Post by Angela L. on Apr 22, 2009 16:02:29 GMT -6
Legend of the Honey Island Swamp Monster
Honey Island Swamp is a marshy place located somewhere in Louisiana. It would probably look a lot like other swamps around the world - inhabited by alligators, insects and the hideouts of Zartan, the master of disguise GI Joe guy who turned blue in the freezer. One thing that makes the Honey Island Swamp stand out though, is its very own mythical monster.
Honey Island enjoyed a nice normal existence until the seventies when a couple of men spotted a monster living in its swamp. The beast’s physical description appears to be identical to Bigfoot upon first look - but it’s not. The footprints the thing leaves behind vary from its hair covered cousin.
The Honey Island Swamp Monster leaves tracks that have what appears to be four toes, three big ones and one that looks thumb-ish. According to one cryptozoologist the feet that leave those tracks look like they are good for climbing. Bigfoot’s never been described as a climber.
Eye witness descriptions, though, seem to be very sasquatch-esque. It looks like a big furry ape-man covered in heaps and heaps of hair. Here’s the story of man’s first recorded encounter with the swamp beast. It’s off of AmericanMonsters.com:
“The legend of the Honey Island Swamp was first revealed to the world in 1974, when a pair of Air Traffic Controllers, Harlan E. Ford and Ray Mills, shambled out of the deep antediluvian sloughs of Honey Island with an unbelievable story… and something even more incredible. The veteran hunters claimed to have discovered a pair of unusual footprints imbedded in the soft earth next to a wild boar whose throat had been torn open. They saw something else that day. Something that would change their lives forever… they saw a monster.
“They described a vicious looking creature that stood on two legs. A man-like animal that was covered with a coat dingy, gray hair. The men estimated that this beast stood over 7 feet tall and weighed somewhere between 400 and 500 lbs. But what they remembered most were its sickly yellow eyes, set far apart on its skull, and the horrific stench which surrounded this creature… it was the smell of death.”
Since then there have been multiple encounters with the animal. A lot of people report hearing it, a lot report finding its four-digit tracks - and some say they’ve even seen it with their own eyes. On the accompanying video a man says he thought he hit a log with his boat at night time - and then when he shined his light on it he saw it was a partially submerged bipedal creature.
There’s one other thing you should know - footage of the creature allegedly exists. It was recorded by Harlan Ford, one of the first two men to report sighting the monster, but the tape just sat in a box gathering dust until his widow found it in 1980. It’s since been included in a Honey Island Monster documentary made by his grand daughter.