are neat human interest stories that cause the reader to cluck his tongue in wonderment how the strangeness of out-of-place animals could come to be. However, bobcats in Florida and coyotes in Manhattan are in no measure comparable to sighting black panthers in Iowa or African lions in Indiana.
My friend and colleague Tim R. Swartz grew up in Indiana and he recalls that mountain lions have also been recorded in that state over the years, even though these large cats are believed extinct in the state.
“It is not unreasonable to suppose that some mountain lions could still live or migrate through some of the more unpopulated regions,” Swartz said. “However, Indiana has had sightings of what appeared to be maned lions, animals indigenous to Africa, not the Midwest.”
Here is an account of one such sighting that Swartz shared with me:
On August 5, 1948 Deputy Sheriff Jack Witherby received a phone call from a man who reported that he and his family were fishing along the banks of Elkhorn Falls, in the extreme eastern part of the state. Suddenly, a large cat came running at the family, chasing them into their car. The cat lunged at the car, but then ran away along the stream bed. The cat was described as looking like an African lion with a long tail and a bushy mane around its neck and head.
Deputy Sheriff Witherby examined tracks found at the scene and said they were “like nothing I have ever seen before in this area.”
A few days later two brothers, Arthur and Howard Turner, spotted two strange animals that they said looked just like African lions: “They were large headed, shaggy and brown in color.”
In January 1954, experienced hunters by the hundreds arrived to trek through the swamp outside of Bladenboro, North Carolina, in search of the Vampire Cat that had been ripping people’s prize hounds to bloody shreds.
The terror began on New Year’s Eve, 1953, when Johnny Vause found two of his dogs “torn to ribbons and crushed.” Everybody knew that there was no animal anywhere near the small mill town that could work such terrible carnage on two big and healthy dogs.
Within a few days, two more pairs of dogs were killed in a similar fashion, but this time it appeared that their blood had been drained by the thing that had killed them.
Chief of police Roy Fores informed Mayor W.G. Fussell that something mighty strange was going on near the swamp, and Fussell decided that the citizenry needed to be warned. If it were big healthy dogs being torn to ribbons then, how long would it be before the beast claimed its first human victims?
On January 5, 1954, the Wilmington Morning Star ran a front-page story warning that “Vampire Tendencies Found in Bladenboro’s Monsters.” That night people began to walk cautiously and look warily over their shoulders if they had to go out after dark.
There was no question that area residents were on edge, and numerous reports came in to the police and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission demanding the capture or the killing of the Vampire Cat. Increasingly, people began to hear strange noises and to report shadowy figures moving near the swamp at night.
No one in the police force or the Wildlife Resources Commission denied that the witnesses were seeing something that they deemed out of the ordinary, but none of the official investigations yielded any hair, tracks, droppings, or any physical evidence of any kind. Some livestock was lost, but in each case when the authorities investigated the slaughter the deaths were quite obviously the result of attacks by feral dogs.
Newspaper reporters from around the United States descended on the small community, each journalist hoping to scoop the others with a photograph of the Great Vampire Cat. According to the people in the vicinity of Bladenboro, at least 1,000 hunters arrived to trek through the swamp. One of the men shot a large bobcat, and Mayor Fussell eagerly declared the dreaded monster slain and announced that the danger of attack by a vampire cat had come to an end.
Interestingly, today, over 50 years later, Bladenboro still celebrates “Beast Week,” each year in recognition of the genuine terror that seized the community. A creature that was once feared as a “bloodthirsty shadow-dweller” now precipitates a “Boost the ‘Boro Festival.”
Hiram Hester, a former chairman of the festival, told Monica Holland (The Fayette Observer, March 16, 2008) that the beast was no longer an embarrassment to the townspeople. The people were now really excited about celebrating The Beast of Bladenboro.
Still, though, there must really be something in North Carolina that delights in mauling large dogs. Paul Jefferson (of starnewsonline.com) reported on December 12, 2007, that a monster that local residents had called the Beast of Bolivia had returned to wreak havoc on their pets.
Shelby Sellers returned from work at the Brunswick County Government Center to find Rosie, his three-year-old pit bull, mauled, with claw marks and wounds on its hindquarters and paws. The veterinarian assured Sellers that Rosie would survive, but she was more fortunate than his neighbors, who reported that their two puppies had been killed.
It appeared that the Beast of Bolivia who had terrorized the region in mid-September had returned. At that time, three dogs had been found mauled by an unknown predator in the area of Midway, Brown, and Gilbert Roads.
Area residents had been completely unsatisfied with the efforts of the county’s Animal Services department to identify the marauder. Some men came out to investigate the Beast’s track, scoop up some droppings and other specimens, but there was no announcement of the analysis of these clues.
Those who had lost their dogs to the mysterious creature agreed with local animal experts who had pronounced the mauling of the dogs to be the work of a cougar or an unusually large bobcat. Others speculated that a lion or a tiger had escaped from the Faircloth Zoo, and the managers just didn’t want to own up to their carelessness. The accusations against the zoo were silenced when authorities informed the citizenry that that particular zoo had been closed for 15 months and that all their animals had been shipped to other zoos.
In the meantime, attacks continued. While no one ever saw the Beast of Bolivia, some hunters theorized that the monster must have been a bear, judging from the size of the tracks.
On April 2, 2009, it appeared that the Beast was still roaming around North Carolina, but it must have become enraged when people began keeping their dogs inside. The Gilliam family of Lincoln County came out of their home on Sunday morning to discover that some clawed creature had ripped their 2004 Saturn Vue SUV to pieces.
To their astonishment, the vehicle that stood in their driveway was scarred with scratches, bite marks, and gaping holes. The Beast had ripped through fiberglass and caused thousands of dollars in damage. The monster had even destroyed
