The Mill Race Monster of Columbus, Indiana

Mill Race Park sits on the west side of Columbus, in Bartholomew County, Indiana. Here the Flatrock and Driftwood rivers meet to form the East Fork of the White River. The city bought the site in 1963 and cleaned it up. By 1974 it had a paved boat ramp, woods along the water and a covered bridge. Not the bridge visitors see today. That one arrived in 1986.

Friday, 1 November 1974. About 3 p.m. Near the boat ramp to the White River, witnesses saw a monster. Accounts differ on who they were, four teenage girls or two women driving by. They agree on what it was. Six or seven feet tall. Upright. Dark fur and a pale green face. Police searched. They found nothing.

That night, two young women sat in a parked car. One of them was Tyra Cataline. The creature ran to the car and jumped on the hood. It pounded on the windshield. It left "paw" marks in the paint and thick mucus on the glass, then fled into the woods where the rivers meet. Decades later, Cataline remembered it as "at least 7 feet tall, if not taller," with fangs and "so much slime on its face." A terrible stench surrounded it.

On 5 November, two men in their 20s saw a large hairy "thing" hiding behind trees near the park's covered bridge. They came back near midnight with binoculars. Accounts disagree on who chased whom. By the next day, The Republic was calling it the "Mill Race Monster." On 7 November, more women reported that it jumped on the hood of their car near the paved boat ramp, leaving scratch marks in the paint.

Then, 8 November. About 9 a.m. City dogcatchers Rick Duckworth, 20, and John Brown, 19, were getting cats out of a tree. They saw it about 200 feet away. Duckworth gave chase. It fled into the forest. The cats, Duckworth said, "were really scared."

Columbus did not stay calm. Police had said they were "hoping it's only a misguided hobgoblin who lost its sense of timing." Parks Director Robert Gilligan counted "dozens of cars and people on foot searching the park. Some were armed with knives and one carried a gun." More than 135 cars were counted in the park the next Friday night. The park was closed to the public at night, with police at every entrance. The Republic ran an editorial titled "Enough's Enough."

Police and the dogcatcher reached their own verdict. The monster, the Indianapolis Star reported on 9 November, was "a man wearing green blankets and a green mask enjoying a frolic in balmy Indian summer weather and by the light of the harvest moon." No prankster was ever named. On the 40th anniversary in 2014, the late Republic editor Harry McCawley called it a hoax that hurt the city's reputation. Others have wondered about a misidentified or diseased animal. Tyra Cataline is unmoved. "I know it's real… It was not a person in a costume."

In 2015, Cataline's testimony appeared in Monsters and Mysteries in America, which billed the event as "the largest monster hunt in U.S. history." The Astonishing Legends podcast revisited the case in 2023. In 2024, Kevin Zeigler released a comic, The Mill Race Monster. And the Columbus Area Arts Council has scheduled the first Mill Race Monster Festival for 23 to 25 October 2026. Back in Mill Race Park.