Posted 22 July 2012 - 09:53 PM
I remember the story of dear ol' Momo as a kid. I'll admit I'm pretty young, but that story stuck around here. I live near Crowley's Ridge, a rather scary place, especially at night. There are a lot of stories surrounding that entire ridge, ranging from the typical witch to Momo to ghastly spirits. My favorite ones are two that originated in Commerce, MO, an even smaller town than Louisiana, located in Southeast MO.
The first one is one of your regular witch... In a sense. She kept to herself, apparently, and I can't remember where her house is for the life of me, but I have seen it. It's really old, the front porch was caving in. You can still see furniture in the house, curtains still up in the windows, but you can tell it's been empty for decades at least. It's said that one day, she just took disappeared because of the townspeople, since considering, she's a witch.. Er, was. From gestimating, she'd be about 95-100 if she is still alive. The story says that she took off to the woods behind her house and built her house there. You can see a very, very small trail leading to the woods, but the trees are so thick you probably wouldn't be able to get far. No one knows what happened after that.
My other favorite is one I did very light research on, and like the witch story above, it's only known locally. It's the Commerce Werewolf. He's supposedly a huge monster, estimated to be as large as Momo or a bit bigger. I feel as if the height might be about the same, but the werewolf thing larger in body weight. I say he's a werewolf, but it's the closest "myth" I could link it to. The story says he has large claws but doesn't attack the civilians of Commerce, just kind of... watches them. My light research went as far as looking at Topix, where the Commerce residents will speak of him as a "guardian." I question why their ancestors chased away a witch but borderline worships a monstrous beast. Anyway. I'm not sure how long this story exists, but there is a pretty old house somewhere in the woods there that supposedly has a very, very, very large pentacle drawn into the wooden floor of the living room, significantly large claw marks all over the house and the trees surrounding it, and apparently... A Monopoly board. I didn't know about the Monopoly board until my at-the-time-boyfriend went there with his cousin and a few friends, since the story interested them, as well. I found that part kind of humorous. At any rate. There's a cliff near that house, where they said they hung around at after they checked out the house (they said it was virtually impossible to go very deep into the house, the living room was about the only safe-ish place without risking the floor caving in.) They heard a really loud noise, which I assume was a roar but none of them went into great detail about that, and heard the trees rustling and a crash. They said they saw the thing, which was, like stated, pretty big, and said it had claws. They also said it appeared incredibly hairy, but couldn't tell any color, since it was at night. I imagine the thing was silhouetted. My at-the-time-boyfriend and his cousin later told me that only they went back the next morning to see everything in the daylight. They said they had found a tree snapped in half, laying on the ground with claw marks in it.
The Commerce residents say that they see the beast every now and then, but it's pretty uncommon. It apparently has never threatened them, so I assume the intrusion of my friends at the time probably angered it. I've read reports of it being brown to black to even white, so there's no telling. When I read it was white, though, I imagined it to appear to look like a Bavarian thing from Fable, so I kind of dropped the matter. However, I realize now that many of these reports come from the older crowd, people in their 40's or older, people who have lived in Commerce their entire life. There are very few younger adults and teens that say they have seen it.
I also question if the two stories are at all connected.
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