Creature record / 1964
Caddo, Texas. July 1964. A near-empty oil-boom town of perhaps 50 people, and something was coming around the houses at night. Witnesses said it was hairy. Seven feet tall. Four feet across. "It looked like a gorilla!" said 72-year-old Charlie Gantt, who emptied his .22 pistol at it on a Saturday night and apparently missed. A post cutter and his wife said they had been seeing it for about three weeks. A nine-year-old boy met it on the way to go fishing. The Abilene Reporter-News named it the "Caddo Critter." Searchers found nothing. Then came a yak, a sketch, and the pranksters.
Caddo sits in east-central Stephens County, Texas, where US 180, FM 717 and Park Road 33 meet. It was a near-empty oil-boom town. Perhaps 50 people lived there in 1964. Talk ran to "parched range conditions and descending clouds of grasshoppers." Then something came out of the mesquite.