Shepherdstown Register (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]), October 28th 1920
The Horror of the Woods.
Following the accounts that have persisted for some months the ape, babboon, gorilla, wild man, or terror that has been reported at various points from Pittsburg south, has appeared and taken his habitation in the dismal fastness of Black Mountain and there is something approaching a panic in that part of the county, to say nothing of the fearsome thing appealing strongly to the imagination of every school child in this city. Those who wander through the beautiful woods surrounding this town are not wholly at ease by reason of the reports that come in.
We have made some investigation and we hear that a hunter saw the beast some weeks ago in a blackberry patch on Black Mountain near the mouth of Day’s Run. He makes no mystery about it, and says that it is no more or less than some apelike animal escaped from a show and that it has been hanging around the bountiful berry patches of Williams River for food. He does not seem to have been particularly afraid of it, and succeeded in finding its nest and he said that the beast had collected a lot of railway spikes from the old abandoned railroad at the Campbell Lumber Company.
This carries out the theory of a half tame gorilla.
The next clear sight of the animal was a woman who lives near the mouth of Day’s Run and she had a bad scare. She was a distance from her house and the thing pursued her. She ran home and slammed the door in its face and called on two watch dogs to drive the brute off. The animal waited until the dogs came up and seized and choked them to death one after the other in a few moments.
Repeated calls have come from that section for the State Police to come and capture or kill it. The appeal has even reached Elkins, the headquarters of the force stationed in this part of the State. The local force is preparing to go to the mouth of Day’s Run to investigate the matter one day this week. – Pocohontas Times.
Disclaimer: This 1920 newspaper article was published prior to 1931. Under United States copyright law (specifically the 95-year rule), this work has entered the public domain and is thus free to use or republish. It is presented here as an interesting and folkloric newspaper oddity.
Note on categorization: This newspaper article does not say what the “terror” exactly is. The author makes guesses that it might be an escaped animal or a Wild Man (the “feral” human archetype) but the terror, which reportedly strangled dogs to death, doesn’t seem to be a person at all and I haven’t located anything verifying it to be an escaped ape. Therefore, the report not only doesn’t seem to fit into the category of a Wild Person but is also not even necessarily a Primate Escape. It doesn’t say how large the “animal” is, how tall it is, or directly if it’s humanoid. So we don’t know if it fits more into the ape-man or Proto-Bigfoot category, meaning an ape-like humanoid story from before the term “Bigfoot” was coined in 1958. I’ve decided to just include it in the “Out of Place Animal” category for now. Of course, as Fort has so eloquently pointed out, categorization is never perfect.
Source(s): https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84026824/1920-10-28/ed-1/?sp=6
[ Special thanks to: Les O’Dell of WV C.A.S.E. for locating this article within the Library of Congress online archives and Theresa of Theresa’s Haunted History of the Tri-State for bringing it to further attention. ]
Categories: Newspapers, Out of Place Animal