# Short Stuff: The Enfield Monster

An episode of [Stuff You Should Know](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/278981407), 28 Oct 2026, 14 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a91018a4-ea4f-4130-bf55-ae270180c327/8e0a3bbf-b52f-4e95-81e0-b4e801153034/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=44710ecc-10bb-48d1-93c7-ae270180c33e

Did a strange cryptid show up in Enfield, Illinois in 1973? Some people think so. DO YOU? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
[0:06] Speaker 1: there's Chuck. Jerry's here sitting in for Dave, and Dave
[0:09] Speaker 1: didn't want to come because he gets spooked easily. And
[0:12] Speaker 1: this is a spooky one, Chuck. A spooky one. Exactly.
[0:17] Speaker 1: I can't do that as well as you, so I
[0:19] Speaker 1: just kind of left it for you. Oh, how about
[0:21] Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Jr. saying spooky like that?
[0:25] Speaker 2: I don't think that's possible. Cameron, a spooky one.
[0:31] Speaker 1: Perfect.
[0:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all right.
[0:33] Speaker 1: Man, I'm going to get you a crown, says Sammy
[0:35] Speaker 1: Davis Champ.
[0:40] Speaker 2: You ready to dive into this mystery of the Enfield Monster? Yeah.
[0:45] Speaker 1: Had you heard of this before? I had not.
[0:47] Speaker 2: I don't think so. We need to thank ManThink about Medium,
[0:53] Speaker 2: the website, and Dread Central, and all that's interesting for
[0:56] Speaker 2: their reporting on this I mean, supposedly true thing that
[1:01] Speaker 2: happened in 1973.
[1:04] Speaker 1: We should say that there are a lot of skeptics
[1:06] Speaker 1: out there about this story. But it is a really
[1:09] Speaker 1: big deal in the cryptic community. And there is a
[1:11] Speaker 1: cryptic community out there. People who are like, yes, there
[1:16] Speaker 1: are animals out there that we don't understand. This is
[1:19] Speaker 1: one of their big examples that they throw to. But
[1:22] Speaker 1: we're not going to look too deep into it because
[1:24] Speaker 1: this is Halloween. And it's a fun story, don't you think?
[1:28] Speaker 2: Yeah. The skeptics are calling from inside the podcast.
[1:34] Speaker 1: So this was one of those 70s things along the
[1:38] Speaker 1: lines of like the Amityville horror where there was a
[1:41] Speaker 1: decade where people were willing to be like, hey, this
[1:44] Speaker 1: insane supernatural thing happened to me and I want to
[1:49] Speaker 1: be on the news about it. And they would get
[1:51] Speaker 1: on the news. And the guy who got on the
[1:53] Speaker 1: news the most from this whole thing was a guy
[1:56] Speaker 1: named Henry McDaniel. He lived in the village of Enfield, Illinois.
[2:02] Speaker 1: And he got on the news because he said that
[2:04] Speaker 1: there is a very strange creature that he not only saw,
[2:08] Speaker 1: but shot at. And the creature behaved quite strangely and
[2:12] Speaker 1: looked so strange that he was quite sure it was
[2:14] Speaker 1: not of this planet.
[2:16] Speaker 2: That's right. I guess we can kick it off, though,
[2:19] Speaker 2: with their neighbor's. The Garretts, because the Garrett boy, young
[2:24] Speaker 2: Greg Garrett, apparently, this is around 9 o'clock at night,
[2:27] Speaker 2: was catching lightning bugs. And all of a sudden, you know,
[2:32] Speaker 2: comes storming back into the house. His parents are watching TV.
[2:36] Speaker 2: And he's hysterical. He's crying. He's upset. And he said
[2:39] Speaker 2: he saw a monster. Described it as four or five
[2:43] Speaker 2: feet tall. Tiny little arms with claws. Slimy gray skin.
[2:49] Speaker 2: And three legs... with claws and big red eyes about
[2:54] Speaker 2: the size of flashlights and presented physical evidence in the
[2:58] Speaker 2: form of his tennis shoes that were shredded up that
[3:02] Speaker 2: he said the monster, you know, kind of stepped on
[3:05] Speaker 2: his feet, I guess, and ran past him. And his
[3:07] Speaker 2: parents were like, oh, what?
[3:09] Speaker 1: Pretty much. Apparently, Greg wasn't known as much of a
[3:13] Speaker 1: trickster or a liar or even a fibber, from what
[3:17] Speaker 1: I understand. So his parents were just kind of like,
[3:20] Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure what to make of this. What happened, Greg?
[3:23] Speaker 1: And they yelled at him for like a half hour
[3:26] Speaker 1: until he cracked. Or they tried to make him crack
[3:28] Speaker 1: and he never cracked. So as this was happening, and
[3:33] Speaker 1: so we should say this, Chuck, the accounts of this
[3:36] Speaker 1: are so muddy by this time that it's not entirely
[3:39] Speaker 1: clear the order of events and everything. So we're just
[3:42] Speaker 1: going to kind of go with the general flow, but
[3:45] Speaker 1: just take this with a grain of salt because- It's just,
[3:49] Speaker 1: it's a muddied story, essentially. It's a muddied supernatural story,
[3:53] Speaker 1: if you can believe that.
[3:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's one of those deals where
[3:56] Speaker 2: over the years it's been retold so many times, it's
[3:58] Speaker 2: probably been added to and changed about, like, things like
[4:03] Speaker 2: this are done. Does that make sense?
[4:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, no, totally. And not only retold, retold by people
[4:10] Speaker 1: too lazy to go look up facts that they just
[4:13] Speaker 1: assume instead, and then that becomes fact kind of thing. Yeah.
[4:18] Speaker 1: At least we're not writing about it. We just read
[4:20] Speaker 1: about it and we're too lazy to go look up
[4:21] Speaker 1: the facts.
[4:22] Speaker 2: That's right. Because this is just a fun, silly, spooky shorty.
[4:26] Speaker 2: So the McDaniel kids are out that night as well.
[4:31] Speaker 2: And Mr. McDaniel hears this story. He's also in disbelief, obviously,
[4:37] Speaker 2: because he doesn't believe something like that could happen to
[4:39] Speaker 2: his kids. And here's some scratching at the door, opens
[4:43] Speaker 2: the door. sees this monster, evidently slams the door and
[4:49] Speaker 2: goes and grabs a. 22 pistol and a flashlight, opens
[4:53] Speaker 2: the door back up and shoots at this thing.
[4:55] Speaker 1: Yeah. As you do. I just have in my mind
[4:59] Speaker 1: like him closing his eyes and turning his head and
[5:02] Speaker 1: just firing wildly out the door.
[5:04] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[5:06] Speaker 1: So that's when he got the description that you gave.
[5:09] Speaker 1: And like he said also that he hit it. He
[5:13] Speaker 1: knows that he hit it. Cause he said it hissed
[5:15] Speaker 1: like a wildcat, which is, I believe a quote. Um,
[5:20] Speaker 1: and that it just bounded away and bounded away, meaning
[5:23] Speaker 1: like it covered tens of feet with each bounce, which
[5:27] Speaker 1: with each hop, thanks to that third leg, apparently. Yeah.
[5:31] Speaker 2: Apparently 75 feet in about three hops.
[5:34] Speaker 1: That's impressive.
[5:36] Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh, and it went over the railroad tracks, calls
[5:39] Speaker 2: the cops, uh, And the Illinois State, it calls like
[5:42] Speaker 2: the local police and the Illinois State Troopers show up instead.
[5:46] Speaker 2: And maybe that's a good time for a break.
[5:48] Speaker 1: I agree.
[5:49] Speaker 2: I agree.
[6:18] Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, where we last left off, McDaniels, Henry McDaniels'
[6:22] Speaker 1: gun is smoking. The Enfield monster has bounded off out
[6:27] Speaker 1: of sight. And, of course, the first thing he does
[6:29] Speaker 1: is call the police. Like his children have just been terrified.
[6:32] Speaker 1: He's just fired on some unknown monster. God knows that
[6:37] Speaker 1: he was concerned about Greg Garrett's tennis shoes.
[6:40] Speaker 2: Sure.
[6:41] Speaker 1: So he called the police. The Illinois State Troopers show
[6:44] Speaker 1: up to conduct a search. And they search.
[6:47] Speaker 2: Quite a recap, by the way.
[6:48] Speaker 1: Thank you very much. You know I live to do recaps.
[6:52] Speaker 2: Man, you just retold the whole thing.
[6:54] Speaker 1: So the Illinois State Troopers show up and they search
[6:57] Speaker 1: the area. And they don't find the monster, but they
[7:01] Speaker 1: do find some suspicious evidence. I found it suspicious, didn't you?
[7:06] Speaker 2: I think so. They found scratch marks on the siding
[7:10] Speaker 2: of the house, fresh scratch marks. They found footprints, three
[7:15] Speaker 2: footprints with claw marks on them. Two of them were
[7:19] Speaker 2: about four inches wide, apparently. The third one was a
[7:21] Speaker 2: little bit smaller. And then apparently, you know, McDaniel starts
[7:26] Speaker 2: telling the story all around town and people start retelling
[7:29] Speaker 2: the story. I think a kid, some other kid, maybe
[7:33] Speaker 2: a neighbor faked or said he had faked the eyewitness account.
[7:38] Speaker 1: Yeah, that doesn't really help your case. But it was
[7:40] Speaker 1: enough for Henry McDaniel to kind of get into the paper.
[7:44] Speaker 1: I think he was in the would you say it's
[7:46] Speaker 1: got to be the Redding Eagle, right? Hmm.
[7:50] Speaker 2: It's not reading though. The reading Eagle.
[7:53] Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it could be referring to the Eagle
[7:55] Speaker 1: reading the newspaper. I don't know.
[7:57] Speaker 2: Sure. Why not?
[7:58] Speaker 1: At any rate, it wasn't the, um, the sun times
[8:01] Speaker 1: or anything like that, but they did run a story
[8:02] Speaker 1: and like the, the story very quickly started to get
[8:05] Speaker 1: picked up through other news outlets, including the news, um,
[8:09] Speaker 1: like TV news in, um, Illinois in the surrounding area. And, um,
[8:15] Speaker 1: so this was, it had become a thing, right. Um,
[8:17] Speaker 1: but that, that was the, First sighting. About 10 days later,
[8:22] Speaker 1: Henry McDaniel comes into play again when he wakes up
[8:26] Speaker 1: to the sound of the neighborhood dogs going crazy. And
[8:29] Speaker 1: he grabs his gun again and goes down to the
[8:31] Speaker 1: front door, opens it up as he does. And there's
[8:35] Speaker 1: the monster again.
[8:36] Speaker 2: That's right. But not at the door this time. This
[8:40] Speaker 2: time it was over on those railroad tracks that it
[8:43] Speaker 2: had disappeared over on the previous sighting. And he said
[8:47] Speaker 2: it wasn't in a hurry. It was just kind of
[8:49] Speaker 2: ambling down the tracks. He has a great quote in
[8:52] Speaker 2: an interview. If they do find it, they'll find more
[8:55] Speaker 2: than one, and they won't be from this planet, I
[8:57] Speaker 2: can tell you that. So he thought it was otherworldly, extraterrestrial, perhaps.
[9:03] Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time with Henry McDaniel to
[9:06] Speaker 1: prep for this short stuff, and he sounds exactly like that.
[9:09] Speaker 2: Oh, good. All right, good.
[9:11] Speaker 1: So, yeah, a bunch of people started to show up,
[9:13] Speaker 1: monster hunters, which are basically... Bush beer drunk hunters with
[9:19] Speaker 1: rifles and shotguns. Yeah. They showed up, obviously. Like I said,
[9:24] Speaker 1: the news showed up. There were cryptid investigators, people who
[9:30] Speaker 1: are like, I'm not, I'm not a fool, but I
[9:33] Speaker 1: also believe that there's animals out there that we can't explain.
[9:36] Speaker 1: So like, I guess quasi scientific investigators showed up as well.
[9:42] Speaker 1: The whole, the upshot is the whole town, the small town,
[9:46] Speaker 1: just became like a hotbed of activity so much so
[9:49] Speaker 1: that the sheriff was like, hey, McDaniel, if you keep
[9:51] Speaker 1: telling this story, I'm going to arrest you for basically
[9:54] Speaker 1: disturbing the peace. And I mean, I believe that's unconstitutional.
[10:00] Speaker 1: So he never made good on that threat. But the
[10:02] Speaker 1: point is the town was in an uproar over all this. Yeah.
[10:06] Speaker 2: And they arrested some of these hunters because they're just
[10:09] Speaker 2: out there drinking beer and firing into the night. You
[10:12] Speaker 2: can't do that either. Not even in 1973.
[10:14] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[10:16] Speaker 2: And then a guy whose name is too great to
[10:20] Speaker 2: be disbelieved named Rick Rainbow. He's the news director for
[10:26] Speaker 2: WWKI in Kokomo, Indiana.
[10:29] Speaker 1: The place where you get there fast and then you
[10:31] Speaker 1: take it slow.
[10:32] Speaker 2: That's right. And he was another eyewitness, supposedly. He and
[10:37] Speaker 2: three other guys saw this monster there. For sure.
[10:41] Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a few things that are kind of sketchy
[11:04] Speaker 1: about this story.
[11:05] Speaker 2: Like all of it.
[11:07] Speaker 1: So that was, I think, so McDaniel's, or no, sorry,
[11:12] Speaker 1: Rick Rainbow's sighting was the last sighting of the Enfield monster,
[11:17] Speaker 1: I believe.
[11:19] Speaker 2: I think so.
[11:20] Speaker 1: But some other people heard it over the course of
[11:24] Speaker 1: the next few days, some weird cries coming from the woods,
[11:28] Speaker 1: and then it just stopped. As quickly as the Enfield
[11:31] Speaker 1: monster showed up, It just went away. And I think
[11:35] Speaker 1: those crypto cryptid investigators opened a case study in 1978
[11:42] Speaker 1: where they really investigated this and they found. I saw
[11:46] Speaker 1: that the guy who is the lead investigator was like,
[11:49] Speaker 1: I'm baffled by this. But yeah, it's also essentially like
[11:54] Speaker 1: most of the story is basically the the locals wanting
[11:58] Speaker 1: to get in on it and embellishing it. sightings or
[12:01] Speaker 1: just completely making some stuff up. But he seemed to
[12:04] Speaker 1: really be intrigued by Henry McDaniel's accounts in particular, at least.
[12:09] Speaker 2: Yeah. And some of that, you know, alleged actual evidence
[12:13] Speaker 2: like the footprints and the scratched up shoes and the
[12:16] Speaker 2: scratched up sighting. A lot of people were like, you know,
[12:19] Speaker 2: this is a big hoax. They were trying to, you know,
[12:22] Speaker 2: just dust up some news about their town. So maybe
[12:27] Speaker 2: people would come by and give them some tourist money. Uh,
[12:31] Speaker 2: but you know, no one really knows what happened. I think, um,
[12:35] Speaker 2: it's interesting that a guy in Ohio later on said,
[12:37] Speaker 2: you know what? I have a pet kangaroo named Macy
[12:41] Speaker 2: who kind of fits that description and, uh, had gotten
[12:45] Speaker 2: away and was missing. So, uh, this thing bounding around the,
[12:49] Speaker 2: the hopping, the three, I suppose the tail, if it
[12:52] Speaker 2: had a funky tail could have been a third leg. Uh-huh.
[12:56] Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe it was just this guy, Macy
[12:58] Speaker 2: the Kangaroo.
[12:58] Speaker 1: It being Macy the Kangaroo is almost as astounding as
[13:03] Speaker 1: it being like a cryptid that has never been discovered before,
[13:06] Speaker 1: if you ask me.
[13:07] Speaker 2: Like a guy just having a random kangaroo that happened
[13:10] Speaker 2: to escape?
[13:10] Speaker 1: Yeah. That's what people were shooting at, too.
[13:15] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[13:17] Speaker 1: I think that's it for short stuff. This spooky short stuff, huh?
[13:20] Speaker 2: Yeah, except it's actually not that spooky. I think we
[13:23] Speaker 2: were more laughing at it. But hey, if you're from
[13:25] Speaker 2: the surrounding area, I am curious if that legend still
[13:30] Speaker 2: survives around the campfire. So let us know.
[13:33] Speaker 1: That means short stuff's out, right?
[13:35] Speaker 2: I think so. Stuff You Should Know is a production
[13:41] Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
[13:45] Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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