November 2, 2025 • 52 mins
In September 1903, the quiet farming town of Van Meter, Iowa became the stage for one of the most credible and terrifying cryptid encounters in American history. For five consecutive nights, townspeople reported a winged creatureunlike anything they’d ever seen — an enormous being with leathery bat-like wings and a glowing horn on its headthat emitted a blinding beam of light powerful enough to pierce the darkness.
This wasn’t the tale of drunkards or overactive imaginations. The witnesses included the town doctor, the bank cashier who later became mayor, and multiple respected businessmen — credible, level-headed citizens with everything to lose and nothing to gain by reporting what they saw.The creature stood eight to nine feet tall, with smooth skin, a blunt horn, and glowing eyes, described consistently by multiple witnesses.
Even more disturbing, it appeared immune to bullets. Dr. Alcott fired five shots at close range without effect. Clarence Dunn opened fire through a bank window. O.V. White shot at the creature while it perched atop a telephone pole. Nothing slowed it down. The confrontation reached its climax when an armed mob tracked the being to an abandoned coal mine at the edge of town. There, they discovered not one creature—but two.
A larger and a smaller entity emerged from the shaft, seemingly impervious to the barrage of gunfire that followed. The townsfolk, terrified beyond reason, sealed the mine entrance with brick and mortar, entombing the unknown visitors deep underground.
This episode examines every documented event from those five nights and explores the enduring mystery of the Van Meter Visitor — a creature that continues to defy explanation more than a century later. From pterosaurs and demonsto extraterrestrial beings and underground species, we dig into every theory — and why none can explain all the evidence.
This wasn’t the tale of drunkards or overactive imaginations. The witnesses included the town doctor, the bank cashier who later became mayor, and multiple respected businessmen — credible, level-headed citizens with everything to lose and nothing to gain by reporting what they saw.The creature stood eight to nine feet tall, with smooth skin, a blunt horn, and glowing eyes, described consistently by multiple witnesses.
Even more disturbing, it appeared immune to bullets. Dr. Alcott fired five shots at close range without effect. Clarence Dunn opened fire through a bank window. O.V. White shot at the creature while it perched atop a telephone pole. Nothing slowed it down. The confrontation reached its climax when an armed mob tracked the being to an abandoned coal mine at the edge of town. There, they discovered not one creature—but two.
A larger and a smaller entity emerged from the shaft, seemingly impervious to the barrage of gunfire that followed. The townsfolk, terrified beyond reason, sealed the mine entrance with brick and mortar, entombing the unknown visitors deep underground.
This episode examines every documented event from those five nights and explores the enduring mystery of the Van Meter Visitor — a creature that continues to defy explanation more than a century later. From pterosaurs and demonsto extraterrestrial beings and underground species, we dig into every theory — and why none can explain all the evidence.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness Bigfoot,
(00:22):
dog man UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods. If you dare,
picture a small Iowa farming town at the turn of
the twentieth century. Gas lamps flicker in the windows of
(01:08):
modest homes. Dirt streets lie quiet under the stars. The
biggest excitement in van Meter, Iowa is usually the Saturday
market or the occasional barn dance. Life moves slow and
predictable in this community of about a thousand souls, where
everyone knows their neighbors and the most scandalous gossip involves
who's courting whom or which farmer got the best price
(01:30):
for his corn. But in the fall of nineteen o three,
something crawled out of an abandoned mine on the edge
of town that would shatter that peaceful existence forever. For
five terrifying nights, the good people of van Meter would
face something that defied explanation, something that moved faster than
anything they'd ever seen, something that bullets couldn't stop, Something
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that emitted a blinding light from a horn on its forehead,
like some demon straight out of Hell itself. This is
the story of the Van Meter visitor, and what makes
it so compelling, so absolutely chilling, is that it wasn't
just one drunk stumbling home from the saloon who saw it.
It was the town's most respected citizens, the doctor, the banker,
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the business owners, men who had everything to lose by
claiming they'd seen a monster, and they all saw the
same thing. When we talk about cryptids and unexplained creatures,
were usually dealing with fleeting glimpses, blurry photographs, or stories
that have been passed down and embellished over generations until
the truth is impossible to separate. From fiction, But the
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van Meter visitor case is different. It happened over just
five nights. It was documented in newspapers as it occurred.
The witnesses weren't backwoods hermits or attention seeking teenagers. They
were pillars of the community who had no reason to
lie and every reason to keep quiet about something so bizarre,
so impossible that talking about it openly could ruin their reputations.
(03:00):
They spoke up anyway because they knew what they saw,
and what they saw would haunt van Meter for the
next one hundred and twenty years. Now, before we dive
into those five nights of terror, we need to understand
what van Meter was like in nineteen o three. This
wasn't some isolated mountain settlement cut off from the modern world.
Van Meter was a proper town with a bank, stores,
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a doctor's office, churches, and schools. It had been founded
less than twenty years earlier, in eighteen eighty six, part
of the great Westward expansion that saw small towns sprouting
up across the Midwest like mushrooms after rain. The people
who lived there were practical, hardworking folks, farmers mostly, but
also shopkeepers and tradesmen. These were people who dealt with
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the concrete realities of life. They planted crops, raised livestock,
built buildings, kept ledgers. They weren't the type to see
shadows and jump to conclusions about monsters. That's what makes
this case so fascinating and so deeply unsettling. When the
creature first appeared, these same level headed citizens grabbed their
guns and started shooting. They organized posses, They tracked it
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to its layer. They didn't run, screaming or hide under
their beds. They responded the way you'd expect Turn of
the century men to respond to a threat with firepower,
lots of it. The problem was the bullets didn't work.
The events began on the night of Tuesday, September twenty ninth,
nineteen o three. The time was one o'clock in the morning,
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that dead hour when even the saloons have closed and
honest people are deep in sleep. But Ulysses G. Griffith
wasn't sleeping. He just returned to van Meter from a
business trip, and as he made his way down Main
Street toward his home, something caught his eye. A bright
light moving across the rooftop of one of the downtown buildings.
Not the warm flicker of a gas lamp or the
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steady glow of moonlight, but something else, something that moved
with purpose, sweeping back and forth, like someone up there
was searching for something. Griffith was a businessman, an implement dealer,
the kind of man who sold farming equipment and kept
careful records and didn't have much patience for nonsense. His
first thought was burglars. Someone up there with a lantern,
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probably casing the stores below looking for a way in.
It made sense, it was logical, and Griffith, being the
sort of man who believed in taking action, decided to
confront whoever was up there before they could rob the
town blind. He approached the building ready to shout up
at the burglar, ready to scare them off or get
a good look at their face so he could identify
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them to the sheriff. But as he got closer, as
he opened his mouth to call out, the thing on
the roof moved, and it moved in a way that
no human being could possibly move. It leaped, not climbed down,
not scrambled across the roof tiles, but leaped clear across
the street to another building, a jump that would have
been physically impossible for any person a distance that would
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have acquired wings, or magic or something else entirely. Griffith
stood there in the empty street, his heart pounding, trying
to make sense of what he'd just seen. The light
had vanished, whatever it was had disappeared into the night.
He went home, but he didn't sleep much. How could he.
He kept seeing that impossible leap in his mind, kept
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trying to convince himself that he'd been tired from his journey,
that his eyes had played tricks on him in the darkness.
By morning, he'd almost convinced himself, almost, but the thing
would return. The next night. Doctor Alcott was sleeping in
a room above his office, as he often did, so
he'd be available if someone needed medical attention in the night.
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The town doctor was another one of those bedrock citizens,
a man whose judgment and credibility were beyond question. When
you're the person people trust with their lives and the
lives of their children, you don't go around making up
wild stories. You can't afford to be seen as un
reliable or prone to hysteria. Your reputation is everything. So
(07:04):
when doctor Alcott woke up around one in the morning
on September thirtieth, to find a brilliant light shining through
his window, bright enough to drag him from sleep. He
did what any sensible man would do. He grabbed his
gun and went outside to investigate. Maybe he expected to
find someone with a lantern. Maybe he thought there was
a fire. Whatever he expected, it wasn't. What he found.
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Perched on the roof across from his office was a
creature unlike anything doctor Alcott had ever seen in all
his years of medical training and practice. It stood upright,
taller than a man, much taller, maybe eight or nine
feet if you counted the height of the horn. And
yes there was a horn, a blunt protrusion growing from
its forehead. And from the tip of that horn came
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the light that had woken him, a beam so bright
it was almost blinding, so intense it seemed to cut
through the darkness like a knife. But it wasn't the
horn that made doctor Alcott's blood run cold. It was
the wings. Enormous wings, leathery and smooth, folded against a
body that looked part human and part something else entirely.
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He would later describe the creature as having a body
that seemed almost humanoid, but covered in a smooth hide
with features that were a grotesque mixture of human and animal.
The thing turned its head toward him, and in the
glow of its own strange light, the doctor saw its face,
not quite human, not quite anything he could name. Doctor
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Alcott raised his shotgun and fired. He was a good shot.
At that distance, he couldn't miss. The blast echoed through
the empty streets, loud enough to wake half the town.
He fired again, and again, five times. He shot at
the creature five times. He knew his aim was true.
But the thing didn't fall. It didn't even seem bothered.
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It spread those massive wings, and, with a movement that
was far too quick, far too graceful for something so large,
it launched itself into the air and disappeared into the
night sky. The doctor stood there, his hand shaking, his
gun empty, trying to process what had just happened. He
was a man of science. He'd studied anatomy, physiology, the
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natural world. He knew what was possible and what wasn't
and what he'd just seen, what he'd just shot at
wasn't possible, but he'd seen it. He'd fired at it.
The broken glass in the window and the spent shells
at his feet were proof that something had happened. He
couldn't pretend otherwise, He couldn't convince himself it had been
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a dream. Words spread quickly. The next day, as word
always does in small towns, Griffith heard about doctor Alcott's
encounter and came forward with his own story. Suddenly, people
who dismissed the implement dealer's tale as exhaustion or imagination
had to reconsider. The doctor had seen it too, The
doctor had shot at it. Whatever this thing was, it
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was real and it was in their town. The third
night October first, Clarence Dunn had guard duty at the bank.
By this point, rumors were swirling through van Meter like
leaves in a storm. Some people thought it was a hoax.
Others thought the doctor and Griffith had both had too
much to drink. But the bank's owners weren't taking chances.
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Banks were prime targets for robbers in those days, and
whether the creature was real or just a distraction for thieves,
Clarence Dune was going to make sure nobody walked away
with the town's money done. Was the bank cashier, a
man who would eventually become Van meter's mayor, which tells
you something about his standing in the community. He was smart, reliable,
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and level headed, not the type to jump at shadows
or fire his gun without cause. So when he settled
in for his night watch, shot gun across his lap,
he was ready for human trouble. He wasn't ready for
what actually showed up around one in the morning, the
pattern holding true, dun heard something outside, a sound like
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something being strangled, a horrible, strangling, choking noise that made
his skin crawl. He stood up, moving toward the window
to investigate, and that's when the light hit him, a
brilliant beam shining through the bank window, directly into his face.
So bright it was disorienting, so intense it left spots
dancing in his vision. For a moment, he couldn't see
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anything except that terrible light. Then behind the light he
saw the shape, something massive, something with wings. Done didn't hesitate.
He raised his shotgun and fired through the window, glass,
exploding outward into the night. He shot where he knew
the creature had to be, where the light was coming from,
and like doctor Alcot before him, his aim was true
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and his shot had no effect whatsoever. The light moved away.
The creature was gone, but it had left something behind.
When dawn came and Done could safely invent vestigate, he
found tracks in the mud outside the bank. Not human footprints,
not animal prints, like anything he'd ever seen. These were
three toed tracks, large and distinct, pressed deep into the earth,
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as if whatever made them was incredibly heavy. Done thinking ahead,
made plaster casts of those tracks, hard evidence proof that
something had been there. Those casts have since been lost
to history, but their creation was documented, witnessed by others.
They existed, which means the tracks existed, which means something real,
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something physical, had stood outside that bank. The fourth night
brought more witnesses. O. V. White, who owned the hardware
and furniture store, was sleeping in his room above the
shop when a loud, scraping sound woke him. He got up,
went to the window and saw the creature perched on
a telephone pole across the street, just sitting there, or standing,
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or whatever you call what a nine foot tall winged
thing does when it's balanced on a pole. White grabbed
his gun the same way everyone else had and fired
at it same result. The creature seemed impervious to bullets,
as if its hide was made of something that couldn't
be pierced, or as if it existed slightly outside the
normal rules of the physical world. Sidney Gregg, another banker,
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had his own terrifying encounter. He was walking home from
work when he turned into an alley and came face
to face with the creature. It jumped at him, knocked
him to the ground, and for a moment, greg found
himself pinned beneath something that should not exist. He would
later describe the creature's skin as smooth, its eyes as
large and unsettling, its nose as blunt and strange. He
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managed to scramble free and run, but the experience left
him shaken to his core. This wasn't something he saw
from a distance. This was close contact. This was real
in a way that left no room for doubt or rationalization.
By the fifth night, October third, the town was in
a state of barely controlled panic. Nobody was sleeping with
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their lights off. People were staying up all night, guns loaded,
watching the streets. The creature had been seen by too
many people, too many reliable people, for anyone to dismiss
it as imagination or lies. Something was out there, something
that came out at night, something that seemed drawn to
the light, or perhaps used its own light to hunt,
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something that moved like nothing they'd ever encountered. And then
someone reported hearing sounds coming from the abandoned coal mine
on the edge of town. The mine had been there
for years, dug back when people thought there might be
valuable coal deposits in the area. They'd gone down deep
more than two hundred and fifty feet, had even built
underground stables for the mules that hauled the coal cars.
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But the coal hadn't panned out, or at least not
enough to make the mine profitable, and it had been abandoned.
Stay tuned for more backwoods big foot stories will be
after these messages. The entrance was still there, though, a
dark opening in the earth that led down into tunnels
and chambers where no one went anymore. It was the
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kind of place that would be spooky even without a
monster legend attached to it. Add in the fact that
something impossible was terrorizing the town, and that dark hole
in the ground became absolutely terrifying. The sounds coming from
the mine were described in the Des Moines Daily News
as sounding like satan, and a regiment of imps were
coming forth for battle. Can you imagine hearing that demonic
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noises echoing up from the depths of an abandoned mine,
knowing that somewhere in your town is a creature that
can't be killed, that flies on leather wings and shoots
blinding light from its head. The people of van Meter
were scared, yes, but they were also angry. This thing
had been terrorizing their town for five nights. It had
to be stopped. Jail Platt, a local factory manager, was
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among those who went to investigate the sounds at the mine.
What he saw there would become the climax of the
entire van Meter Visitor saga. As the men watched from
a distance, weapons ready, the creature emerged from the mine shaft.
But it wasn't alone. There were two of them, one
large the size they'd been seeing all week, and one smaller,
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perhaps half the size of the first. A mate and offspring,
some speculated apparent and child, two creatures that had been
hiding in that mine, coming out at night to hunt,
or explore, or do whatever unknowable things creatures from abandoned
mines do. The two visitors took flight, their wings spread wide,
the horns on their heads blazing with that unnatural light.
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They flew off into the darkness, and the men of
van Meter knew they would return. This was their layer,
this was where they lived. So the men did what
men in nineteen o three knew how to do. They
formed a posse. They gathered every gun in town. They
waited at the mine entrance for the creatures to come back.
Just before dawn, the visitors returned. The men of van
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Meter opened fire. The newspaper account said they unleashed enough
firepower to have sunk the Spanish fleet, which gives you
an idea of just how much lead was flying through
the air. Dozens of men shooting rifles and shotguns at
close range, pouring everything they had into these two creatures,
and like every other time someone had shot at the visitors,
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the bullets had no effect none. The creatures didn't fall,
they didn't even slow down. They made unearthly screeching sounds,
released a stench so foul that it made grown men gag,
and then they simply walked into the mine shaft and
disappeared into the darkness below. The men stood there, smoke
still rising from their guns, trying to understand what had
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just happened. They'd hit those things. They knew they had.
You don't miss it that range with that much firepower.
But the creatures had absorbed the bullets like water absorbing rain,
like it was nothing at all, like they were made
of something that existed outside the normal laws of physics.
As the sun came up on October third, casting light
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over a town that hadn't slept, the men of van
Meter made a decision. They couldn't kill the creatures, that
much was clear, but they could trap them. They spent
that day bricking up the mine entrance, sealing it with
stone and mortar, and tombing whatever was down there in
the darkness where it had come from. The work was
done quickly, desperately, with everyone helping, because everyone wanted this
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nightmare to end, and it did end. The Van Meter
visitor was never seen again, not during those terrifying five nights.
In nineteen o three. The town slowly returned to normal.
People started sleeping with their lights off again. The guards
at the bank went home. Life went on. But nobody
who'd been there, nobody who'd seen those things or heard
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about them from reliable witness is ever really forgot. The
story was written down, recorded in newspapers, mentioned in the
town's centennial book. Decades later, it became part of Van
Meter's history, part of its identity. So what was the
Van Meter visitor? What were these things that terrorized a
small Iowa town for five nights and then vanished into legend.
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Let's look at what we know for certain. Multiple witnesses,
all of them respected members of the community, all described
the same basic creature eight to nine feet tall when
standing upright, massive leathery wings, smooth and bat like, a
blunt horn on the forehead that emitted a brilliant blinding light.
A body that was part human, part animal, covered in
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smooth skin or hide, the ability to move at incredible
speeds to leap distances no normal creature could manage to
fly with grace and power, three toad tracks, large and deep,
a terrible stench that accompanied its appearances, and most importantly,
it was completely impervious to bullets. That last point is crucial.
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We're not talking about missed shots or poor aim. These
were men who knew how to handle firearms. They were
shooting at close range, hitting their target, and the bullets
were having no effect either. The creature's hide was incredibly tough,
tougher than anything in the natural world, or something else
was going on, something we don't have a good explanation for.
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The theories have ranged from the mundane to the fantastical.
Some skeptics, including some residents of Van Meter at the time,
claimed it was all a hoax perpetrated by the town
postmaster HH Phillips, who supposedly made up the story for
an article in the Des Moines Daily News. But that
theory has major problems. First, the witnesses were real people
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with real reputations to protect. They had no reason to
participate in a hoax that would make them look foolish. Second,
there was physical evidence. The broken bank window where Dune
fired as shotgun, the plaster casts of the three toed tracks,
the sealed mine entrance. These weren't things that existed only
in a newspaper article. They were real. And Third, even
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the people who claimed it was a hoax admitted that
the town experienced strange lights and unidentified noises. They admitted
that Clarence Done really did blow out the bank window.
So if it was a hoax, it was a remarkably
elaborate one that involved physical evidence and multiple respected citizens
willing to stake their reputations on a lie. Other skeptics
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have suggested it was a large owl or crane, misidentified
in the dark and blown out of proportion by fear
and panic, but that doesn't hold up either. These witnesses
got good looks at the creature. Doctor Alcott saw it
clearly enough to describe its features. Clarence Done had it
shine a light in his face. Sidney Gregg was knocked
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down by it. They knew what birds looked like, they
knew what animal looked like. This was something different, something
that stood upright like a human, had wings like a bat,
and emitted light from a horn on its head. No
known bird or animal fits that description, and the idea
that multiple witnesses all independently misidentified the same common animal
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in the same bizarre way strains credibility, so we're left
with more exotic theories. Some cryptozoologists have suggested the Van
Meter visitor might have been a surviving pterosaur, a flying
reptile that was supposed to have gone extinct millions of
years ago. The description does fit in some ways. Pterosaurs
had wings, they were large, They had crests on their
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heads that could potentially explain the horn, but terosaurs didn't
emit light. There's no known biological mechanism for a living
creature to generate a beam of light strong enough to
blind people or light up building facades, and pterosaurs certainly
weren't bulletproof. The light is really the sticking point for
any natural explanation. Bioluminescence exists in nature. Of course. We
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have fireflies and deep sea fish that glow, but that's
a gentle luminescence, a chemical reaction that produces a soft light.
What the van Meter visitor produced was described as a beam,
a spotlight, something that could temporarily blind people and illuminate
large areas. That's not bioluminescence. That's something else entirely. Some
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researchers have drawn parallels between the van Meter visitor and
other winged cryptids from American folklore. The Jersey Devil, for instance,
which has been reported in New Jersey for centuries, shares
some characteristics winged, bipedal, strange and terrifying, but the Jersey
devil doesn't have the light emitting horn, and the descriptions
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are otherwise quite different. The mothman, which would terrorize Point Pleasant,
West Virginia, in the nineteen sixties is another comparison. The
Mothman was winged, associated with strange life light, and seen
by multiple credible witnesses, But Mothman was described as having
glowing red eyes, not a horn that shot light, and
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the overall description is different enough that lumping them together
seems forced. What's fascinating about the Van Meter case is
how contained it was. Five nights, one location, multiple consistent witnesses,
and then it was over. The creatures went into the
mine and never came out, or at least if they
did come out, they did it quietly, without terrorizing the town. Again,
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that pattern doesn't fit with most cryptid sightings, which tend
to be sporadic and spread out over time. It's more
like an invasion, a brief incursion into our world by
something that didn't belong here. That's led some of the
more imaginative theorists to suggest the Van Meter visitor might
have been extraterrestrial in origin aliens. In other words, the
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horn emitting light could have been a scanning device or
a weapon. The imperviousness bullets could be explained by advanced technology,
some kind of personal force field. The abandoned mind could
have been where their craft was hidden, or a portal
to somewhere else. It's a theory that fits the facts
in a way, but it also raises more questions than
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it answers. Why would aliens terrorize a small Iowa town,
What were they looking for? And why did they leave
so abruptly. There's also the possibility that the Van Meter
visitor was something supernatural rather than flesh and blood, a demon,
as some of the contemporary accounts suggested. The Des Moines
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Daily News described the sounds from the mind as satan
and a regiment of imps, and that kind of language
wasn't just colorful journalism. People at the time genuinely considered
the possibility that they were dealing with something from hell.
The creature's resistance to bullets, its unnatural light, its terrible stench,
the way it seemed to appear and disappear at will.
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All of these could be seen as demonic attributes. In
folklore and religious tradition, demons are often described as having
power over light and darkness, as being able to take
physical form but not be truly physical, as having an
overwhelming stench associated with sulfur or brimstone. If we consider
a supernatural explanation, the mind becomes significant in a different way.
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Abandoned places, especially underground spaces, are often associated with the
supernatural and folklore. They are thin places where the barrier
between our world and others might be weakened. The idea
that something could emerge from deep beneath the earth, terrorize
the surface world, and then retreat back into the depths
is a very old story, one that appears in mythologies
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around the world. The Greeks had stories of creatures coming
up from the underworld. Medieval Europe had tales of things
that dwelt in caves and mines. Every culture has some
version of the underground monster, the thing that lives where
humans don't belong. But here's what troubles me about all
the theories, both mundane and extraordinary, None of them really
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fit all the facts. A hoax doesn't explain the physical
evidence or the credibility of the witnesses. A misidentified animal
doesn't explain the light, or the impossible jumps, or the
resistance to gunfire. A pterosare doesn't explain the light. An
alien doesn't explain why it would behave the way it did.
A demon doesn't explain the physical tracks and the body
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that could knock a man down. It's possible likely even
that we're missing information. The plaster casts of the tracks
are lost. We don't have photographs of the creatures, though
photography in nineteen o three was certainly possible. We don't
have samples of the hide to test its composition. We
don't have the mind anymore. It's been sealed and filled
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in over the years. All we have are the accounts,
the newspaper articles, the testimony of people who claim to
see something impossible. Chad lewis a researcher who wrote a
book about the Van Meter visitor. After extensive investigation, came
to an interesting conclusion. He said that after pouring over
all the records, interviewing residents, and visiting the sites of
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the original encounters, he was still as puzzled as the
people of Van Meter were in nineteen o three. He'd
gone into the research convinced it would turn out to
be a hoax, but as he dug deeper that conviction eroded.
The more he learned, the less sense a hoax made.
But he also couldn't say with certainty what the creature
actually was, and in the end he found peace in
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not knowing, in accepting that some mysteries might not have
answers that fit into our understanding of the world. That's
a hard thing for modern people to accept. We're used
to having explanations for everything. We expect science to eventually
explain every strange occurrence, every anomaly. We trust that with
enough investigation and the right tools, we can understand anything.
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But maybe some things exist out there side that framework.
Maybe there are experiences that don't fit into neat categories
of known animals, identified phenomena, or understood physics. The Van
Meter case is particularly frustrating because it feels like it
should be solvable. It's not some vague legend passed down
through generations and embellished with each telling. It happened in
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nineteen o three, well within the modern era. It was
documented as it occurred. The witnesses were literate, intelligent people
who wrote down what they saw, and yet we still
can't say for certain what terrorized that town. What we
can say is that something did happen. Too many people
saw it, too much evidence existed at the time. The
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town wouldn't have sealed up a mind shaft for no reason.
Clarence Dunn wouldn't have blown out a bank window and
made plaster casts of tracks if he'd seen nothing. Doctor
Alcott wouldn't have risked his reputation as a medical professional
by claiming he'd shot at a monster if he had
actually done so. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. These people had everything
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to lose and nothing to gain by making up such
a story. Their accounts were consistent with each other, which
argues against hallucination or individual delusion. They all described the
same basic creature with the same impossible characteristics. The story
didn't end in nineteen oh three, though, like all good mysteries,
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the Van Meter Visitor has refused to stay buried. Over
the years, there have been occasional reports of similar sightings
in the area. Nothing is sustained or well documented as
the original five Nights, but enough to keep the legend
alive and make people wonder if something might still be
out there. In the nineteen eighties, a man reported seeing
a giant bat like creature near the old Mine location.
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What makes this sighting interesting is that the witness apparently
had no knowledge of the town's history. He wasn't a local,
looking for attention or trying to revive a legend. He
was just someone who saw something strange and reported it.
When people later told him about the nineteen oh three events,
he was shocked to discover that his description matched what
those long ago witnesses had seen. That's the kind of
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detail that makes you think if someone independently describes the
same creature without knowing about the previous sightings, what does
that mean? Coincidence, shared hallucination, or something that's actually there.
In two thousand and six, a local pastor reported seeing
something dragon like flying in the sky. Only after searching
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online for Iowa dragon did he discover the Van Meter
Visitor legend and realized that what he'd seen matched the
historical descriptions. Again, we have someone who saw something first
and learned about the legend second, rather than the other
way around. That pattern of sightings argues against people simply
seeing what they expect to see based on knowing the story. Today,
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Van Meter has embraced its months. There's an annual Van
Meter Visitor Festival where people come from all over to
celebrate the legend, listen to researchers and paranormal experts, and
take tours of the historical sites. The festival started in
twenty thirteen, more than one hundred years after the original events,
and it's become a source of community pride. Not everyone
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in town believes the story, of course, Some residents think
it's fun folklore, while others consider it a silly hoax
that gets too much attention. But the legend has become
part of Van Meter's identity, part of what makes it
unique among small Iowa towns. There's something deeply American about
the Van Meter visitor story. It happened during an era
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of rapid change and discovery. The Wright Brothers would make
the first powered flight just two months after the Van
Meter encounters. Scientific discoveries were accelerating, the world was getting smaller,
as telegraph lines and railroads connected previously isolated communities. People
were open to the idea that new things might be discovered,
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that the world still held mysteries. The Mountain Guerrilla had
only recently been confirmed to exist, proving that legendary beasts
of the jungle could be real. So when something impossible
appeared in Van Meter, people didn't immediately dismiss it. They
took it seriously. They tried to deal with it in
practical ways. And maybe that's the real lesson of the
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van Meter Visitor, not that we need to believe in monsters,
but that we should take seriously the experiences of credible witnesses,
even when those experiences don't fit our preconceptions. The people
of van Meter saw something. We can argue all day
about what it was, whether it was flesh and blood
or something else entirely, whether it came from the depths
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of the earth, or the depths of space, or the
depths of human imagination. But something happened there in those
five nights in October nineteen o three. Something scared an
entire town. Something left tracks and broken windows and sealed
mind shafts. The truth is, we may never know what
the van Meter Visitor really was. The physical evidence is gone,
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the witnesses have long since passed away, the mind is
sealed and filled in. All we have left are the stories,
the newspaper accounts, the testimony recorded more than a century ago.
And maybe that's enough. Maybe the value isn't in solving
the mystery, but in having the mystery to contemplate, to
wonder about, to spark our imagination about what might be possible.
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Because here's the thing, about the van Meter visitor. That
makes it different from a lot of cryptid stories. It
doesn't ask us to believe in a breeding population of
unknown creatures living undiscovered in the wilderness. It doesn't require
us to accept that scientists have missed an entire species
hiding in plain sight. The van Meter case is about
something that appeared, briefly, interacted with humans, and then vanished.
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A visitor, as the name suggests something passing through, and
that's somehow more plausible than the idea of bigfoot families
living in the Pacific Northwest or lake monsters in every
body of water. A visitor can come and go. A
visitor doesn't need to leave behind bones or DNA or
a sustainable population. A visitor is, by definition temporary. The
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question is where did it come from and where did
it go? The underground origin suggested by the mind is intriguing.
The earth is vast and mostly unexplored. Beneath the surface,
we've barely scratched the top layer of the crust. There
could be caverns down there, vast chambers and tunnels that
we've never discovered. Creatures that evolved in the darkness, adapted
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to an environment without sunlight, could develop unusual characteristics. Bats
use echolocation to navigate in darkness. Why couldn't something else
develop light generation as a hunting tool, and the resistance
to bullets could be explained by a hide adapt to
withstand the pressures and conditions of deep underground life, something
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so tough and dense that small arms fire couldn't penetrate it.
But then we have to ask why such creatures would
come to the surface at all, what drew them up?
What need would underground creatures have for the surface world,
and why did they return so quickly to the depths.
Did the sunlight hurt them? Were they just exploring satisfying
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curiosity about the strange realm above their home? Or were
they driven out by something deeper down, something even more
terrifying that made the surface world seem like a safer
option despite the humans with guns. These are the questions
that keep researchers and enthusiasts fascinated with the Van Meter
case more than a century later, because, unlike a lot
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of cryptid stories that are vague or contradictory or clearly embellished,
the Van Meter visitor case has a solidity to it.
It happened in a specific place at a specific time.
It involved specific people whose lives and reputations can be verified.
It was documented in contemporary sources, It had physical evidence
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that was observed by multiple witnesses. And then it ended cleanly,
without the kind of lingering sightings that make you suspect
people are just seeing what they want to see. Five nights.
That's all it took for the Van Meter Visitor to
etch itself permanently into the folklore of American cryptozoology. Five
nights of terror. Five nights when a small Iowa town
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faced something that shouldn't exist. Five nights that raised questions
we still can't answer. On those five nights, in October
nineteen o three, the people of Van Meter learned something
that humans have always known but frequently forget. The world
is stranger than we think. There are things in the dark,
things in the depths, things that don't fit into our
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neat categories and explanations. We like to believe we figured
everything out, that we've mapped and measured and understood the world,
but every so often something happen that reminds us how
little we actually know, how much mystery still exists. The
van Meter Visitor is one of those reminders. Whether it
was a creature of flesh and blood, a visitor from
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another world, something supernatural, or something we don't even have
words for, yet, it was real to the people who
experienced it. It changed their lives, it changed their town,
and it left behind a legacy that continues to fascinate,
perplex and occasionally terrify people more than one hundred years later.
So the next time you're in Iowa, if you find
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yourself passing through van Meter, take a moment to look
at the sky, scan the rooftops, listen for strange sounds
in the night. Because while the mine is sealed and
the original witnesses are long gone, nobody can say for
certain that the Van Meter visitor won't return. Maybe it's
still down there in the deep places of the earth waiting.
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Maybe it emerged somewhere else, in some other town that
either hasn't recognized what they're seeing or has cho and
to keep quiet about it. Or maybe it really was
just a visitor, something passing through our world briefly before
moving on to wherever things like that go. The truth
is out there, as they say, but sometimes the truth
is so strange, so impossible, so far outside our frame
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of reference that even when we're looking right at it,
even when we're shooting at it with everything we have,
we still can't quite believe what we're seeing. The people
of van Meter believed, though they had no choice. They
saw it with their own eyes, They heard it with
their own ears, They smelled that terrible stench. They fired
at it and watched their bullets have no effect. They knew.
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And because they knew, because they had the courage to
report what they'd seen, even when it meant risking ridicule
and disbelief, we know too. We know that in the
fall of nineteen o three, something impossible came to van Meter, Iowa.
Something with wings and a horn and a light that
could blind you, Something that couldn't be killed, Something that
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emerged from an abandoned mine and eventually returned to the
darkness below. Something that shouldn't exist, but did. The Van
Meter Visitor one of America's most credible, most documented, most
mysterious cryptid encounters, A story that stood the test of
time because it's built on a foundation of reliable witnesses,
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contemporary documentation, and physical evidence. A story that raises more
questions than it answers, but refuses to be dismissed or
explained away, a story that reminds us that the world
is bigger and stranger than we usually dare to imagine,
and somewhere deep beneath the Iowa soil, in tunnels and
chambers that humans have never reached. Maybe that story isn't over.
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Maybe the Visitor is still down there, along with others
of its kind, living their lives in the eternal darkness
of the deep Earth. Maybe they remember those five nights too,
remember the strange creatures they encountered on the surfaces, the
bipedal beings without wings, who made loud noises and bright
flashes and smelled of fear. Maybe they tell stories to
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their offspring about the time they visited the upper world,
about the lights and the colors and the strange constructions
the surface dwellers had made. Or maybe the van Meter
Visitor came from somewhere else, entirely, somewhere we can't even conceptualize,
and those five nights were nothing more than a brief
intersection between worlds, a moment when something impossible slipped through
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a crack in reality and walked among us before returning
to wherever it properly belonged. We'll probably never know for sure.
The Van Meter Visitor took its secrets with it when
it descended back into that mind shaft in the early
morning hours of October third, nineteen o three. But the
mystery it left behind, the questions it raised, the fear
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and wonder it inspired, those things remain. They're part of
Van Meter's legacy, now part of cryptozoology's most intriguing cases,
part of the great tapestry of American folklore and unexplained phenomena.
And every October, when the air gets crisp and the
leaves start to turn and the nights grow longer, some
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people in Van Meter still find themselves glancing at the sky,
watching the rooftops, listening for the sound of wings, because
they remember the stories their grandparents told, stories passed down
from those who were there, who saw it, who knew
the truth, And they wonder if maybe the Visitor might
decide to come back, to emerge once more from whatever
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dark place it calls home, and spread those impossible wings
under an Iowa sky. The Van Meter Visitor a mystery
wrapped in history, documented by the trustworthy, witnessed by the skeptical,
and unexplained by science. Whatever it was, wherever it came from,
it earned its place in the annals of American cryptozoology,
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not through blurry photos or dubious sightings, but through five
solid nights of encounters with credible witnesses who had nothing
to gain and everything to lose by telling the truth
about what they'd seen. That truth, strange and terrifying as
it was, deserves to be remembered. The people of Van
Meter in nineteen o three faced something beyond their understanding
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and responded with the courage and determination that characterized America
at the turn of the century. They didn't run, they
didn't hide. They grabbed their guns, and they fought back,
even when their weapons proved useless. And when they couldn't
kill the creature, they did the next best thing. They
trapped it, sealed it away, protected their town the only
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way they knew how. Whether the visitor is still down there,
still trapped behind that seal, or whether it found another
way out, another path to freedom, remains one of the
many unknowns surrounding this case, but the story endures. The
mystery persists, and somewhere in the darkness, whether it's the
darkness of deep Earth or the darkness of the unknown.
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The Van Meter Visitor waits, maybe forever, maybe just until
the time is right to return. That's the power of
a good mystery, and the Van Meter Visitor is one
of the best. It gives us just enough to know
something happened, but not enough to know what. It provides
credible witnesses and physical evidence, but not enough of either
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to reach a definitive conclusion. It offers multiple possible explanations,
but none that quite fit all the facts, and in
doing so, it keeps us wondering, keeps us asking questions,
keeps us looking at the world with just a bit
more openness to the possibility that there are things out there,
things in the dark, things that don't fit into our
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neat categories of known and unknown. The Van Meter Visitor
I was winged terror, The creature from the abandoned mind,
the thing that came in the night, with its blinding
light and its terrible stench, and its resistance to bullets.
Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back
after these messages. The monster that united a town in
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terror and then vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared,
leaving behind only questions and stories and a legacy that
refuses to die. Five nights in October nineteen o three.
That's all it took to create a legend that would
last for more than a century. Five nights that the
people of Van Meter would never forget, would never fully understand,
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would never stop talking about. Five nights when the impossible
became real and the residents of a small Iowa town
learned that the world is far stranger than they'd ever imagined.
And the most terrifying thing, the thing that keeps this
story alive and relevant more than one hundred years later,
the fact that it could happen again, that somewhere in
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some small town, something might emerge from the darkness, something
with wings and light and characteristics that defy explanation. Because
if it happened once, if the Van Meter Visitor was real,
and all the evidence suggests it was, then the door
is open. The possibility exists, and we have to accept
that our understanding of the world, our certainty about what
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does and doesn't exist, might need some serious revision. That's
the gift the Van Meter Visitor gave us. Not fear,
though there was plenty of that, not proof of monsters,
though the evidence is compelling, but doubt healthy doubt, the
kind of doubt that keeps us humble, keeps us curious,
keeps us open to possibilities we might otherwise dismiss. The
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Van Meter Visitor taught us that sometimes the witnesses are
telling the truth even when the truth seems impossible. That
sometimes the physical evidence is real, even when it doesn't
make sense. That sometimes things happen that we simply can't explain,
no matter how hard we try. And maybe that's exactly
as it should be. Maybe the world needs mistry like
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the Van Meter Visitor, need stories that don't have neat
endings or simple explanations, needs reminders that for all our
science and technology and accumulated knowledge, there's still so much
we don't understand about this strange and wonderful universe we inhabit.
The Van Meter Visitor came and went, leaving behind more
questions than answers, more mystery than certainty, And somewhere in
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the darkness it waits, maybe in the depths of the Earth,
maybe in the depths of space, maybe in the depths
of dimensions we can't even perceive, But it waits, and someday,
somewhere it might emerge again, spread those impossible wings, shine
that blinding light, and remind another generation that the world
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is stranger, more mysterious, more wonderful and terrible than we
dare to imagine. Until then, we have the story. We
have the testimony of those brave witnesses who saw the
impossible and had the courage to report it. We have
the newspaper accounts, the documented evidence, the legacy of five
nights in October nineteen o three, when a small Iowa
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town faced something beyond understanding. And we have the mystery,
eternal and unsolved, waiting for anyone brave enough or curious
enough or crazy enough to seek the truth. The Van
Meter visitor, a legend, a mystery, a reminder, and possibly
a truth too strange for us to fully comprehend, but
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a truth nonetheless preserved in the annals of American cryptozoology,
waiting to be rediscovered by each new generation that hears
the story and wonders, as we all must wonder, what
really happened in Van Meter those five October nights so
long ago. What happened we may never know for certain,
but we know something did, and that knowledge, that certainty
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that something impossible occurred is both terrifying and exhilarating. It
means the world is bigger than we thought, stranger than
we imagined, full of possibilities we've barely begun to explore.
And somewhere in that vast landscape of possibilities, the van
Meter Visitor flies on leather wings, its horn blazing with
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impossible light, waiting for the day when it might return
to remind us once again that there are things in
the darkness, things that can't be killed, and things that
defy explanation. The
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness Bigfoot,
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dog man UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods. If you dare,
picture a small Iowa farming town at the turn of
the twentieth century. Gas lamps flicker in the windows of
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modest homes. Dirt streets lie quiet under the stars. The
biggest excitement in van Meter, Iowa is usually the Saturday
market or the occasional barn dance. Life moves slow and
predictable in this community of about a thousand souls, where
everyone knows their neighbors and the most scandalous gossip involves
who's courting whom or which farmer got the best price
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for his corn. But in the fall of nineteen o three,
something crawled out of an abandoned mine on the edge
of town that would shatter that peaceful existence forever. For
five terrifying nights, the good people of van Meter would
face something that defied explanation, something that moved faster than
anything they'd ever seen, something that bullets couldn't stop, Something
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that emitted a blinding light from a horn on its forehead,
like some demon straight out of Hell itself. This is
the story of the Van Meter visitor, and what makes
it so compelling, so absolutely chilling, is that it wasn't
just one drunk stumbling home from the saloon who saw it.
It was the town's most respected citizens, the doctor, the banker,
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the business owners, men who had everything to lose by
claiming they'd seen a monster, and they all saw the
same thing. When we talk about cryptids and unexplained creatures,
were usually dealing with fleeting glimpses, blurry photographs, or stories
that have been passed down and embellished over generations until
the truth is impossible to separate. From fiction, But the
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van Meter visitor case is different. It happened over just
five nights. It was documented in newspapers as it occurred.
The witnesses weren't backwoods hermits or attention seeking teenagers. They
were pillars of the community who had no reason to
lie and every reason to keep quiet about something so bizarre,
so impossible that talking about it openly could ruin their reputations.
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They spoke up anyway because they knew what they saw,
and what they saw would haunt van Meter for the
next one hundred and twenty years. Now, before we dive
into those five nights of terror, we need to understand
what van Meter was like in nineteen o three. This
wasn't some isolated mountain settlement cut off from the modern world.
Van Meter was a proper town with a bank, stores,
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a doctor's office, churches, and schools. It had been founded
less than twenty years earlier, in eighteen eighty six, part
of the great Westward expansion that saw small towns sprouting
up across the Midwest like mushrooms after rain. The people
who lived there were practical, hardworking folks, farmers mostly, but
also shopkeepers and tradesmen. These were people who dealt with
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the concrete realities of life. They planted crops, raised livestock,
built buildings, kept ledgers. They weren't the type to see
shadows and jump to conclusions about monsters. That's what makes
this case so fascinating and so deeply unsettling. When the
creature first appeared, these same level headed citizens grabbed their
guns and started shooting. They organized posses, They tracked it
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to its layer. They didn't run, screaming or hide under
their beds. They responded the way you'd expect Turn of
the century men to respond to a threat with firepower,
lots of it. The problem was the bullets didn't work.
The events began on the night of Tuesday, September twenty ninth,
nineteen o three. The time was one o'clock in the morning,
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that dead hour when even the saloons have closed and
honest people are deep in sleep. But Ulysses G. Griffith
wasn't sleeping. He just returned to van Meter from a
business trip, and as he made his way down Main
Street toward his home, something caught his eye. A bright
light moving across the rooftop of one of the downtown buildings.
Not the warm flicker of a gas lamp or the
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steady glow of moonlight, but something else, something that moved
with purpose, sweeping back and forth, like someone up there
was searching for something. Griffith was a businessman, an implement dealer,
the kind of man who sold farming equipment and kept
careful records and didn't have much patience for nonsense. His
first thought was burglars. Someone up there with a lantern,
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probably casing the stores below looking for a way in.
It made sense, it was logical, and Griffith, being the
sort of man who believed in taking action, decided to
confront whoever was up there before they could rob the
town blind. He approached the building ready to shout up
at the burglar, ready to scare them off or get
a good look at their face so he could identify
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them to the sheriff. But as he got closer, as
he opened his mouth to call out, the thing on
the roof moved, and it moved in a way that
no human being could possibly move. It leaped, not climbed down,
not scrambled across the roof tiles, but leaped clear across
the street to another building, a jump that would have
been physically impossible for any person a distance that would
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have acquired wings, or magic or something else entirely. Griffith
stood there in the empty street, his heart pounding, trying
to make sense of what he'd just seen. The light
had vanished, whatever it was had disappeared into the night.
He went home, but he didn't sleep much. How could he.
He kept seeing that impossible leap in his mind, kept
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trying to convince himself that he'd been tired from his journey,
that his eyes had played tricks on him in the darkness.
By morning, he'd almost convinced himself, almost, but the thing
would return. The next night. Doctor Alcott was sleeping in
a room above his office, as he often did, so
he'd be available if someone needed medical attention in the night.
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The town doctor was another one of those bedrock citizens,
a man whose judgment and credibility were beyond question. When
you're the person people trust with their lives and the
lives of their children, you don't go around making up
wild stories. You can't afford to be seen as un
reliable or prone to hysteria. Your reputation is everything. So
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when doctor Alcott woke up around one in the morning
on September thirtieth, to find a brilliant light shining through
his window, bright enough to drag him from sleep. He
did what any sensible man would do. He grabbed his
gun and went outside to investigate. Maybe he expected to
find someone with a lantern. Maybe he thought there was
a fire. Whatever he expected, it wasn't. What he found.
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Perched on the roof across from his office was a
creature unlike anything doctor Alcott had ever seen in all
his years of medical training and practice. It stood upright,
taller than a man, much taller, maybe eight or nine
feet if you counted the height of the horn. And
yes there was a horn, a blunt protrusion growing from
its forehead. And from the tip of that horn came
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the light that had woken him, a beam so bright
it was almost blinding, so intense it seemed to cut
through the darkness like a knife. But it wasn't the
horn that made doctor Alcott's blood run cold. It was
the wings. Enormous wings, leathery and smooth, folded against a
body that looked part human and part something else entirely.
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He would later describe the creature as having a body
that seemed almost humanoid, but covered in a smooth hide
with features that were a grotesque mixture of human and animal.
The thing turned its head toward him, and in the
glow of its own strange light, the doctor saw its face,
not quite human, not quite anything he could name. Doctor
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Alcott raised his shotgun and fired. He was a good shot.
At that distance, he couldn't miss. The blast echoed through
the empty streets, loud enough to wake half the town.
He fired again, and again, five times. He shot at
the creature five times. He knew his aim was true.
But the thing didn't fall. It didn't even seem bothered.
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It spread those massive wings, and, with a movement that
was far too quick, far too graceful for something so large,
it launched itself into the air and disappeared into the
night sky. The doctor stood there, his hand shaking, his
gun empty, trying to process what had just happened. He
was a man of science. He'd studied anatomy, physiology, the
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natural world. He knew what was possible and what wasn't
and what he'd just seen, what he'd just shot at
wasn't possible, but he'd seen it. He'd fired at it.
The broken glass in the window and the spent shells
at his feet were proof that something had happened. He
couldn't pretend otherwise, He couldn't convince himself it had been
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a dream. Words spread quickly. The next day, as word
always does in small towns, Griffith heard about doctor Alcott's
encounter and came forward with his own story. Suddenly, people
who dismissed the implement dealer's tale as exhaustion or imagination
had to reconsider. The doctor had seen it too, The
doctor had shot at it. Whatever this thing was, it
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was real and it was in their town. The third
night October first, Clarence Dunn had guard duty at the bank.
By this point, rumors were swirling through van Meter like
leaves in a storm. Some people thought it was a hoax.
Others thought the doctor and Griffith had both had too
much to drink. But the bank's owners weren't taking chances.
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Banks were prime targets for robbers in those days, and
whether the creature was real or just a distraction for thieves,
Clarence Dune was going to make sure nobody walked away
with the town's money done. Was the bank cashier, a
man who would eventually become Van meter's mayor, which tells
you something about his standing in the community. He was smart, reliable,
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and level headed, not the type to jump at shadows
or fire his gun without cause. So when he settled
in for his night watch, shot gun across his lap,
he was ready for human trouble. He wasn't ready for
what actually showed up around one in the morning, the
pattern holding true, dun heard something outside, a sound like
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something being strangled, a horrible, strangling, choking noise that made
his skin crawl. He stood up, moving toward the window
to investigate, and that's when the light hit him, a
brilliant beam shining through the bank window, directly into his face.
So bright it was disorienting, so intense it left spots
dancing in his vision. For a moment, he couldn't see
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anything except that terrible light. Then behind the light he
saw the shape, something massive, something with wings. Done didn't hesitate.
He raised his shotgun and fired through the window, glass,
exploding outward into the night. He shot where he knew
the creature had to be, where the light was coming from,
and like doctor Alcot before him, his aim was true
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and his shot had no effect whatsoever. The light moved away.
The creature was gone, but it had left something behind.
When dawn came and Done could safely invent vestigate, he
found tracks in the mud outside the bank. Not human footprints,
not animal prints, like anything he'd ever seen. These were
three toed tracks, large and distinct, pressed deep into the earth,
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as if whatever made them was incredibly heavy. Done thinking ahead,
made plaster casts of those tracks, hard evidence proof that
something had been there. Those casts have since been lost
to history, but their creation was documented, witnessed by others.
They existed, which means the tracks existed, which means something real,
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something physical, had stood outside that bank. The fourth night
brought more witnesses. O. V. White, who owned the hardware
and furniture store, was sleeping in his room above the
shop when a loud, scraping sound woke him. He got up,
went to the window and saw the creature perched on
a telephone pole across the street, just sitting there, or standing,
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or whatever you call what a nine foot tall winged
thing does when it's balanced on a pole. White grabbed
his gun the same way everyone else had and fired
at it same result. The creature seemed impervious to bullets,
as if its hide was made of something that couldn't
be pierced, or as if it existed slightly outside the
normal rules of the physical world. Sidney Gregg, another banker,
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had his own terrifying encounter. He was walking home from
work when he turned into an alley and came face
to face with the creature. It jumped at him, knocked
him to the ground, and for a moment, greg found
himself pinned beneath something that should not exist. He would
later describe the creature's skin as smooth, its eyes as
large and unsettling, its nose as blunt and strange. He
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managed to scramble free and run, but the experience left
him shaken to his core. This wasn't something he saw
from a distance. This was close contact. This was real
in a way that left no room for doubt or rationalization.
By the fifth night, October third, the town was in
a state of barely controlled panic. Nobody was sleeping with
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their lights off. People were staying up all night, guns loaded,
watching the streets. The creature had been seen by too
many people, too many reliable people, for anyone to dismiss
it as imagination or lies. Something was out there, something
that came out at night, something that seemed drawn to
the light, or perhaps used its own light to hunt,
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something that moved like nothing they'd ever encountered. And then
someone reported hearing sounds coming from the abandoned coal mine
on the edge of town. The mine had been there
for years, dug back when people thought there might be
valuable coal deposits in the area. They'd gone down deep
more than two hundred and fifty feet, had even built
underground stables for the mules that hauled the coal cars.
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But the coal hadn't panned out, or at least not
enough to make the mine profitable, and it had been abandoned.
Stay tuned for more backwoods big foot stories will be
after these messages. The entrance was still there, though, a
dark opening in the earth that led down into tunnels
and chambers where no one went anymore. It was the
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kind of place that would be spooky even without a
monster legend attached to it. Add in the fact that
something impossible was terrorizing the town, and that dark hole
in the ground became absolutely terrifying. The sounds coming from
the mine were described in the Des Moines Daily News
as sounding like satan, and a regiment of imps were
coming forth for battle. Can you imagine hearing that demonic
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noises echoing up from the depths of an abandoned mine,
knowing that somewhere in your town is a creature that
can't be killed, that flies on leather wings and shoots
blinding light from its head. The people of van Meter
were scared, yes, but they were also angry. This thing
had been terrorizing their town for five nights. It had
to be stopped. Jail Platt, a local factory manager, was
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among those who went to investigate the sounds at the mine.
What he saw there would become the climax of the
entire van Meter Visitor saga. As the men watched from
a distance, weapons ready, the creature emerged from the mine shaft.
But it wasn't alone. There were two of them, one
large the size they'd been seeing all week, and one smaller,
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perhaps half the size of the first. A mate and offspring,
some speculated apparent and child, two creatures that had been
hiding in that mine, coming out at night to hunt,
or explore, or do whatever unknowable things creatures from abandoned
mines do. The two visitors took flight, their wings spread wide,
the horns on their heads blazing with that unnatural light.
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They flew off into the darkness, and the men of
van Meter knew they would return. This was their layer,
this was where they lived. So the men did what
men in nineteen o three knew how to do. They
formed a posse. They gathered every gun in town. They
waited at the mine entrance for the creatures to come back.
Just before dawn, the visitors returned. The men of van
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Meter opened fire. The newspaper account said they unleashed enough
firepower to have sunk the Spanish fleet, which gives you
an idea of just how much lead was flying through
the air. Dozens of men shooting rifles and shotguns at
close range, pouring everything they had into these two creatures,
and like every other time someone had shot at the visitors,
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the bullets had no effect none. The creatures didn't fall,
they didn't even slow down. They made unearthly screeching sounds,
released a stench so foul that it made grown men gag,
and then they simply walked into the mine shaft and
disappeared into the darkness below. The men stood there, smoke
still rising from their guns, trying to understand what had
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just happened. They'd hit those things. They knew they had.
You don't miss it that range with that much firepower.
But the creatures had absorbed the bullets like water absorbing rain,
like it was nothing at all, like they were made
of something that existed outside the normal laws of physics.
As the sun came up on October third, casting light
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over a town that hadn't slept, the men of van
Meter made a decision. They couldn't kill the creatures, that
much was clear, but they could trap them. They spent
that day bricking up the mine entrance, sealing it with
stone and mortar, and tombing whatever was down there in
the darkness where it had come from. The work was
done quickly, desperately, with everyone helping, because everyone wanted this
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nightmare to end, and it did end. The Van Meter
visitor was never seen again, not during those terrifying five nights.
In nineteen o three. The town slowly returned to normal.
People started sleeping with their lights off again. The guards
at the bank went home. Life went on. But nobody
who'd been there, nobody who'd seen those things or heard
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about them from reliable witness is ever really forgot. The
story was written down, recorded in newspapers, mentioned in the
town's centennial book. Decades later, it became part of Van
Meter's history, part of its identity. So what was the
Van Meter visitor? What were these things that terrorized a
small Iowa town for five nights and then vanished into legend.
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Let's look at what we know for certain. Multiple witnesses,
all of them respected members of the community, all described
the same basic creature eight to nine feet tall when
standing upright, massive leathery wings, smooth and bat like, a
blunt horn on the forehead that emitted a brilliant blinding light.
A body that was part human, part animal, covered in
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smooth skin or hide, the ability to move at incredible
speeds to leap distances no normal creature could manage to
fly with grace and power, three toad tracks, large and deep,
a terrible stench that accompanied its appearances, and most importantly,
it was completely impervious to bullets. That last point is crucial.
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We're not talking about missed shots or poor aim. These
were men who knew how to handle firearms. They were
shooting at close range, hitting their target, and the bullets
were having no effect either. The creature's hide was incredibly tough,
tougher than anything in the natural world, or something else
was going on, something we don't have a good explanation for.
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The theories have ranged from the mundane to the fantastical.
Some skeptics, including some residents of Van Meter at the time,
claimed it was all a hoax perpetrated by the town
postmaster HH Phillips, who supposedly made up the story for
an article in the Des Moines Daily News. But that
theory has major problems. First, the witnesses were real people
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with real reputations to protect. They had no reason to
participate in a hoax that would make them look foolish. Second,
there was physical evidence. The broken bank window where Dune
fired as shotgun, the plaster casts of the three toed tracks,
the sealed mine entrance. These weren't things that existed only
in a newspaper article. They were real. And Third, even
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the people who claimed it was a hoax admitted that
the town experienced strange lights and unidentified noises. They admitted
that Clarence Done really did blow out the bank window.
So if it was a hoax, it was a remarkably
elaborate one that involved physical evidence and multiple respected citizens
willing to stake their reputations on a lie. Other skeptics
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have suggested it was a large owl or crane, misidentified
in the dark and blown out of proportion by fear
and panic, but that doesn't hold up either. These witnesses
got good looks at the creature. Doctor Alcott saw it
clearly enough to describe its features. Clarence Done had it
shine a light in his face. Sidney Gregg was knocked
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down by it. They knew what birds looked like, they
knew what animal looked like. This was something different, something
that stood upright like a human, had wings like a bat,
and emitted light from a horn on its head. No
known bird or animal fits that description, and the idea
that multiple witnesses all independently misidentified the same common animal
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in the same bizarre way strains credibility, so we're left
with more exotic theories. Some cryptozoologists have suggested the Van
Meter visitor might have been a surviving pterosaur, a flying
reptile that was supposed to have gone extinct millions of
years ago. The description does fit in some ways. Pterosaurs
had wings, they were large, They had crests on their
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heads that could potentially explain the horn, but terosaurs didn't
emit light. There's no known biological mechanism for a living
creature to generate a beam of light strong enough to
blind people or light up building facades, and pterosaurs certainly
weren't bulletproof. The light is really the sticking point for
any natural explanation. Bioluminescence exists in nature. Of course. We
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have fireflies and deep sea fish that glow, but that's
a gentle luminescence, a chemical reaction that produces a soft light.
What the van Meter visitor produced was described as a beam,
a spotlight, something that could temporarily blind people and illuminate
large areas. That's not bioluminescence. That's something else entirely. Some
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researchers have drawn parallels between the van Meter visitor and
other winged cryptids from American folklore. The Jersey Devil, for instance,
which has been reported in New Jersey for centuries, shares
some characteristics winged, bipedal, strange and terrifying, but the Jersey
devil doesn't have the light emitting horn, and the descriptions
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are otherwise quite different. The mothman, which would terrorize Point Pleasant,
West Virginia, in the nineteen sixties is another comparison. The
Mothman was winged, associated with strange life light, and seen
by multiple credible witnesses, But Mothman was described as having
glowing red eyes, not a horn that shot light, and
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the overall description is different enough that lumping them together
seems forced. What's fascinating about the Van Meter case is
how contained it was. Five nights, one location, multiple consistent witnesses,
and then it was over. The creatures went into the
mine and never came out, or at least if they
did come out, they did it quietly, without terrorizing the town. Again,
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that pattern doesn't fit with most cryptid sightings, which tend
to be sporadic and spread out over time. It's more
like an invasion, a brief incursion into our world by
something that didn't belong here. That's led some of the
more imaginative theorists to suggest the Van Meter visitor might
have been extraterrestrial in origin aliens. In other words, the
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horn emitting light could have been a scanning device or
a weapon. The imperviousness bullets could be explained by advanced technology,
some kind of personal force field. The abandoned mind could
have been where their craft was hidden, or a portal
to somewhere else. It's a theory that fits the facts
in a way, but it also raises more questions than
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it answers. Why would aliens terrorize a small Iowa town,
What were they looking for? And why did they leave
so abruptly. There's also the possibility that the Van Meter
visitor was something supernatural rather than flesh and blood, a demon,
as some of the contemporary accounts suggested. The Des Moines
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Daily News described the sounds from the mind as satan
and a regiment of imps, and that kind of language
wasn't just colorful journalism. People at the time genuinely considered
the possibility that they were dealing with something from hell.
The creature's resistance to bullets, its unnatural light, its terrible stench,
the way it seemed to appear and disappear at will.
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All of these could be seen as demonic attributes. In
folklore and religious tradition, demons are often described as having
power over light and darkness, as being able to take
physical form but not be truly physical, as having an
overwhelming stench associated with sulfur or brimstone. If we consider
a supernatural explanation, the mind becomes significant in a different way.
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Abandoned places, especially underground spaces, are often associated with the
supernatural and folklore. They are thin places where the barrier
between our world and others might be weakened. The idea
that something could emerge from deep beneath the earth, terrorize
the surface world, and then retreat back into the depths
is a very old story, one that appears in mythologies
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around the world. The Greeks had stories of creatures coming
up from the underworld. Medieval Europe had tales of things
that dwelt in caves and mines. Every culture has some
version of the underground monster, the thing that lives where
humans don't belong. But here's what troubles me about all
the theories, both mundane and extraordinary, None of them really
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fit all the facts. A hoax doesn't explain the physical
evidence or the credibility of the witnesses. A misidentified animal
doesn't explain the light, or the impossible jumps, or the
resistance to gunfire. A pterosare doesn't explain the light. An
alien doesn't explain why it would behave the way it did.
A demon doesn't explain the physical tracks and the body
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that could knock a man down. It's possible likely even
that we're missing information. The plaster casts of the tracks
are lost. We don't have photographs of the creatures, though
photography in nineteen o three was certainly possible. We don't
have samples of the hide to test its composition. We
don't have the mind anymore. It's been sealed and filled
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in over the years. All we have are the accounts,
the newspaper articles, the testimony of people who claim to
see something impossible. Chad lewis a researcher who wrote a
book about the Van Meter visitor. After extensive investigation, came
to an interesting conclusion. He said that after pouring over
all the records, interviewing residents, and visiting the sites of
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the original encounters, he was still as puzzled as the
people of Van Meter were in nineteen o three. He'd
gone into the research convinced it would turn out to
be a hoax, but as he dug deeper that conviction eroded.
The more he learned, the less sense a hoax made.
But he also couldn't say with certainty what the creature
actually was, and in the end he found peace in
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not knowing, in accepting that some mysteries might not have
answers that fit into our understanding of the world. That's
a hard thing for modern people to accept. We're used
to having explanations for everything. We expect science to eventually
explain every strange occurrence, every anomaly. We trust that with
enough investigation and the right tools, we can understand anything.
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But maybe some things exist out there side that framework.
Maybe there are experiences that don't fit into neat categories
of known animals, identified phenomena, or understood physics. The Van
Meter case is particularly frustrating because it feels like it
should be solvable. It's not some vague legend passed down
through generations and embellished with each telling. It happened in
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nineteen o three, well within the modern era. It was
documented as it occurred. The witnesses were literate, intelligent people
who wrote down what they saw, and yet we still
can't say for certain what terrorized that town. What we
can say is that something did happen. Too many people
saw it, too much evidence existed at the time. The
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town wouldn't have sealed up a mind shaft for no reason.
Clarence Dunn wouldn't have blown out a bank window and
made plaster casts of tracks if he'd seen nothing. Doctor
Alcott wouldn't have risked his reputation as a medical professional
by claiming he'd shot at a monster if he had
actually done so. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. These people had everything
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to lose and nothing to gain by making up such
a story. Their accounts were consistent with each other, which
argues against hallucination or individual delusion. They all described the
same basic creature with the same impossible characteristics. The story
didn't end in nineteen oh three, though, like all good mysteries,
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the Van Meter Visitor has refused to stay buried. Over
the years, there have been occasional reports of similar sightings
in the area. Nothing is sustained or well documented as
the original five Nights, but enough to keep the legend
alive and make people wonder if something might still be
out there. In the nineteen eighties, a man reported seeing
a giant bat like creature near the old Mine location.
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What makes this sighting interesting is that the witness apparently
had no knowledge of the town's history. He wasn't a local,
looking for attention or trying to revive a legend. He
was just someone who saw something strange and reported it.
When people later told him about the nineteen oh three events,
he was shocked to discover that his description matched what
those long ago witnesses had seen. That's the kind of
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detail that makes you think if someone independently describes the
same creature without knowing about the previous sightings, what does
that mean? Coincidence, shared hallucination, or something that's actually there.
In two thousand and six, a local pastor reported seeing
something dragon like flying in the sky. Only after searching
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online for Iowa dragon did he discover the Van Meter
Visitor legend and realized that what he'd seen matched the
historical descriptions. Again, we have someone who saw something first
and learned about the legend second, rather than the other
way around. That pattern of sightings argues against people simply
seeing what they expect to see based on knowing the story. Today,
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Van Meter has embraced its months. There's an annual Van
Meter Visitor Festival where people come from all over to
celebrate the legend, listen to researchers and paranormal experts, and
take tours of the historical sites. The festival started in
twenty thirteen, more than one hundred years after the original events,
and it's become a source of community pride. Not everyone
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in town believes the story, of course, Some residents think
it's fun folklore, while others consider it a silly hoax
that gets too much attention. But the legend has become
part of Van Meter's identity, part of what makes it
unique among small Iowa towns. There's something deeply American about
the Van Meter visitor story. It happened during an era
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of rapid change and discovery. The Wright Brothers would make
the first powered flight just two months after the Van
Meter encounters. Scientific discoveries were accelerating, the world was getting smaller,
as telegraph lines and railroads connected previously isolated communities. People
were open to the idea that new things might be discovered,
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that the world still held mysteries. The Mountain Guerrilla had
only recently been confirmed to exist, proving that legendary beasts
of the jungle could be real. So when something impossible
appeared in Van Meter, people didn't immediately dismiss it. They
took it seriously. They tried to deal with it in
practical ways. And maybe that's the real lesson of the
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van Meter Visitor, not that we need to believe in monsters,
but that we should take seriously the experiences of credible witnesses,
even when those experiences don't fit our preconceptions. The people
of van Meter saw something. We can argue all day
about what it was, whether it was flesh and blood
or something else entirely, whether it came from the depths
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of the earth, or the depths of space, or the
depths of human imagination. But something happened there in those
five nights in October nineteen o three. Something scared an
entire town. Something left tracks and broken windows and sealed
mind shafts. The truth is, we may never know what
the van Meter Visitor really was. The physical evidence is gone,
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the witnesses have long since passed away, the mind is
sealed and filled in. All we have left are the stories,
the newspaper accounts, the testimony recorded more than a century ago.
And maybe that's enough. Maybe the value isn't in solving
the mystery, but in having the mystery to contemplate, to
wonder about, to spark our imagination about what might be possible.
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Because here's the thing, about the van Meter visitor. That
makes it different from a lot of cryptid stories. It
doesn't ask us to believe in a breeding population of
unknown creatures living undiscovered in the wilderness. It doesn't require
us to accept that scientists have missed an entire species
hiding in plain sight. The van Meter case is about
something that appeared, briefly, interacted with humans, and then vanished.
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A visitor, as the name suggests something passing through, and
that's somehow more plausible than the idea of bigfoot families
living in the Pacific Northwest or lake monsters in every
body of water. A visitor can come and go. A
visitor doesn't need to leave behind bones or DNA or
a sustainable population. A visitor is, by definition temporary. The
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question is where did it come from and where did
it go? The underground origin suggested by the mind is intriguing.
The earth is vast and mostly unexplored. Beneath the surface,
we've barely scratched the top layer of the crust. There
could be caverns down there, vast chambers and tunnels that
we've never discovered. Creatures that evolved in the darkness, adapted
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to an environment without sunlight, could develop unusual characteristics. Bats
use echolocation to navigate in darkness. Why couldn't something else
develop light generation as a hunting tool, and the resistance
to bullets could be explained by a hide adapt to
withstand the pressures and conditions of deep underground life, something
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so tough and dense that small arms fire couldn't penetrate it.
But then we have to ask why such creatures would
come to the surface at all, what drew them up?
What need would underground creatures have for the surface world,
and why did they return so quickly to the depths.
Did the sunlight hurt them? Were they just exploring satisfying
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curiosity about the strange realm above their home? Or were
they driven out by something deeper down, something even more
terrifying that made the surface world seem like a safer
option despite the humans with guns. These are the questions
that keep researchers and enthusiasts fascinated with the Van Meter
case more than a century later, because, unlike a lot
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of cryptid stories that are vague or contradictory or clearly embellished,
the Van Meter visitor case has a solidity to it.
It happened in a specific place at a specific time.
It involved specific people whose lives and reputations can be verified.
It was documented in contemporary sources, It had physical evidence
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that was observed by multiple witnesses. And then it ended cleanly,
without the kind of lingering sightings that make you suspect
people are just seeing what they want to see. Five nights.
That's all it took for the Van Meter Visitor to
etch itself permanently into the folklore of American cryptozoology. Five
nights of terror. Five nights when a small Iowa town
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faced something that shouldn't exist. Five nights that raised questions
we still can't answer. On those five nights, in October
nineteen o three, the people of Van Meter learned something
that humans have always known but frequently forget. The world
is stranger than we think. There are things in the dark,
things in the depths, things that don't fit into our
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neat categories and explanations. We like to believe we figured
everything out, that we've mapped and measured and understood the world,
but every so often something happen that reminds us how
little we actually know, how much mystery still exists. The
van Meter Visitor is one of those reminders. Whether it
was a creature of flesh and blood, a visitor from
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another world, something supernatural, or something we don't even have
words for, yet, it was real to the people who
experienced it. It changed their lives, it changed their town,
and it left behind a legacy that continues to fascinate,
perplex and occasionally terrify people more than one hundred years later.
So the next time you're in Iowa, if you find
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yourself passing through van Meter, take a moment to look
at the sky, scan the rooftops, listen for strange sounds
in the night. Because while the mine is sealed and
the original witnesses are long gone, nobody can say for
certain that the Van Meter visitor won't return. Maybe it's
still down there in the deep places of the earth waiting.
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Maybe it emerged somewhere else, in some other town that
either hasn't recognized what they're seeing or has cho and
to keep quiet about it. Or maybe it really was
just a visitor, something passing through our world briefly before
moving on to wherever things like that go. The truth
is out there, as they say, but sometimes the truth
is so strange, so impossible, so far outside our frame
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of reference that even when we're looking right at it,
even when we're shooting at it with everything we have,
we still can't quite believe what we're seeing. The people
of van Meter believed, though they had no choice. They
saw it with their own eyes, They heard it with
their own ears, They smelled that terrible stench. They fired
at it and watched their bullets have no effect. They knew.
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And because they knew, because they had the courage to
report what they'd seen, even when it meant risking ridicule
and disbelief, we know too. We know that in the
fall of nineteen o three, something impossible came to van Meter, Iowa.
Something with wings and a horn and a light that
could blind you, Something that couldn't be killed, Something that
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emerged from an abandoned mine and eventually returned to the
darkness below. Something that shouldn't exist, but did. The Van
Meter Visitor one of America's most credible, most documented, most
mysterious cryptid encounters, A story that stood the test of
time because it's built on a foundation of reliable witnesses,
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contemporary documentation, and physical evidence. A story that raises more
questions than it answers, but refuses to be dismissed or
explained away, a story that reminds us that the world
is bigger and stranger than we usually dare to imagine,
and somewhere deep beneath the Iowa soil, in tunnels and
chambers that humans have never reached. Maybe that story isn't over.
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Maybe the Visitor is still down there, along with others
of its kind, living their lives in the eternal darkness
of the deep Earth. Maybe they remember those five nights too,
remember the strange creatures they encountered on the surfaces, the
bipedal beings without wings, who made loud noises and bright
flashes and smelled of fear. Maybe they tell stories to
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their offspring about the time they visited the upper world,
about the lights and the colors and the strange constructions
the surface dwellers had made. Or maybe the van Meter
Visitor came from somewhere else, entirely, somewhere we can't even conceptualize,
and those five nights were nothing more than a brief
intersection between worlds, a moment when something impossible slipped through
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a crack in reality and walked among us before returning
to wherever it properly belonged. We'll probably never know for sure.
The Van Meter Visitor took its secrets with it when
it descended back into that mind shaft in the early
morning hours of October third, nineteen o three. But the
mystery it left behind, the questions it raised, the fear
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and wonder it inspired, those things remain. They're part of
Van Meter's legacy, now part of cryptozoology's most intriguing cases,
part of the great tapestry of American folklore and unexplained phenomena.
And every October, when the air gets crisp and the
leaves start to turn and the nights grow longer, some
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people in Van Meter still find themselves glancing at the sky,
watching the rooftops, listening for the sound of wings, because
they remember the stories their grandparents told, stories passed down
from those who were there, who saw it, who knew
the truth, And they wonder if maybe the Visitor might
decide to come back, to emerge once more from whatever
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dark place it calls home, and spread those impossible wings
under an Iowa sky. The Van Meter Visitor a mystery
wrapped in history, documented by the trustworthy, witnessed by the skeptical,
and unexplained by science. Whatever it was, wherever it came from,
it earned its place in the annals of American cryptozoology,
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not through blurry photos or dubious sightings, but through five
solid nights of encounters with credible witnesses who had nothing
to gain and everything to lose by telling the truth
about what they'd seen. That truth, strange and terrifying as
it was, deserves to be remembered. The people of Van
Meter in nineteen o three faced something beyond their understanding
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and responded with the courage and determination that characterized America
at the turn of the century. They didn't run, they
didn't hide. They grabbed their guns, and they fought back,
even when their weapons proved useless. And when they couldn't
kill the creature, they did the next best thing. They
trapped it, sealed it away, protected their town the only
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way they knew how. Whether the visitor is still down there,
still trapped behind that seal, or whether it found another
way out, another path to freedom, remains one of the
many unknowns surrounding this case, but the story endures. The
mystery persists, and somewhere in the darkness, whether it's the
darkness of deep Earth or the darkness of the unknown.
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The Van Meter Visitor waits, maybe forever, maybe just until
the time is right to return. That's the power of
a good mystery, and the Van Meter Visitor is one
of the best. It gives us just enough to know
something happened, but not enough to know what. It provides
credible witnesses and physical evidence, but not enough of either
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to reach a definitive conclusion. It offers multiple possible explanations,
but none that quite fit all the facts, and in
doing so, it keeps us wondering, keeps us asking questions,
keeps us looking at the world with just a bit
more openness to the possibility that there are things out there,
things in the dark, things that don't fit into our
(44:44):
neat categories of known and unknown. The Van Meter Visitor
I was winged terror, The creature from the abandoned mind,
the thing that came in the night, with its blinding
light and its terrible stench, and its resistance to bullets.
Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back
after these messages. The monster that united a town in
(45:08):
terror and then vanished as mysteriously as it had appeared,
leaving behind only questions and stories and a legacy that
refuses to die. Five nights in October nineteen o three.
That's all it took to create a legend that would
last for more than a century. Five nights that the
people of Van Meter would never forget, would never fully understand,
(45:31):
would never stop talking about. Five nights when the impossible
became real and the residents of a small Iowa town
learned that the world is far stranger than they'd ever imagined.
And the most terrifying thing, the thing that keeps this
story alive and relevant more than one hundred years later,
the fact that it could happen again, that somewhere in
(45:52):
some small town, something might emerge from the darkness, something
with wings and light and characteristics that defy explanation. Because
if it happened once, if the Van Meter Visitor was real,
and all the evidence suggests it was, then the door
is open. The possibility exists, and we have to accept
that our understanding of the world, our certainty about what
(46:15):
does and doesn't exist, might need some serious revision. That's
the gift the Van Meter Visitor gave us. Not fear,
though there was plenty of that, not proof of monsters,
though the evidence is compelling, but doubt healthy doubt, the
kind of doubt that keeps us humble, keeps us curious,
keeps us open to possibilities we might otherwise dismiss. The
(46:39):
Van Meter Visitor taught us that sometimes the witnesses are
telling the truth even when the truth seems impossible. That
sometimes the physical evidence is real, even when it doesn't
make sense. That sometimes things happen that we simply can't explain,
no matter how hard we try. And maybe that's exactly
as it should be. Maybe the world needs mistry like
(47:00):
the Van Meter Visitor, need stories that don't have neat
endings or simple explanations, needs reminders that for all our
science and technology and accumulated knowledge, there's still so much
we don't understand about this strange and wonderful universe we inhabit.
The Van Meter Visitor came and went, leaving behind more
questions than answers, more mystery than certainty, And somewhere in
(47:24):
the darkness it waits, maybe in the depths of the Earth,
maybe in the depths of space, maybe in the depths
of dimensions we can't even perceive, But it waits, and someday,
somewhere it might emerge again, spread those impossible wings, shine
that blinding light, and remind another generation that the world
(47:47):
is stranger, more mysterious, more wonderful and terrible than we
dare to imagine. Until then, we have the story. We
have the testimony of those brave witnesses who saw the
impossible and had the courage to report it. We have
the newspaper accounts, the documented evidence, the legacy of five
nights in October nineteen o three, when a small Iowa
(48:08):
town faced something beyond understanding. And we have the mystery,
eternal and unsolved, waiting for anyone brave enough or curious
enough or crazy enough to seek the truth. The Van
Meter visitor, a legend, a mystery, a reminder, and possibly
a truth too strange for us to fully comprehend, but
(48:30):
a truth nonetheless preserved in the annals of American cryptozoology,
waiting to be rediscovered by each new generation that hears
the story and wonders, as we all must wonder, what
really happened in Van Meter those five October nights so
long ago. What happened we may never know for certain,
but we know something did, and that knowledge, that certainty
(48:54):
that something impossible occurred is both terrifying and exhilarating. It
means the world is bigger than we thought, stranger than
we imagined, full of possibilities we've barely begun to explore.
And somewhere in that vast landscape of possibilities, the van
Meter Visitor flies on leather wings, its horn blazing with
(49:15):
impossible light, waiting for the day when it might return
to remind us once again that there are things in
the darkness, things that can't be killed, and things that
defy explanation. The
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