Momo, the Missouri Monster: the Harrison sighting on Marzolf Hill

Louisiana, Missouri. A river town on the Mississippi, in Pike County, among hills, ravines and limestone bluffs. Behind the Harrison home at 1004 Allen Street rose a wooded slope that locals called Marzolf Hill. Some called it Star Hill.

Tuesday, 11 July 1972. The afternoon. Terry Harrison, 8, and his little brother, 5, were playing in the yard with their dog. Inside, their sister Doris, 15, heard them scream. She looked out the window.

At the edge of the woods stood something tall, black and shaggy. About 7 feet tall, it stood like a man. Hair covered its body and its face. It seemed to have no neck. Under one arm it held a dead, bloodied dog.

It was about 50 feet from the house. A putrid odor drifted in through the open window. The family's own dog fell violently ill. Forty years later Doris told the Associated Press: "It wasn't a man, and it wasn't a bear."

By 4:00 pm her father, Edgar Harrison, was on the hill. He found beaten-down brush, faint footprints and scattered black hairs. Three days later, after a prayer meeting, he heard clanging at the water reservoir on the hill. Then came a growl, and he shouted, "Here it comes!" About 40 people, some armed, went up the hill, and Officers Jerry Floyd and John Whitaker found nothing unusual.

Edgar camped at the foot of the hill for 21 straight nights. He smelled it and heard it, but he never saw it. On 19 July Police Chief Shelby Ward organised a search with two-way radios, and Conservation Agent Gus Artus helped sweep about 100 acres. They found two disturbed dog graves and scattered bones. "I am convinced, and the rest of us are also, that there is nothing that even looks like a monster on Marzolf Hill," Artus said.

The reports kept coming. On 21 July Ellis Minor shone a flashlight on a figure with hair "as black as coal," and it "whirled and took off thataway." Fire chief Richard Alan Murray caught an upright, brown-haired figure in his headlights near the Town Branch creek. "I was amazed to see something," he said. On 3 August four large prints appeared in the garden of the Bill Suddarth farm, and Clyde Penrod made a plaster cast.

Hayden C. Hewes of the International UFO Bureau camped in the Harrisons' backyard. He found no evidence, but suggested a UFO link. Tracks went to Lawrence Curtis, director of the Oklahoma City Zoo. His verdict is reported two ways: a hoax, or an unknown primate.

The 1972 papers floated a prank, a hog escaped from a truck accident, a wild cat and a bear. Murray later allowed it "could have been nothing more than a bear." Retired teacher Priscilla Giltner says three former students built a costume, possibly from "maybe an old mink coat." "It got out from under them," she said. To her it was "all a bamboozle," though the boys have never come forward. The Missouri Department of Conservation suggests a large black bear.

The town named it Mo Mo. Merchants held a sidewalk sale and sold a "Mo Mo Burger." Missouri had its own Bigfoot, and Six Flags St. Louis ran a "MoMo the Monster" ride from 1973 to 1994. Lyle Blackburn wrote a book, Seth Breedlove made the 2019 film MOMO: The Missouri Monster, and Astonishing Legends covered it in 2021. Doris Harrison Bliss died in 2021, still insisting it was real.