I use to live in St. Peters, Missouri. I was close to 20 yrs old when
we had a sighting of a creature in the late 1970's. The creature was seen in
St. Peters, Missouri. This happened downtown St. Peters at a railroad bridge
that crosses Dardenne Creek. The creek may be 20 to 30 miles long and drains
into the Missouri River. Downtown St. Peters is a very small farming town.
If you blink your already through town. The creature could easily move
around without ever being seen. The creek has large levees on both sides and
was heavily wooded at the time.
A friend and I used to sit by the creek or on the Railroad Bridge and talk.
One night we were climbing on the bridge. My friend was the daring type, so
I didn't think much about the shadows I saw. I thought it was just my friend
fooling around.
I yelled at my friend asking what he was doing? To my surprise, it was never
him moving around. We just laughed it off and went on chatting. My friend
had to urinate so he went to the end of the railroad bridge and started to
go. Whatever was following us lifted the railroad timbers and tried to grab
my friend. We ran approximately 1 mile back to his parent's home. I have
left out a lot of details as I'm disabled now and it's hard to write.
This animal was seen many times after our first sighting and was seen by our
friends. This animal is violent, tried to kill my friend, smells like
rotting hair, it lets out a scream like a panther. One major thing that is
different about this creature and that is it has only 3 fingers, like a tree
sloth. The reason I say this is because we found handprints in the banks of
the creek and the mud prints under the bridge. We never found a footprint.
We saw the imprints of the fingers and the nails in the soft mud of the
creek banks. It appeared they would then grab the steel beams under the
railroad bridge and it would leave the muddy hand prints on the beams. The
odd part was we never found a footprint. I say these were handprints only
because they wouldn't support a creature of this size. All 3 fingers were
approximately 1½ inch in diameter and approx 8" long with the middle
finger slightly longer. Each nail was approximately 3 to 4 inch long and was
curved like a eagle claw. I would assume both hands had 3 fingers because of
its ability to climb under the bridge.
The creature was approximately 8 to 9 feet tall, couldn't tell if it had a
tail, only saw it from the front, appeared to be male, very long and matted
hair on whole body, hair color was a very dark brown, could barely see its
eyes through the hair, the shoulders looked to be close to 5 foot wide from
shoulder to shoulder, very short neck, its arms were long as the hands hung
past the knees, body shape looked like the classic bigfoot pictures, except
the arms were longer and the hands were different. I could not describe the
feet as for the amount of hair. The creature had a very bad rotting hair
type smell. It also let out a panther type scream one night as we must have
startled it. The creature was or appeared aggressive to us as it pushed over
a dying tree in the woods one night. Granted the tree was dead but it took a
lot of strength to push over a tree that was about 3 foot in diameter. That
was the same night it let out the scream.
The other times we could tell it was getting near was you would smell this
foul odor. It moved very quiet in the creek and the woods for an animal of
this size. I couldn't begin to give you an approximate weight of the
creature. The only thing I could think why it was aggressive is one night it
appeared to be a female with 2 small ones with it. She stayed in the brush,
I couldn't tell if it was bent over or what position to keep the 2 small
ones guarded. She appeared to be maybe a third of the size of the male. She
was 50 to 75 yards from us and the closest we got to the male was maybe 40
to 50 feet away. I have told many people of this sighting over the years, no
one believes it. There was 5 people there one time that seen this creature
and we seen it maybe 4 to 5 times in a short period of time. I guess it went
to a different location on the creek. I assume it walked mainly in the water
as not to leave a few tracks as possible.
Let me know if you need more info. The only mistake I made was I never
thought of bringing a camera along. That's life. People probably would just
say the pictures were fake. You know how that goes. At least I know in my
mind what I saw, heard and smelled.
At the time, I was working for a company and I was talking with another
friend about my past and we just happen to go down by the bridge. I was
showing him around and to my surprise I spot these prints freshly made in
the mud in the creek. Chills ran up my back, I don't know what to say to
this person as they may think I made the tracks myself. Many people have
seen this animal, and it has changed their life. No one believes me? All I
know is my eyes don't lie.
You may reach me at Mark S Richardson, MMMARKRICH40@prodigy.net
