Short Stuff: The Enfield Monster

In April 1973, a boy named Greg Garrett was catching lightning bugs near his home in Enfield, Illinois, when he came running back inside hysterical. His tennis shoes were shredded, and he told his parents he had seen a monster: four or five feet tall, with tiny clawed arms, slimy gray skin, three legs with claws, and red eyes the size of flashlights. His parents didn’t believe him, but after a half hour of trying to get him to crack, he never did. That night kicked off one of the more peculiar cryptid scares of the 1970s—the Enfield Monster.

The McDaniel Sighting and the Hunt

The story quickly spread to a neighbor, Henry McDaniel, whose own children had been out that night. McDaniel heard scratching at his door, opened it, and saw the creature. He slammed the door, grabbed a .22 pistol and a flashlight, and fired. He said he hit it—the thing hissed like a wildcat—and then bounded away, covering about 75 feet in three hops, thanks to its third leg. McDaniel called the police, and Illinois state troopers arrived to search. They didn’t find the monster, but they did find fresh scratch marks on the siding of the house and three-toed footprints with claw marks, two about four inches wide and one slightly smaller.