🦶 CRYPTID SIGHTING · EXP. Nº0555
ACTIVE
Momo the Missouri Monster
Momo the Missouri Monster is a cryptid — a creature whose existence is unconfirmed by science — with reported sightings near Louisiana, Missouri, US. This file collects the accounts and folklore surrounding it.
Where and when was Momo the Missouri Monster sighted?
- Location
- Louisiana, Missouri, US
- Date sighted
- Unknown
- Coordinates
- 39.44, -91.05
- Testimonies
- 0
- Last updated
LOCATION
What is Momo the Missouri Monster?
On the afternoon of Tuesday 11 July 1972, in the Mississippi river town of Louisiana, Missouri, Doris Harrison, 15, heard her younger brothers Terry, 8, and Wally, 5, screaming in the yard at the foot of Marzolf Hill, the wooded ridge above town that almost everyone there now calls Star Hill. She looked out of the bathroom window, and what she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was this and no more: "Six or seven feet tall, black and hairy. It stood like a man, but it didn't look like one to me." Reporters shortened Missouri Monster to Momo, and within a fortnight the hill carried search parties, television crews and a UFO investigator from Oklahoma City. Nothing was found but two disinterred dog graves. What is striking fifty-four years on is how much the creature has grown since. The local Louisiana Press-Journal of that July offered its readers a prank, an escaped hog, a wildcat and a bear before it offered them a monster, and printed no glowing eyes at all — while the pages that dominate the internet today give the same girl a pumpkin-shaped head and large orange eyes she is nowhere recorded as describing.
What is the history of Momo the Missouri Monster?
Louisiana, Missouri, is a river town of about 3,000 people in Pike County, some 90 miles north of St. Louis on Route 79. Above its streets stands a wooded ridge that the maps of 1972 called Marzolf Hill and that almost everyone in town now calls Star Hill. On the afternoon of Tuesday 11 July 1972 — Loren Coleman gives the time as 3:30 p.m. — Terry Harrison, 8, and his brother Wally, 5, were in the yard at the foot of that hill with the family dog, Chubby. Their sister Doris, 15, had been left in charge while their parents were at work.
What Doris said next is the whole of the case, and it is worth reading in her own words rather than in the version that circulates today. "Terry and Wally Paul, he's 5 years old, were out in the back with Chubby, the dog, when I heard Terry start screaming," she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I looked out the bathroom window and saw it. I started crying and ran into the other room to call Mom on the telephone, and then she and Dad came home." Of the thing itself she said only: "It was right by the tree. Six or seven feet tall, black and hairy. It stood like a man, but it didn't look like one to me." The dead dog under its arm, the blood on its coat and the smell are all narrator's additions in the accounts that followed; they are not in the sentences attributed to her.
The first printed version was strikingly cautious. Passages from the Louisiana Press-Journal of that July, read aloud on the Missouri Department of Conservation's own podcast in 2024 by Brent Engel, president of the local museum board, begin: "Something is going on in the area of Marzolf Hill. What it is, no one seems to know for sure." The paper then lists, before any monster, the mundane candidates its neighbours were offering — "some people say it's a prank, it's pranksters making noises to scare people. Some think it might be a hog escaped from a truck accident late last May. Some say it may have been a wild cat. Other people say it may have been a bear" — and reports the sighting at second hand, through the father: "Edgar Harrison said yesterday his daughter, aged 15, was in the bathroom of their house, when his 8 year old son who was playing in the backyard began to holler and scream that something was in the yard. His daughter looked out the bathroom window and she saw about 50 feet from the house, a black object about 7 feet tall. The boy told his father a similar story. The object was tall, black and shaggy."
Edgar Harrison, 41, a city employee with twenty-one years of service and a deacon in the Pentecostal church, is the reason the story did not die there. On Friday 14 July he was holding the regular prayer meeting at his house when, he said, ringing noises came from the metal water reservoir at the top of the hill and then a growl that "got louder and louder and kept coming closer"; his family made him drive off and the congregation scattered down the street. Officers Jerry Floyd and John Whitaker searched the house and found nothing. Later that night Harrison and others went up the hill and met a stench he described as "a moldy, horse smell or a strong garbage smell". His wife Betty was blunter with the Post-Dispatch: "It sounded like a gorilla. That's what it is — a 'Bigfoot.'"
From there it ran. On Wednesday 19 July police chief Shelby Ward took about two dozen men and made three passes up the hill. On the 20th Richard Crowe, a reporter for FATE magazine, walked it with Harrison and found stripped brush, digging in an old dump, two disinterred dog graves and two impressions in ground that had not seen rain for ten days: one over ten inches long, one five inches long and curved, which Crowe read as a handprint. On Friday 21 July Ellis Minor, on River Road, turned a flashlight on something six feet tall and black-haired that ran for the woods. On Saturday 22 July Hayden C. Hewes, of the International UFO Bureau of Oklahoma City, camped on the hill and recorded nothing: "We did not see or smell or hear anything. But from the several reports, it's apparent that something has been sighted." By then the press had already shortened Missouri Monster to Momo. On 1 August Hewes held a press conference, offered four hypotheses — an animal left by a UFO, a prehistoric survivor, an escaped primate, a hoax — admitted he had turned up "some hoaxes" among the twenty-odd people he interviewed, and settled on an unknown hominid: "Momo must be taken alive. He's the greatest anthropological find in history."
The commercial afterlife was immediate. Bill Whyte, a Pike County broadcaster turned Nashville songwriter, recorded "Mo Mo the Missouri Monster" in 1972 from a poem by radio announcer Joe Lewis and Paul Salois; local shops ran Momo sales; and by 1973 the Six Flags park at Eureka, 130 kilometres to the south, was advertising a ride called Mo-Mo The Monster. The creature itself was never seen again in any documented way.
Timeline: the documented record of Momo the Missouri Monster
- July 1971 Joan Mills and Mary Ryan, picnicking off Highway 79 north of Louisiana, report a hairy, gurgling biped that walks up to their Volkswagen and eats a peanut butter sandwich they had abandoned. They file a report with the Missouri State Patrol. Loren Coleman treats this as the overture to the following summer; the Louisiana museum still tells it first.
- Tuesday 11 July 1972 At about 3:30 p.m. Terry Harrison, 8, and Wally, 5, scream in the yard at the foot of Marzolf Hill. Their sister Doris, 15, looks out of the bathroom window and later tells the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "Six or seven feet tall, black and hairy. It stood like a man, but it didn't look like one to me." She describes no face and no eyes.
- July 1972 The Louisiana Press-Journal prints the story at second hand, through Edgar Harrison, as "a black object about 7 feet tall" seen from some fifty feet — and lists prank, an escaped hog, a wildcat and a bear before it lists a monster. No dead dog, no smell and no glowing eyes appear in the passage.
- Friday 14 July 1972 Edgar Harrison's prayer meeting breaks up amid ringing noises from the hilltop water reservoir and a growl that "got louder and louder". Officers Jerry Floyd and John Whitaker search the house and find nothing. Harrison later meets the smell he calls "a moldy, horse smell or a strong garbage smell".
- Wednesday 19 July 1972 Police chief Shelby Ward takes about two dozen men up Marzolf Hill and makes three passes. He barricades the hill for fear of armed searchers and offers his own reading: "More than likely, that's how it all started anyway, some kids making noises."
- Thursday 20 July 1972 Richard Crowe, reporting for FATE magazine, walks the hill with Edgar Harrison. He finds stripped brush, digging in an old dump, two disinterred dog graves and two impressions in hard ground — one over ten inches long, one five inches long and curved, which he reads as a handprint, not a three-toed foot. His account appears as "Monster in Missouri" that December.
- Saturday 22 July 1972 Hayden C. Hewes, of the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma City, camps on the hill and records nothing: "We did not see or smell or hear anything." By this point the press is already calling the creature Momo, short for Missouri Monster; no source I could read names the reporter who coined it.
- 1 August 1972 Hewes holds a press conference, admits he found "some hoaxes" among the twenty-odd witnesses he interviewed, and still opts for an unknown hominid: "Momo must be taken alive. He's the greatest anthropological find in history." The flap subsides within days.
- May 1973 Ten months after the sighting, the Six Flags Over Mid-America park at Eureka, Missouri, is advertising a ride called Mo-Mo The Monster, built by the Eyerly Aircraft Company. Bill Whyte's song "Mo Mo the Missouri Monster", written from a poem by Joe Lewis and Paul Salois, had already been recorded in 1972.
- 30 September 2019 Vice reports that Louisiana's attempts at Momo festivals never really caught on, and quotes Richard Alan Murry — a 1972 witness, the town's fire chief and a councilman — saying that most young people there know nothing about the case.
- 8 July 2022 For the 50th anniversary, Brent Engel reports in the Hannibal Courier-Post that retired teacher Priscilla Giltner says three former students confessed the hoax to her — and that she has never named them and they have never come forward. The same piece records that Doris Harrison Bliss still maintains what they saw was not a known animal.
- 10 September 2024 Work begins on the first of three phases of renovation at the Louisiana Area Historical Museum, some $73,000 raised by donation for the façade, windows and front of the building. The museum closes; the chamber of commerce still describes it as closed on 4 March 2025.
- October 2024 The Missouri Department of Conservation devotes an episode of its NatureBoost podcast to Mo Mo. Wildlife management coordinator Alan Leary says the agency has no official statement and no solid evidence, and answers the direct question about belief with: "No… I don't." Museum board president Brent Engel reads the 1972 Press-Journal aloud on air.
Is there a rational explanation for Momo the Missouri Monster?
The sceptical case did not arrive later: it was printed first. The Louisiana Press-Journal put pranksters, an escaped hog, a wildcat and a bear in front of its readers before it printed anything about a monster, and it watched the thing swell in real time — "the story is growing larger and wilder until everyone in Louisiana feels ridiculous".
The police chief said the same. Shelby Ward, who had spent nights answering calls about "things people hear", closed his 19 July search with: "We've been up there and we're convinced there's nothing there now. We've got the hill barricaded off, but you know some kids will get up there at night. More than likely, that's how it all started anyway, some kids making noises." Hayden Hewes, the one investigator who publicly argued for an unknown hominid, conceded in the same weeks that he had found "some hoaxes" while interviewing witnesses.
The named hoax claim belongs to Priscilla Giltner, a retired Louisiana schoolteacher. Brent Engel reported in the Hannibal Courier-Post on 8 July 2022 that Giltner "says she knows it was all a bamboozle, perpetuated by three former students who confessed to the caper" — and, in the same sentence, that "she has never revealed their identities and they've not stepped forward". That is the honest state of it: a specific, dated, on-the-record claim by a named person, which cannot be checked, because the confession is second-hand and the men have never spoken. Doris Harrison Bliss has never retracted; the same article records that she still maintains what she and her brothers saw was not an animal known to science.
Missouri's wildlife agency has no position, and its wildlife management coordinator, Alan Leary, took the reports politely apart on the department's own podcast in October 2024. He takes the calls, he says, and never tells anyone it could not be — "but we also just don't have any solid evidence that it does" exist. The photographs he receives are "generally too blurry to really say what… if five people looked at them, they might say five different things". Asked outright whether he believes, he answered: "No… I don't. I think with all the trail cameras we have out these days, by this point somebody would have gotten a good photograph." In fifty-four years the only physical residue anyone has produced from Marzolf Hill is two dug-up dog graves of unknown age.
And then there is the drift, which is measurable. In 1972 Doris was quoted describing a black, hairy figure six or seven feet tall whose face could not be seen under the hair; the Press-Journal reduced that further, to "a black object about 7 feet tall", seen from about fifty feet. Modern pages have given the same girl a pumpkin-shaped head and "large glowing orange eyes" — Legends of America and the Wikipedia article both carry the orange eyes, the latter sourced to a 2020 local-newspaper column, and Legends of America manages to print, in the same list, that the face was not visible because of the fur and that the eyes glowed. Both details are real 1972 material, but they belong to other reports: witnesses that summer variously described red, orange or green eyes and a head sitting on the shoulders without a neck, and the accounts were compressed into the Harrison sighting afterwards. Enigma Atlas printed a version of the same compression until this entry was rewritten.
Can you visit Momo the Missouri Monster?
There is no Momo attraction to visit, and the honest advice is to treat Louisiana as a river town with a good story rather than as a monster site.
The town sits on Missouri Route 79 in Pike County, about 90 miles (145 km) north of St. Louis and 30 miles (48 km) south of Hannibal. Marzolf Hill — Star Hill to anyone under sixty — rises straight above the streets and is still, in Brent Engel's words in 2024, "a very used place in Louisiana, a great lookout". The Harrison house at the foot of it is gone: Engel, who walked the ground with the Missouri Department of Conservation in 2024, says it no longer stands. What remains is a residential lane and private woodland. The hill was barricaded by the police in July 1972 precisely because armed strangers were going up it; do not repeat the experiment, and do not go into the trees without permission.
The Louisiana Area Historical Museum, at 304 Georgia Street, is the place where the 1972 press cuttings actually live, and admission is free. Check before travelling: renovation began on 10 September 2024 with a first phase of about $73,000 in donated money for the façade, windows and front of the building, and the museum was closed for it; the Louisiana chamber of commerce still described it as closed for renovation on 4 March 2025, and I could find no announcement of a reopening when this entry was written in August 2026. The published contact numbers are 573-754-5697 and 573-754-4443.
As for festivals, the town's relationship with its monster has been on and off. Vice reported in 2019 that attempts at Momo festivals had never really caught on and quoted Richard Alan Murry — a 1972 witness who was the town's fire chief and a councilman — saying most young people there know nothing about it. The 50th anniversary changed the mood for a season: Mo Mo Days were revived over the 1-4 July weekend of 2022, with Bill Whyte playing his 1972 song at the Elks Lodge, and the chamber gave its October Colorfest the theme "Show Me Mo Mo". Colorfest itself is the reliable date — third weekend of October, running since 1985, with its 41st edition on 18-19 October 2025. The Independence Day slot is now filled by Legends & Liberty, a car show on Georgia Street held on 5 July 2025 that bills itself as honouring "our own local legend, Momo the Missouri Monster".
Sources consulted
- Louisiana Press-Journal (read by Brent Engel), «Passages from the Louisiana Press-Journal of July 1972 on the Marzolf Hill sightings, read on air and transcribed» — Louisiana Press-Journal (Louisiana, Missouri), July 1972; transcribed in Missouri Department of Conservation, NatureBoost, episode 57, 1972 newspaper archive
- Jill Pritchard, with Alan Leary and Brent Engel, «Episode 57: The Legend of Mo Mo the Missouri Monster (transcript)» — Missouri Department of Conservation, NatureBoost podcast, 2024 interview
- Singular Fortean Society, «Momo, the Missouri Monster» — The Singular Fortean Society (quoting the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of July 1972 at length), 2019 web
- Loren Coleman, «Momo» — Missouri Folklore Society (archived), reproducing the author's account and quoting Richard Crowe's FATE investigation of 20 July 1972, 2000 web
- Brent Engel, «50 years later: 'Mo Mo' is a go-go» — Hannibal Courier-Post, 2022 newspaper archive
- MJ Banias, «The Missouri Monster 'Momo' Is the Cryptid Time Forgot» — Vice, 2019 newspaper archive
- WGEM Staff, «Work begins at Louisiana Area Historical Museum» — WGEM (Quincy, Illinois), 2024 newspaper archive
- Louisiana Missouri Chamber of Commerce, «Rich Heritage with the Louisiana Area Historical Museum» — Louisiana Missouri Chamber of Commerce, 2025 web
- Kathy Weiser-Alexander, «Momo – The Missouri Monster» — Legends of America (cited here as an example of the modern retelling, not as evidence), 2020 web
- Coasterpedia, «Mo-Mo The Monster (Six Flags Over Mid-America)» — Coasterpedia, citing an advertisement in the Wisconsin State Journal, 6 May 1973, p. 108, 1973 web
- Legends and Liberty, «Legends and Liberty (event listing, Georgia Street, Louisiana, Missouri, 5 July 2025)» — Cars and Coffee Events, 2025 web
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-08-14 · How we verify our content
📎 Source: Enigma Atlas
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