Читать книгу Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside - Brad Steiger - Страница 22

In January 1954, experienced hunters by the hundreds arrived to trek through the swamp outside of Bladenboro, North Carolina, in search of the Vampire Cat that had been ripping people’s prize hounds to bloody shreds.

The terror began on New Year’s Eve, 1953, when Johnny Vause found two of his dogs “torn to ribbons and crushed.” Everybody knew that there was no animal anywhere near the small mill town that could work such terrible carnage on two big and healthy dogs.

Within a few days, two more pairs of dogs were killed in a similar fashion, but this time it appeared that their blood had been drained by the thing that had killed them.

Chief of police Roy Fores informed Mayor W.G. Fussell that something mighty strange was going on near the swamp, and Fussell decided that the citizenry needed to be warned. If it were big healthy dogs being torn to ribbons then, how long would it be before the beast claimed its first human victims?

On January 5, 1954, the Wilmington Morning Star ran a front-page story warning that “Vampire Tendencies Found in Bladenboro’s Monsters.” That night people began to walk cautiously and look warily over their shoulders if they had to go out after dark.

There was no question that area residents were on edge, and numerous reports came in to the police and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission demanding the capture or the killing of the Vampire Cat. Increasingly, people began to hear strange noises and to report shadowy figures moving near the swamp at night.

No one in the police force or the Wildlife Resources Commission denied that the witnesses were seeing something that they deemed out of the ordinary, but none of the official investigations yielded any hair, tracks, droppings, or any physical evidence of any kind. Some livestock was lost, but in each case when the authorities investigated the slaughter the deaths were quite obviously the result of attacks by feral dogs.

Newspaper reporters from around the United States descended on the small community, each journalist hoping to scoop the others with a photograph of the Great Vampire Cat. According to the people in the vicinity of Bladenboro, at least 1,000 hunters arrived to trek through the swamp. One of the men shot a large bobcat, and Mayor Fussell eagerly declared the dreaded monster slain and announced that the danger of attack by a vampire cat had come to an end.

Interestingly, today, over 50 years later, Bladenboro still celebrates “Beast Week,” each year in recognition of the genuine terror that seized the community. A creature that was once feared as a “bloodthirsty shadow-dweller” now precipitates a “Boost the ‘Boro Festival.”

Hiram Hester, a former chairman of the festival, told Monica Holland (The Fayette Observer, March 16, 2008) that the beast was no longer an embarrassment to the townspeople. The people were now really excited about celebrating The Beast of Bladenboro.