Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

Central Alabama's myths and legends


Razadia_the_Silver

Recommended Posts

Is anyone interested in hearing any of the stories I've heard over the years? Most of them are from Montgomery, Elmore, Lowndes, and some of the surrounding counties. Some of them I've seen for myself and other are just too crazy to believe. Who's up for it?

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Sure, why not? :)

Please remember however, if you have your own blog or website, It's considered poor form here to self promote.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sure, why not? :)

Please remember however, if you have your own blog or website, It's considered poor form here to self promote.

Nah. Only thing I have is a chicken blog I haven't even started on.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, from your tags to this thread, what pray tell is a "Kudzu Monkey"?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, from your tags to this thread, what pray tell is a "Kudzu Monkey"?

Kudzu is a horrible ubiquitous imported weed from China. Some putz thought it would be good for cattle to graze on but it turns that even cows are disgusted by it. It's really like an alien life form and grows exponentially it seems... whew...not sure where the monkey fits in though :)

I'm home in Mobile and I'd love to hear some stories from that area near the capital.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, from your tags to this thread, what pray tell is a "Kudzu Monkey"?

XD I guess it'll be the next one I post. It's actually one of the funniest stories I've ever heard.

I figured someone might appreciate a local legend that hasn't hit the internet yet. I've been meaning to type the story out for years, but never got around to it. I do have a few things to say about it before I get started, though. The creature I'm about to describe may very well be nothing more than a startled whitetail buck (or doe in some cases), but sometimes it just doesn't seem to add up. I know that one case was nothing more than an old buck with green and Spanish moss covered antlers. So the creature may very well not exist, but you can never be too sure.

In Montgomery County, Alabama we have a road called Well Road. It's off Highway 80 (Selma Highway), down Mitchel Young Road, and cuts across a swampy area, woods, and cow fields to meet up with Old Selma Road (MY meets up with Old Selma farther down, about 5 miles from the end of Well). There are a few places along the road where the trees are cut for power lines and for a Montgomery Water Works station, though I believe in one of these clearings they're together.

Well Road is pretty secluded. There are only a few houses on the same side of the road as the station and the train tracks are on the opposite side. The ditch on both sides is always full of water and it's pretty easy to get stuck at the station. We've had to stop to help one of my brother's coworkers before when he got his truck stuck in the ever present mud, so you'll understand a bit of what happened in the first account I heard.

The first story I heard several years ago. I'd say I was around 15 or 16 at the time and it wasn't long after my brother started working for Montgomery Water Works. One of his coworkers had been at the Well Road station the night prior. He was getting ready to leave after checking the meter and the as soon as he turned the headlights on he said that he saw something rear up in front of the truck just outside clear range. He said that it was tall and had a thick chest, much like a deer. Its arms and legs were long and thin, but instead on ending in hooves they ended with claws that curled upwards instead of down. He said that its eyes glowed and it looked like it was covered in moss and pond slim. It got down on all fours and ran away.

Well Road is, as I said, a swampy area. Catoma and Pentlala Creek are not too far from Well. If you turn right at the end of Well, it won't be long before you reach Catoma Creek. If you turn right, you'll reach Pentlala Creek. Both creeks have a lot of swampy, and possibly alligator infested, slews you can see clearly from the road. It would be a stretch to say this could have been a deer with malformed hooves that had to swim through one of these slews. We also don't know what it looks like further back into the woods behind the station.

The next story I heard took place about 2 weeks after the first sighting that we know of. A good friend of the family was over visiting my dad. He told us how he had been driving up Well Road from Old Selma Road (pretty common since Well is straighter than Mitchel Young and safer at night) when a creature walked out onto the road. He described it in much the same way as my brother's coworker, but rather than startling the creature onto two legs, he claimed it was walking out of the woods where the train tracks are to get to the swampy clearing where it was first sighted.

Before I continue, I'd like to say that we never shared the story we heard with anyone else. Things like this don't come up often and I'm normally the one that brings them up. He didn't hear about it from us and the guy that saw it first lives in another county. I can't say for certain that they don't know each other, but he never mentioned knowing him when my brother told him about the first sighting.

Since this is Alabama, you may not be surprised with what my dad's friend did next. He told us he sped up to hit it with his truck and find out what it was. Rather than stand there and take it like deer tend to do when faced with headlights, the creature seemed to hunch down like is was waiting for the impact then it disappeared completely.

At this point I was wondering what he was taking or how much he had been drinking. He was sober, though, and it just makes the whole story all the stranger.

No one saw it again for about 2 months and the next sighting (and last that I'm aware of) was by my whole family.

During the summer we take a lot of fishing and camping trips and it was (at the time) just my mom, dad, brother, and myself. Mitchel Young had been blocked off to non-residential traffic due to road work, so we had to take Well Road to Old Selma Road. We had gotten a late start since my mom had to work late and none of us wanted her driving out by herself that late at night.

I would say that it was around 8:30 to 9 at night (normally we would leave early morning and not get back till late the next day) and it was just starting to get really dark. There aren't many street lights down Well, so we had to rely on the headlights for the most part to avoid deer and any escaped cows. The clearing is about 1 ½ miles from the Mitchel Young end of the road. That means we couldn't see anything that far up.

We were nearly at the clearing when we saw what looked like a deer start to cross the road. It looked up at the lights, but unlike a deer, it looked away and continued across the road. It's fur was a greenish color and it didn't really look anything like a deer. At this point my dad had stopped the car and we just stared at it. It didn't move slowly, but it wasn't in a huge hurry either.

My brother ended up killing the creepy moment by saw something along the lines of 'Well, there goes the swamp creature. I wonder if we should have shot it?' The irony is that we never had a gun with us aside from an old BB gun to kill snakes and half the time we just used the machete on them.

That's pretty much all we heard about it after that. As far as I know, no one has seen it since then. I honestly just think it was an old deer. That summer was pretty humid, so it isn't a far stretch to say that it's pretty easy for moss to grow on them after they shed their winter coat.

I do still wonder if it really was a deer like I think it was. Or could it have been a real swamp creature trying to scare the crap out of people?

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, like it was basically said, kudzu is a horribly invasive vine you can find all over the south. It pretty much tries to kill everything in it's path and it's not something you want to walk into since you can find all kinds of creepy crawlers and snakes hiding in it. I think that may be a small part of where the Kudzu Monkey myth came from. The other half may come from a few monkey and primate sightings between Canalou Road and Long's Landing (or Shady Lakes trailer park across the road) on Old Selma Road, usually on Pentlala Creek.

One of the very few stories I've ever heard stated that two kids were playing in their front yard (note that where this took place there is not and never has been a house) when one of them spotted something with yellow eyes coming out of the kudzu across the road. There's plenty of it heading into Lowndes County from Montgomery, so the kudzu is easy to believe.

The kids called their dad out as it was coming out of the vines. The description given of it was that it (again) had yellow eyes, long fangs, thick, hairy arms, and over all looked a bit like a chimpanzee. It charged at the father, bit his left arm, and clawed at him. The creature then ran back into the kudzu. I was told that afterwords the father died from poison in the monkey's bite. I still find that really hard to believe. I could understand bacteria, but not poison.

Another story states that it was a chimp that escaped the Montgomery Zoo and was bitten by a rabid dog. The zoo is much closer to Elmore than Lowndes, so I find that hard to believe as well.

Yet another story says that it was someone's escaped pet that caught rabies. With our rather lax laws on exotic animals it's a little easier to believe. I was told through most of my chlidhood to watch the trees on Pentlala for George the monkey, but I don't remember ever seeing him. Though, I did see someone's escaped Squirrel Monkey shortly after it got out of their house on Mitchel Young Road.

The general story on the Kudzu Monkey is that it was from Hell. I very highly doubt that's true.

Edited by Razadia_the_Silver
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Razadia, you write very well.

I love these tales, but it's like I need GPS/Google Earth to follow them.

Give me time, and I might find the place. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Razadia, you write very well.

I love these tales, but it's like I need GPS/Google Earth to follow them.

Give me time, and I might find the place. :)

:lol: Maybe I should start posting maps with them. The two areas I was talking about are ones I know very well, but I'm not exactly good at giving directions. :whistle:

I made a map for it. I'll just keep adding to it as I go along. I marked both creeks I've mentioned and a few of the marks have a note to them.

https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zCHOoRLovvhg.kQe8336Dly-c

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was born in Greenville and was just there at Christmas when I flew into Montgomery. So I was just a few miles from the monster, cool. :) Keep em coming if you have more.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know there are a lot of black panther sightings reported in a lot of places all year round, but the two I have (one I've seen, one I haven't) were never reported. Because of the stupidity of most Alabamians, the Fish and Wildlife service doesn't take those reports seriously. Most people are under the impression that black panthers are black mountain lions. I have no idea where they came up with that.

My sighting happened in a field near my parents' house. I was probably around 14 or 15 when it happened, so it's been at least 9 years since then. It was fairly dark at the time with the exception of the light that shines into the field in a neighbor's back yard. There was some visibility, but not a ton due to the trees. I was walking one of our dogs in the back yards before everyone headed to bed that night and I can honestly say I'm thankful I had a leash on him. I could hear the rat terrier from the back road barking and running (his collar had tags on it) from something. My dog started barking shortly after that, but when I looked out into the field I couldn't really see anything. The dog wasn't close enough for me to see yet. When it got within a distance that I could really see it's white and rusty brown fur I noticed something large and black running fairly close behind it. The dog and it's follower made it into a patch of light that was peppered with the shadows from the trees and I was extremely surprised (and a little freaked out) by what was behind it. I didn't get a good look until the dog let out a sharp screech and went quiet. I honestly couldn't tell you exactly how long and tall it was, but the animal that had taken down the dog was a large black cat.

We have lots of bob cats in the area, but with the amount of light there was, I would have known if it was one of them. We also haven't had any mountain lion sightings in a long time. I know exactly what a black jaguar looks like, from pictures and the one we have at the zoo. I couldn't mistake it for anything else. Since there aren't a ton of small dogs in the area and most of them stay inside at night, I haven't heard of another small dog going missing. None of the cows in the field have gone missing or been found dead. I would have heard about it since we've good friends with the owner. The cat may have moved on, or decided that the deer population in the area is good enough. Personally, I think it moved on. I never reported it (aside from telling my parents what happened) since I doubt anyone would have believed me.

The next story (and as far as I'm concerned, it's JUST a story) happened when I was about 21 or 22, so that was about 3 or 4 years ago. A close friend of the family and his girlfriend were visiting us and we normally sit out on the back porch and talk. The girlfriend decides to wow us with a tale about how she almost ran over a black panther. I was never told where this took place, but I can assume that if it did actually happen, it took place in the middle of nowhere.

She told us that she was speeding down a dirt road when her headlights lit up a big black cat in the road. She then came to a complete stop and the cat jumped on the hood of her car. It looked right at her and growled. Then it ran off into the woods. Those were her words in a nutshell, so I'm sure you can see why I don't believe her.

She told us that it was a black mountain lion, but when I asked if she meant that it was a jaguar she became extremely defensive. I might have believed that she saw a black panther (though her story just doesn't really add up to a large cat of any kind in unfamiliar territory, or even any of the reports) if she had just listened to what I had said. I did end up explaining to her exactly why it wasn't possible for her to see a black mountain lion, but she still argued with me, which killed all her credibility in my eyes. Most people know not to argue with me when it's something I've done a ton of research on.

No one else has told me any personal stories (or accounts) of seeing a black panther since then. I've heard plenty of bobcats in the area and plenty of coyotes, but nothing else from the jaguar I saw.

The area I saw the jaguar has been added to the map. https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zCHOoRLovvhg.kQe8336Dly-c

Edited by Razadia_the_Silver
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

:lol: I didn't know there were any stories about them online! Thanks Asadora. I got a good laugh out of that.

You are most welcome:)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I grew up in central Fla, and my brother and sister, and I saw a black panther from about 220 - 250 feet away. We all stopped, the panther stopped, and we just looked at each other for a few seconds, then the panther was like, whatever, and disappeared into the brush. It was around 9 feet or so, counting the tail I would guess. Other people had spotted it too. Pretty neat to see something some people didn't even believe exist.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I grew up in central Fla, and my brother and sister, and I saw a black panther from about 220 - 250 feet away. We all stopped, the panther stopped, and we just looked at each other for a few seconds, then the panther was like, whatever, and disappeared into the brush. It was around 9 feet or so, counting the tail I would guess. Other people had spotted it too. Pretty neat to see something some people didn't even believe exist.

That's pretty funny since that's were I'm at for the moment. It is really cool to see something you wouldn't normally see outside a zoo just out walking around. :)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, I was going to write about black dogs next, but it isn't a local story. I've heard two different stories behind them. One is the old trucker story about seeing them when you've been awake too long. The other I can't remember where I heard it first, but it basically says that when you see a black dog on the road at night you're about to die. I think the stories are the same, but I honestly can't remember much more about either of them.

Edited by Razadia_the_Silver
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

If you are interested in central Alabama legends and monsters check out tbe thread on the " chilton county booger " ..we have Loup Garou sightings all the time up here....

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have seen a black panther one time in central Mississippi, 80 miles from Alabama. Had to be fall of 1998 it walked out of the woods next to the Tallahatchie river, drank some water then went back the way it came.

I have also been an avid hunter since I was 6 and black bears are something I have always looked for , not to kill. I just know there are some here and I have never seen any in the wild.

I have found bear tracks near creek beds, still no bears. I know a few people that say they have and I have heard a lot of tall tales from other hunters about many things here and there. Nothing I would think worthy of retelling.

Fun thread, look forward to reading more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I could tell you of crybaby bridge around Greenville somewhere, but who doesn't have a crybaby bridge?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The crybaby bridge thing is a great urban legend. ...however there is an alternative theory ... most of the backstory of anyplace called crybaby bridge can be proven to be total b.s. ...however if you are inclined to believe in such things the indian legend of " water babys " does come to mind...of course my spook knowledge is limited. .I am just a simple werewolf hunter. ..

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 7 months later...
 

I've heard a few werewolf stories that hit extremely close to where I live. I'm pretty close to what a few locals (most long dead now) Wolf Swamp. They always swore that there was a werewolf living near there, but the supposed werewolves are really close friends of my family.

Someone spotted the swamp creature again, but this time it was at Going Broke Cattle Company. There aren't many people that are allowed down there and at this time of year you won't find me out there. There are a few people allowed to hunt there and I don't want to be mistaken for a deer or turkey. So, I won't get to look for it till summer. Not that I actually WANT to look for it.

I have a few more stories to tell, I just need to get them together. I just moved back home a few months ago (why I haven't been online) and completely forgot about this thread.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.