Posted on 05/05/2013 4:41:34 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Over a series of nights in the fall of 1903, several respected and prominent men of Van Meter reported a half human, half animal with enormous, smooth bat wings flying about. It let off a powerful stench and scared the daylights out of them because it moved at speeds never seen before. And it shot a blinding light from its horned head.
Shots were fired each time, first by implement dealer U.G. Griffith as it flew across building tops. The monster shrugged them off like a minor nuisance. The next night the town doctor and bank cashier Peter Dunn separately saw the creature and opened fire. Dunn even took a plaster cast of the “great three-toed tracks.”
The following night, O.V. White, reportedly a dead-eye with a gun, was awakened from his slumber in his quarters above the hardware store and shot at the creature that was perching atop a telephone pole. This awakened Sidney Gregg, who had been sleeping in his store nearby. Gregg said the monster hopped like a kangaroo. Even the local high school teacher saw it and deemed it some sort of antediluvian monster.
... J.L. Platt Jr. heard a noise down by the abandoned coal mine.
...
The monster appeared, joined by a smaller version. In a brilliant light they sailed away, only to return in the morning where the men had gathered “to rid the earth of them” with their firepower heard far and wide.
“The reception they received would have sunk the Spanish fleet, but aside from unearthly noise and peculiar odor they did not seem to mind it, but slowly descended the shaft of the old mine.”
Never to be seen again.
(Excerpt) Read more at deathraywish.wordpress.com ...
Sorry, I meant the Leeds Devil! Too many devils on my mind!
“It was Kankles Clinton...”
Right look-wrong timeline.I wonder where Helen Thomas was on the night in question?
*****
No, it can’t be Helen, she started her career using a hammer and chisel.
People see some funny things at night. Has this been seen since 1903?
Rodan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodan
A giant pterydactyl is hatched out of a coalmine and wreaks havoc all over Japan.
That beam of light was probably a miner’s lamp that he wore when flying at night.
I thought Helen Thomas was younger than that.
Van Meter, IA is the birthplace of “Rapid Robert,” Bob Feller late of the Cleveland Indians. Van Meter is about 15 miles due West of Des Moines.
One of the greats!
Someone up there was running off some really fine likker!
Obviously the photo of this “monster” was photoshopped in 1903.
I read, many years ago, a newspaper account from the 1880s,of two cowboys seeing a flying monster back then. There were also tales of flying machines abducting cattle back then.
Opium dreams?
Note the sun is behind the “monster”, but there is no shadow on the opposing side of the building, but there is on the front.
So the sun is actually coming from the upper right.
Damn!
Can I say that?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.