Their descendants of today still have that quality, and are also generous, fun-loving and not given to stupid foolishness. What follows is the story of a well-known cryptid mystery that occurred in the county during the mid-1950s, with an insider's take on setting some facts straight about the strange phenomena.
The witness to this story about the Beast of Bladenboro is someone I've know about indirectly for decades and personally for the last couple of years. He was a boy living in Bladenboro, North Carolina, in the years 1953-4, when the beast phenomena first occurred.
His parents were well known and influential folks in the county of Bladen, where the small town of Bladenboro is located. He was in a position to later on glean any inside information the mayor, police chief, and other officials received at the time of the attacks and subsequent mayhem. The friend, for obvious reasons, wishes to remain anonymous and will be referred to as Jay.
As a smart picture show exhibitor, it wouldn't have been unusual. The mayor was quoted at the time as saying "A little publicity never hurt a small town" or for that matter the ticket receipts on a horror movie that only started the day the mayor - to diffuse the by then dangerous and out of control situation - proclaimed the crisis over.
Before that day arrived, however, it became alarmingly apparent to the mayor and his police chief that they had a far more important situation on their hands than any booked scary B-movie. In fact, publicity was soon to be the very last thing they wanted coming to town - in any, way, shape or form. And that, too, is a fact. Indeed, fear factor may be a better term for it all.
Back in the 1950s there were newspaper reporters who came through Bladenboro that were known as stringers. They would travel around their assigned areas on the watch for any interesting or newsworthy stories they could wire in to the main paper in Wilmington, North Carolina.
According to Jay, the erroneous assumption in some circles that have Mayor Fussell calling the papers once the killings started is incorrect. It was one of the roving stringers that heard about an attack on several dogs from a farmer who had reported them as being killed by an animal resembling a cat, but with strange characteristics to its appearance. The dogs "skulls were crushed in and chewed" he told the intrigued reporter.
They were also drained of blood in an eerie manner reminiscent of today's Chupacabras; a suspected tooth of which has recently been declared after a year's study at a top laboratory to be from an unknown species, by the way. Other folks were soon reporting mutilations of cows, hogs, and even a goat (not mentioned in the papers) who's head had been flattened-out like a pancake.
The eyewitness accounts of the beast itself, described an animal about four and a half to five feet long, furry, resembling a panther-like beast, but with canine and ursine (bear) type characteristics as well. The tracks found were rather strange and unusual, but generally seemed to resemble something akin to the feline family.
As Jay explained it, everyone became jittery and frightened, and in the ensuing panic some folks actually did start to see a monster beast behind every nook and cranny. Events quickly began to snowball. One area resident got very jumpy when he heard some dogs' barking outside one night. The man grabbed his shotgun, ran into the yard, and then blasted away at his child's bicycle, much to his later red-faced embarrassment.
But all the misplaced excitement still didn't change the fact that something really was killing animals and leaving strange tracks at the scenes of slaughter. According to one resident, "Everybody was scared, everybody, near 'bout, that had a gun was carrying it." And to quote Jay, "Things were just getting warmed up for what was soon to come."
So, what we have here is a real "cryptid mystery," described by those that sighted the creature as a weird combo of wolf and cat, a hybrid even, with some eyewitnesses reporting a bear-like gait to its locomotion as well. County residents were in a heightened state of anxiety, that was fast becoming something akin to the panicked jitters. Who can blame them when you think about it. And these were not reactions the residents were prone to.
Many adults and all the children were staying indoors at night and officials, besides declaring a curfew, were at a loss as to what to do about the bizarre and unexpected animal killings and attendant frenzy. Little did they know at the moment that help was soon to arrive for the frightening situation in numbers nearly over-whelming for the small town of Bladenboro and its surrounding county.
Police Chief Flores got up a hunt for the beast but most of the dogs refused to follow the unusual scent. The few that did were later found torn to pieces. Flores then suggested tying up a goat or dog in the forest, presumably as bait, but Mayor Fussell nixed that idea.
By this time the story had gone national and pandemonium was soon to descend on the county of Bladen. Hunters and trackers from all over started showing up in droves with all kinds of firepower, tracking gear and hunting dogs; along with much respected sage and savvy trapping advice to go along with it all. At one point a large group of men thoroughly searched a swamp of about 400 acres, but this kind of hunt wasn't much territory to cover in a county of nearly 900 square miles.
The Mayor was getting worried about someone getting badly hurt or even killed; so when a large bobcat was snared and slain- the population of which had a rather rapid and steep decline in the area- it was stretched out and photographed- but did not have its body or skin run up a flagpole as is so often written about as fact. A sign laid next to the carcass read, "THIS IS THE BEAST OF BLADENBORO." The panic and hunting frenzy now began to ease up some.
Jay says it was all over within two weeks or so. The beast was gone, perhaps back into the deepest recesses of the nearby Green swamp in next door Columbus and Brunswick counties, or even deep into what is now the Bladen Lakes State Forest. The Green and other area swamps were known as mysterious and often deadly abodes. Growing up in the Piedmont region of the Carolinas, I recall hearing stories from the grown-up men about hunters and other outdoorsmen going into some of those swamps and never being seen or heard from again.
Our insider told me as the years went on and the subject came up, most folk, and especially those in South Carolina, assumed with confidence the beast had been a big panther cat, ranging up from their swamps into Bladen County, as they knew of they're continued existence in those areas back then. If so, it must have been an escapee or released pet (most unlikely) - or if wild, one of the last of its kind as they were surely killed or run out of their range about this time in the Carolina coastal regions, if not long before. Some books and articles report a large striped cat either seen or killed, but Jay didn't mention this as having happened. However, if true, then it could indicate an escaped leopard or tiger. But if so, why were the tracks found so hard to identify?
An investigation by the television series Monster Quest pointed to a similar conclusion as it probably being a cougar. Possible, but it's hard to see how even an unusually big panther, or other large cat species, could smash the skulls of domesticated animals and tough tracking dogs like crushed aluminum cans and leave nary a trace of blood. But if not the big cats, then what? And, again, what about the odd tracks? If they were a cougars or another big feline wouldn't they have been positively identified as such by all those tracking experts? Bears were extant in the swamps and forests back then and still are in some coastal areas to this day, but this hardly seems the mystery solver to such an intriguing and unusual cryptid mystery.
Starting in 2007, Jay told me that the town of Bladenboro has been hosting a Beast Fest every Oct.31st on the spot where the old movie theater used to be. Fun and games for all, with a beast impersonator, doggy costumes, car shows, musical band performances; plus dancing, food, horse carriage rides, and cook-off competitions, just to name several activities available at the Fest. It has turned into a big event with people coming from far away to enjoy everything available.
The link in the paragraph above is to a 2015 YouTube video and gives a good idea what the Festival is like. The town and county are right off Highway 74 heading into Wilmington and the coast, and with a map or GPS, should be easily found if one wants a short side trip to see the area and/or town or attend the cool October 31st fun-filled event.
And last but not least, to finish the article my thanks go out again to "Jay" for his time and inside baseball.