Did a hairy monster stalk Tazewell County?[Illinois]

AP ^ | 06 Nov 2006 | AP

[FLOutdoorsman]

I know we will get the Hillibeast jokes and the 'one who shall not be pictured' jokes but does anybody in Illinois remember this one?

[kinoxi]

Who's got the manbearpig ping list?

[pissant]

Janet reno? Helen Thomas? Susan Estrich? Maddy Albright?

[Lurker]

There's no telling what one might find wandering the woods in Tazewell County.

Anything south of I-80 might as well be another country.

L

[LegendHasIt]

Could have been my ex-Brother-in-Law.

He was huge, hairy, a little weird, an avid woodsman, and lived in that area all his life.

[AnnGora]

Is it related to the Boggie Creek creature? He's a legend, you know.

[Graybeard58]

I lived in Tazewell county then, specifically East Peoria, I still live in Tazewell county..... It's horse hockey.

[FLOutdoorsman]

Could have been a female hairy monster.

[Publius]

It was described as 10 feet tall. The creature's face had long, gray U-shaped ears and a red mouth with sharp teeth. The reliable citizens said the creature possessed thumbs with long second joints and looked like a cross between an ape and a cave man...Newspaper articles of the time suggest that Cohomo had a horrible smell, sometimes compared to that of a wet dog, rotten eggs, or as sulphur-like.

Ground sloth. Supposedly became extinct at the end of the last ice age. But maybe it didn't.

[Krankor]

[pissant]

That's estrich before the makeup.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Alien, bigfoot and weird stuff ping.

[gaijin]

[Lurker]

I was just about to ping you.

L

[Thumper1960]

Cohomo monster?

Red mouth, sharp teeth, smells horrible, less than 10' (mate, perhaps, of hairyman?),.......

[Graybeard58]

That was back before I quit drinking and I saw a lot more scary things than a hairy monster. I saw hairy monsters on my good days.

[Jet Jaguar]

Nevermind.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

You just never know.

[Charles Henrickson]

YOU'RE A COHOMO

[SaveTheChief]

But one remains. If Cohomo was the product of mass hallucination, caused by the sightings of a Missouri monster called Momo, why did only the citizens of Tazewell County invent the elusive beast?

Well for one thing, I can't imagine there was a heck of a lot to do in East Peoria or anywhere else in Tazewell County in 1972.

I was but a wee lad at the time and even then we were living in Peoria. We didn't make it to the east side of the river until about 1974 and frankly I only vaguely remember someone at some time mentioning the alleged beast. I wouldn't think a story like that would go largely forgotten in Central Illinois.