Cryptids of Indiana

Apparently bigfoot isn't the only cryptid being reported in Indiana. Check out this article that covers some of the other mystery creatures reported in the state.

Wild Men

While most Bigfoot reports come out of the country’s northwest corner, Indiana isn’t immune from stories of encounters with large, hairy humanoid creatures.

A Dec. 30, 1839, article in a Pennsylvania newspaper tells of a 4-foot-tall “wild child” covered in light brown hair running among the hills in Michigan City, Indiana. Another wild child was sought by a posse of 300 in June of 1860 in Carroll County. And, in 1937, an animal described as a “monster hairy ape,” “giant sloth” and “cross between a sloth and ape” was believed to be stalking the Booneville area.

Modern-day reports persist, especially in the areas near Crosley State Fish and Wildlife Area, where visitors to the woods report seeing the “Crosley Monster,” an 8-foot-tall, hairy bipedal creature whose hideous howls will stop you in your tracks.

Mud Mermaids

Indiana is without an oceanic coastline, making it quite a stretch that Hoosiers would see a mermaid, the beautiful (or hideous, depending on the teller of the tale) half-human, half-fish cryptids of the sea.

But in 1894, two Ohio newspapers reported sightings of the creature on the Ohio River near Vevay, Indiana. These “mud mermaids” had apparently taken up residence on a sand bar in the river. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the creatures were purported to be “about five feet in length” with a “yellowish” color and “the extremities resemble hands and are webbed and furnished with sharp claws.” The mermaid was devoid of hair but had ears that were “sharp-pointed and stand up like those of a dog.”

Meshekenabek

Apparently, Indiana has a Loch Ness monster of its own, with reports dating far back in the traditions of the Native Americans that inhabited the lands near Rochester. An August 1838 article in the Logansport Telegraph describes a monster, known to the Potawatomi as the Meshekenabek, in Lake Manitou, that was estimated to be 60 feet long with a noggin shaped like a cow’s head about 3 feet across and a “dingy” color with bright yellow spots. There was apparently a “well-known tradition of the Indians respecting the Monster in ‘Devil’s Lake.’”

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