The Thorntown Gorilla and the Four-Posse Search

Thorntown sits in Sugar Creek Township, in northwest Boone County, Indiana, roughly midway between Lafayette and Indianapolis. In the summer of 1949 its life ran along Sugar Creek. Fishing holes. Swimming holes. Country roads past the cornfields.

June 14, 1949. Gobby Jones, a fisherman of about 50, was on the banks of Sugar Creek with George Coffman, 41. The underbrush began to rustle. Suddenly they were faced with a huge dark shape. "It was hairy, had flashing eyes and large teeth," Jones said. In his fright he climbed a bank he could never normally have climbed. He lost his billfold on the way.

Soon others saw it too. Amos Copas was scared while out in a boat. A figure stepped out of a roadside ditch into passing headlights, then vanished. Nina Larsh met it while driving. At Barker's Pit, the press reported, the creature shook a large tree and jumped the fence head first. An elderly woman saw it rise up in front of her window and fell backward in her rocking chair. Gorilla-like footprints appeared on the riverbank and in cornfields. It was always seen for just a few moments.

Nearly 30 people said they had seen it, including some leading citizens. Residents stopped going out at night. Mothers kept children indoors. The fishing holes emptied. Zoos and circuses were asked. None reported a missing gorilla.

June 22. The Lafayette Journal and Courier called it a hoax planned by members of the "Sportsmen and Wild Life club". The sightings went on. On July 17 the Richmond Palladium reported "Safari Seeks 'gorilla' at Thorntown". Four posses of State Conservation officers and nearly 30 Thorntown residents beat the brush. Over forty men with shotguns joined what locals called "gorilla drives". Airplanes flew over Sugar Creek.

They found no gorilla. They found a woman the papers called "deranged". Disheveled, confused, with matted hair. She kept asking, "Have I scared them enough?" She was taken into custody. Her name was never given.

March 16, 2012. Asher Cones, 36 in 1949, told his side on the Thorntown High School alumni blog. The gorilla was a prank by himself, George Coffman and Homer Birge, meant to scare Gobby Jones off Sugar Creek. Pearl Birge, Homer's wife, sewed the suit. "Homer had an old horse hair coat his father had worn." "The head was made over a wire frame with a couple tiger eyes so they would shine at night." "We made a set of tin teeth and painted them white." They meant it to be a bear. Jones made it a gorilla. The tree at Barker's Pit, Cones said, was about 2 inches wide. Coffman quit early. Cones quit once the drives and the planes began.

Cones admitted the suit "wouldn't stand close inspection by a long shot". Later accounts say wooden feet strapped to old shoes made the tracks. Not every sighting fits the prank. Park rangers at Spring Mill State Park in southern Indiana reportedly said they saw it too. The woman the posses found, remembered by Cones in a fur coat, may explain some copycat sightings. The Shadow Frequency podcast weighs a prankster in a costume against mass hysteria.

Janet and Colin Bord listed the case in The Bigfoot Casebook, citing an INS wire report of a "'Gorilla' with protruding teeth". It sits beside the Jacko hoax of 1884, another wild ape-man that proved invented, and shares 1949 with the Beast of Busco. Asher Cones died on Christmas Eve 2014, aged 101.