The Farmer City Monster (Salt Creek, Illinois, 1970)

Summer 1970. Farmer City is a small town in De Witt County, Illinois. A mile south, near Salt Creek, lay a wild 10-acre piece of land covered in buffalo grass. Locals used it as a lovers' lane. A gate led into it.

Thursday, 9 July 1970. Loren Coleman, writing in Fate magazine the following March, named four 18-year-olds camping there: Don Ennis, Beecher Lamb, Larry Faircloth and Bob Hardwick. About 10:30 p.m. they heard something moving in the tall grass. Then "it" moved between them and their tent. Lamb turned on his car lights. The thing was squatting by the tent. Its widely separated eyes gleamed at them. Then it ran off. On two legs.

The next night more than 10 people said they saw a pair of glowing eyes near the same spot. On 12 and 14 July, at least 15 people swore they had seen a furry creature in the area.

15 July. Between 2 and 3 a.m., Officer Robert Hayslip of the Farmer City police went to the campsite to check the stories for himself. He heard something running through the grass. He later told Coleman: "out of the corner of my eye I could see these two extremely bright eyes … just like it was standing there watching me." When he turned toward it, it was gone.

He came back about 6 a.m. A tent's heavy steel grommets had been ripped out since 3 a.m. A quilt lying nearby was torn to shreds. The police chief had privately called the "monster" nothing more than a Shetland pony. Now he decided to lock the gate to the 10-acre area.

The reports did not stop at the gate. 24 July. At Weldon Springs State Park near Clinton, two motorists saw what they thought was a "bear" near Willis Bridge. The tracks found were "more like a large cat's but definitely not a bear's." In early August, near Ireland Grove Road in the Bloomington area, Vicki Otto saw "this ape running in the ditch." It was, she said, the size of a baboon. That same week three youths from Rantoul saw "an upright creature as big as a cow" at Kickapoo Creek. Someone found a string of opened mussel shells and half-eaten minnows.

16 August. Waynesville. Construction workers Dan Lindsey and Mike Anderson described "a tall man or maybe a bear or a gorilla" that trotted across on the west side of the creek. About 6 ft 5 in. Brown. Stooped shoulders. Walking on two legs. It was the last sighting.

No hair, casts, photographs or film ever surfaced. The chief's Shetland pony remains the nearest thing to an official explanation. Sceptics point to the teenagers at the heart of the story. A University of Illinois Press blog notes that teen involvement "makes the entire matter ripe for dismissal," yet adds that a police officer among the witnesses "lends some credibility." No hoaxer was ever named. The witnesses themselves reached for bears, gorillas, baboons and large cats.

Coleman saw in the wave the familiar marks of such stories: cars, lovers' lanes, creek areas. The Farmer City Monster has since found its way into Bigfoot casebooks and Troy Taylor's Weird Illinois, and is often set beside the Cole Hollow Road Monster and the Murphysboro Mud Monster. Later retellings gave it glowing yellow eyes and long white or grey fur. The 1970 accounts are plainer. Two bright eyes in the grass. Then nothing.