Beast of Bladenboro

Also Known As: also the Vampire Beast of Bladenboro and the Bladen Beast; nicknamed BOB by the town today
Region/Culture: North America
Mythos: Cryptids
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: The Beast was blamed for killing dogs by crushing their skulls and tearing off their jaws, and the newspapers of January 1954 said it drank their blood.
Role in Mythos: It is the unidentified animal behind a two-week panic in Bladen County, North Carolina, in the winter of 1953 to 1954, and one of the best documented cryptid scares in the American South.
Relation to Humans: It killed pets and livestock and once charged a woman on her porch, but it never injured a person. Up to a thousand armed people a night hunted it through the swamps, and the town now holds a festival in its name.

On the last day of 1953 a man in Bladenboro, North Carolina, went out to his kennels and found two of his dogs dead in a great deal of blood. One had its head torn off and its body crushed. The other had lost its lower jaw. He said they had been torn into ribbons. Bladenboro was a small town on the edge of the swamps of Bladen County, a place where a dog killing a chicken was news, and nobody could say what had done this.

Two days earlier something had killed a dog at Clarkton, eight miles away, and the people who saw it described an animal that was sleek, black and about five feet long. Now it had come to town. On New Year’s Day two more dogs were found dead on a farm. A farmer lost another on the second of January. Two more died on the third, and this time the bodies were opened and examined. Their jaws were smashed. The Wilmington papers reported that there was hardly any blood left in them, and on the fifth the Morning Star ran the word that made the story: vampire.

Police Chief Roy Fores took his own dogs out on the night of the third. They would not follow the trail. The next night he went back with eight or ten officers and a party of hunters from Wilmington, who tracked the animal for three miles around the swamp. They found claw marks an inch long and judged the thing to weigh eighty or ninety pounds. They also found two sets of prints running together. Either it had a mate or it had a cub.

That same week a woman named Mrs. C. E. Kinlaw watched something attack a dog. It looked to her like a big mountain lion, and when it saw her it left the dog and came at her instead. She screamed. The animal swung away and went off down the dirt road. Chief Fores looked at the tracks afterwards and said they were bigger than a silver dollar. A pet rabbit was found on the fifth, cleanly decapitated and still warm.

Nobody saw the same animal twice. One man said it was four and a half feet long, bushy, and like either a bear or a panther. Another saw a smaller one running beside it and heard a noise like a baby crying. A boy named Dalton Norton saw a big cat on his own porch making the same sound. One witness gave the newspapers an exact account: about twenty inches high, a tail of about fourteen inches, dark in colour, and a face exactly like a cat. “Only I ain’t ever seen a cat that big,” he said. Later that month two cars stopped for something four feet long, brownish and tabby, with runty-looking ears.

Then the crowds came. On the night of the fifth more than five hundred people with guns and dogs went into the woods. The next night there were eight hundred, and on the seventh as many as a thousand. They came with shotguns, flashlights and hounds, on a cold wet night in bay swamp, and the worry stopped being the Beast. Chief Fores proposed staking out dogs as bait, and a humane society in Asheville sent a telegram of protest. On the eighth, Mayor Woodrow Fussell called off the organised hunt before somebody got shot. That night the only hunters left were four fraternity brothers from Chapel Hill.

The mayor is the difficult part of the story. Fussell was the one who first telephoned the Wilmington papers about the dead dogs. He also ran the town’s movie theatre, and on the sixth of January, with eight hundred armed strangers in his swamp, he drove to Charlotte and booked a film called The Big Cat for one day. He later said he thought the Beast was a hoax, and that a little publicity never hurts a town. A one-armed sign painter was already selling plates that read “Home of the Beast of Bladenboro.”

It ended, officially, on the thirteenth. A farmer named Luther Davis found a bobcat caught in a steel trap in Big Swamp, four miles out, and shot it. The mayor told the press the Beast was dead. The same day a man from Tabor City hit a cat with his car on the way out of town, spotted like a leopard and said to weigh seventy-five pounds or more, and a professional guide named Berry Lewis shot another bobcat elsewhere in the county. The papers could not agree on whose animal was in the mayor’s photograph. Plenty of people doubted that a bobcat could tear the head off a dog.

There was never an origin for it beyond guesses. The police chief thought of wolves, which old people remembered in the bay swamps. A game warden said catamount. The curator of the state museum in Raleigh said no panther lived in that country and suggested a coyote. A man from Lumberton believed it was Big Boy, a huge shepherd and hound cross he had given away near Big Swamp, and a veterinarian agreed that a dog could kill other dogs and lap the blood.

What it could do was limited to what was found in the mornings: skulls crushed, jaws broken, a rabbit’s head taken off, a goat’s head flattened. It moved through swamp that stopped tracking dogs. It made grown hounds refuse a trail.

It was also afraid of a scream. It never touched a person, and the killing tailed off once a thousand people were walking its ground every night. In December 1954 five pigs and three chickens were found with crushed skulls in the next county, and the Beast was blamed until a stray dog was shot the following day. Bladenboro now holds a Beast Fest every year, with the Beast as its mascot.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the Beast of Bladenboro?

The Beast of Bladenboro was an unidentified animal blamed for killing dogs and other animals around Bladenboro, North Carolina, between late December 1953 and mid January 1954. Most witnesses and trackers thought it was a large wild cat. Its identity was never confirmed.

Why was the Beast of Bladenboro called a vampire?

Wilmington newspapers reported in January 1954 that the dead dogs had very little blood left in their bodies, and headlines began calling the animal a vampire beast. The dogs also had crushed skulls and broken jaws. A Lumberton veterinarian said at the time that an ordinary dog could have killed them and lapped the blood.

What did the Beast of Bladenboro look like?

Witnesses gave different descriptions of the Beast of Bladenboro. Some saw a sleek black animal about five feet long, some a bushy creature like a bear or a panther, and one described a dark cat about twenty inches high with a fourteen-inch tail. Several people said it made a noise like a baby crying.

Was the Beast of Bladenboro ever caught?

On January 13, 1954, farmer Luther Davis shot a bobcat caught in a trap in Big Swamp, and Mayor Woodrow Fussell announced that the Beast of Bladenboro was dead. Two other large cats were killed in the area around the same day. Many people doubted that a bobcat was big enough to have killed and mangled the dogs.

Was the Beast of Bladenboro a hoax?

The dead animals were real, but the scale of the scare owed a lot to publicity. Mayor Woodrow Fussell, who first called the newspapers, also owned the local theatre and booked a film called The Big Cat during the hunt. He later said he believed the Beast was a hoax and that a little publicity never hurts a town.