Creature record / 1958
November 8, 1958. A Saturday night in Riverside, California. Rain had swollen the Santa Ana River until water ran across North Main Street. It was about 9:30 p.m. Charles Wetzel was driving toward the crossing. Then something jumped out of the brush. It had a round, scarecrowish head and no ears. Its eyes were shining like something fluorescent. Its arm reached all the way across the hood to claw at the windshield. Wetzel stomped on the gas. The thing fell back and gurgled. Deputies searched the riverbed and blamed a vulture. Wetzel never accepted it. "But I did see something," he insisted, "and it wasn't a vulture, either."
Riverside, California. Saturday, November 8, 1958, at about 9:30 p.m. Rain had fallen, and years later Wetzel recalled that the Santa Ana River had overflowed where North Main Street crossed it, sending water over the road. Charles Wetzel of Bloomington was behind the wheel of what he later remembered as a green two-door 1952 Buick Super. Wire reports gave his age as 24, and a local clipping called him a painter.