Short Stuff: The Enfield Monster

This is an "I Heart" podcast. Guaranteed Human. (upbeat music) - Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. Jerry's here sitting in for Dave, and Dave didn't want to come because he get spooked easily. And this is a spooky one, Chuck. - A spooky-- - Spooky one. - Exactly. I can't do that as well as you, so I just kind of left it for you. Oh, how about Sammy Davis Jr. going, saying spooky like that? - I don't think that's possible. - Hey, man, a spooky one. - Perfect. - Yeah, that's all right. - Man, I'm gonna get you a crown. So Sammy Davis champ. - Are you ready to dive into this mystery of the infield monster? - Yeah, had you heard of this before, I had not. - I don't think so. We need to think, man, think, about medium, the website, and Dread Central, and all that's interesting for their reporting on this, I mean, supposedly true thing that happened in 1973. - We should say that there are a lot of skeptics out there about this story, but it is a really big deal in the cryptic community, and there is a cryptic community out there, people who are like, yes, there are animals out there that we don't understand. This is one of their big examples that they throw to. But we're not gonna look too deep into it because this is Halloween, and it's a fun story, don't you think? - Yeah, the skeptics are calling from inside the podcast. - So this was one of those 70s things along the lines of like the Amityville Horror, where there was a decade where people were willing to be like, hey, this insane supernatural thing happened to me, and I wanna be on the news about it, and they would get on the news. And the guy who got on the news the most from this whole thing was the guy named Henry McDaniel. He lived in the village of Enfield, Illinois, and he got on the news because he said that there is a very strange creature that he not only saw, but shot at, and the creature behaved quite strangely, and looks so strange that he was quite sure it was not of this planet. - That's right. I guess we can kick it off though with their neighbors, the Garrett's, because the Garrett boy, young Greg Garrett, apparently, his around nine o'clock at night was catching lightning bugs, and all of a sudden comes storming back into the house. His parents are watching TV, and he's hysterical, he's crying, he's upset, and he said he saw a monster, described it as four or five feet tall, tiny little arms with claws, slimy gray skin, and three legs with claws, and big red eyes about the size of flashlights, and presented physical evidence in the form of his tennis shoes that were shredded up, that he said the monster stepped on his feet, I guess, and ran past him. And his parents were like, "Oh, whoa." - Pretty much. Apparently, Greg wasn't known as much of a trickster or a liar, or even a fibber from what I understand. So his parents were just kind of like, "I'm not quite sure what to make of this. "What happened, Greg?" And they yelled at him for like a half hour until he cracked, or they tried to make him crack, and he never cracked. So as this was happening, and so we should say this, Chuck, the accounts of this are so muddy by this time, that it's not entirely clear the order of events and everything, so we're just gonna kind of go with the general flow, but just take this with a grain of salt, because it's just, it's a muddy story, essentially. It's a muddy supernatural story, if you can believe that. - Yeah, and I think it's one of those deals where over the years it's been retold so many times, it's probably been added to and changed about like things like this are done. Does that make sense? - Yeah, no, totally, and not only retold, retold by people too lazy to go look up facts that they just assume instead, and then that becomes fact kind of thing. So at least we're not writing about it, we just read about it, and we're too lazy to go look up the facts. - That's right, 'cause this is just a fun silly spooky shorty. So the McDaniel kids are out that night as well, and Mr. McDaniel hears this story. He's also in disbelief, obviously, 'cause he doesn't believe something like that could happen to his kids. And here's some scratching at the door, opens the door, sees this monster evidently, slams the door, and goes and grabs a 22 pistol in a flashlight, opens the door back up and shoots at this thing. - Yeah, as you do. - I just have in my mind like him closing his eyes and turning his head and just firing wildly out the door. - Yeah, yeah. - So that's when he got the description that you gave, and he said also that he hit it, he knows that he hit it, 'cause he said it hissed like a wildcat, which doesn't I believe a quote, and that it just bounded away, and bounded away meaning like it covered tens of feet with each bounce, with each hop, thanks to that third leg apparently. - Yeah, apparently 75 feet in about three hops. That's impressive. - Yeah. - And it went over the railroad tracks, calls the cops, and the Illinois State, it calls like the local police, and the Illinois State Trooper show up instead, and maybe that's a good time for a break. - I agree. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Okay Chuck, where we last left off, McDaniel's Henry McDaniel's gun is smoking, the infield monster has bounded off out of sight, and of course the first thing he does is call the police, like his children have just been terrified, he's just fired on some unknown monster. God knows that he was concerned about Greg Garrett's tennis shoes. - Sure, so he called the police, the Illinois State Troopers show up to conduct a search, and they search, and they quite a recap by the way. - Thank you very much. - You know, I live to do recap. - Man, do you just read the whole thing? - So the Illinois State Troopers show up, and they search the area, and they don't find the monster, but they do find some suspicious evidence. I found it suspicious, didn't you? - I think so. They found scratch marks on the siding of the house, fresh scratch marks. They found footprints, three footprints, with claw marks on them. Two of them were about four inches wide, apparently the third one was a little bit smaller. And then apparently, you know, McDaniel starts telling the story all around town, and people start retelling the story. I think a kid, some other kid, maybe a neighbor phaked, or said he had phaked the eyewitness account. - Yeah, that doesn't really help your case, but it was enough for Henry McDaniel to kind of get into the paper. I think he was in the, would you say it's gotta be the red eagle, right? It's not redding though, the reading eagle. - I mean, yeah, it could be referring to the eagle reading the newspaper, I don't know. - Sure, why not? - At any rate, it wasn't the sun times or anything like that, but they did run a story and like the story, very quickly started to get picked up through other news outlets, including the news, like TV news in Illinois in the surrounding area. And so this was, it had become a thing, right? But that was the first sighting. About 10 days later, Henry McDaniel comes into play again when he wakes up to the sound of the neighborhood dogs going crazy and he grabs his gun again and goes down the front door, opens it up as he does, and there's the monster again. - That's right, but not at the door this time, this time it was over on those railroad tracks that it had disappeared on the previous sighting. And he said it wasn't in a hurry. It was just kind of ambling down the tracks. He has a great quote in an interview. If they do find it, they'll find more than one and they won't be from this planet, I can tell you that. So he thought it was otherworldly, extra terrestrial perhaps. - I've spent a lot of time with Henry McDaniel to prep for the short stuff and he sounds exactly like - How good. - All right, good. So yeah, a bunch of people started to show up monster hunters which are basically bush beer drunk hunters with rifles and shotguns. - Yeah. - They showed up, obviously. Like I said, the news showed up. They were cryptid investigators. People who are like, I'm not a fool, but I also believe that there's animals out there that we can't explain. So like, I guess quasi-scientific investigators showed up as well. The whole, the upshot is the whole town. The small town just became like a hotbed of activity. So much so that the sheriff was like, hey, McDaniel, if you keep telling the story, I'm gonna arrest you for basically disturbing the peace. I believe that's unconstitutional, so he never made good on that threat, but the point is the town was in an uproar overall this. Yeah, and they arrested some of these hunters because they're just out there drinking beer and firing into the night, and you can't do that either. Not even in 1973, and then a guy whose name is too great to be disbelieved named Rick Rainbow. He's the news director for W.W.K.I. and Kokomo in Niana. The place where you get this fast and then you take it slow. That's right, and he was another eyewitness supposedly. He and three other guys saw this monster near to Band-In House, not too far from the original sightings. It was in the shadows, though, with its back turned, so he couldn't verify the description, but he said it was grayish in about five feet tall and stooped over. And reportedly, recorded audio of this thing screaming, even though it was never released to the public, which makes it very sketchy to me. For sure. There's a few things that are kind of sketchy about this story, but like all of it. So that was, I think, so Rick Rainbow's sighting was the last sighting of the Enfield Monster, I believe. I think so. But some other people heard it over the course of the next few days, some weird cries coming from the woods, and then it just stopped. As quickly as the Enfield Monster showed up, it just went away. And I think those crypto-cryptid investigators opened a case study in 1978, where they really investigated this, and they found. I saw that the guy who was the lead investigator was like, "I'm baffled by this," but it's also essentially like most of the story is basically the locals wanting to get in on it and embellishing sightings, or just completely making some stuff up. But he seemed to really be intrigued by Henry McDaniel's accounts in particular, at least. Yeah, and some of that alleged actual evidence, like the footprints and the scratched up shoes and the scratched up sighting. A lot of people were like, "This is a big hoax. They were trying to just dust up some news about their town, so maybe people would come by and give them some tourist money." But, you know, no one really knows what happened. I think it's interesting that a guy in Ohio later on said, "You know what? I have a pet kangaroo." The Macy, who kind of fits that description, and had gotten away and was missing. So this thing bounding around, the hopping, the three, I suppose the tail, if it had a funky tail, could have been a third leg. I don't know. Maybe it was just this guy who may see the kangaroo. It being Macy, the kangaroo is almost as astounding as it being like a cryptid that has never been discovered before, if you ask me. Like a guy just having a random kangaroo that happened to escape? Yeah. And then that's when people were shooting at, too. Yeah. I think that's it for short stuff. That's spooky short stuff, huh? Yeah, except it's actually not that spooky. I think we were more laughing at it. But, hey, if you're from the surrounding area, I am curious if that legend still survives around the campfire, so let us know. That means short stuff's out, right? I think so. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts to my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.