Creature record / 1903
Van Meter, Iowa. Autumn 1903. A coal town of 1,000 people on the Raccoon River. Just after midnight, an implement dealer coming home from his rounds saw a light on a rooftop. It jumped across the street. Then it went out. Over five nights, the town's doctor, its bank cashier and two merchants each had an encounter of their own. A creature, half human and half animal, with great bat-like wings and a horn on its forehead that gave off a dazzling light. Shots had no effect. It ended at an abandoned coal mine, where an armed crowd watched two of them come out of the shaft. Two days after the story broke, townspeople called it pure fabrication.
Van Meter sat about 18 miles west of Des Moines, on the Raccoon River in Dallas County, Iowa. In 1903 it had a working coal mine, a railroad stop and, by the press's count, 1,000 people. On the northwest side of town lay an old abandoned coal mine.