Secrets of the City

wait, vampires and werewolves are real? ZIOKS!

stupid dislexia. that’s Z-O-I-K-S. as in scooby snacks.

There was some horrible purple dwarf who used to throw people into Lake Minnetonka –

Oh, wait. I’m thinking of Prince.

Hey, I sent Chris here, so you guyses had better help.

I don’t know any stories and now Kurtis has chided us to be serious and helpful, so I can’t tell you my ridiculous Dutch joke. It’s a good one!

hey, I didn’t say you had to help exclusively.

How are you supposed to seriously comment on something like this?

Monster: John Dillinger.

There was that time when a mothman, shadow person, flying rod, chupacabra, loch ness monster, ghost, alien, unicorn, and I got together to watch Teen Wolf Too. Christopher Leitch was the real monster.

The mosquitoes were so bad last year…

Okay: What is big, and brown, and fierce, and is not a bear?

It’s a bear anyway.

Rat, I think if you know of local legends about monsters they would qualify. I actually don’t know of any, but most regions have a certain amount of folklore. Like NYC has legends about CHUDS and sewer alligators. We should have something like that. If we don’t, we’ll make them up.

Also, Sailor Martin told me there’s a Lake Minnetonka Ness Monster, but he was pretty wasted at the time.

Ha ha ha Jane.

I heard a rumor of a Minneapolis Police Officer who likes to shoot pit bulls for no reason… My neighbor’s dog got shot last week as it was running away from the officer. ‘Sounds like a monster to me!

There is this Minnesota Monster.

I swear to god I am trying to track down an actual monster. I know there is a werewolf creature in northern Minnesota, I think; haven’t found the link yet.

Damn, Max beat me to to the link to Erica’s fresh blog.

I heard there’s a monster under the circle bed…or maybe it was on the circle bed…

I didn’t want to, but Alie made me!  (GRRFL)

I can’t find any concrete stories, but I know northern Minnesota has the Wendigo.

thanks guys for the comments. I like the humor. And any monster story is a good monster story in my book.

This Minnesota artist’s body of work is largely made of bodies — roadkill, to be exact.

One of his creations is “Chulacabra del Ebay.” 

The Chulacabra is a cool monster, but this is the only sighting I know of in Minnesota.

Pehaps because we don’t have enough goats here.

Here’s a serious answer: There’s a legend of a monstrous fish in Lake George in St. Cloud. *shrug* Worth a look at, I guess.

Check back from time to time, Chris. This is the sort of thread that sometimes hits a jackpot a few months after it is posted.

My dad has spotted some sort of pure white, half goat/half deer-like creature on his land in a wooded valley in SE Minnesota. Does that count? He has a photo, but it’s from a distance and pretty fuzzy.

Okay: What is big, and brown, and fierce, and is not a bear?

um…Carl Eller?  I think he was a Viking, not a Bear…right?

there’s an albino squirrel that haunts the grounds of the Golden Valley Country Club. It has been said that if you leave your balls out too long, he will make off with them.

Look up “The M-Files: True Reports of Minnesota’s Unexplained Phenomena” by Jay Rath. Among other sightings and events, it discusses several apparent reports of a Big Foot like creature in northern Minnesota (Apparently, Crookston has proclaimed itself the Bigfoot Capitol) and the infamous Minnesota Iceman (a sordid story if ever there was one). Also, look up stories of the Windigo, much more creepy than Big Foot. Oh, and Lake City has recently been attempting to woo tourists with its newly discovered Lake Pepin Monster, “Pepie.”

My dad used scare me with stories about the Wauwatosa Monster which was a bigfoot like creature that lived on Wauwatosa Island (Boyscout Island) on Lake Minnetonka. However, since I can’t seem to find anything about it on Google, I think he might have been the originator of the legend.

I can’t remember any details of the stories so I’m no help there.

67-68 two hitch-hiking female killers around Duluth Stabbing males that picked them up…..

good point Anony Mouse. Any wierd happenings around minnesota – catastrophic and tragic events – might be a sign of strange monsters. I’m interested in those incidents as well.

I’d be interested in Bigfoot sightings in northern MN. But Crookston? Where would it hide? There are no trees. Something wooded and desolate like Koochiching County would be more believable.

I remember seeing this on the news in the 70`s

“Mysterious circles in a Meeker County,
Minnesota pasture, December 1974.
A mutilated heifer was found dead inside a circle”

Animal mutilations all over Southern Minnesota, then never a mention after, theories abounded, but the phenomemon ceased without an answer.

Well Forepaugh’s has photos of ghosts. Current manager Greg Awada has a photo he claims is most certainly not doctored…

Well, they sunk a cool million into the place. They need something to draw people in.

Two paws are enough to scare me!

There’s also a scary T-Paw on Summit Ave. Boo!

There have been numerous sightings of a bigfoot like creature in the Staples Motley area on the border of Todd and Wadena County. There is also a legen that the sight of the Milford Mine Disaster near Crosby in Crow Wing County is haunted. There was also a legen that the abandoned Riverton High School of Riverton in Crow Wing County was haunted the school has since been destroyed.

Thanks, everyone, for the information. Keep it coming!

Thanks,
Chris

Yeah there used to be this one commercial on tv saying that the goverment was shipping vampires away to a diferent continent but then they stopped dhowing it on tv all of a sudden…

I used to fish off the float just below the Alma damn on the Mississippi. Both Minnesota and Wisconsin fishing licenses were valid there as long as fishing between the railroad tracks running up and down the river in both states. The owner of the float at the time said he saw a fish brought up to the surface of the water next to his float that was at least 12 ft long before the line broke. He was able to estimate its size by looking at the 4′ x 8′ sheets of plywood decking of his float. He said it was big around like maybe a 30 gal. or larger drum. Weight was guessed at well over 300/400 lbs. It was thought to have been a sturgeon, although many times larger than anything known to be at the bottom below the damn. A monster fish anywhere and certainly for that far up the Mississippi.

Chris, you might also want to check out a story I heard about a mountain man skeleton found standing inside a tree in or near Whitewater State Park, perhaps to the north of it. The person in the tree was dressed in the garb of an era a long time ago. He had his musket in the tree next to him. It was guessed that a bad snow storm had come along and he sought shelter in a somewhat hollow tree and he froze to death in while waiting out the storm. In that it was a living tree, it kept growing and eventually encompassed him. My impression was that the skeleton was discovered maybe in the 1950s or 1960s, but certainly no later than the 70s. I heard about this and the other things I’ve mentioned in here back in the mid 1980s. Also in that same area but of course, unrelated, parts of a mastodon were found in one of the coulees also north of Whitewater. Whether the remains were fossilized or not, I don’t know. Water that was coming down the coulee had apparently uncovered the layers limestone, sandstone or whatever else had been covering it.

Chris, oh yes, there is also a story about the wild man of either Dumfries or Theilman, MN. He was supposed to have lived in up in the woods pretty much like a wild animal near one or the other of those two small towns. It seems that his mother had lived in town and she’d put food out on the back porch at night and he’d come down from up in one of the coulees and eat it or take it back up with him. As before, my impression was that this occurred back in the 50s or 60s. I don’t know if he could have been classified as a monster, but I would imagine seeing someone like that who was apparently trying to hide from you way back up in one of the heavily wooded coulees would have been nonetheless pretty scary – particularly in that it’d be the last thing you’d expect to be seeing if you were on a nature hike.

In the mid 1980s there was a Bigfoot sighting one night on Highway 135, halfway between Gilbert and Virginia. It was walking upright in the ditch on the North side of the road. Whatever it was, it was definitely not a black bear. It was just as large or larger a than any bear of Northern Minnesota. In this case, my close relative who at the time lived and now still lives on the Iron Range and within 3 miles of where it was sighted, knows personally the fellow [an avid outdoorsman] who saw it. [Sorry about my damn late-night typo/misspelling in my previous post. I was referring to the Alma "Dam" on the Mississippi River.]

Thanks Mike for the great info. I plan on heading up to Gilbert/Virginia area this summer, to do some Bigfoot investigating for my book. I’d like to chat with your relative, and the man who had the sighting if possible. Please email me offline (chris@cslarsen.com).

Thanks,
Chris

hey i just think you might want 2 no a real story i have a date and location and i havent had the courage 2 go in the woods sense.

Please contact me, re: any information about strange things in Minnesota. I’ve produced the cult film Microwave Massacre and Malibu High (theatrical releases, both), and working now with Complete Media and Video in South Saint Paul. We plan on a series of documentaries in Minnesota. We have distribution through Anthem Pictures.