The Honey Island Swamp sits between the Pearl River and the West Pearl in southeastern Louisiana, about seventy thousand acres of cypress, black water and alligators. Locals have a name for what else lives in there. The Cajuns called it the Letiche. Everyone else calls it the Honey Island Swamp Monster.
The modern story begins in 1963 with Harlan Ford, a retired air traffic controller who hunted and fished the swamp for years. He and a friend reported a creature seven feet tall, covered in dingy gray hair, with yellow eyes set wide in its face, standing over a dead boar whose throat had been torn out.
In 1974 Ford came back with plaster. He and a companion found tracks in the mud and cast them. The prints were unlike anything the state had seen. Three toes with webbing between them, and about a foot long. Ford kept hunting the thing until he died in 1980. After his death his family found a reel of Super 8 film among his belongings that appears to show a large figure moving through the trees.
The story went national in the late 1970s, and the swamp has not been quiet since. Wildlife officers call the tracks a hoax, probably made with a carved wooden stamp.
I have been in swamps like that one. The dark comes down fast and the sounds do not match anything you can name.
Makes you wonder what has been living there longer than any of us.
Alligator tracks and a good story, or a creature the Cajuns knew by name?
What do you think about this? The Dropa Stones, 716 grooved stone discs said to be found in Chinese caves in 1938 beside small bodied skeletons, telling of a crash 12,000 years ago. The 1978 book that spread the story was admitted to be a hoax. Pure fiction, or a truth wrapped in lies?
What do you think about this? The Paiute of Nevada told of red haired giants they trapped in a cave and burned, written down in 1883. In 1911 miners near Lovelock opened a cave and found red haired mummies and a layer of ash. Legend that matched a cave, or memory of real enemies?
What do you think about this? In 1987 a Wisconsin family bought a used bunk bed. Within weeks their kids were sick, a radio changed stations by itself, and a chair rocked with no one in it. They fled in the night in 1988 and burned the bed. Old house, or something that came with it?
What do you think about this? In 1904 an American dredged the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá and pulled up gold disks, jade, wooden idols and the bones of more than 200 people, many of them children. The Maya called such wells doorways to the underworld. Prayers for rain, or an open door?
What do you think about this? Norse settlers lived in Greenland for nearly 500 years, with farms, a cathedral and a bishop. The last record is a wedding at Hvalsey church on Sept 16, 1408. Then nothing. The church still stands, roofless and empty. Starved out, or walked away?
What do you think about this? In 1615 a Spanish pearl ship is said to have sailed into an inland sea that then dried up. In 1870 a Los Angeles paper reported its hull found in the desert near the Salton Sea. Every searcher since has lost it to the sand. Mirage, or a galleon in the dunes?
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