Midwest Monster Mash: The Enfield Horror

Nightmare Now

The enfield horror

1. I've got a real treat for you this week one of my favorite cryptids.
   1. This was 1973 which as we get deeper in our episodes over time you might notice that number a lot because in my anecdotal research over the last few years that seems to be the one where a good chunk of the weirdness in the united states happens.
      1. I’m talking bigfoots,
      2. So many Fucking UFOS
      3. Aliens
      4. Other random one off cryptids
      5. Different high strangeness,
         1. MIBS
         2. Timeslips
         3. Other crazy stuff
      6. The early 1970s midwest is gonna be in the paranormal history books down the line and I don’t think a lot of people are necessarily connecting all those dots.
2. Lastly I wanna give a quick plug to curious cryptids
   1. It’s from curious cryptids that I actually drew inspiration for today’s show, and in particular today’s nightmare. The ENFIELD HORROR
   2. I always thought this was a cool creature when I read about it as a kid in ripleys believe it or not or some other adjacent publication but this book reminded me of the weird creature that terrorized enfield illinois in the spring of ‘73 so without further ado lets leap right into it.
3. First sighting (Chronologically)
   1. Greg Garret a young lad of 10 years was happily catching fireflies in his backyard when it began that fateful night, april 25th 1973
      1. Greg was attacked by the creature as it leapt out of the woods, and tore his tennis shoes to shreds
      2. It ripped his shoes apart, I couldn’t find anything about whether Greg's feet were okay but since there’s no mention of it I assume the horror literally just tore up the shoes. And left his dogs intact.
      3. He described the creature with gray slimy skin, short claws on two small arms and here’s the real kicker. 3 clawed legs. I want to know how he was tearing up shoes on three legs, did he plan one leg and go to town ith the other two or pull like reinforced excavator move with two legs in the dirt and tear it up with the other one. How many animals do you know with three legs, naturally that is, I’m not talking about lucky the jack russel terrier
      4. He ran back into his house where his parents though nothing of the incident, they probably smacked him around for destroying his shoes though, I have no evidence to support that other than baseless assumptions about early seventies illinois.
   2. This sighting wasn’t actually the first one reported though. That honor belonged to the mcdaniel family about an hour later.
      1. Jil 12 and her older brother henry junior mcdaniel 15 were home alone while their father henry mcdaniel was working late. This was right up the road from the garret's place so that’s a little bit of corroboration.
      2. 10 pm
      3. He gets inside finds his kids going nuts telling him there’s a monster trying to get in. first it scraped the door then tried to rip their AC out of the wall.
      4. He’s pissed because his kids are still up and then goes and checks and the AC is actually awry
      5. The kids are going ape saying that it’s been trying to get in for a half hour up to and including the last five minutes when he pulled up and came inside.
      6. He opens up the door and standing in the porchlight is the enfield horror.
         1. 3 legs
         2. Short body
         3. Two little arms coming from the breast area
         4. 4 ½ feet tall
         5. Grey in color
         6. Big pink eyes the size of flashlights
      7. He’s like fuck what the heck is that, slams the door shut as it’s coming towards the house and grabs his 22 pistol that’s just chilling next to the door. I love this country.
      8. Mcdaniel opens the door again to find the creature perched just beyond his porch stoop
      9. He shoots 5 times. The first time connecting because the creature let out a hiss like a wildcat and recoiled back
      10. The next 4 shots all seemed to miss because after the first the creature took off, covering the 50 feet to the treeline in just 3 leaps. That’s like 17 feet each jump.
      11. He didn’t see it again, and called the police, who showed up around midnight, this is another important detail. That gives it credence. If he’s just making shit up and haphazardly blasting bullets into the neighborhood it’s probably best to not call the police.
      12. Together they find strange tracks, like a dogs with 6 pads instead of five and with an abnormal pattern, could be related to the thing having 3 legs.
      13. There were also scratches on the siding of the house.
4. The Next day the police asked around the neighborhood and found greg garret, which is where we get his report from earlier.
5. This is where we get the first newspaper article in the mt vernon register describing mcdaniels sighting and report from the night before.
   1. Things are exciting in town, as you would expect from a monster sighting
6. Days passed as the town was still abuzz with excitement
   1. Nothing happens until may 6th 10 days later
7. When the local radio station gets a call from Henry mcdaniel himself, to report seeing the creature once more
   1. Mcdaniel hears dogs howling near his home and does what every red blooded american does at a mildly distressing sound, grabs his gun. He grabs his gun and goes to investigate,
   2. This time the creature was quote languidly sauntering down the railroad tracks like it was fucking stand by me. Mcdaniel reportedly said it didn’t appear to be in any hurry, and I like that a lot. Just vibing and thriving, not caring that it’s on the wrong planet or reality.
   3. The creature isn’t a threat so mcdaniel lets it just walk off into the sunse and calls into the radio station
8. This is where things start to both heat up and cool off in the story.
   1. After this second sighting the town goes wild and more importantly reporters and other people with an investigative bent start pouring into the town and what has since become a tired horror movie cliche comes true in real life.
   2. The sheriff roy poshard jr shows up and threatens to arrest mcdaniel if he deosn’t stop causing hysteria. Presumably because it’s gonna ruin the turnout for their mule days festival.
   3. It’s that same next day that the DJ from the radio station shows up on the scene to capture footage and record interviews ect. He was rick rainbow. Hey folks it’s double R Ricky rainbow reporting round the clock from kokomo indiana with the morning corn, anyway here’s the REO Speedwagon.
   4. He and his cameraman set up (Why) they have a microphone going before they’re set to film
      1. They see an ape man and follow it and manage to catch no footage but audio of it’s cry
         1. A mix of a woman screaming in fear and the laughter of a baby, this audio doesn’t exist anywhere insofar as I can tell.
      2. He later interviews mcdaniels who swears the veracity of his claims
   5. One thing I love about stuff with exact dates is finding the soundtracks via the top 40 hits of that week. Honestly the radio must’ve been jammin
      1. Tie a yellow ribbon on the old oak treE
      2. But then bangers like:
         1. Drift away
         2. Stuck in the middle with you
         3. Frankenstein
         4. Walk on the wild side
         5. And debuting that week no song other than THE MONSTER MASH By bobby boris pricket
            1. Need I say more?
9. Cut to a few days later
   1. Roy Poshard jr and his deputy have to drive quickly over to the neighboring woods on account of gunshots and screaming
   2. What do they find but a monster hunting party of five 58 beers deep brandishing knives, shotguns, pistols and several brain cells
   3. They said they had just seen the creature and had almost blown it back to mars which honestly seems like a great time, not safe, but maybe a drunk airsoft monster hunt or somthing.
   4. What they saw was a rustling in the bushes and just laid into the bush like it was sonny’s car in the fucking godfather. Sorry if that’s a spoiler but that movie came out a year before the enfield horror did so it wouldn’t have even been a spoiler back then. Despite lighting up the rustling bush the creature hissed and took off into the woods, but I think we can mostly discount this sighting at the bush on account of the drink
   5. They were charged with hunting violations
   6. Running off into the night was the last time the creature was ever seen.
10. Also of note Famed cryptozoologist, loren coleman happened to be in town when he was just starting out tracking down fortean mysteries like this guy. He doesn't do much in this particular story but shows up takes the tape and footage from rick rainbow and just leaves without elaborating further
    1. Next time I visit the cryptid museum in portland I’ll demand we release the enfield monster scream 10 minute version taylors version
11. Later on Greg Garret recanted his story of having his shoes ripped up, seemingly under his mothers duress, which fair.
12. So what happened?
    1. There’s a lot that quote unquote experts and skeptics might have you believe so lets go down the list. You have your usual suspects
       1. Mass hysteria
          1. Always a go to cop out
       2. Mistaken identity for a raccoon or dog
          1. My man was rational and sober according to the news article and the cops,
          2. He called the cops not through 911
          3. Not known for being a prankster
          4. Wasn’t panicked until after the sighting
       3. Now we have the most likely explanation
          1. A FUCKING KANGAROO
             1. Think about it small clawed hands
             2. Three legs, the tail
             3. Weird footprints
             4. Unfamiliar creature
             5. Could be captive, which is why it wanted to get into buildings and wasn’t afraid of humans
             6. Leaping 17 feet in a single bound
             7. Boom case closed right? See you guys next week
             8. Sure maybe, and that’s where a lot of people leave it, some moron had an exotic animal and it got loose, this happens all the time right?
          2. Wrong
             1. Not in australia
             2. I don’t care how exotic, or how rare who doesn’t know what a kangaroo is
             3. Giant red eyes
             4. Slimy gray skin
                1. Okay maybe it’s diseased
13. But the real smoking gun that blows this out of the water in my opinion comes from really digging into th newspaper articles
    1. Henry mcdaniel served in the army, confirmed, there’s an obituary, military record the works
    2. Where was he stationed before he became an antique dealer single father?
       1. AUSTRALIA
       2. Where he said they basically had roos as pets on the base
       3. If there was anybody in the whole midwest that would know a kangaroo from a racoon or alien or whatever anomalous aberration this thing was it was gonna be henry mcdaniel
    3. He got a good look at the thing, again sober and sound of mind according to all reports. He put a bullet in it at close range, for those of you who haven’t fired a pistol before, it’s not all john wick hawkeye stuff you need a pretty good bead on something to get a good shot and unless you’re lucky or very skilled you gotta be fairly close range.
14. But where does that leave us?
    1. I don’t think it’s a kangaroo although that is a good theory and covers a lot of bases, it’s mutually exclusive with too much of the evidence.
15. It really is a monster, never seen since. But possibly seen before, 30 years earlier in the 1940s a devil monkey creature was spotted harassing people in the woods just 40 miles north of enfield, could it be related? Who knows
16. The area has also seen it’s fair share of UFO sightings, but as far as I can tell, nothing that really fits the timeframe.
17. Then there’s the release of monster mash, what did boris prickett know, is this one of those whole town got dosed with LSD scenarios? I don’t know
18. As far as people hoaxing it for money, I don’t think that’s the case because nobody got anything out of it, mcdaniel was probably harassed the rest of his life by bigfoot nerds and got two local radio interviews.
19. It is just one of those weird cases where something happens for a little bit, gets everyone riled up and then stops
    1. I think this is some sort of dimensional anomaly far from home Personally
    2. Someday I hop someone makes a movie about the events of illinois spring 1973 because it really has all th great elements of a creature feature.
       1. Small town drama
       2. Cops shutting it down
       3. Drunk monster hunting posses
       4. Multiple escalating sightings
       5. A unique beast
       6. People in fear
       7. People in denial
    3. If I can fund it someday I will

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/thesouthern/name/henry-mcdaniel-obituary?id=25073460

https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Enfield_Horror

https://www.gelcubicle.com/store/p/curious-cryptids-soft-cover-book

https://www.newspapers.com/image/30409597/?clipping_id=7318965&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjMwNDA5NTk3LCJpYXQiOjE2Njg1NjkzMTQsImV4cCI6MTY2ODY1NTcxNH0.yhpSLG_82xPsA2Gbdpwr2pkIis1CcAgtQ0SBSU3VvLk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_kangaroo

http://tylerscryptozoo.blogspot.com/2016/01/devil-monkeys-escapees-or-something-else.html

https://medium.com/@chrisdarkes/strangers-in-the-night-156983eb0d7d

https://top40weekly.com/1973/05/05/us-top-40-singles-week-ending-5th-may-1973/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJU2cz9ytPQ&ab_channel=Movieclips