A year after my week as the boyfriend of Mary Bock from Roachdale, that town rose to my attention again. As school resumed in the fall of 1972 and I started the sixth grade, word spread around school that there was a monster prowling in Mary’s hometown.
A Mrs. Lou Rogers had first encountered the creature on a night in August, when she heard a growling in her yard and stepped out to see what it was. It was too dark for her to identify the source of the growling, so she went back inside. The growling returned over the next several nights, growing louder each night, filling her with dread.
Her husband tried to get a glimpse of the creature, but all he could see was a large figure rushing into the cornfield.
“We tried to think of a rational explanation, maybe an ape had gotten away from a zoo or circus,” Mrs. Rogers would later report. “It would stand up like a man, but would run on all fours, even bent over on all four feet it was still taller than my husband, and it stank, like rotten garbage.”
On the night of August 22, Carter Burdine and his uncle Bill Burdine discovered the slaughtered remains of 60 chickens on Carter’s farm, forming a trail from the coop to the front yard. The chickens had not been eaten – just ripped apart.
The town marshal was summoned and surveyed the scene, and while they were talking, they heard a sound nearby. The marshal got in his patrol car and slowly rolled down the road beside the farm with Bill Burdine walking behind. A large, dark figure leapt of a ditch, passing in front of Burdine.
“It ran so fast I couldn't get a good look at it in the dark,” he reported. “Whatever it was, it was big. The fence it ran over was mashed all the way to the ground, and you could see where it had trampled the weeds when it ran away.”
After the marshal departed, they saw the creature again, in the chicken coop door. They blasted it with a shotgun, which seemed to have no effect. It had killed another 110 chickens, bringing the death toll to 170.
During the month of August, 36 people reported seeing the creature. A conservation officer later investigated, but came up with nothing. Based on descriptions, the creature was primate-shaped, like Bigfoot; based on its behavior, it was more likely have been a large cougar or similar feline.
Why is he telling us this?
I’m telling you this because this was my first struggle with existential dread. I’d lived a very safe, secure life up to that point; now I’m cowering at night, afraid to even look out my bedroom window, realizing there’s a monster a mere 12 miles away.
The reports from Roachdale faded, and before long the monster passed out of collective mind. Sixth grade proceeded without incident.
But I had now experienced something new – vulnerability – based on something real, not imagined. And faith hadn’t helped even a little bit.
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