Dark Midwest: Issue 2

In September 1988, two 13-year-old boys of La Grange Park, Il, discovered an abandoned storm cellar in Bemis Woods. W

ithin, they found an empty shelter and a hatch leading to a pit of unknown depth.

When they returned the next day, they discovered a previously unseen trail of “clawed human-sized footprints” as if something had since exited the pit.

In the late 1800s, the McAllistairs were considered the “most evil clan” of Illinois. Ten murderers, horse thieves, and kidnappers were buried in a family cemetery near Murboro, Il.

In 1915, a series of tornadoes struck the area, ripping out every gravestone in the cemetery and leveling the property.

The site of the cemetery has been lost to time, though it’s believed part of what is now downtown Murboro is built upon the bodies of the “most evil clan of Illinois.”

“The Ghost Zoo” is a copse of woods near Zale Elementary in Westfield, MO.

For decades, children have reported faint and unexplained exotic animal noises beckoning from the nearby trees.

It is also the site of the “Coliseum Circus Disaster” of 1888. A caravan of carnival wagons was swept away in a flash flood. Two animal wranglers drowned trying to free their animals from their cages.

It was reported that they nearly succeeded, but no onlookers would help the carnival men from the water.

In 1960, hiker Jed Griffin became lost in the Shawnee National Forest. After two weeks without a significant food source, he discovered and fed off a swarm of periodical millipedes rising from the forest floor. He found his way back to civilization and reunited with his wife.

Within days he fell ill and died. His wife followed shortly. Doctors believed Griffin had contracted and spread a fatal and novel virus from the millipedes.

In 1983, a private funicular connecting a Dune Acres, Indiana, beachside house to a boating dock burst into flames and hurtled down the grade into the dock, crushing a boat and causing a second explosion.

Only Jonah Vanger, the homeowner, was killed—or so authorities believed. A decade later, evidence surfaced that indicated Vanger had elaborately faked his death and disappeared into Europe.

So whose body had been found in the funicular wreckage? While it is still unknown, there is evidence Vanger coerced a transient man from Gary, Indiana, to be in the funicular at the time.

A private search throughout Europe for Vanger continues today.

The Beast of Bray Road is a canine or bear-like creature believed to inhabit within or near southern Wisconsin.

First reported in 1936 by Mark Shackleman, a watchman at St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children, the creature was alleged to be seen digging at burial mounds over two nights.

It is said to be fanged, humanoid, and up to 7 feet tall when standing. Animal injuries, property damage, and mysterious threatening encounters have been ascribed to “the beast.”

A column of airspace above Heracles National Lab in Darien, Il, is notoriously and inexplicably deadly for birds—but it also seems to attract them.

In the lab’s early days, heavily concentrated flocks of regional birds would descend on the area in waves. It became necessary to hire more groundskeeping personnel to keep up with dead animal cleanup.

Investigations never concluded what attracted and killed the birds. Today, birds more generally avoid the lab.

“The Animal Skin Man” was a mysterious and legendary figure who roamed Kentucky and Illinois in the late 1800s.

Little was known about him other than he seemed to only speak a little French and he wore a suit of self-made heavy furs and leathers. He vanished in 1905, but several caves or “dens” thought to have been his have been found. In 1915, a number of his skins were discovered and analyzed. At least some quantity of human skin and bones were used in his clothes.

In the 50s, criminology students at Southern Illinois University compared The Animal Skin Man’s known routes to the last known locations of a dozen missing persons (all healthy adult men) throughout the region and concluded The Animal Skin Man could have been responsible for each of their disappearances.

In 1999, a home explosion claimed the life of Morristown, KY, resident Michael Grimm.

Grimm—it was later revealed—was actually Kevin Liston, a former Chicago police officer living under the Witness Protection Program. Liston had been a member—some say leader—of “The Shop,” a brutal and corrupt circle of officers engaged in murder-for-hire activities throughout Chicagoland over years.

Liston’s key testimony against The Shop resulted in multiple convictions and four life sentences.

Though no arrests were ever made, it has long been understood that Liston’s murder was payback ordered from within prison by The Shop.

The Churning Waters religious organization, headquartered in Watertower, MO, has long been a source of strange and troubling rumors. Beginning in 1950, the group spread into towns and cities throughout the Midwest.

Offices of theirs in Chicago in particular have been linked with human and narcotics trafficking. No formal charges were ever brought against the group during this period of expansion. This was long assumed to be due to their close ties to city political leaders.

Sixteen judges, aldermen, and union leaders have been associated with the group. Notably, most of them seem to have lost a number of fingers over the years. Many were attributed to simple accidents. Others have never been publicly explained.

In the late 1700s, the river pirates of Southern Illinois terrorized traffic on the Ohio River.

The pirates operated out of caves, raiding passing boats and taking innocents captive—often just to strip them naked, blindfold, and push them from the cliffs. Many pirates were cleared out by mercenary bands led by Christopher Woods, a retired Navy captain.

After exploring one cave, Woods found loot, weapons, bones, and a mysterious altar seemingly dedicated to some unknown reptile.

To date, 110 slot machines have been found in Lake Como, WI. They are understood to have all come from local prohibition-era casinos and speakeasies, including “The Arrow,” the infamous underground den where gangster Francis Valentine slit an enemy’s throat at a poker table, then stood, calmly moved to the bar, and ordered a drink. After a beat, the party was said to carry on while the body was removed and the table cleaned.

Adam’s Hot Stuff near Porter, IN, is a rural roadside biker bar long associated with the Minotaurs Outlaw Motorcycle Gang.

While the bar and restaurant is open to the public, a second bar and meeting room in the back is not. There, one can find an enormous chest piece tattoo—still on a giant swath of human skin—under glass.

It is the prized preserved skin of Minotaurs’ founder Bruce Hazer, who was killed in 1965. His murder has gone unsolved.

Of all the shipwrecks in Lake Geneva, the vessel freighted with the darkest history may be the dinghy that was launched off Queen Island in 1930 to be sunk with a single soul aboard: the final Sin Eater of Queen Island.

The pariah—long a resident and integral part of the small community—was finally cast from the population and set afire.

Sin Eaters were used as semi-religious mystics for generations on the island until the practice finally and permanently fell out of favor.

W.K. Traeger owned, managed, and performed at a small magician’s theater in the vacation town of Lake Baldy, IN.

After his suspicious passing in 1980, it was learned that he’d been involved with (or extorted by) the local chapter of the Minotaurs Outlaw Motorcycle Club.

For years, he had used his federal ATF permit to purchase explosives at volumes far higher than what was necessary for his small magic acts. Those materials are known to have passed directly to the club.

During the days after the Southern Illinois Saluki Hiking Club of ’04 failed to return from their weekend expedition, local authorities mobilized a large-area search of the Giant City State Park woods but never located any sign of the eight-person team.

Three years later, all of the team members' bodies were discovered at the site of a long-abandoned teachers’ college within the woods—a location that had been previously heavily searched.

Each body lay at the foot of the clocktower, the site where eight students had thrown themselves (or been thrown) a century earlier.

William Short, “The Snake Man” of Potter, Michigan, was a young man who tried to maximally modify his appearance through heavy body and face tattoos and self-mutilation to become maximally serpent-like.

He has not been seen or heard from since he disappeared into the swamps of an upper peninsula forest in 1990.

However, in 1995, a duffel bag washed up on a nearby beach containing two human legs with tattoos known to match Short’s.

Circles of freighthoppers in the early 20th century spoke with fear and reverence of “Mr. Heat”—an enigmatic traveler with strange facial brands who was often said to be in multiple places at once and believed to possess hypnotic powers.

Mr. Heat was widely believed to be responsible for either kidnapping or persuading dozens of women throughout the Midwest to leave their lives and join him on passing train cars, never to be seen again.

A disastrous 1940 chemical fire in a railyard in Pact, Michigan, was said to be the result of a bloody battle between Mr. Heat and freight line security agents who attempted to take the mysterious figure on directly.

Ten agents or “bulls” died, and Mr. Heat vanished, though the very occasional rumor or alleged sighting cropped up over the next decades until his legend all but burned out.

The Public Library of La Grange, Il, is built on the site of a late-19th century house fire.

Friendly ghosts are widely believed to haunt the children’s library in particular. They are said to often leave favorite books out at night. What is less well known is that for decades the librarians have left open journals out at night for the ghosts to “sign” if they wish.

Though many notebooks have been filled, the librarians have never shared what messages have been left.

The Martin Comstock Teachers College of Southern Illinois was closed and abandoned in 1940.

In 2002, amateur urban explorers found and mapped at least twelve miles of mysterious tunnels beneath the dilapidated campus.

Their larger purpose is unknown, though one particular chamber was clearly used as some kind of holding cell.

Scratchings of text on the walls are mostly illegible, though the phrase “I’m sorry” is clearly repeated dozens of times.