Momo Stalks the Midwest
Mysterious monster sighted in county
By Raymond Castile
Illustrator Hal D. Crawford drew this image for the 1970 book "The Aliens"
by Crawford, Hayden Hewes and Kietha Hewes. It depicts a creature associated
with 1950s UFO landings. Momo eyewitnesses in Louisiana, Mo., claimed the
illustration looked almost exactly like the creature they saw during the summer
of 1972. Used with permission.
Does a real-life monster roam the Missouri wilderness?
Witnesses claim to have seen a huge, hairy, hulking creature stalking the
woods and lonely country roads. The creature is similar to the well-known
Bigfoot of the Pacific Northwest, only more otherworldly. It has glowing orange
eyes, a pumpkin-shaped head, three-fingered hands and leaves three-toed
footprints. Unlike the shy Bigfoot, this aggressive creature is known to kill
animals and antagonize humans.
Its name is Momo – the Missouri Monster.
Momo sightings have been reported throughout Missouri, even in St. Charles
County. But the most famous sightings occurred in Louisiana, Mo., a town of
fewer than 4,000 people. Located in Pike County, Louisiana lies 75 miles
northwest of St. Charles County.
Momo footprint illustrations by Raymond Castile
Bigfoot-like creatures have been reported in the Louisiana area since the
1940s, but it was not until the early 1970s that Momo attracted serious
interest.
Bigfoot researcher Loren Coleman describes the now-legendary Momo scare in
his book, "
Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America."
According to Coleman, the Momo saga began in July, 1971. Joan Mills and Mary
Ryan were driving along Highway 79, north of Louisiana, when they allegedly saw
a hairy creature that made disturbing gurgling noises. The women described the
thing as "half ape and half man."
The most notorious sighting took place one year later. On the afternoon of
July 11, 1972, 8-year-old Terry Harrison and his 5-year-old brother, Wally, were
playing in their backyard at the foot of Marzolf Hill on the outskirts of
Louisiana. Their older sister, Doris, was inside the house. Doris heard her
brothers scream. She looked out the bathroom window and saw a black, hairy
manlike creature, standing by a tree.
The thing appeared to be six or seven feet tall. Its head sat directly atop
its shoulders, with no visible neck. The face was likewise invisible, completely
covered by a mass of hair.
The youths reported a chilling detail – the creature, streaked with blood,
carried a dead dog under its arm
Momo mockup at far left. Middle,
A sketch of the creature reported by Doris and Terry Harrison on July 11,
1972, in Louisiana, Mo. Courtesy of MUFON. Right,
An illustration depicting the Troy creature wading across the Cuivre
River. Courtesy of MUFON.
A local farmer reported his dog had disappeared. A neighbor reported hearing
terrible growling sounds that afternoon.
Edgar Harrison, the children's father, also heard loud growls the evening of
July 14. He and several other people smelled a strong, unpleasant odor as they
investigated the area around Marzolf Hill. Investigators later reported smelling
a similar stench, like rotting flesh.
On July 21 Momo revealed itself to Ellis Minor outside his home on River
Road. It was around 10 p.m. when Minor heard his dogs barking. He grabbed a
flashlight and stepped outside, expecting to see an intruding dog.
Instead, he saw a 6-foot-tall monster standing in his yard. The black, hairy
creature turned and ran.
According to a July 23, 1972 story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, police
sealed off a 200-acre wooded area while a team of 25 hunters searched for the
creature, which many believed to be a black bear. Police received reports of a
creature crossing the highway with a dog or sheep in its mouth. Another witness
told police that the creature lifted the back of his automobile.
Not all hunters used guns. Many used pencil and paper.
Bigfoot investigators swarmed Louisiana, interviewing witnesses and taking
plaster casts of the creature's unusual three-toed footprints. One of the
preeminent researchers was Hayden Hewes, director of the Oklahoma City-based
Sasquatch Investigations of Mid America.
"What impressed me was the willingness of people to talk to us. Normally
people are reluctant to talk about these things," said Hewes, 61. "This was not
just one person spitting in a can, saying `yes sir, I saw it right over there.'
These were good quality people who were enthusiastic about what was going on."
Hewes said he was impressed with the witnesses' sincerity.
"These people didn't want to sell something. They didn't want publicity. They
just wanted to share their stories. I never got any inkling that there was a
hoax."
The Momo scare lasted only two weeks, but it triggered a media frenzy.
Television and newspaper journalists from across the nation descended on the
small town.
"I did close to 75 television and newspaper interviews," Hewes said. "They
flew me to Chicago to do some television there. There were people around us
shooting documentaries. We haven't had a case that well-documented since."
Sasquatch Investigations of Mid America is an offshoot of the International
UFO Bureau, an organization Hewes founded in 1957.
"We researched Bigfoot sightings in eight states, mainly to see if there was
any connection with UFO sightings," he said. "With Momo, we found there was no
correlation whatsoever with UFOs."
Hewes said his investigations suggest there are families of nocturnal Bigfoot
creatures that continuously migrate across the nation from the Pacific Northwest
to the southeast.
"The path begins around Oregon and Washington state," he said. "It crosses
Oklahoma around the first week of September, then finishes in Florida."
When he is not conducting paranormal investigations, Hewes runs a talent
agency and works in warehouse distribution in Oklahoma City. Hewes has a degree
in aeronautical and space engineering from the University of Oklahoma.
While Hewes and other researchers concentrated on Louisiana, one team of
investigators focused on sightings in the St. Charles County vicinity.
John Schuessler was living in O'Fallon during the Momo scare. Schuessler
worked for McDonnell Douglas as a group engineer for life support systems on the
Sky Lab space station, then later as director of flight operations for the
Johnson Space Center in Houston.
In 1969, Schuessler helped establish the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), an
international collective of UFO researchers. The 71-year-old Schuessler still
directs the organization from its headquarters in Colorado.
The Momo scare coincided with a rash of UFO sightings, including reports near
his home in O'Fallon. The possible UFO connection intrigued Schuessler, so he
joined the Momo investigation. Schuessler found no connection between Momo and
UFO activity, but he did investigate two incidents that corroborated the
presence of Bigfoot creatures in the region.
On June 30, 1972, a month before the Harrison sighting in Louisiana, two
young men from Troy were fishing on a secluded bank of the Cuivre River near
Cuivre River State Park in Lincoln County. The fishermen, named Vaughn and Tim,
stood atop a high bank overlooking an unusually low bank on the river's opposite
side.
According to Schuessler, Vaughn noticed a splash and looked up.
"They said they saw something wading across the river – a big, hairy thing.
They didn't know what it was," Schuessler said. "Vaughn said, `Hey Tim, look at
that silly hippie wading across the river.' Then they realized it was not a
hippie."
The men described the creature as standing taller than a normal man and hairy
all over, Schuessler said. Like the Louisiana creature, the Troy monster's hair
completely covered its face. Its head looked like a dome resting on its
shoulders.
Tim scrambled up a hillside while Vaughn held his ground. The creature
continued its deliberate march toward him. Vaughn finally panicked and ran. The
men found a conservation officer and returned to the scene.
"All they found were fresh, three-toed footprints where the creature came out
of the water," Schuessler said.
Schuessler inspected the area the next day and found the prints.
"They were large prints, but I couldn't tell what made them," he said. "We
looked for hair, but found nothing but tracks."
Schuessler said Vaughn and Tim seemed honest and genuinely frightened.
Schuessler also interviewed the conservation officer.
"He said he'd gotten a lot of weird reports out of the park, but he didn't
pay attention to them. I think he wanted to stay at arm's length from it all,"
he said.
Another Momo sighting took place July 24 near O'Fallon, just after the final
Louisiana sighting. Two teenage girls reported seeing a hairy creature at sunset
walking along the edge of a wooded area. The O'Fallon incident is mentioned in
"The Bigfoot Casebook" by Janet and Colin Bord, but Schuessler does not remember
the details.
"It was not as vivid as the Troy sighting," he said.
Momo must have enjoyed his sojourn in St. Charles County, because the
creature apparently passed through town again four years later.
The "Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization" Web site lists Momo sightings in
29 Missouri counties, including a 1976 report from St. Charles County. According
to the report, two people were in a boat on the Missouri River near Highway
40-61 when they saw what appeared to be a 6-to-7-foot tall creature covered in
dark brown hair. The creature was drinking from the river when it saw the boat,
stood up and ran into the trees.
Another local story is posted on the "Bigfoot Encounters" Web site. Mark
Richardson, of Modesto, Calif., claims to have seen the creature in 1979 when he
was living in St. Peters.
According to Richardson, he and a friend were on a railroad bridge over
Dardenne Creek one night. Richardson saw shadows moving and assumed it was his
friend.
To his shock, he discovered it was an 8-to-9-foot-tall creature with long,
matted brown hair covering its body and face. Its shoulders were five feet wide.
Its three-fingered hands hung below its knees.
The creature smelled like rotting hair and screamed like a panther.
Richardson claims it lifted the railroad timbers and tried to grab his friend.
The two escaped and ran home.
Richardson claims he knows other people who saw the St. Peters creature. He
could not be reached for comment.
So is Momo real? Investigators like Schuessler say the sincere testimony of
eyewitnesses cannot be dismissed.
"There is definitely something going on," Schuessler said. "I just don't know
what it is."
This story was originally published in the Suburban
Journals of St. Charles County, Oct. 31, 2004. Used with
permission.
A "Swamp Monster" Mask off the internet. What is interesting this time is that the segmented sections of the face are not scales but are patces of hair showing how the hair tracts are meant to lie when slicked down, there is the typical bony structure around the eye sockets, a hint of a sagittal crest, and a small fringing beard in the jowly areas (Presumabluy more beard would show and the hair around the face bush up when dry)o seems to indicate a flat nose with two nostrils facing ahead that can be shut off by valves, long upper lip and the ears which look large when they are exposed, when the mane hair is slicked down. The ears being so large shows an early form of the aquatic adaptation, in a more evolved stage the ears should be reduced to the minimum possible.
In Momo the shaggy mane around the head is very shaggy and can obscure the face from some views when the hair is thoroughly dried and fluffed-out.es th larger and the contrast between the "Pumpkinheaded" Momo and the West-coast Sasquatch was noted in all of the original press releasesp of reports was going on in the 1970s.
A chart showing how the swamp monster or "Frogfoot" foot might develop from the foot of a large monkey, if the type of track is actually legitimate. It should be noted that the "Fouke Monster" in Arkansas is supposed to leave the same tracks and such tracks also show up in Florida. On the other hand, these are quite unlike the hoaxed alligator tracks and the toes do not correspond to that type. The outline drawing is from Sanderson's chart of footprints in the appendix of
Abominable Snowmen and represents an old male rhesus macaque.
Previously posted at the Frontiers of Zoology Yahoo group, with original caption:
Feet and Tracks, Outsized Monkeys and Apes
Posted: Dec 9, 2006
Resolution: 800x281
Size: 23KB
The Woadd-al-uma of the Nile and swamps of the Sudan [and in Lake Chad?] might be a giant water-loving macaque related to the Barbary ape and parallel in size to the Chinese giant macaque (photos of hands and feet from PURSUIT illustrated previously)
--In this case we can see the parallel to the "Frogfoot" track plus the odd form of the opposed big toe, gone missing in the more advanced type of foot. The alternative hypothesis would be that this is a peculiar form of water-loving gorilla: that seems less likely now. The track and information about the
Woadd el-Umma is from Heuvelmans and never translated into English yet.
But it would seem we have an even earlier stage of a "Missing Link" in the aquatic-monkey adaptive radiation.
 |
| Barbary Macaques (Barbary Apes) |
One of DJs items in his list is the "water chimp" which he says is widely known by the locals. [the illustration above is of an orang, but it is the best I could do to give you something to look at.] These animals, "Ya-olo", are pretty far out on the unbelievability scale but with all this, who knows?? "Ya-olo is about the size of a chimp, aquatic, but possesses thick black hair like a chimp and has a black crown of hair which the people describe as resembling most the crown of the Diana monkey. The sound is vaguely chimp-like: ooooh--oooh--ooh--ooh--ooh. The feet, they say, are actually unlike a chimp's and more like a leopard's with permanent claws". [yeh, right.] Now lovers of the chupracabra will love this: Ya-olo hunts by night and kills its victims sucking out all their blood by masticating through their nose [sorry for the imagery]. Cattle mutes and chupracabras here we come. I see no evidence that Ivan wanted to go there.
