Momo

The full file

On the afternoon of Tuesday 11 July 1972, Terry Harrison, aged 8, and his brother Wally, aged 5, were playing with the family dog, Chubby, behind their house on Allen Street, at the foot of Marzolf Hill in Louisiana, Pike County, Missouri. Their sister Doris, 15, was cleaning the bathroom sink when she heard Terry scream. From the window she saw something by a tree at the edge of the woods. Nine days later she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch it was "6 or 7 feet tall, black and hairy", and that it "stood like a man, but it didn't look like one to me." Later accounts add that it carried a dead dog under one arm and smelled foul. Terry saw it; Wally, by the family's own account, did not.

What followed

Doris telephoned her parents, Edgar and Betty Harrison, who came home. On Friday 14 July, Edgar Harrison, a deacon in the Pentecostal church, hosted the church's regular meeting at the house. He told the Post-Dispatch that those present heard a growling noise three times, then "a large yelp". The family moved out to stay with relatives. Other residents soon reported smells, screams and figures in the dark, and the stories grew: three toes, green or red eyes, up to twelve feet tall. The press called it Momo, or Mo Mo, short for "Missouri Monster". The town, of about 5,000 people by the Post-Dispatch's 1972 count (the Associated Press gave 3,300 in 2012), drew searchers and reporters from across the country for about two weeks.

The Post-Dispatch's 2022 retrospective notes an earlier report, from 1971: two women picnicking off Highway 79 said a half-ape, half-man came out of the weeds.

The evidence and where it is

The physical evidence is thin. Local man Clyde Penrod made a plaster cast of a print found in a garden; in 2012 his daughter, Christina Windmiller, still kept it and described a big heel and three toes. Hayden Hewes, an amateur investigator from Oklahoma City, came to look into the case and was described in 2011 as its lead investigator; he said the witnesses never seemed to be inventing a story. Other prints and hair on bark were reported, but none is known to have been examined by a museum or university, and no sample is known to survive. The International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, displays casts of three-toed prints. The contemporaneous record is the newspaper record, chiefly Ed Wilks's Post-Dispatch report of 20 July 1972.

What investigators found

On the morning of 19 July, the city police chief, Shelby Ward, led a search of the hill. The Post-Dispatch says "about two dozen men"; later accounts give twenty. Ward limited the party to officers and members of the Pike County Rescue Squad because many of the hundred people who gathered at City Hall had guns. "We didn't find a thing," Ward said. His own view was that "some kids making noises" had probably started it. A Missouri Department of Conservation agent, Gus Artus, led a separate search of about 100 acres; Missouri Life reports that it found two disturbed dog graves and scattered bones, and quotes him saying there was nothing "that even looks like a monster on Marzolf Hill." Ward's son, Tom, who searched with him, said in 2022 that his father believed it was a prank.

The leading explanations

Two conventional explanations were in circulation in July 1972 and remain so. The first is an animal. The Post-Dispatch recorded that some residents thought the children had seen a "honey bear" driven towards Town Branch Creek by a hot, dry summer, and a Conservation Department spokesman made the same general point to Missouri Life in 2022: a large black bear is easily taken for something stranger. A scavenging animal would account for the disturbed dog graves. Its weakness is that no bear sign was reported, and Doris Harrison rejected it from the start; "It wasn't a man, and it wasn't a bear," she told the Associated Press in 2012.

The second is a hoax. Priscilla Giltner, a teacher at Louisiana High School, told the Associated Press in 2012 that three boys had made a homemade monster suit, planted footprints and made the noises and smells. "I will never, ever, tell their names," she said. Her husband, Don, a former mayor, believes the costume was thrown into the Mississippi. The account fits Ward's suspicion at the time and the three-toed cast, which looks nothing like a primate foot. Its weakness is that it is second-hand: the boys have never come forward, and Giltner's account surfaced decades later. The two explanations are not exclusive; a genuine fright on 11 July could have been followed by pranks that fed the panic.

What remains disputed

What Doris and Terry Harrison saw on 11 July has never been settled. Doris Harrison Bliss maintained until her death that it was no hoax, and in 2012 she told the Quincy Herald-Whig, as the Post-Dispatch later reported, "I saw what I saw." No search found an animal, a costume or a culprit, and no physical item from 1972 was ever tested. Sources also disagree on the posse's size and the hill's name: Marzolf Hill, or Star Hill after the town's holiday star. The town, meanwhile, kept the story: a "Mo Mo" sidewalk sale in August 1972 grew into a festival, a country single, and a Six Flags St. Louis ride.

Sources

• 1972: Mo Mo the Monster becomes the talk of the town (archived) — Ed Wilks, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 20 July 1972 (reprinted 2023). The Harrison account, the church meeting, Ward's search of 19 July and his quotes, the bear and prank suggestions at the time.
• 40 years on, 'Momo' debate lingers (archived) — Jim Salter, Associated Press, 2012. Ages, the Penrod cast, Giltner's hoax account, Doris Harrison Bliss's denial of a bear.
• Missouri town embraces Mo Mo the monster 50 years after original sightings (archived) — Valerie Schremp Hahn, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2022. The 1971 picnic report, Tom Ward on his father's view, Star Hill, the cryptozoology museum casts, the Six Flags ride.
• The legend of Mo Mo, the Missouri Bigfoot (archived) — Jodie Jackson Jr., Missouri Life, 2022. Gus Artus's 100-acre search and its findings, the Conservation Department's bear comment, the Giltners, the 1972 sidewalk sale.
• Missouri Life magazine looks anew at 50-year-old Mo Mo story (archived) — Brent Engel, Muddy River News, 2022. Cross-check of the Giltner account, the costume in the river, and Bliss's position until her death.
• The Return of Momo the Monster (archived) — Byron Kerman, St. Louis Magazine, 2011. Hayden Hewes as lead investigator in 1972 and his view of the witnesses' sincerity.