Monster Sightings – What Supernatural Creatures Lurk in Iowa?

Whenever some new episodes of the series 'Unsolved Mysteries' dropped on Netflix, I usually watch all of them in one sitting. The final episode of Volume 4 was titled, The Mothman Revisited, and it was easily my favorite of the bunch.

The Mothman is described as a dark, humanoid creature with glowing red eyes and wings that makes a loud screeching noise. The legend comes from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where it was reportedly spotted by several people in late 1967. According to Wikipedia, "following the December 15, 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge and the death of 46 people, the incident gave rise to the legend and connected the Mothman sightings to the bridge collapse." The town of Point Pleasant holds a Mothman Festival each September, and even has a statue and museum dedicated to the creature. Wikipedia and the new episode of 'Unsolved Mysteries' also mentions some sightings of Mothman in 2017 in the Chicago area.

Out of curiosity, I decided to see if Mothman had ever been spotted here in Iowa. I couldn't find anything online, but I did discover the story of another strange, winged creature that reportedly visited Iowans in the early 1900s: the Van Meter Visitor.

An article from the Des Moines Register says that the legend of the Van Meter Visitor originated back in October of 1903. They say that several "prominent" men reported seeing a "half human, half animal with enormous, smooth bat wings" that "let off a powerful stench and scared the daylights out of them because it moved at speeds never seen before." Oh yeah, and it had a horn on its head that fired beams of light. Super casual.

So, what happened to the Van Meter Visitor? Well, legend has it that the monster was immune to gunfire, so a group of folks in the town gathered together to hunt it down. They chased two of the creatures into an abandoned coal mine, and they were never seen again.

Much like the town of Point Pleasant, Van Meter holds a festival surrounding the Van Meter Visitor each year. This year's event is scheduled for Saturday, September 28th.

The Van Meter Visitor isn't the only monster that's said to lurk in Iowa. There's also the legend of the Lake Okoboji Monster or "Obojoki." Described by N'West Iowa as "the Okoboji version of the Loch Ness Monster," the massive creature is rumored to be some sort of sea serpent or aquatic dragon. Native Americans legends mention something like it, but the first "official" sightings were in 1903. It was spotted again in 2001, and its head was described as a cross between a lizard and a horse.

And don't forget about Iowa's very own Sasquatch, the Lockridge Monster! It was spotted in the fall of 1975 in the tiny town of Lockridge in SE Iowa. An article from Little Village says strange tracks were discovered near four "partially devoured" turkeys by a hunter named Lowell Adkins, but that "the beast gained national attention when farmers Gloria Olsen and Herb Peiffer reported a hairy bear-like animal with a monkey face that prowled their cornfields by night." The Cryptid Wiki page says that the reason that the Lockridge Monster is not technically classified as a Bigfoot it has a smaller foot size, and it appears to be "more carnivorous."

Have you ever encountered any supernatural creatures here in Iowa? Send us a message on our station app!