Big-cat tales and other mysteries

The Chicago Tribune

Big-cat tales and other mysteries
3 months after reported sightings that couldn't be verified, Lake County's cougars evoke similar state myths of the past

By Trine Tsouderos
Tribune staff reporter

July 22, 2004

While the Pacific Northwest has Bigfoot and Nevada is famous for UFOs, Illinois claims the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, the Farmer City Monster and perhaps yet another unconfirmed tall tale: Lake County cougars.

Three months after dozens of residents reported spotting the big cats and children were kept indoors during recess, sightings have dwindled to a couple a month, leaving some experts scratching their heads.

Was there really a cougar, or should the story be filed away with reports of Scotland's Nessie or, closer to home, the phantom visitor who allegedly poisoned unsuspecting Mattoon townsfolk with gas during a terror-filled month in 1944?

"We see this as a big mystery," said Leslie Piotrowski, spokeswoman for the Lake County Health Department, which received more than 100 reports of cougar sightings, tracks and scat since February--including more than 40 sightings in April alone--but failed to find any hard evidence. "We haven't come to any kinds of conclusions as to what might have happened."

It all "sounds like a classic case of mass hysteria," said New York sociologist Robert Bartholomew, who has written on the subject. "Bigfoot, big cats, UFO reports often appear in waves and are much more common than people think--and they are usually media driven."

Bartholomew said the pattern often starts with a few reports, prompting newspapers and television stations to run stories, which inspire the public to call in even more reports.

The hysteria bubble eventually bursts when so many unsubstantiated sightings are reported that it becomes clear they were bogus, he said.

"Show me the hard evidence," Bartholomew said of the cougars. "Bottom line, there is no hard evidence."

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources shares his skepticism. "There is no wild population of cougars in the state," said DNR spokesman Tim Schweizer, adding that any cougar spotted in Illinois is likely to be an escaped pet. "[Sightings] come up on occasion. And generally, the evidence just isn't there to verify it."

The most promising hard evidence turned out to be dog tracks, Schweizer said.

"People see what they think they see," he said. "Unless we have proof, it's hard to say."

The Lake County episode sounds all too familiar to students of Illinois' most enduring mysteries: the Mad Gasser; the Farmer City Monster, sometimes known as the Midwest's Bigfoot; and giant birds reportedly seen over central Illinois.

"Most all mythologies or legends--most of those stories don't get perpetuated unless there is some truth behind them," said Scott Maruna of Jacksonville, Ill., author of "The Mad Gasser of Mattoon: Dispelling the Hysteria."

Mattoon's myth

In September 1944, police in Mattoon, which is about 80 miles southeast of Springfield, began receiving reports of a mysterious prowler pumping gas into the homes of unsuspecting residents at night, leaving them nauseated, temporarily paralyzed and terrified. The town became gripped by fear, and residents quickly grew frustrated as police failed to catch anybody. Psychologists and police eventually declared there was nothing to the reports.

Shortly afterward, the alleged gassings stopped, and Mattoon became known as a textbook example of mass hysteria.

Maruna doesn't buy that explanation. "Something was causing the people of Mattoon to report these cases," said Maruna, who believes the Mad Gasser was a local loner with a basement chemistry lab who was committed to an institution about the time the gassings ended. "To say that these people were doing this out of mass hysteria was an easy copout."

Other legends persist in Illinois, including the Farmer City Monster, a hairy, apelike creature allegedly spotted by residents in the 1970s near Farmer City, about 25 miles northwest of Champaign. Enormous birds with wingspans more than 10 feet long also have been reported flying over Illinois for years.

And sightings of big cats have persisted in Illinois for decades, Maruna said.

One scientist who accepts the possibility of Illinois cougars is James Mahaffy, a biology professor at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa, who compiles Midwestern sightings, especially in Iowa.

"Illinois is a bit in denial," Mahaffy said, adding that the Department of Natural Resources staff tends to be "skeptical, and historically there is a reason for that skepticism. We probably wiped out almost all of [the cougars in the Midwest]."

Cougars probably began wandering into Nebraska and Iowa in the 1990s, he said.

"You will get the same sort of thing in Illinois unless you are different from us and have no deer around," he said.

Many Lake County residents say they wouldn't be surprised to learn a cougar is lurking in forest preserves and back yards, along with the coyotes, deer, raccoons, skunks and foxes.

"I grew up in rural Indiana, but I have seen more wildlife here than I ever saw at home," said Suzanne Slade, 40, in the midst of putting on a birthday party for her son in Libertyville's Nicholas-Dowden Park, where a cougar sighting was reported April 15.

'Concerned in the beginning'

Throughout Lake County, formerly alarmed residents admit they are no longer worried.

"I was concerned in the beginning," said Judy Palm, 39, who lives near the site of one of the reported cougar spottings in Libertyville, prompting her to keep an extra close watch on her children and dog. "But at this point I've forgotten about it."

The Lake County Health Department's staff still believes some of the calls, especially those made in February before the media got ahold of the story, were legitimate and that "there could be something out there," spokeswoman Piotrowski said.

But no one on the Health Department's staff had seen it, she said, adding that "sometimes people might have been seeing coyotes out of the corner of their eyes ... so they would call in and say, 'We saw a tan-colored animal.' We think a number of those calls were coyotes."

Still, calls trickle in. The last reported sighting was June 16 in the Ivanhoe area, she said.

Bear tracker Wayne Russell, enlisted in April by the Health Department to trap the cougar, said he's still game but remains a little dubious. "I never saw anything," Russell said. "You'd hate to say they are liars, but I never saw nothing."