Monsters You Never Heard Of by Daniel Cohen Read Free Book Online Page A

cattle that die accidental deaths, but not for cattle that die natural deaths.
    These possible explanations calmed the fears of the Nebraska and South Dakota ranchers. The scare died away after a few months. But since then cattle mutilation scares have cropped up in Texas, Arizona, and elsewhere.
    The story is not a new one. People have been collecting accounts of mysterious cattle deaths for many years. Reports of similar incidents have come from many other countries, particularly Great Britain.
    In addition to the ordinary explanations, often far stranger explanations have been offered for the mysterious deaths. One is that the animals have been killed by some kind of Devil's cult. It has been suggested that killing cattle is part of the ritual.
    UFOs have often been blamed as the source of the phantom cattle killers. Why would creatures from other planets want to go around killing earthly cattle? No one has any reasonable suggestions. But people like to lump mysteries together, even if they have nothing to do with one another.
    And then there is the monster explanation. There have been some vague reports that a monster has been seen in areas where the killings have taken place. In Nebraska and South Dakota it was called "the Thing." It was supposed to be a two-legged Bigfoot-like creature.
    Now we must admit that most monster reports are hard to pin down. But these reports were even more difficult to check than most. No one seemed to know exactly who had seen "the Thing," or when or exactly where. There just seemed to be sort of a general feeling that a monster of some kind must be responsible, and no one really saw anything.
    But what if the mysterious cattle killing monster was invisible? This explanation has been seriously suggested several times. And some people even say that there is evidence of the existence of an invisible monster.
    One of the strangest, and spookiest, invisible monster stories appeared in the December, 1977, issue of Fate magazine. It is about what is supposed to have happened on two small farms located in a northern Michigan game preserve. The account was written by Bradley Earl Ayers, who had visited the farms and talked to the witnesses.
    The farmers were given the names Art Dahl and Henry Dubois, though these were not their real names.
    The trouble seemed to begin on the Dubois farm in 1971. A calf was mysteriously killed. No one thought too much of it. There are bears, and other large animals, in the area. They might have been responsible. Still, no one found any tracks.
    Over the next few years there were a few more odd incidents. At first, no one connected them. Then in 1976 several of Dubois' pigs were killed. Whatever had killed them seemed to be enormously strong.
    The local game warden was called in. There was nothing he could do because he couldn't find any evidence that any of the animals he knew of killed the pigs. As usual, there were no footprints.
    Dubois then asked for help from his neighbor, Art Dahl. The two men, aided by their wives and families, began patrolling the farm at night. They didn't see or hear anything unusual until early in the morning of August 19.
    Dubois and Dahl had been sitting up all night waiting for something to happen. They were both armed. First, they saw some strange lights in the sky. A couple of hours passed. Then they heard something coming through the marsh. It was coming right for the camper in which the men were sitting. A large dog the men had brought with them cowered under the camper. They heard a sound which they described as a "screech-growl." Dahl said it was "half-human and half-animal." It was the strangest thing he had ever heard. They saw a shadowy mass coming out of the marsh. But they never did get a good look at it, for whatever it was quickly backed off and disappeared.
    The men were scared, but they investigated anyway. They found no footprints, no broken branches—nothing.
    Things on the Dubois and Dahl farms were normal for the