The year was about 1951 or 1952. Bladenboro is a small
town over in Bladen County about 80 miles southeast of
Rockingham, just beyond Lumberton. It was a tobacco
town back then, and I image it still is. There were reports
of dogs and farm animals being savagely destroyed and
partially eaten by some sort of strange, unknown
creature. What sort of creature was this, and was a
human going to be it's next victim? I was about ten at the
time. This made the front page of the Richmond County
Journal every several days with new attacks. By the way,
the Journal was only delivered three days per week back
then. I used to deliver it starting shortly after this
incident, but I had to discontinue after about four
months. (You really need to be over twelve to be a
paperboy, and I think I was slightly short of eleven). Was
this creature a bear, a large cat or something else?
Nobody ever suggested it was the abominable snowman,
mostly because they had never heard of that creature yet.
Besides, it only snows in Bladenboro about once ever
million years (would you believe once every five years?)
You know, this came at a particularly bad time for me. I
was just about to get over my fear of all those goblins and
gremlins that hide under little children's beds at night.

As I mentioned in LD's Fan, Rev. N. B. Stevens was the
pastor at the Pee Dee Church from about 1950 to 1952
(three full years). When he left Pee Dee, he retired to his
family farm near Chadbourn about ten miles this side of
Whiteville. He was a particularly close friend of our
family, and later, my big sister went down from Gastonia
to stay with Rev. Stevens and his wife shortly after she
finished High School. (Actually I should say my older
sister; one should never refer to a sister as a big sister
after she is grown, especially after she is a grandmother).
I think the purpose of her trip was to attend some type of
church camp. Anyhow, on this trip she met her future
husband. They were married at the Pee Dee Church in
1960 by Rev. Stevens. Now the whole reason for telling
you this is that her husband was from Bladenboro. In fact,
they lived in Bladenboro for about ten years right after
they were married and before they moved to Gastonia.
Her husband would tease the rest of us by telling us that
he was the Beast of Bladenboro. Of course we knew he
was joking because we knew by that time the same thing
you will know when you finish reading this article. I
wonder if my little niece and nephew knew whether he
was teasing or not.

Now the following never happened, but it easily could
have happened. We were on the playground at school
during this time. One of the school bullies cried out: It's
the Beast of Bladenboro, and all the children started
running back into the school building. Then the bully
passed by where I was changing to my new set of run
shoes. As he passed, he said: "Idiot, you can't outrun the
Beast of Bladenboro." My reply was: "It's not necessary to
outrun the Beast of Bladenboro; it's only necessary to
outrun you." (Sorry, I couldn't resist that).

We did curtail our outside activities somewhat in reaction
to this situation, even in Rockingham. This was in the late
fall of the year when the days were getting short. We
didn't have daylight savings time in North Carolina back
then. Every movement or noise in the bushes and every
shadow were suspicious. It's real easy for a ten year old to
get spooked. Often in our family, we would need to go
down to the bottom of the hill to Mr. Pop Brady's store to
get a loaf of bread or something like that. Any other time,
I'd been eager to go. I was thinking: But not now, and
especially not at night. Wha't used to be a simple walking
errand for us kids was now a car trip of two blocks.

My father surmised this was a large cat that had been
wounded by a hunter so that it was no longer quick
enough to capture its normal prey such as deer. It was
hungry and had to settle for anything it could catch. A big
cat would be no match for a pack of dogs, but might
overcome a single dog or even a couple of dogs. In the
mountains of North Carolina we have mountain lions,
also called cougars, pumas or catamounts, and they are
usually light brown in color. The mascot of Western
Carolina University is called the Catamounts (i.e., cat of
the mountains). There were some panthers in the Florida
& Georgia swamps, but were they also in some of the
swamps in Bladen County? In Pennsylvania, they like to
call them Nittany Lions after the Nittany Mountains
there. This is where Penn State University got the name
for its mascot. Does anybody remember the Carolina
Cougars professional basketball team from back in the
1970's and early 1980's? Some of your large African lions
might approach four or five hundred pounds. The
mountain lions of America might weigh two hundred
pounds. They could kill a man if they really wanted to do
that; however, humans are not worth the effort when
there are so many other animals that are more fleshy and
much better eating for the effort. It's usually only when
big cats become injured are they a threat to humans
(including in Africa and India).

Now the Sheriff of Bladen County had a problem on his
hands. He and his men had tried to find the Beast, but it
had proved to be very elusive. Meanwhile, there were
more maulings, and I think they eventually asked big
game hunters to come in and see what they could do. This
whole affair lasted about two or three months. They did
finally kill the Beast. It turned out it was an injured black
panther. Bet you didn't know they had big cats in our neck
of the woods? I didn't until then. I'm not sure an
American panther is not a mountain lion, but the
newspapers called it a panther. Turns out the panther had
been previously injured, but I don't remember whether it
was from a gunshot wound or not. I wonder if Charlotte's
professional football team chose its mascot based on this?
(Probably not).



PS: This past weekend I was talking to my
brother-in-law about the Bladenboro story since it
involved him.  He added that during this scary time in
Bladenboro, there was a curfew against being out after
dark, that is, a "dust to dawn" curfew.  He also
mentioned that the games hunter who finally destroyed
the Beast was from Asheville.  Maybe he had previously
had some big cat hunting experience since they do have
big cats in the North Carolina mountains.

Addendum:  Correction:  October 29, 2007.

My brother-in-law said I had misquoted him.  
Everything above was correct, except they never caught
the Beast.  The original story above was first published
in 2005.

 

(Below is a photo of the beast forwarded to me by

John Kelly 021516)