Via Newspapers.com

A Texan Bigfoot?  The “Abilene Reporter News,” July 7, 1977:

HAWLEY - The forest of the Northwest has its Big Foot, the Himalayas have the Abominable Snowman, and as of Wednesday, this dusty Jones County town has the Hawley Him. The Him, a shaggy 7-foot monster with long dangling arms, reportedly attacked three youths Wednesday morning at Bob Scott's ranch. The youths, Tom Roberts, 14; Larry Suggs, 15; and Renee McFarland, 15, all reported seeing the beast and even tried to down the critter with a shot from a 30-30 rifle before the apparition made good his escape in the thick brush.

The reported attack started at approximately 10 a.m. while Roberts and Suggs were clearing brush for Scott. Both the boys live at the Abilene Boys' Ranch, of which Scott is superintendent. The boys said they were taking a break when they were startled by the breaking of tree limbs and a shower of rocks. Suggs said he was hit in the leg by one of the stony missiles and showed a bruise on his right calf in support of his claim.  Roberts said his head just barely missed being beaned by one of the projectiles. 

During the attack the boys dropped their tools and ran for the safety of the nearby home of Mr. and Mrs. Ed McFarland.

"We got three good glimpses of him," Suggs said. "I call it him--whatever it was.” 

"It was kind of an ape, but still a man," he added. "He had huge arms. They hung to his knees. You'd have to see it to believe it.” 

Roberts said one of the peculiar aspects of the attack, outside the fact a monster was heaving rocks at them, was that it made no sounds "except for the brush cracking." 

After recovering from the initial attack the boys went back to their worksite along with the McFarlands' daughter, Renee, and her 30-30. 

"It's a good gun. It's got a boom like a cannon and a kick like a horse," Renee said in praise of her armament. 

While at the site a rock was thrown at the McFarlands' van and the three youths said they saw Hawley Him approximately 40 yards away in a tangle of nettles. Suggs shot at the monster, but apparently missed his mark.

"She (Renee) was going to shoot it until she saw it. Then she crammed the gun at me and said, 'You shoot it'," Suggs said. 

The recoil from the shot floored Suggs and he never got off a second round as the Him "glided" through the brush, leaving foot-long footprints in the sandy soil. 

"That stuff (the brush) is so thick you have to know where you're going and he just glided through it," Roberts said. Roberts added that just prior to the attack he noticed a rotten smell in the area.

The area the boys were working in is near the site where Scott recently lost 21 penned goats without a trace, until several goat carcasses later were found in the brush. Scott said the Jones County Sheriff's Office said coyotes got the goats, but he is not convinced coyotes are to blame since no goat was killed in the immediate area of the pen. 

Wednesday was not the first time Hawley Him has been sighted. Renee said she and two of her girlfriends saw the monster in October during a slumber party. But when she told her parents of the strange creature creeping about the house they discounted it as a "trick of the night." 

Another area resident, Mike McQuagge, said he saw the footprint the youths claimed the monster had left, but he had never seen the creature which supposedly left the track. When asked if he believed a monster was roaming Jones County, McQuagge said he rather doubted it. Whether the Hawley Him is real or just another of the Big Country's list of imaginary monsters such as the infamous Caddo Critter and the Haskell Thang, there's little chance that Suggs and Roberts will be out there clearing brush without armed lookouts.

For some time afterwards, hunters roamed the area in search of “Him,” but as far as I can tell, the smelly rock-throwing whatsit was never identified.  In November, it was reported that a “squat, shaggy creature” had been mutilating animals in Merkel, a town about 20 miles from Hawley, but that mystery seems to have gone unresolved, as well.

I don’t normally have a great interest in cryptozoology--my attitude towards Bigfoot is that if it leaves me alone, I’ll leave it alone--but one of my exceptions to this rule is the story of an alarming creature which once terrorized an area in Knox County, Indiana.  Not only were there multiple sightings of this fearsome whatchamacallit, these eyewitness accounts were more credible than the usual "How I Took a Selfie With Sasquatch" fan fiction.

On the night of August 22, 1981, Jack Langford was fishing in the White River, in eastern Knox County.  After he had been there a couple of hours, he began having the  creepy  feeling that he was being watched. When he looked up, he saw two eyes, each about an inch in diameter, glowing red from the campfire and staring right at him from a distance of 50 yards away.  The creature was standing in the river at a depth of about four feet.  It was too dark to see the face, but Langford could tell the body was very large, and very hairy.  After silently studying the fisherman for a few minutes,  it used a tree limb to raise itself out of the water and went on its way.  Langford estimated that the creature weighed about 200 pounds, and had arms  that went down to the knees.  As it left, it “made a loud squeal or high-pitch shriek when it left, something like a young pig would make when you try to hold on to it.”  Langford had heard similar noises  on earlier visits to the area, but at the time thought little of them.  

Five days later, Vincennes residents Terry and Mary Harper, who lived not far from where Langford had his unsettling encounter, woke up to a disturbing sight: although they had heard no disturbances during the night, while they slept, something had vandalized their house.  Part of a door and chunks of aluminum siding were torn off.  Whatever it was that attacked the home left behind traces of blood--some as high as eight feet high on the house--toothmarks, and bits of white fur.  They also found paw prints four inches wide.  Oddly, the area the creature attacked was nowhere near the kitchen or food storage areas.  The food bowl belonging to the family dog was only about 10 feet away from the damaged spot, but it was untouched.  The dog herself, a German shepherd who normally chased any animal intruders from the yard, was left, according to Mrs. Harper, “shaking and whining and too frightened to move” for hours afterward.  The morning after the attack, their neighbors were horrified to find that during the night, something had killed their pet rabbit.  The poor animal had its throat torn out and the paws chewed off.  The local police shrugged and said it was probably a wolf.  The understandably nervous Harper family started a round-the-clock watch and left lights on throughout the night.  Fortunately, the incident was not repeated.  

Vincennes Sun-Commercial, October 9, 1981, via Newspapers.com. As you can guess, the local papers didn't take the whole business very seriously.

On the night of September 25, a woman named Barbara Crabtree, who lived about 12 miles south of the Harpers, was putting out the garbage when she saw a creature standing in a cornfield a short distance away.  She described it as having “dirty white hair all over and stood somewhere between 7 and 8 feet tall.  He emitted a bad smell and had huge eyes, but I couldn’t tell what color they were because I didn’t stand around long enough to look.”  (A sensible move, that.)  Before retreating to the house, she noticed that a chicken she had put in the garbage can that morning was now gone.

Later that same night, Barbara and her husband Roger went to the movies.  While on their way home at about 2 a.m., they saw the same creature heading toward the road from some nearby woods.  Mr. Crabtree notified the sheriff’s office, but when deputies searched the area, they found no trace of the strange beast.

Four nights later, Mrs. Crabtree was awakened by an ominous growling outside her house.  It was like nothing she had ever heard before.  When her husband turned on the front porch lights, the growling stopped.  A few minutes later, they heard the noise on the other side of the house.  When the Crabtrees called police, they received the same dismissive response given to the Harpers.  A wolf.  Or a coyote.  Or some overactive imaginations at work.  And so the story quickly faded from the newspapers.

In the years since then, there have been occasional claimed sightings of this large white whatzit, but no more violent incidents have been reported, fortunately for the residents of Knox County.  The Harpers had a hell of a time explaining their damaged home to the insurance company.

via Newspapers.com

This unpleasant bit of Forteana comes from the "Victoria Advocate," February 28, 1971:

Oklahoma City (AP)--There's something out there. It walks like a gorilla, leaves hand prints like a man, rips doors off their hinges, and it likes chickens.

For want of a better name we'll call him Oklahoma's Abominable Chicken Man.

It's a long story and it goes like this.

An El Reno farmer walked out to his chicken coop one day in December and found its door on the ground, apparently thrown there after being ripped off the wall.

On the surface of the door, and inside the coop on the walls, were a number of strange hand prints--like none he'd ever seen before. They were about seven inches long and five inches wide.

The farmer called a state game ranger. The ranger had never seen anything like it either and he sent the door to the Oklahoma City Zoo to see what experts could make of the prints.

The experts were baffled too. Zoo Director Lawrence Curtis says the prints appear to be like those of a primate. A primate is an animal like a gorilla or a man that can stand erect.

The thumb of the print is unusual. Curtis says it crooks inside, as if it were deformed or had been injured.

"It resembles a gorilla," he said, "but it's more like a man."

"It appears that whatever made the prints was walking on all fours. There were some footprints on the ground outside," he said. Whatever it was was barefoot. Barefoot in December.

Since Curtis got the first print he has had reports of similar finds around the state. A man in Stillwater and a woman in McAlester have told him of discovering similar prints. The woman has a photograph she is mailing to the zoo for comparison.

Oklahoma has only four native animals big enough to leave such prints: the black bear, the mountain lion, the wolf and man. Curtis has ruled out all but the last.

"We've shown it to several mammologists and several wildlife experts in Oklahoma and some passing through. All agree it is a primate," he said. "These prints were made by some sort of a man, perhaps one looking for chickens."

Asked about the wide distances between the points reporting similar prints, Curtis said, "If there is one there is more than one. There has to be more than one unless he's hitchhiking."

There are no zoos in El Reno, no circuses and no one known to be keeping a gorilla. In fact the only thing in the area that "keeps" primates--in this case men--is the federal reformatory just on the outskirts of town.

The Abominable Chicken Man is being compared with reports of similar findings from California. In this case people have reported seeing a seven-foot man-like creature wandering in the northern wilds. They call him Bigfoot, after the large tracks he makes.

The description also seems to match the Sasquatch, also known as Bigfoot, a towering primate reported in Washington and British Columbia.

Curtis is trying to find a book and a magazine article that tell about the Bigfoot sightings. He's anxious to make a comparison.

In the meantime he has the chicken coop door in his office for reference, and one supposes, for conversation.

There's not much else to go on until somebody reports actually seeing the Abominable Chicken Man.

There are a lot of people looking.

So far as I know, they never did find it, so Oklahoma poultry had better remain on guard.