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Short Stuff: The Enfield Monster · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck. Jerry's here sitting in for Dave, and Dave
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: didn't want to come because he gets spooked easily. And
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: this is a spooky one, Chuck. A spooky one. Exactly.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I can't do that as well as you, so I
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: just kind of left it for you. Oh, how about
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Jr. saying spooky like that?
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I don't think that's possible. Cameron, a spooky one.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Perfect.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all right.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Man, I'm going to get you a crown, says Sammy
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Davis Champ.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: You ready to dive into this mystery of the Enfield Monster? Yeah.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Had you heard of this before? I had not.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. We need to thank ManThink about Medium,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: the website, and Dread Central, and all that's interesting for
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: their reporting on this I mean, supposedly true thing that
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: happened in 1973.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: We should say that there are a lot of skeptics
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: out there about this story. But it is a really
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: big deal in the cryptic community. And there is a
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: cryptic community out there. People who are like, yes, there
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: are animals out there that we don't understand. This is
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: one of their big examples that they throw to. But
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: we're not going to look too deep into it because
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: this is Halloween. And it's a fun story, don't you think?
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The skeptics are calling from inside the podcast.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: So this was one of those 70s things along the
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: lines of like the Amityville horror where there was a
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: decade where people were willing to be like, hey, this
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: insane supernatural thing happened to me and I want to
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: be on the news about it. And they would get
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: on the news. And the guy who got on the
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: news the most from this whole thing was a guy
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: named Henry McDaniel. He lived in the village of Enfield, Illinois.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: And he got on the news because he said that
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: there is a very strange creature that he not only saw,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: but shot at. And the creature behaved quite strangely and
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: looked so strange that he was quite sure it was
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: not of this planet.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: That's right. I guess we can kick it off, though,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: with their neighbor's. The Garretts, because the Garrett boy, young
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Greg Garrett, apparently, this is around 9 o'clock at night,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: was catching lightning bugs. And all of a sudden, you know,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: comes storming back into the house. His parents are watching TV.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: And he's hysterical. He's crying. He's upset. And he said
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: he saw a monster. Described it as four or five
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: feet tall. Tiny little arms with claws. Slimy gray skin.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: And three legs... with claws and big red eyes about
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: the size of flashlights and presented physical evidence in the
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: form of his tennis shoes that were shredded up that
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: he said the monster, you know, kind of stepped on
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: his feet, I guess, and ran past him. And his
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: parents were like, oh, what?
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Pretty much. Apparently, Greg wasn't known as much of a
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: trickster or a liar or even a fibber, from what
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I understand. So his parents were just kind of like,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure what to make of this. What happened, Greg?
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: And they yelled at him for like a half hour
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: until he cracked. Or they tried to make him crack
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: and he never cracked. So as this was happening, and
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: so we should say this, Chuck, the accounts of this
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: are so muddy by this time that it's not entirely
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: clear the order of events and everything. So we're just
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: going to kind of go with the general flow, but
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: just take this with a grain of salt because- It's just,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: it's a muddied story, essentially. It's a muddied supernatural story,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: if you can believe that.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's one of those deals where
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: over the years it's been retold so many times, it's
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: probably been added to and changed about, like, things like
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: this are done. Does that make sense?
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, totally. And not only retold, retold by people
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: too lazy to go look up facts that they just
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: assume instead, and then that becomes fact kind of thing. Yeah.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: At least we're not writing about it. We just read
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: about it and we're too lazy to go look up
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the facts.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: That's right. Because this is just a fun, silly, spooky shorty.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: So the McDaniel kids are out that night as well.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: And Mr. McDaniel hears this story. He's also in disbelief, obviously,
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: because he doesn't believe something like that could happen to
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: his kids. And here's some scratching at the door, opens
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: the door. sees this monster, evidently slams the door and
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: goes and grabs a. 22 pistol and a flashlight, opens
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: the door back up and shoots at this thing.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. As you do. I just have in my mind
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: like him closing his eyes and turning his head and
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: just firing wildly out the door.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: So that's when he got the description that you gave.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: And like he said also that he hit it. He
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: knows that he hit it. Cause he said it hissed
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: like a wildcat, which is, I believe a quote. Um,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: and that it just bounded away and bounded away, meaning
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: like it covered tens of feet with each bounce, which
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: with each hop, thanks to that third leg, apparently. Yeah.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Apparently 75 feet in about three hops.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: That's impressive.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh, and it went over the railroad tracks, calls
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: the cops, uh, And the Illinois State, it calls like
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: the local police and the Illinois State Troopers show up instead.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: And maybe that's a good time for a break.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: I agree.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, where we last left off, McDaniels, Henry McDaniels'
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: gun is smoking. The Enfield monster has bounded off out
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: of sight. And, of course, the first thing he does
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: is call the police. Like his children have just been terrified.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: He's just fired on some unknown monster. God knows that
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: he was concerned about Greg Garrett's tennis shoes.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: So he called the police. The Illinois State Troopers show
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: up to conduct a search. And they search.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Quite a recap, by the way.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much. You know I live to do recaps.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Man, you just retold the whole thing.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: So the Illinois State Troopers show up and they search
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: the area. And they don't find the monster, but they
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: do find some suspicious evidence. I found it suspicious, didn't you?
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: I think so. They found scratch marks on the siding
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: of the house, fresh scratch marks. They found footprints, three
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: footprints with claw marks on them. Two of them were
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: about four inches wide, apparently. The third one was a
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: little bit smaller. And then apparently, you know, McDaniel starts
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: telling the story all around town and people start retelling
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: the story. I think a kid, some other kid, maybe
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: a neighbor faked or said he had faked the eyewitness account.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that doesn't really help your case. But it was
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: enough for Henry McDaniel to kind of get into the paper.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I think he was in the would you say it's
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: got to be the Redding Eagle, right? Hmm.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: It's not reading though. The reading Eagle.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it could be referring to the Eagle
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: reading the newspaper. I don't know.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Sure. Why not?
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: At any rate, it wasn't the, um, the sun times
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: or anything like that, but they did run a story
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: and like the, the story very quickly started to get
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: picked up through other news outlets, including the news, um,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: like TV news in, um, Illinois in the surrounding area. And, um,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: so this was, it had become a thing, right. Um,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: but that, that was the, First sighting. About 10 days later,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Henry McDaniel comes into play again when he wakes up
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: to the sound of the neighborhood dogs going crazy. And
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: he grabs his gun again and goes down to the
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: front door, opens it up as he does. And there's
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: the monster again.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: That's right. But not at the door this time. This
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: time it was over on those railroad tracks that it
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: had disappeared over on the previous sighting. And he said
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: it wasn't in a hurry. It was just kind of
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: ambling down the tracks. He has a great quote in
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: an interview. If they do find it, they'll find more
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: than one, and they won't be from this planet, I
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: can tell you that. So he thought it was otherworldly, extraterrestrial, perhaps.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time with Henry McDaniel to
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: prep for this short stuff, and he sounds exactly like that.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, good. All right, good.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, a bunch of people started to show up,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: monster hunters, which are basically... Bush beer drunk hunters with
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: rifles and shotguns. Yeah. They showed up, obviously. Like I said,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: the news showed up. There were cryptid investigators, people who
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: are like, I'm not, I'm not a fool, but I
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: also believe that there's animals out there that we can't explain.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: So like, I guess quasi scientific investigators showed up as well.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: The whole, the upshot is the whole town, the small town,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: just became like a hotbed of activity so much so
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: that the sheriff was like, hey, McDaniel, if you keep
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: telling this story, I'm going to arrest you for basically
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: disturbing the peace. And I mean, I believe that's unconstitutional.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: So he never made good on that threat. But the
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: point is the town was in an uproar over all this. Yeah.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: And they arrested some of these hunters because they're just
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: out there drinking beer and firing into the night. You
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: can't do that either. Not even in 1973.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: And then a guy whose name is too great to
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: be disbelieved named Rick Rainbow. He's the news director for
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: WWKI in Kokomo, Indiana.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: The place where you get there fast and then you
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: take it slow.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: That's right. And he was another eyewitness, supposedly. He and
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: three other guys saw this monster there. For sure.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a few things that are kind of sketchy
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: about this story.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: Like all of it.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: So that was, I think, so McDaniel's, or no, sorry,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Rick Rainbow's sighting was the last sighting of the Enfield monster,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: I believe.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: But some other people heard it over the course of
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the next few days, some weird cries coming from the woods,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: and then it just stopped. As quickly as the Enfield
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: monster showed up, It just went away. And I think
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: those crypto cryptid investigators opened a case study in 1978
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: where they really investigated this and they found. I saw
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: that the guy who is the lead investigator was like,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: I'm baffled by this. But yeah, it's also essentially like
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: most of the story is basically the the locals wanting
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: to get in on it and embellishing it. sightings or
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: just completely making some stuff up. But he seemed to
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: really be intrigued by Henry McDaniel's accounts in particular, at least.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And some of that, you know, alleged actual evidence
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: like the footprints and the scratched up shoes and the
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: scratched up sighting. A lot of people were like, you know,
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: this is a big hoax. They were trying to, you know,
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: just dust up some news about their town. So maybe
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: people would come by and give them some tourist money. Uh,
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: but you know, no one really knows what happened. I think, um,
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: it's interesting that a guy in Ohio later on said,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: you know what? I have a pet kangaroo named Macy
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: who kind of fits that description and, uh, had gotten
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: away and was missing. So, uh, this thing bounding around the,
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: the hopping, the three, I suppose the tail, if it
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: had a funky tail could have been a third leg. Uh-huh.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe it was just this guy, Macy
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: the Kangaroo.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: It being Macy the Kangaroo is almost as astounding as
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: it being like a cryptid that has never been discovered before,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: if you ask me.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Like a guy just having a random kangaroo that happened
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: to escape?
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's what people were shooting at, too.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: I think that's it for short stuff. This spooky short stuff, huh?
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, except it's actually not that spooky. I think we
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: were more laughing at it. But hey, if you're from
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: the surrounding area, I am curious if that legend still
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: survives around the campfire. So let us know.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: That means short stuff's out, right?
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: I think so. Stuff You Should Know is a production
• 13:41
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• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.