangaroo named Macy who had been lost or stolen or escaped a year before the encounters. So I'm like, maybe this kangaroo got that far? I don't really know. A year? Yeah, it's a long time to survive on your own as a kangaroo.
00:38:41
Speaker
in the Midwest. I'm so sad. I think a lost kangaroo in the Midwest is just making me very sad. I mean, I don't know, zoos have become another thing that I'm like, should we just get rid of zoos? Yeah, it's like something that as a kid, I was like, this is amazing. And now as a result, I'm like, this is not okay, probably.
00:39:02
Speaker
Feels depressing. Others think that it might have been a wild ape because there were other reports of a wild ape in the Mississippi area, kind of similar in that time. But I'm like, Mississippi to Illinois feels far to me, but I also don't really understand the Midwest or that area of the country. These all feel like ideas for children's movies. The gorilla's journey from Mississippi to the Midwest.
00:39:31
Speaker
I really do think we could we could write a children's book about these and make a million dollars. Exactly. But it has been used as I kind of hinted at the beginning, it has been used in several papers about
00:39:47
Speaker
social contagion, which is that idea that one person says something and it kind of creates this collective behavior where people can be affected by this group emotion kind of thing. So panic, hysteria, collective visions. So all of that kind of thing, I do think probably had an effect in this case, especially because it was such a small town.
00:40:17
Speaker
that it's like if one man was saying he encountered this monster, it does seem like it created this kind of crazy hysteria where all these people came into town, people were searching for it, and it seems like it just got out of hand. And I do think the concept, I'm always fascinated by the idea of somebody telling you that they saw a monster and then you seeing something and then thinking you see that monster. Oh, because they already kind of put it in your head, maybe.
00:40:46
Speaker
Exactly. And because it got so much media attention, like everybody knew what it looked like. Everybody knew what to imagine.
00:40:54
Speaker
But if one of the interviews, this is how I'll end it, Henry McDaniel does have like one of my favorite quotes about cryptids. I mean, he seems just like exactly what you would imagine by somebody that saw a monster in a small town. But the quote is, if they do find it, they will find more than one and they won't be from this planet. I can tell you that. I can tell you that. Exactly.
00:41:20
Speaker
So I thought it was a cool story. I always like these, like what, I don't know. Yeah. Where, where do these cryptids come from? Is it just like hysterical people seeing a normal animal or is it something else? I don't know. We don't know. We don't know. Well, great job. Amazing. And I can't wait to see a drawing of this little guy. Yes. There are some funny ones. A little pants monster. Yes, exactly.
00:41:47
Speaker
I still think that Fresno Nightcrawler video haunts my dreams. It's real. I believe it. I believe in aliens, so I'm always like of all things. Oh, yeah. They're coming. Yeah, they're already here. That's true. Don't be naive Lauren, they're already here.
00:42:06
Speaker
Maybe they'll save us from global warming. God. Or ourselves. Good God. Both. Amazing. Well, thank you all for listening again this week. We're excited to talk to you again next week. Yeah. We hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Bye.