The Roachdale Bigfoot: the Rogers Farmhouse Visits and the Burdine Chicken Coop

Roachdale is a small town in Putnam County, Indiana, surrounded by farmland. In August 1972 it became the setting for a Bigfoot story. Early in the month, one of the Rogers household saw a luminous object hovering above a cornfield. Some said it exploded. No debris was found. About an hour later, Mrs. Rogers set eyes on the creature for the first time.

Between 10 and 11:30 each night, it announced itself by banging on the walls and windows of the farmhouse, a little more each time. When Mr. Rogers ran outside, he caught only a glimpse. Something heavily built, around 6 ft tall, disappearing through the cornfield. It left a smell like a dead animal or rotting garbage. Mrs. Rogers set out waste food, and it was readily taken.

Then she saw it through the window. It stood like a man but ran on all fours, and on all fours it was as tall as her husband, at 5'9". It seemed to hardly touch the ground, making no noise in the undergrowth and leaving no tracks, even in mud. She thought she could see through it. The creature was pursued and fired upon, but appeared unharmed.

22 August 1972. Carter Burdine and his uncle, Bill "Junior" Burdine, found 60 chickens dismembered but not eaten, strewn 200 yards from the chicken coop to the front yard of the farmhouse. That evening they searched with the Roachdale town marshal. Something large and heavy rushed across the road, six feet from Bill.

In the early hours of the next day, two men returning to the farm saw a massive figure standing next to the chicken coop. It totally filled the 6 x 8 ft doorway, blocking out the lights from inside. Its head was higher than the top edge of the door. On 23 August, 110 more chickens were found dead. Carter's father, Herman Burdine, joined a chase, and accounts mention a confrontation in a hay barn.

By the third week of August, almost three dozen people had reported seeing a creature wandering around at night. State Conservation Officer William Woodall looked into the reports. He found no concrete evidence, and said hard ground and tall vegetation prevented any tracking. His inquiry produced eyewitness accounts only. Then the reports subsided.

No hoax was ever claimed, and no published explanation has surfaced. Some details invite ordinary readings. Birds killed in numbers and left uneaten fit surplus killers such as mink, weasels, raccoons, foxes or loose dogs. A figure seen at night against coop lights is a silhouette, hard to measure. And the doorway giant sits awkwardly beside the Rogers estimate of about 6 ft.

Writers in the tradition of Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman see it differently. A light in the sky. A body you could see through. No tracks in mud. No wound from a gun. To them, Roachdale is high strangeness, a sign of something paranormal rather than a flesh-and-blood animal.

Clark and Coleman carried the case in Creatures of the Outer Edge in 1978, later reissued as Creatures of the Goblin World. Strange Magazine's Unnatural Indiana series appears to hold the same account, and online retellings call it the Roachdale Monster. No 1972 newspaper report has yet been recovered. The story belongs to the same summer as Momo in Missouri, another hairy creature that came with a stench and lights in the sky.