Every now and then, you run across something that catches your interest. Recently on Facebook, I saw a brief story about a strange beast in Land between the Lakes. So I decided to dig into this a little further to see if there were any truth to it.
Now, growing up in the area, I have heard all the legends and stories of things in the woods around the region. Many are not factual and have been pretty well discounted. But some have turned out to have some truth behind them. I know most of us have heard the stories of 
a big black panther like cat that roams the north woods of Christian County.
There have been sightings of bears, wolves, cougars, Bigfoot, and aliens from another world. Actually the bear story turned out to be true, and it is believed cougars, also known as mountain lions, are present in some areas. But, in the world of strange mystery beasts there are some that are certainly stranger than others, and some that are more frightening than others as well. This is just such of a story. This takes place close to home, next door at Land between the Lakes. Besides its modern designation as a recreation area, encompassing 170,000 acres of forest, over 300 miles of shoreline, and hundreds of miles of hiking trials, the area has also long been plagued by a variety of high strangeness such as roving phantoms, Indian curses, and mysterious lights, but perhaps the most frightening is the history of strange tales of a bizarre, bipedal creature which prowls the landscape here and has been called the “The Beast Between the Rivers” as well as the “Beast of the Land Between the Lakes.” 
For hundreds of years, the area between the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers at the Western most edge of Kentucky has been said to be the home of a terrifying, unnatural creature. The Beast of the Land between the Lakes is said to resemble a gigantic half man, half wolf that walks on two legs and has five-fingered human hands ending in vicious claws. The creature is said to stand over seven feet tall, with massive crushing jaws, glowing red eyes, and some even say a taste for human flesh. But these stories go way back to the earliest days of European incursion into Western Kentucky, and some even say back to the days when the land was Shawnee and Chickasaw territory. Accounts of the creature from the early days of American expansion into Kentucky tell of hunters disappearing in the woods, and of storage, unnatural howls that echoed through the forests at night. At this time, bison still roamed wild in Kentucky, and hunters would sometimes encounter mutilated carcasses of these massive animals, lying half-eaten in the deep grass, their throats ripped open by massive claws. There have been several reports of close encounters with the creature in modern times.
One of the most frightening of these happened to a group of Murray State University students who were camping in the Land between the Lakes in 1973. A group of young men were enjoying the woods on a warm spring weekend, sitting around a fire built by their VW Microbus and just generally having a fine time. As the evening began drawing in, one of the students went off into the woods to answer the call of nature. When he returned to the campsite, he told his friends that he’d felt like something was watching him and that 
he had “heard something sniffing” in the woods. His friends said that he’d just heard a wild hog or some other animal. The student said he’d never heard anything like it before, and he grew increasingly nervous as the darkness gathered. As the night grew dark, the group started to hear the shuffling sound of something large moving in the fallen leaves. It seemed to be circling their campsite, moving incredibly swiftly. The boys began to become anxious. They shined their flashlights into the woods in the direction of the footsteps, but saw nothing. And then the howling began.
It was a wild, insane howling. Like a wolf, only much louder than any wolf could ever be, and with an unnatural, bloodcurdling quality that made the howling sound almost like mocking laughter. It seems to come from everywhere around them – first one side of the circle of light around the fire, and then from the other. Soon, the terrified campers began to catch glimpses of a pair of glowing red eyes as they ran past in the dark. The terrified boys retreated into their Volkswagen bus, and wisely decided not to stick around to get a better view. Tearing down the road, they soon saw they were being pursued, and that a massive, shadowy figure was racing behind them, barely visible in the bus’s taillights.
As the bus slowed to take a corner, they felt a massive jolt, and then it seemed as if something was holding the Volkswagen back. Giving it everything, they broke free and tore out of the forest and didn’t stop until they were back on the Murray State Campus. Back on Campus, they found four deep gashes, like claw marks, torn into the metal of the engine compartment cover at the back of the bus. I will continue this story in my next blog post depending on the interest. Believe me, there is a lot more to be told. So leave comments or hit the “Like” button at the bottom of this to let me know your interest.