Tuttle Bottoms monster

Tuttle Bottoms monster Category Abominable swamp slob Proposed scientific names Other names Country reported United States First reported • 1963 Prominent investigators • Virgil Smith

The Tuttle Bottoms monster was an abominable swamp slob reported from Saline County, Illinois, in the United States, described as a hairy, often-bipedal animal resembling an anteater or a bear. Although it has been considered a bigfoot-like creature, according to cryptozoologist Virgil Smith, evidence indicates that it was probably a released giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla).

Attestations

The swamps of the U.S. Midwest, and Illinois in particular, are a common source of reports of cryptohominids which Fortean John Keel termed abominable swamp slobs, which are sometimes regarded as skunk apes, but also include more distinct creatures such as the Enfield monster. The Tuttle Bottoms monster was specifically reported from bottomlands around the Bankston Fork river and the northwestern outskirts of Harrisburg, in Saline County, part of the "Little Egypt" region of southern Illinois.

Paranormal investigator Bruce L. Cline claims that reports of the Tuttle Bottoms monster began in the 1960s, when people driving Dorris Heights Road began to report sightings of "a large furry animal that resembled an overgrown anteater" or "a large bear" to the local police department. A report quoted from the Harrisburg Daily Register (6 August 1963), on the authority of Saline County Sheriff James L. Thompson, describes local youths forming armed hunting parties to search for "a monster loose in the bottoms," "eight feet long, four feet high and had a nose like an anteater." Other accounts allegedly came from hunters and farmers in the swamplands. Harrisburg Police Chief Gary Crabtree reportedly announced in 1999 that his department had received up to fifty reports of "some kind of beast lurking in the area northwest of Harrisburg" at the beginning of his career around 1971. It was generally described as a hairy animal with a long snout, compared to that of an anteater, and was variably said to walk either bipedally or quadrupedally.

Virgil Smith, a local cryptozoologist who founded an organisation called Shadows of the Shawnee, spent around ten years researching the Tuttle Bottoms monster case. Smith claims that a former employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture admitted that his department had launched an investigation into the Tuttle Bottoms monster. The monster remains well-known in Saline County.

Sightings

In 2010, following an appeal made by Virgil Smith for more recent reports of the Tuttle Bottoms monster, a citizen of Eldorado, also in Saline County, wrote to the Harrisburg Register claiming that she had seen the monster several times, although she requested anonymity. The woman claimed that she and her friends sometimes saw it "near the bridge on that road," and described it as an enormous cat-like creature of humanoid form, with "fingers," pricked ears, a large snout, and the ability to walk and run both quadrupedally and bipedally. She thought it resembled a werewolf more than anything else, although its large-snouted face was less human.

Theories

According to Virgil Smith, the Tuttle Bottoms monster was probably a released giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla; CC BY-SA 2.0).

Smith claimed in 2010 that the monster could have been "an actual animal released by the federal government," which had since died, but did not elaborate due to a lack of further evidence. Interviewed in 2022, he explained that he had discovered that a Mount Vernon zoo, in neighbouring Jefferson County, had been shut down by federal investigators around the time of the Harrisburg sightings. The zoo's unidentified owner was ordered to rehome his animals within two days, but, according to friends and family interviewed by Smith, he instead released them in various parts of southern Illinois. One of the animals he released was allegedly "a giant anteater from Africa," the description of which Smith feels matches the Tuttle Bottoms monster.

The giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), to which the Tuttle Bottoms monster had several times been compared, is found only in South and Central America, never having ranged beyond southern Mexico, but the aardvark (Orycteropus afer), which is found in Africa, is also sometimes called an anteater. Both animals are capable of assuming a bipedal stance, but only the giant anteater is known to inhabit wetlands; the anteater is also the larger of the two, although it does not reach the alleged dimensions given in the 1963 report. Citing his former Department of Agriculture contact, Smith believes that an old orangutan (Pongo sp.) released at the same time could have been responsible for contemporaneous sightings of another abominable swamp slob, an inquisitive-seeming bipedal primate reported from the swamps of Massac County, which has sometimes been lumped together with the Tuttle Bottoms monster.