Tuttle Bottoms Monster

Around 11 p.m. on August 5, 1963, Saline County Sheriff James L. Thompson was driving through Tuttle Bottoms, west of Harrisburg, when he ran across a young man carrying a rifle. The young man told him there was a monster loose in the bottoms and described a creature eight feet long, four feet high, with a nose like an anteater’s. Later that night, Thompson found about a dozen boys armed with shotguns searching for it and sent them home. He did not report seeing the animal himself.

The Harrisburg Daily Register ran the story on August 6, describing the sheriff’s “busy night last night,” in what seems to be the first report of what would become the Tuttle Bottoms Monster.

Tuttle Bottoms is a broad area of low-lying bottomland northwest of Harrisburg along the Middle Fork Saline River watershed. It includes wooded waterways, fields, drainage channels, and mining-altered land. In the 1960s it was popular with local teens seeking seclusion.

The earliest reports came from teenagers and hunters who called police after seeing something unusual. Police reports quoted in the Daily Register described “a large furry animal that resembled an overgrown anteater.” The legend remained familiar to Saline County residents for decades.

Former Harrisburg Police Chief Gary Crabtree told the Daily Register his department received about 50 reports over 28 years. Callers described creatures on both two and four legs; most mentioned hair and a long anteater-like snout.

Local resident Virgil Smith told the Register in 2010 that the creature was not a monster out of myth but an actual animal “released by the federal government” that has long since died. He described it as a hairy primate on two legs, unafraid of humans, and said one couple reported it walked right up to them. Smith also said a former employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture confided that the department had launched a private investigation into the Tuttle Bottoms Monster. His story changed later. In a 2019 Southern Illinoisan interview, Smith said a Mount Vernon zoo had been closed and its owner released some animals, including a giant anteater, and he tied an orangutan from the same zoo to reports in Massac County.

A separate 2010 account described encounters with a creature over six feet tall with pointed ears, a human face, and blue-white glowing eyes that could climb, leap, and follow vehicles but lacked the large snout associated with the Tuttle Bottoms Monster. This may be a different creature claim attached to the legend by location.

The most practical explanation is an escaped giant anteater. But they are native to Central and South America and poorly adapted to freezing temperatures, which means Illinois winters would be a serious survival challenge. Mount Vernon did have a municipal zoo that closed during the 1950s, but according to Lair of Mythics, no zoo inventory, release record or contemporary report confirms that a giant anteater was ever released in Tuttle Bottoms.

No verified photograph, track, hair, tissue, cast or remains has turned up. In October 2019 a student group explored Tuttle Bottoms but reported no unusual sightings.