American Cryptids

My Encounter With the Big Muddy Monster – Daniel M.

I suppose I should start by introducing myself, but that honestly feels a little too boring. I think it would be more interesting if I started by introducing my motivations.

I consider myself to be an amateur crypto-zoologist, someone with a keen interest in American folklore, mythical creatures, and particularly: cryptids. This interest began six years ago, in my first year as a student at Southern Illinois University, when I first became aware of the Big Muddy Monster.

It began with a camping trip outside of Murphysboro, Illinois with three of my friends, Randy, Nick, and Katelyn. Randy and Nick are a year older than me, so while I was still a bit of a greenhorn, they had already spent a year getting acquainted with Southern Illinois. They had a few more friends, they knew a few more spots, and they had already soaked up a bit of local lore.

Admittedly, I wasn’t much of a roughneck at the time. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and the concept of camping was foreign to me. I would’ve tried to wriggle my way out of the trip, but Randy and Nick insisted that I needed to be “initiated” into the Southern Illinois way of life. Some of the initiation rituals were mild, like afternoon trips to the local wineries, and others were a bit more exhilarating. I recall one weekend in which Nick practically dragged me through a trail in the woods that ended with a steep, rocky cliff over a secluded lake. I’ll admit, once I got over the initial fear, jumping from that cliff into the cold, murky water was one of the most memorable experiences from my four years in Southern Illinois.

On a Saturday afternoon in late September of my freshman year, there was an unexpected knock at my front door. I opened the door to see Randy’s toothy smile gleaming in the sun. I glanced over his shoulder, his shitty Volvo was still running in the street behind him, with Nick slouched in the passenger seat and Katelyn sitting behind him in the back.

“Pack a bag. Two days, one night.” was all he said.

“Pack a bag for what? You can’t just say ‘Pack a bag.’ I need to know if I’m swimming, if I’m hiking, if I need a nice shirt for dinner, if I need-“

“We’re camping, just bring some jeans and a hoodie and maybe an extra t-shirt. I have an extra sleeping bag for you and we already got hot dogs to eat.”

I threw some clothes in my backpack, and in a blur, I was swept into the backseat. Katelyn was pretty much half-asleep, and I didn’t know her very well at that point, so I greeted her with a nod and a smile when I climbed into the car, and left it at that. Nick was in the middle of a pretty intense dubstep phase, and Randy’s subwoofers drowned out most of my attempts at conversation. I wanted to interrogate my captors about the details of this camping trip, but it was one of those unfortunate drives where the loud music creates a divide between the front and back seats. The first-class passengers in the front could hear each other perfectly fine, but with the car’s speakers positioned just behind my head, I couldn’t make out a word they were saying.

After about an hour of driving through access roads, gravel trails, and dirt paths, we stopped at a rope hung across the width of the road, prominently featuring a metal sign that said “No Trespassing” in deeply faded red lettering.

Nick jumped out of the passenger seat, marched over to one end of the rope, untied it from the tree that it was affixed to, and held it up for Randy to drive underneath.

I leaned forward in my seat, poking my head between the driver and passenger sides, crossing the divide for the first time in the hour long drive.

“Are we going to get in trouble for this?”

“Nah.”

And with that simple statement, all of my fears were quelled. Not really. I was pretty anxious about the whole thing, but I wasn’t about to make them turn around and drive me an hour back home just because I was nervous. Ten minutes later we were parking the car on the side of the road, and we began our trek through the woods.

Southern Illinois has some surprisingly diverse wilderness. You’ll find cliffs, rock formations, beautiful flora, and our apparent destination for this excursion: waterfalls.

After a relatively short hike, we arrived at what Randy had been referring to as “The Spot”. There was a thin waterfall flowing over the mouth of what I would describe as a shallow cave. The water fell from the top, and began flowing again at the bottom, widening out into a creek that went off into the woods as far as I could see. The cave was only about 50 feet deep, but the ceiling was 60 feet high and it was wide enough to fit probably 12 full size tents.

We settled in, set up our sleeping bags on the floor, and Nick gathered some rocks and sticks to build a fire right in the middle of our bags. Randy pulled out his fishing pole and walked off into the woods to find the end of the creek, where he insisted he would find “some damn good fishing.”

The majority of the day was pretty uneventful. I clamored up to the top of the cave to see the waterfall from the top, Nick stoked his fire and charred up some hot dogs for us, Katelyn spent some time studying for her Finite Math class, and Randy came back with a grand total of zero fish. Nightfall was when my interest in this camping trip was truly piqued.

It’s easy to notice something that’s there, but it’s much more difficult to explicitly notice when something is missing. You can hear crickets, you can smell the wilderness, you can see birds in the trees. You don’t necessarily notice when they’re missing, but you get a feeling in your gut that something is off. I had that feeling that night. I didn’t understand it at first, but then Katelyn pointed out to me that the only sounds in the woods were coming from us and our crackling fire.

I turned my head to face her and ask, “Is it always like this here?”

“I don’t know, I’ve only been here one other time with Randy, and it was during the day. I realized that there were no crickets about an hour ago, but I just thought it was normal.” Her voice was a bit muffled from the mouth of her sleeping bag, but I could hear her clearly through the eery silence.

Katelyn was a lot like me, she was from the suburbs too. This whole thing was pretty new to both of us, and I think we both took comfort in having another person around who didn’t know what they were doing.

While we were sitting around the fire, and I was enjoying my fifth hot dog of the evening, Nick pulled out some documents from his backpack.

Nick held up the papers in his right hand. “And so, here we have the real reason for this adventure.”

I squinted at the papers, the light of the fire dancing off their yellow tinge. They looked faded, like they were decades old.

Nick mimed like he was putting on a pair of invisible reading glasses, and then cleared his throat dramatically and started reciting the words from the page.

“At approximately 2212 hrs., June 26, 1973, the Murphysboro Police Department received a phone call from Mrs. Harry Ray, stating that her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend had just seen a large creature in the field behind their residence. Officers Nash and Manwaring were dispatched to the scene.

Upon arrival, Officers were met by Cheryl A. Ray and Randy E. Creath, which gave the following account of what had occurred. Randy and Cheryl were sitting on the patio talking, when they observed something moving around a patch of small trees in the field behind 37 Westwood Lane. Both Randy and Cheryl watched and observed a large creature walk out of the patch of trees near the edge of the yard, and then turn around and walk back into the field The creature was described as being 7 to 8 feet tall, weighting 300 to 350 pounds, pale dirty white, or cream colored, and standing on two feet. Creath stated that he walked toward it and got approximately 30 to 40 feet from it. Creath also stated that it had a musky odor to it.”

“What is this, man?” I was creeped out, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested.

Nick glanced up from the paper and saw my expression, intrigue mixed with a tinge of fear. He smirked at me over his stack of documents and looked back down.

“You’ll get it in a minute.”

He continued reading aloud.

“Officers inspected the area where the creature was seen and found weeds broken down and somewhat of a path where something had walked through. Jerry Nellis was notified to bring his dog to the area to see if the dog would track the creature. Upon arrival of Nellis and his dog (a German Shepard, trained to attack, search buildings, and track) the dog was led to the area where the creature was last seen. The dog began tracking down the hill where the creature was reported to have gone. As the dog started down the hill, it kept stopping and sniffing at a slimy substance on the weeds, the slime appeared periodically as the dog tracked the creature. Nellis put some of the slime between his fingers, rubbed it, and it left a black coloring behind. Each time the dog found amounts of it, it would hesistate. The creature was tracked down the hill to a pond, and around to the south of the pond to a wooded area, where the dog attempted to pull Nellis down a steep embankment. The area where the dog tracked the creature to was too thick and bushy to walk through, so the dog was pulled off of the trail and returned to the car. Officers then searched the entire area with flashlights.

Officer Nash, Nellis, and the dog then proceeded to the area directly south of where the dog was pulled off of the tracks The area was at the end of the first road to the west past Westwood Hills turnoff. The area is approximately 1/2 mile south of the area of the pond behind 37 Westwood.

Nellis and the dog again began to search the area to see if the dog could again pick up the scent. Nellis and the dog approached an abandoned barn, and Nellis called to Officer Nash to come to the area as the dog would not enter the barn. Nellis pushed the dog inside and the dog immediately ran out. Nash and Nellis searched the barn and found nothing inside. Nellis stated that the dog was trained to search buildings, and had never backed down from anything. Nellis could offer no explanation as to why the dog became scared and would not go inside the barn. Officers continued to search the area and were unable to locate the creature.”

Note: I later found out that Nick printed these documents from Murphysboro.com, and he was reading the first police report that can be found at this link: https://murphysboro.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Big-Muddy-Monster-Merged-File.pdf

After he finished reading, Nick pulled a page out of his stack of documents, and passed it around for each of us to look at. It was a drawing of this supposed “creature” that Nick found online.

Source: Murphysboro.com – https://murphysboro.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Big-Muddy-Monster-Merged-File.pdf

In 1973, there had been a string of sightings of this Bigfoot-esque creature. Locals began calling it the Big Muddy Monster. Nick passed around more documents from his stack, they began with letters from locals claiming to have spotted the monster in the woods and their backyards, but then he explained that this became a nation-wide phenomenon, and passed around letters from all across the country. People were intrigued by the monster, some wanted to find it and study it, others wanted to capture and kill it. Some even wrote songs dedicated to Big Muddy. The buzz became so prevalent, that the Mayor of Murphysboro eventually had to make a statement.

Statement from the office of the Mayor of Murphysboro – https://murphysboro.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Big-Muddy-Monster-Merged-File.pdf

Letter from Wendy Young to the Murphysboro Chief of Police – https://murphysboro.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Big-Muddy-Monster-Merged-File.pdf

The Legend of the Big Muddy Monster – Ken Carr – https://murphysboro.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Big-Muddy-Monster-Merged-File.pdf

Newspaper Clipping Featuring the Big Muddy Monster – https://murphysboro.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Big-Muddy-Monster-Merged-File.pdf

Letter from Iso-Tech Research Institute to Chief Berger – https://murphysboro.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Big-Muddy-Monster-Merged-File.pdf

Letter from the University of Chicago Department of Biology – https://murphysboro.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Big-Muddy-Monster-Merged-File.pdf

A request to hunt and trap the beast – https://murphysboro.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Big-Muddy-Monster-Merged-File.pdf

I’ll admit that when Nick began reading his police report excerpt, I initially met the entire thing with a thick layer of skepticism. However, after seeing that Randy and Katelyn were completely enamored with the story, I decided to just have fun with it. I read each letter that he passed around, and I was surprised to see just how many people in the country were taking this so seriously. Nick was smart, he started by passing around the letters from local kids, and then ramped up to the serious inquiries from university professors and journalists. The Big Muddy Monster wasn’t just a local fairytale at this point, he was clearly a nation-wide sensation.

After I read the letter from the University of Chicago, Nick stood up and pulled four flashlights out of his bag.

“Come on, everyone grab a light, we’re going on a hunt.”

I immediately wanted to protest. It was dark, there were cliffs around, one of us could easily get hurt wandering around in the woods this late. However, Katelyn and Randy jumped up out of their sleeping bags with so much excitement that I knew they would just leave me behind if I didn’t join. Then I would be alone in the cave, with no sounds of nature to comfort me, and the light of the fire casting shadows and playing tricks with my mind.

I got up and grabbed a flashlight.

We were four 18-19 year olds rummaging around in the woods late at night. To us, every snapping twig was the Big Muddy Monster stalking us from just beyond our sight, and every bit of mud on a branch was his black ectoplasm that he was known to leave behind. We spent hours wandering around, swishing the beams of our flashlight through the trees and trying to scare one another.

We never did find the Big Muddy Monster that night, but we did find a new hobby. At least a couple times per semester after that, we would read up on local cryptids and go on a trip to hunt them down. We hunted the Big Muddy Monster in Murphysboro, we took a trip up to Ohio to search for Melon Heads, we got a lead on a Mothman sighting in Indiana, and we learned about our fair share of local cult activity.

That was where my journey into crypto-zoology began. I’ve spent the past six years reading about, writing about, and searching for cryptids. I can’t say for sure if the Big Muddy Monster is really out there, but I can say that it’s fun to believe. So, join me on this journey of intrigue, as I tell you more about American Cryptids and Folklore.