Indiana is a US state located in the Midwestern and Great Lakes region of the United States and is bordered with the US states of Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and Kentucky and also has a coast on part of Lake Michigan. The states capital and largest city is Indianapolis.
Central Indiana is mostly flat with some low hills and also the exception of some rivers cutting deep valleys into the terrain and the content of the soil in the area allows quality farmland in many areas here as well. In the north the state is similar in terrain to the central but also includes more hills and also tending to be higher as well and there are many kettle lakes. In the northwest there are sand ridges and dunes along the shoreline of Lake Michigan and further inland towards the Kankakee Outwash Plain. Finally, in the south of the state there are rugged hills and valleys and bedrock can be found exposed, there are many caves, quarries and caverns. The state has hot and humid summers and cold to mild winters and the state can also be prone to tornadoes.
Manufactuing is the largest contributor to the economy and the state’s top exports are motor vehicles, auto parts, pharmaceutical products, industrial machinery, optical and medical equipment and electric machinery. The state has led the nation in its steel production. Agriculture is also another contributor to the economy as it is for most states. The state is also known for its sports.
Now we shall get into the weird and the unexplained and Indiana actually appears to have quite a bit of it, much of which comes from the 1800s and the state also appears to be quite rich in its folklore as well.
First of all, we shall talk about a monster that was said to have inhabited Lake Manitou, and perhaps still does, called the Meshekenabek. Lake Manitou was created via a dam in 1827 in which turned five smaller lakes into one big lake and was made for the construction of a corn mill for the Native American tribe as part of a treaty between them and the US federal government. The lake’s name means Devil Lake or good/bad spirit and is apparently named as such due to the belief by the Native American tribe that a monster or evil spirit existed in the lake, which could now reside in the larger man-made lake.
Tales, whether true or not, claimed that the Potawatomi Indians would not hunt near or fish in the lake/s or travel across it by canoe due to fear and taboo over a water monster or evil spirit existing in the lake. One may brush it off as just simple superstition from ancient belief, but an interesting incident took place during the construction of the mill that the lake was created for.
Men constructing the corn mill in 1827 claimed to see something most queer in the lake. They described it as a serpent that was at least 30ft in length and that it also had the head of a horse. It is alleged that the workers saw the monster on numerous occasions and news of it spread to the nearby cities of Rochester and Logansport giving it quite a bit of attention and popularity and making it into a more popular legend.
A local blacksmith who also claimed to witness it, came forward quite a while after the worker sightings, the blacksmith said that he had watched it swimming around after it had emerged on the lakes surface, he described it as serpent-like, with a head close to 3-feet in width and that it had resemblance to a cow’s head, also having a long neck and grayish-black skin with big yellow spots. This sighting became fairly famed and led to even greater belief in the monster and further claims of sightings from others.
A rather gnarly encounter of the apparent serpent by two fishermen in the lake ended up leading to the residents of Rochester hunting for the monster in an attempt to rid of it, not wanting a potentially dangerous creature to be in their vicinity. Naturally no such monster was ever caught or killed.
The lake does have a history of unusually large fish being caught and so some skeptics believe that it may merely have been oversized fish that people had seen and combined with Native American legends the encounters had perhaps been overexaggerated or just misinterpreted.
Next up is the Beast of Busco in which is said to be a monstrous snapping turtle. The first reported sighting came in 1898 when Oscar Fulk, a farmer, claimed that he had seen a giant snapping turtle in a lake on his farm, the farm being near Churubusco.
But not much really came of it until 1948 when two people, Ora Blue and Charley Wilson, fishing on this lake, which was known as Fulk Lake to the locals, also claimed to have witnessed something most unusual in the lake, calling it a huge turtle and was estimated to weigh 500 lbs. Farmer Gale Harris, who owned the land, also claimed to have seen the monster turtle as well as some other locals.
In early 1949 the story of the monster turtle of Fulk Lake would end up going mainstream due to a story published by a reporter of United Press International. This ended up bringing a lot of people on to Harris’s land and required authorities to control the influx of people hoping to see the huge turtle.
The turtle was named Oscar after Oscar Fulk and after growing doubts of its existence, Gale Harris made a number of attempts to capture the giant turtle but all failed. To this day it remains unsolved if there ever was a giant snapping turtle in the lake or if it was all tall tales or misidentification of something else.
Oscar the elusive snapping turtle has remained a cultural icon for Churubusco and there is also a turtle festival held there each June that includes turtle racing.
Up next, we have a little something that took place in Mill Race Park, Columbus in November 1974. A scary encounter was reported to the police from two separate groups of eyewitnesses, one such group even claimed they were accosted by some kind of monster. The two groups of girls were unrelated to each other and so had no knowledge that each group had a strange encounter, which means that on the two groups parts it likely wasn’t a hoax.
The first group spotted it around 3PM when one of the women glimpsed an uncanny figure among two trees in the park, with the group soon getting out of there before anything could happen. In a report to the police they described the humanoid creature as green, hairy and large.
The encounter for the other group of girls was more harrowing, the description was that the monster had slime on its face and large claws. The girls claimed they were attacked and chased by the monster and when they reached the safety of their car the monster jumped on it and also left scratch marks on the car before leaving them alone. The monster also left a bad stench behind.
One of the women, Tyra Cataline, has also come forward in both 2014 and 2015 and has continued to insist that the encounter happened and that it was not just someone wearing a costume and scaring people, as a number of skeptics have concluded it to be.
One such encounter that have made skeptics believe it was just a man scaring people in a costume was a report also in 1974, where two city dogcatchers witnessed the creature, one of which (Rick Duckworth) chased after the monster as it ran away. Rick Duckworth would say that it was not a monster at all but simply a large man wearing a green mask and green blankets.
Despite this, due to the media attention around other claimed sightings of the monster as well, mass attention begun being attracted to Mill Race Park for those wanting to catch a glimpse of the monster themselves or even to hunt it. Due to the mass influx of people crowd control measures had to be introduced for public safety.
Sightings of the creature soon died down. It has never been fully explained what it was, some also claimed that UFO’s had been seen over the area during the time as well and led some to speculate that the creature could have been an alien being, others say it was some kind of Bigfoot-type creature, while many continue to stick to it simply being a prankster in a costume that caused mass hysteria.
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Well that’s going to be it for Indiana. Next up will be the strange and the unexplained of the US state of Kentucky.
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