The US state of Iowa is found in the Midwestern United States, you may remember from earlier in the year it is where the former Democratic Presidential Candidate Pete Buttigieg got in a shock win in the Democratic Primaries, although he did not go on to perform well enough to become the nominee. Iowa is bordered with the US states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, South Dakota and Nebraska. Its capital and largest city is Des Moines.
Iowa’s territory consists of rolling hills, with tallgrass prairie and savanna, dense forest, pothole prairies and wetlands. The northern part of the state is drier than the south. Iowa has a humid continental climate, with hot humid summers and cold winters. Spring is the severe weather season in the state where thunderstorms and tornadoes can happen.
Iowa has a very diversified economy that isn’t dependent on agriculture, which only makes up a small part of its economy despite taking up much of the land. Manufacturing makes up the largest part of the Iowa economy, such as food processing, heavy machinery and agricultural chemicals. Other large contributors to the economy are biotechnology, as well as finance, insurance and government services sectors.
Now that introductions are in order let’s move on to the stranger side of Iowa. The state actually has quite a few interesting localized cryptids and unexplained encounters and so there is plenty to check out here, despite it being a state you’d expect to be rather quiet.
So, let’s get started. In 1903 during Fall, the town of Van Meter would be in for quite the frightening surprise, when it was seemingly visited by some kind of flying humanoid cryptid, which was described by various prominent townsfolk as looking like some kind of half-human, half-animal with huge bat-wings and horns on its head. The creature also had a terrible aroma about it and weirder yet some kind of ability that let it project bright blinding light from its head at the terrified people below and the creature also flew at incredible speeds.
For the next few days the creature would harass the town and its people by flying about, causing a number of the townsfolk to shoot at it in natural American style, except that the creature for whatever reason wasn’t fazed by this, either being impervious to bullets or perhaps everyone just kept missing.
On one of the nights a doctor (name unknown) and bank cashier Peter Dunn both saw the creature and also shot at it, with it continuing to have no effect, but Peter Dunn did manage to collect a plaster cast of large three-toed tracks of unknown origin apparently from the creature having landed briefly.
The fiasco would continue on with people regularly shooting at this unknown creature when they saw it until one day in the northwest of the town an armed group gathered and headed towards the old brickyard where a strange noise had been reported by a resident near an abandoned coal mine. It was reported in the Des Moines Daily Newspaper that the noise emanated again, described as Satan and a regiment of imps coming to battle.
Apparently, this monster would appear but also with another of itself albeit smaller (perhaps its child, who knows). These monsters apparently then flew away surrounded by a brilliant light – whatever that means, but that they would then return in the morning where the armed men were still gathered. The men opened fire on the creatures, with the kafuffle being heard from great distance. The creatures continued to be un-fazed (and also quite smelly) but eventually descended down the shaft of the mine and were not seen again, perhaps they got the message.
So just what was it? Was it simply mass hysteria caused by an animal that town was unable to recognize? Was it perhaps a demon of evil or maybe even some kind of alien creature visiting Earth? Some of the parts made it sound a bit like an unidentified craft. Whatever it was, it seems the town certainly had a right spooking in the fall of 1903.
Iowa also has its very own Sasquatch or Bigfoot called the Lockridge Monster with it being encountered in Jefferson County, Iowa in 1975. Its name comes from its first reported sighting by a Mr. And Mrs. Herb Peiffer on their farm north of Lockridge, in the time leading up to the sighting that had been experiencing oddities on their farm such as their livestock being killed by an unknown creature, a day after their sighting the creature also seemingly returned to their farm to cause more disturbances including more killings of their turkey livestock as well as bites taken out of apples still attached to the branches of a tree at least seven feet into the air.
When they reported their initial sighting to the media it eventually led to national attention and also other locals and hunters in the area reporting in recent oddities they had also been encountering, such as seeing an unknown bipedal creature, dead livestock and footprints.
The description from eyewitnesses are that it is a bipedal creature that walks similar to a man, covered in dark hair with an ape-like face. The Lockridge Monster is apparently a rather carnivorous, unlike the usual Sasquatch and that its footprints are also smaller than the usual Sasquatch footprints and it is also a lot shorter, more around actually a typical primate size. Its body is described as being large and bulky like a Bear, of which many skeptics have said that it could just be misidentification of a Bear.
The Lockridge Monster has been blamed for the killing and mutilation of chickens, rabbits, raccoons, pigs, turkeys and even sometimes cows, perhaps when it is feeling extra peckish. It seems the monster though does often waste its food, not eating all of its kills, but just leaving the rest mutilated to be discovered by a freaked out human, who may also be quite annoyed if it were some of their farm stock.
Of course, there are many possible explanations for all of this, but the witnesses who claim to have seen the creature are adamant that it wasn’t just a Bear or some other large animal, but that it was clearly something that walked on two-legs with an ape-like face.
How about some water cryptids now? Iowa has two to go over. The first one is an apparent giant snapping turtle that has been called Big Blue, named after Big Blue pond that he can apparently be witnessed in, within the Lester Milligan Park near Mason City.
Now this is dubbed a cryptid due to the snapping turtle being much, much bigger than the average one would be that would possibly live there, the environment for such a turtle just isn’t right. The pond it is said to reside in is 34ft deep and is often used by recreational scuba divers. Now to give an idea of how big this turtle is meant to be, its shell has been described as large as a Volkswagen Beetle hood. Now if that is the case, then this thing is truly gigantic and you would not expect it to be in the Big Blue pond.
The alleged sightings have often came from the scuba divers that use the pond, and if they are truly seeing what they are think they’re seeing, then it must be quite the fright, snapping turtles themselves are scary cause well, they can literally bite off your finger given the chance, so just imagine one that size that could near enough snap your arm in half, I don’t think you’d want to be swimming in that pond.
There have even been a few tales of people nearly being eaten by the snapping turtle while playing around the pond. One thing for sure is I’m certainly not messing with that; I have a phobia enough when it comes to not knowing what’s in a body of water.
Next up is the Okoboji Lake Monster, named after the lake it is meant to reside in, East Okoboji Lake. The lake is a natural body of water found in Dickinson County that has an 1,835-acre surface area, an average depth of 10ft and a max depth of 22ft, it is a popular fishing spot and is near to the city of Spirit Lake and Okoboji. The area around the lake was long inhabited by Sioux Natives before European-American settlers arrived.
The Native American’s had long believed that the lake was inhabited by aquatic dragons, otherwise known as underwater panthers. There were some stories from early European settlers related to this Native American creature of the lake, such as about four Ojibwa Indians who went to the home of the water panther to collect some copper to bring home to heat water, but that they angered the water panther for taking the playthings of its children, the four Indians died, although not before one of them managed to make it back to relate the story before passing.
Many accidents in the area during the Copper Rush in the 1840s have been blamed on the apparent Native American water panthers in the lake.
So as can be seen there appears to be some history of oddities surrounding the lake via Native American legend and superstition.
But the first official sighting of what is now known as the Okoboji Lake Monster wasn’t reported until 1903. The quite scary sighting and account was reported by a Mr. And Mrs. Bartlett, with them saying that they witnessed splashing from their boat of the lake and it created such powerful waves that they were afraid their boat would tip over and so left before that happened. Charles Bartlett said he believed it was either a water serpent or a fish as big as a skiff. This account was reported in the Vindicator and Republic Estherville newspaper on July of that year.
The description of the lake beast is as follows (probably from various accounts, but of course not at all confirmed), that it is some kind of massive fish with the head the size of a bowling ball and that its skin is a dark green colour.
A mysterious dark large fish-like figure was also captured in the lake via a satellite photo as well, which can be found via a simple Google search or on Youtube.
Another epic fact about the lake is that the X-Files episode Conduit was based on the lake (called Lake Okobogee) although it wasn’t actually filmed at lake Okoboji itself but instead at Buntzen Lake in British Columbia.
As always, I like to try and round this off with an interesting haunted spot in the state and this time is no different. And straight away the one I want to talk about is another that has been featured on Ghost Adventures, the best paranormal investigative program there is (no bias). I am talking about the Villisca Ax Murder House located in the town of Villisca.
It was on a tragic evening-early morning between June 9th-10th 1912 when a horrific set of murders took place at this house that remain unsolved until this day. 8 were killed at the house, 6 of whom were of the Moore family and two-house guests, six of those who were killed were merely children including the two guests, the other two were the mother and father of the Moore children. They had been killed by a vicious ax blow to the head.
An investigation of the murders possibly found that chillingly, the murderer or murderers may have quietly waited in the attic until the family and two guests had gone to sleep due to the presence of cigarette buds up there. The ax’s sharp side had only been used on the father, while the blunt side had been used to bludgeon the rest to death.
Such disgusting barbarity is scary to think of. There have been numerous suspects and theories over who could have done it and why, but no one was definitely convicted of the crime and thus it still remains unsolved until this day. Creepily the killer also covered up all the mirrors in the house and then randomly made a meal which wasn’t eaten.
Of course, such terrible actions leave many to believe that the house is now haunted by the victims of the attacker/s and possibly even darker things that have been attracted by it as well. Such reported paranormal activity includes all the usual apparitions, shadows, footsteps, disembodied voices, things moving by themselves, doors closing/slamming by themselves, random feelings of dread, cold spots and even physical attacks from unseen forces, such as scratches.
The house was bought by Martha Linn in 1994 who restored it to what it looked like back in 1912… but why you may ask? Well so it could be turned into a tourist attraction, seems pretty grim and macabre to turn a place of tragedy such as that into a tourist attraction, but that is what has happened and so people who want to learn more on the murders or who want to potentially experience some paranormal phenomena, it is a place that can be added to your list to check out. Some people have even paid to sleep and experience the night there… note that this place has no plumbing or electricity.
From further research it appears previous occupants of the house never mentioned experiencing any paranormal activity which leaves two possibilities from that, either they did and they just didn’t want to bring it up for fear of being ridiculed or second, they actually didn’t experience anything, which then brings me to my next theory.
When it was turned into a tourist attraction naturally the notion of it being haunted would come up at some point in association with the history and murders, and so it could be a thing to consider that these tourists themselves have willed the haunting in from dark spirits, not simply by believing the place is haunted but possibly due to the usage of things such as Ouija boards. It could potentially be that, or perhaps it is just superstition and over-alertness from the rumors and the place isn’t actually haunted, who knows.
And that’s strange Iowa for you, I am quite surprised how much the state has to offer in the paranormal and unexplained realm. Next up we will be looking at the strange and the unexplained in Missouri.
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