10 Monsters People Claim Are Real (That Totally Don't Exist)

4. The Brooksville Monster

Brooksville Monster The summer of 1959 was not a good time to live in the city of Brooksville, For a brief period, locals were terrified by stories of an enormous 2.7-meter (9 foot) tall monster (with huge, glowing eyes, no less) roaming the area. Allegedly, the monster hunted only at night and, fearing for the safety of their families, a number of armed men went in search of the strange beast. Some even claimed to have shot at it. Eventually, two local reporters were able to expose the story as a hoax when a young housewife, Mrs. Peggy Thomas, brazenly owned up to scaring half the town sh*tless for weeks on end. In the resultant story, charmingly entitled €˜Just a Housewife€™s Gag€™ (that ran in the News Tribune on July 27th 1959) Mr. Thomas€™ sociopathic spouse revealed that, for unimaginable reasons of her own, she had created the illusion of the monster as a joke. First, Mrs. Thomas revealed, she had tied two pine trees together and covered them with a sheet, making the monster€™s body, then, she€™d attached a battery-powered torch to a cow€™s skull to create a scary head complete with glowing eyes. She had then covered her creation with moss, just to make it look more authentic. Finally, Peggy tied a long rope between two trees and, using a fishing line, pulled the €˜creature€™ across it, creating the effect of a gargantuan, moss-covered beast stomping over the tree lines. It has been suggested by some that Mrs. Thomas€™ monster could have been an early inspiration for the rash of sightings of Florida€™s own Bigfoot, the Skunk Ape, which is said to be a foul smelling creature that lives in swamps. The Brooksville Monster does bear some passing similarities with the Skunk Ape, it must be said. In addition, interested parties should note that the Skunk Ape was only widely reported from the 1960€™s onwards... After all the havoc she had caused, the crazy housewife did not seem at all bothered by the fact that she could very easily have been shot in the process of creating this insane (yet also hilarious) practical joke.
 
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I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction. I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long! If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it). I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work. Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that! Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?) Latcho Drom, - CQ