North Dakota is a US state located in the northern midwestern region of the United States and is bordered with the nation of Canada. It also borders the US states of Montana, South Dakota and Minnesota. The state capital is Bismarck and the largest city is Fargo.
The state like many in the region has a small and sparse population, both 4th out of the other US states. The state’s natural resources, specifically oil, have played a large role in its economy and employment rate, giving it the 2nd lowest unemployment rate out of the other US states behind Hawaii. Agriculture and farming, including the manufacturing of farming equipment and products, also make up a large part of the state’s economy. 90% of the nation’s canola and flaxseed comes from North Dakota and the state leads in a number of other produces.
The KVLY-TV mast can be found here in Blanchard and is the tallest man-made structure in the Western Hemisphere.
Much of North Dakota is made up of the Great Plains, grasslands and Badlands having some hilly areas but also much vastly flat areas.
So, let’s get into some of the paranormal and unexplained stuff of North Dakota. Both the Sasquatch and Thunderbirds have been sighted in the state of North Dakota, with the Thunderbird coming from the legends of many of the Native American tribes that inhabited the northern regions. The Sasquatch is not as common of a sighting in this state as compared with previous states we have visited in this series.
But there are some more localized cryptids out there, a few at least, although many of them are not too well known outside of the state and at least one of them is quite shrouded in legend as well.
The first one is the Miniwashitu, a strange bipedal beast from Native American folklore in the area. It is said to be found along the Missouri River in central North Dakota. It has been described as looking like some kind of Bison standing on two legs, with tough hide and fur on its body, having a single cyclops-like eye and a single horn sticking out of its head above this single eye. It also has hooves on the legs it stands on but human hands on its arms. It has also been described as having spines run up the center of its back.
The creature sounds terrifying to come across I would assume that the Native Americans took the creature seriously and were quite fearful of it. Seeing the creature is said to spell certain death and cause craziness, restlessness and terrible pain until the witness eventually dies.
An author called Melvin Randolph Gilmore wrote about the beast in one of his books in 1921, where he talked about an apparent sighting made by someone. This apparent man gave a similar description of the beast and that when he saw it “everything became dark to him”, he managed to make it home but that he soon after died. Of course, there is absolutely nothing that backs up this story, it is merely a legend, but it is quite scary nonetheless that you could possible see something along the Missouri River in North Dakota and simply just die from that.
Devil’s Lake is the largest natural lake in North Dakota but the 2nd largest body of water overall in the state when taking the man-made Lake Sakakawea into account. The Lake’s ominous name came about due to a mistranslation of a name given to it by the Natives. There are two nearby settlements named after the lake, one directly called Devils Lake and another called Minnewaukan, coming from the Native Dakota words mni (water) and wak’an (pure source/spirit/sacred). The nearby Native American Spirit Lake Reservation is also named after the lake.
There is said to be a water serpent that lives within this lake, believed by Native American’s who called it the Unktehi and settlers who called it the Devils Lake Monster. An account from the New York Sun on October 21st 1894 is said to be one of the earliest and it also gives a good description of the apparent serpent.
In the article it says that the monster has an alligator-like tail and glaring red eyes and a tail that is about 80ft in length, with the creature being a slimy green colour on its scaly skin. The beast has ragged and enormous fins sides and horn-like substances that project from its jaws and trail along in the water of which it can stick them up and bristle them when angered.
It is said to be most active around the month of August and is most likely to show itself during the time that the sunsets and that the light from this sunset can reflect from its eyes and then dart about where ever the creatures looks.
There has been a number of other newspaper reports of the creature as well including a mass sighting report by the Grand Forks Daily Herald on July 21st 1915. Apparently during this incident, the serpent was brazenly basking out on the surface of the lake while stunned locals looked on from multiple different areas.
Such witnesses included businessmen and even a police captain and his wife.
What about aliens and UFOs in North Dakota? Would you expect them to be out in a sparse place such as this? Well apparently, they were and one of these aliens had a very strange description. The incident took place on the night of August 26th 1975 and happened to Sandra Larson, her boyfriend and daughter, Jackie.
They were driving towards the state capital of Bismarck when they would encounter strange rumbling orange orbs approaching their car and the occupants of the car all reported an unusual feeling as if they were stuck in time. After this Sandra found herself in the backseat of the car despite originally driving and the daughter was somehow in the front, both had no knowledge of having moved themselves.
After this the occupants of the car did not feel so well and so they decided to pull over at the next gas station where they then discovered that they had somehow lost an hour of time. It was all clearly the typical hallmarks of a classic alien abduction.
Curious to try and figure out what happened to them, both Sandra and Jackie would go under hypnosis via a phycologist from the University of Wyoming to try and remember what had happened during the hour of time they had lost. During one of the sessions Sandra described being levitated towards one of the strange UFOs and while onboard she received a medical exam from a very bizarre being.
Sandra described the apparent alien as having large, bulging eyes that peered through a head that for whatever reason was covered in wrappings, as if it was some kind of mummy. Stranger yet, she described the being’s arms being made out of jointed strips of metal like some kind of Meccano set and finally its body was described as covered in what Sandra said looked like brown vinyl.
The outlandish description of this being led to it being dubbed the Alien Meccano Mummy.
So just what on Earth happened on that night? Is it merely false memories as hypnosis is not a proven science of extracting lost information? Or is this encounter really as bizarre as is being said? Or is there something more to it?
Well I guess that’s it for North Dakota. To be fair I was not expecting too much from this state as it is one of the states with less attention and I also could not really find any good or exciting haunted place either, that at least personally interested myself. But there are at least a couple of cryptids/legends here and an interesting alien abduction story. I kind of like that this post is a bit shorter than the others as it can be neater and easier to digest for some who prefer a shorter post on this topic.
Next up we will be heading to the opposite twin, South Dakota, and see what they have to offer in the paranormal, cryptid and unexplained realms. Now that I think about it as well it may be better to call these posts “Unexplained (state name)” instead as I think that is better fitting for the topics discussed. That is in fact what I shall do.
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