By Kristi O’Toole

It was the spring of 1973 and the warming evenings found young Greg Garrett playing outside in his backyard. Suddenly and without warning, the unsuspecting child became the first victim of an indescribable monster. A monster that would come to be known as the infamous Enfield Monster.

Every person who witnessed the beast describes it the same: three legs, five feet tall, taloned arms that curl in the front of the torso like a T-Rex, and gleaming red eyes that peer out of the dark with a weird radiance. News reports at the time suggested that the creature may be a kangaroo or gorilla, but with a description like that it seems hard to believe it could be so easily confused with a such common animal.

From that first incident, encounters with the mysterious creature rolled in. At about 9:30 on the night of April 25, 1973, Henry McDaniel heard a scratching sound at his front door. He looked out, and saw something that he thought might be a bear. Taking a gun and flashlight, he headed outside into a strong wind and saw a creature between two rosebushes. He later said “It had three legs on it, a short body, two little short arms, and two pink eyes as big as flashlights. It stood four and a half feet tall and was grayish-colored.” He added later that it was “almost like a human body”.

McDaniel fired four shots at the creature, one shot hitting it and causing it to make a hiss “much like a wildcat’s”, before fleeing towards a nearby railway embankment, covering 50 feet in three jumps. McDaniel called the local authorities who discovered footprints in the soft earth near the house, which McDaniel described as dog-like in shape, with six toe pads. The police considered McDaniel to be “rational and sober” in his reporting of the incident. In a later press interview, McDaniel said “If they do find it, they will find more than one and they won’t be from this planet, I can tell you that.”
Two weeks later on May 6, McDaniel called the radio station WWKI claiming to have seen the creature again, at 3am that morning. It was negotiating the trestles of the railroad tracks near his home, and McDaniel said “I saw something moving out on the railroad track and there it stood. I didn’t shoot at it or anything. It started on down the railroad track. It wasn’t in a hurry or anything.” A search party including WWKI’s news director Rick Rainbow explored the area later that day, and reported observing an “apelike” creature standing in an abandoned building near McDaniel’s house. They claimed to have made a recording of the creature’s cries, and fired a shot at it before it fled. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman investigated the case and the sound recording. The studies were inconclusive.

About 10:30 P.M. Randy and Cheryl Ray were sitting on the back porch of their home when they heard something moving in the trees along the river just beyond the lawn.They they saw the creature standing in an opening in the trees, quietly watching them through glowing pink eyes. Cheryl insists the eyes were glowing, not reflecting – there was no light source nearby.
The creature was either the same one seen before or one similar to it. It was white and dirty, weighed close to 350 pounds and stood seven feet tall; it had a large round head. Cheryl thought its arms might be “ape-length,” although she wasn’t certain because it was standing in waist-high grass. Finally the thing ambled off through the trees making considerable noise. Later, investigators found a trail of crushed weeds and broken brush, as well as imprints in the ground too vague and imperfect to be cast in plaster.

Cheryl’s mother Mrs. Harry Ray called the police. While waiting for them to arrive, they suddenly began to smell a “real strong odor – like a sewer,” Cheryl said, but the odor lasted only a short time. Soon Officers Nash and Ronald Manwarin pulled up in their car. What happened then is recounted in their report:
“Officers inspected the area where the creature was seen and found weeds broken down and somewhat of a path where something had walked through. Jerry Nellis was notified to bring his dog to the area to see if the dog would track the creature. Upon arrival of Nellis and his dog (a German shepherd trained to attack, search buildings and track) the dog was led to the area where the creature was last seen. The dog began tracking down the hill where the creature was reported to have gone. As the dog started down the hill it kept stopping and sniffing at a slime substance on the weeds; the slime appeared periodically as the dog tracked the creature. Nellis put some of the slime between his fingers, rubbed it and it left a black coloring on his fingers. Each time the dog found amounts of it, the dog would hesitate.
The creature was tracked down the hill to a pond, around the pond to a wooded area south of the pond where the dog attempted to pull Nellis down a steep embankment. The area where the dog tracked the creature to was too thick and bushy to walk through, so the dog was pulled off the trail and returned to the car. Officers then searched the area with flashlights.

Nellis and the dog again began to search the area to see if the dog could again pick up the scent. Nellis and the dog approached the abandoned barn and Nellis called to Officer Nash to come to the area as the dog would not enter the barn. Nellis pushed the dog inside and the dog immediately ran out. Nash and Nellis searched the barn and found nothing inside. Nellis stated that the dog was trained to search buildings and had never backed down from anything. Nellis could offer no explanation as to why the dog became scared and would not go inside the barn. Officers continued to search the area and were unable to locate the creature.

As fantastic as these stories seem they do form a certain pattern. Several features consistently appear. Bear in mind this was happening before the dawn of the internet and social media, and yes, while stories can be told and shared, the details would vary far greater by word of mouth if there was in fact no truth to them.
To start with,the creatures reported are almost always bipedal, hairy and sub-hominid in general appearance. Their color is typically described as white or gray. Their eyes are usually pink or red and glow in the dark. The creatures emit an extremely unpleasant odor often compared to the smell of garbage or sewage. They run fast and leap enormous distance – even from a sitting position.

So, what are we left with? What is the Enfield Monster? While there is no evidence the two are directly related, it has been intimated that the monster could have come from outer space as there were strange lights in the area not too long before the creature made it’s first appearance.
Aliens? Government experiment gone wrong? No one may ever know the truth for sure, but the sheriff at the time firmly believed his townspeople were seeing something and none of the stories had been fabricated.

When Kristi isn’t writing for NewzBreaker, she writes supernatural suspense novels having three currently published. If you would like to check out any of her books they can be found online and at other major retailers like Books a Million and Amazon. Never one to rest, she also paints/designs shoes and items for the home. Check out her eBay store, Watered Down Vodka and her FB page.

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