Decatur Hairy Hominoid Anniversary
Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 21st, 2011
One of the first eyewitnesses I ever interviewed about an alleged Midwestern strange cryptid sighting, as I wrote at the time, died on Saturday, May 1, 2010, in Florida.
I had known Steve Collins well during our early days in Decatur, Illinois. I actually spent four years in the same homeroom with him. Due to our last names being so close to each other in the alphabet, we sat near or next to each other in most classes.
A few years after our graduation from Douglas MacArthur High School in 1965, I took my notes of my interviews with Steve, and wrote about the strange encounter that Steve said he had had. He received local attention (although not overt media mentions), at the onset.
My authored account of his encounter appears in several of my books (e.g. Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America) and others, such as in Janet and Colin Bord’s The Bigfoot Casebook (1982). Today, the name “Steve Collins” is noted in historic hominology studies, regarding his 1962 sighting, near Decatur, Illinois. It seems hard to consider that next year, this encounter will be marking its 50th year. Where has the time gone?
Even John A. Keel wrote of Steve’s encounter in his 1970 book Strange Creatures From Time and Space, on page 105. Keel recorded the incident this way:
“…in November 1962, Steve Collins said he, Robert Earle, and two unidentified men had seen a large gray animal standing upright in the middle of a creek [named Stevens Creek] east of Decatur, Illinois, off East William Street Road. They felt it was definitely not a bear.”
The mention was five years before Keel had penned his now-famous The Mothman Prophecies, which was the source of the 2002 Richard Gere movie. Of course, this is the film that Keel and I worked together with Sony/Screen Gems around the tagline, “Based on a true story.”
Time moves along, and sometimes the changing news is rather unexpected. Keel is gone, Steve Collins is gone. So many have left us from those days, it seems.
I was able to reach Steve by phone a few days before he died. We chatted until he grew tired. He told me he’d been in Florida for 17 years, after moving from Decatur. We even talked of the incident in Stevens Creek again, and he reaffirmed what he’d seen.
No one will ever know what Steve saw. But as November creeps by, I was reminded of it, once again.
This post was written by
Loren Coleman no longer writes for Cryptomundo. His archived posts remain here at Cryptomundo.
I’m sorry to hear of your friend’s passing, at least you spoke to him beforehand. Does anyone know where I could read a full report about his encounter online?
time does march on, nice eulogy/memorial. Made me a bit sad today though.
I was born not far from Decatur in the 50′s – on a farm near a river. Jack Prowell – recall him?
Sad to hear your friend passed away. Very interesting story. I live in Peoria and work in Bloomington. I may have to do a little scouting on my next trip to Decatur.
Very Interesting……Back in about 1971 I was serving on the Aircraft Carrier, USS John F Kennedy….One night on a slow midwatch the subject of bigfoot came up, as a sailor from Oregon claimed that he had once seen one…..Well, another sailor who happened to hail from Decatur Ill, swore up & down that he too had encountered one which was terrorizing a lovers lane area just outside Decatur in the late 60s….He claimed that he and his older brother and two friends, had piled into his brothers 55 Chevy and went slowly cruising the back roads looking for it…He was riding in back and the fellow in the front passenger seat had a deer rifle between his legs with the barrel pointed up at the roof…..He said the back of the chevy was suddenly raised up off the ground high enough that the back wheels were spinning……He turned around and saw a huge hairy face staring at him through the rear window….The boys were screaming at one another and the boy up front discharged his rifle, blowing a hole in the front roof of the chevy….The car was then dropped and the boys sped off….I called BS on the story as I felt Bigfoot in the wilds of Oregon might be possible, but in the cornfields of Illinois, no way….In light of this article however……