Each year, people around the world report having encounters with bizarre animals that seem not to be of this earth.

It occurs so frequently that an entire scientific discipline, cryptozoology, was established to study the phenomenon.

For a brief period during the early 1970s, one small town in rural Illinois would briefly play host to an entity so mysterious that neither the residents themselves nor anyone else has ever encountered it again.

Just what exactly was the Enfield horror? horror.. The US state of Illinois spans a vast state of Illinois spans a vast geographic area, with its borders extending from the shores of the Great Lakes to the banks of the Ohio River Basin.

Though it is home to one of the largest cities in the country, Chicago, the rest of the state is far more rural,

with woodlands covering some 4.8 million acres.

It is perhaps unsurprising then that a region capable of generating multiple different climate

zones possesses more than its fair share of terrifying cryptic encounters.

As is common in the Americas, some of these stories go back centuries, long before the first

Europeans set foot on the continent. Perhaps the best example is the giant Piazza bird, which is

said to haunt the skies above the Mississippi River, descending as if from nowhere to attack on wary travellers. Its name, which means the bird that devours man, has been traced to Illini tribal folklore, and one father Jack Marquette, who wrote of seeing murals depicting the beast back in 1673.

Though referred to as a bird, the beast in these images possesses horns, red eyes, a beard,

and a serpent-like tail, which historians agree seems much more indicative of a dragon.

Then there is the Big Muddy Monster,

a Sasquatch-like being that has menaced the inhabitants of the southern city of Murphysboro

since the early 70s. As with similar creatures seen in the Pacific Northwest and the American South,

witnesses described getting quick, often terrifying

glimpses of a large hairy biped emerging from the woods or a pond.

Over the years, local police have collected sketches, witness letters and even filed a case

that officially still remains open.

Curiously, a similar creature has been seen just 50 miles away

in Saline County, where it's known as the Tuttle Bottoms monster. Again, witnesses describe an

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