Dark Midwest: Issue 3

According to legend, corn farmer Adam Brennan of Plainfield, Iowa, found himself under attack from a swarm of “strange and oily locusts” in 1847.

The locusts allegedly “spread a vile and burning acid that cut through everything-leather, wood, my very hand.”

Brennan defended his family and farm against the sudden onslaught until all hope seemed lost.

It was then that his wife Bathsheba thought to wrap axes and tools in bedsheets, soak them in the acid, and fight back.

The ploy worked. The locusts were repelled by their own acid and never seen again.

A previously undiscovered species of venomous pack-hunting snakes was allegedly discovered in the caves of Southern Illinois in the late 18th century.

According to folklorists and anthropologists from the University of Chicago, these “black as obsidian serpents demonstrate coordinated strategy to entrap and strike larger prey such as bison and vultures… The locals speak of a recent incident in which a carriage of trained circus birds was lost to a wave of thinking snakes.”

The town of Carterville, IL, has long been the home of the legendary “Wrought Iron Hounds.”

A pack of dogs as “transparent as mist but material as iron” have roamed the small town for decades, according to locals.

Vicious and lethal maulings have been ascribed to the creatures. Notably, every victim was a would-be criminal. A common phrase in the region: “Do your evil outside of Carterville.”

The residents seem quite comfortable with their guardian “Wrought Iron Hounds.”

The Geo-Dynamics Institute (GDI) is a private university, town and “utopian” compound located in a remote and otherwise empty corner of Southern Illinois.

Surrounded by miles of private farmland, the dozens of red brick GDI buildings stand like a “ghost city” on the desolate landscape.

Though little is known about the GDI, it is documented that the remote compound has received diplomatic visitors from Russia, Iran and North Korea regularly since at least the 70s.

The GDI has never provided a reason for these visits or even publicly acknowledged them.

A human skeleton was found hanging by its wrists from a tree in Starved Rock National Park, Il, in April of 1998. Authorities concluded it had been there all winter. The body was never identified.

The circumstances matched, precisely, eleven similar discoveries across the globe that decade including locations as close as Michigan and as far as eastern China.

A little-known 99-mile stretch of Route 66 actually passes underground through a region of Missouri and Illinois.

The definitive reason for the subterranean portion is lost to history but explanations include engineering errors and efforts to avoid unincorporated towns that have since moved or failed.

Because “The Route”–as some locals call it–is both remote and often forgotten, it is rumored to host entire communities of criminals, fugitives and literal underground cultures.

The Faner Clan is one of the few known groups to permanently reside in “The Route”-a subterranean stretch of Route 66 running beneath parts of the Midwest.

Originally a successful family of rural MO lawyers and politicians, the Faners were drawn into The Route over a generation during a prolonged legal battle with a several mining companies in the 1940s.

Today, the Faners are never seen in public and synonymous with kidnapping, drug trafficking and strange local mythology.

Hundreds of eyewitnesses attested to the strange appearance of gigantic black smoke rings in the skies over Carbondale, Murphysboro and Carterville, Il, in 2008.

The rings moved against the wind, linked in “a triskelion” configuration and rotated rapidly for more than half an hour before rising and dissipating.

Officially, the event was explained as a hoax committed by a clever local rocketry club.

Though no one in the area knows of any local rocketry clubs.

The sender signed his letters “Dispositor.”

Throughout the 1980s, small town newspapers across central and southern Illinois received hundreds of feverish conspiracy-themed letters mailed from “Dispositor.”

Though they were outlandish and dismissible, a growing number of researchers believe the letters may have functioned as one-way dispatches to covert Russian agents within the US tied to a rumored plot to cause an “American Chernobyl” in the heartland.

Willow McGhee of Braverton, MI–now a 36-year-old local teacher–had a notable early childhood. As a toddler, she would often disappear from her parents’ sight and reappear almost instantly in seemingly impossible locations: a closed garage, atop the roof, a neighbor’s kitchen.

Such “shifts” were witnessed by many neighbors. Willow herself had no explanation.

The incidents occurred at least 60 times but stopped altogether soon after her 7th birthday. She does worry they will resume.

The corner of Westers and Juliet Road in the small town of Shannon, MN, was the site of a still-unexplained event in May 1980.

Over the course of the day, multiple people “slipped” through “some kind of unseen wall” and vanished. There were 6 victims in total, of a wide range of ages, no relation. The corner was closed off by police and investigated.

The 6 residents have never been seen or heard from again. The site was eventually reopened though many locals still avoid it.

The Harrison Steel Mill of Frontier, IN, was the site of a bizarre cult takeover in 1949.

Four members of the Churning Waters cult terrorized the front office of the factory and took seven workers hostage for a period of three days.

No one knows what happened in that office during that time. The hostages were eventually released and the attackers utterly vanished.

Over the years, the former hostages never spoke a word about their experience.

They eventually all left their families and moved in with one another in a large house on a small island on Lake Michigan where they spent the rest of their lives in isolation.

Though the house eventually burned down, descendants of “the Harrison 7” still visit the island seeking clues or insights into their parents and grandparents' lives.

“The Heathendom House” of Neptune, Illinois, is a prohibition-era shelter formerly used by bootleggers and later, allegedly, area occultists.

The house was swept over by a rerouted river in 1970 but the submerged ruins became something of a destination for hobbyist divers.

Over the years, a number of discoveries have been made within the collapsed structure: casks of alcohol, alchemical equipment and dozens of unidentified and human skeletons bound in chains.

The legend of “The Big Muddy Monster” of Southern Illinois was given new life in 1999, when Murphysboro, IL, residents Luke and Kim Karver returned home late one night to the alarmed barking of their dog.

Their pet clearly sensed something in the woods behind the home.

Luke and Kim investigated and found massive footprints and an overpowering foul smell.

They returned to their house to find their car overturned and their dog cowering silently in the basement.

When Minotaurs Outlaw Motorcycle Club Sargent-at-Arms Simon Knox went to prison for robbery in 2015, his pit bull pet Bigguns wound up in a Wisconsin animal shelter, and eventually the home of a local ER doctor Kevin Michelson.

When Knox was released in 2020, he found and tried to collect the dog from Dr. Michelson, who refused.

Knox attempted to violently steal the animal, Bigguns attacked and Knox was grievously injured.

He was successfully treated onsite by Dr. Michelson.

Jonathon Mellwin, proprietor of Mellwin’s Occult Museum in Channton, IN, died naturally at home in May 1980.

His daughter’s troubled and allegedly abusive ex-husband has received curse objects known to come from the museum in the mail from an anonymous sender annually since.

Professor Sean McCleod of Farmington, Indiana, disappeared from a group camping trip in 1950.

McCleod is one of four known unrelated disappearances in the local woods.

Sam Worder, president of the local historical society, believes he has identified each of the missing individuals in several century-old photographs from the area.

He has no explanation but believes each of those missing-and maybe more-somehow slipped from their present and became trapped in previous eras.

Wendy Greener was a respected comptroller for the sleepy little town of Hammer, Il, for 28 years until her career came to an inglorious end when she was arrested for embezzlement in 2017.

Ultimately, Greener pled guilty to a number of financial crimes that spanned decades, including funneling nearly $30m of city funds into her own horse breeding business.

She served only eight of her 20-year sentence before being released to her father’s luxurious ranch for home confinement.

Hundreds of “lost film” reels were discovered-inexplicably-in an abandoned office within a chamber of a closed Southern Illinois coal mine in 1992.

Films discovered there include The Mountain Eagle by Hitchcock, Ten Years in Manitoba by James Freer and Heart Trouble by Harry Langdon.

Two decades later, Southern Illinois University researchers returned to the site and discovered more films that had either escaped notice in 1992 or been placed there since by parties unknown.

The “Waterside Welcomer” newspaper office in Waterside, MI, was a small two-room storefront building. It had stood for more than 150 years until it was finally destroyed by a mysterious fire in 2016.

During the teardown, a secret sub-basement room was discovered to contain a stout Carbondale iron safe.

After weeks of effort, authorities were able to open the safe but unfortunately whatever large porcelain item it contained was destroyed in the process.

The shards-white and ornately decorated-were donated to the local historical society who worked to reassemble and restore the vase over years.

Shortly after releasing an estimate that their work was nearly complete, the society abruptly canceled the effort.

No full explanation has ever been given, though one former member of the historical society moved out of town and allegedly told neighbors the vase had not been a vase at all but “a cage that should never have been opened.”

In May, 1899, in the small Northern Illinois town of Brell, IL, Mayor Jon Goer entered his 2nd floor office after lunch and was never seen again. It was unclear how or why the 52yo family man vanished.

One year later, three inmates escaped the Mason’s Institute for the Insane in Freeport, MO, and were captured after a six-day manhunt. One of those escapees claimed to be Mayor Goer.

He told police a bizarre and often incoherent story of capture and imprisonment by an unknown circle of enemies he only referred to as “the Collectors.”

Shortly after his return to the institute, the escapee was reportedly lobotomized and never seen by Goer’s family or attorneys who repeatedly requested an interview and further explanation.

A pack of rabid gray wolves recently terrorized a Boy Scout troop camping on Constellation Isle off the coast of Northern Michigan.

Over the course of one long night, the boys (ages 12–15 and a single adult scout master) sheltered in a boathouse against the manic animals.

They finally defeated the four wolves with makeshift weapons of boat rudders and oars before escaping onto a single boat and escaping out onto the lake.