Swamp people

I've written here at Skeptophilia for twelve years, and I've been interested in weird claims since I was a teenager, so it's not often that I run into a cryptid I'd never heard of.

Much less one from my home state of Louisiana.

So I was pretty shocked when a loyal reader sent me an article on the "Honey Island Swamp Monster," a southern relative of Sasquatch (and thus a cousin of Arkansas's Fouke Monster and southern Florida's Skunk Ape), who allegedly haunts the swamps along the Pearl River in Saint Tammany Parish.

Unlike a lot of cryptids, though, the Honey Island Swamp Monster doesn't have a long history.  The first reported sighting was by a retired air traffic controller named Harlan Ford in 1963.  Since then, the crypto-crowd has seized upon the story as they always tend to do, and the Monster has made appearances on shows like Mysteries and Monsters in America wherein they search every week for some strange beast, and every week find exactly zero beasts, then high-five each other for being such amazing beast hunters and do the same thing next week.

Oh, and if you're ever in Saint Tammany Parish, apparently there are Honey Island Swamp Monster Tours wherein a guide will take you out into the swamp, and you'll come back having had the thrilling experience of seeing no monsters while getting approximately 8,382,017 mosquito bites.  (I will say, however, that the Louisiana swamps are beautiful even without monsters.  I have great memories of growing up fishing, boating, birdwatching, and swimming -- yes, with the alligators and cottonmouths and all -- in the Atchafalaya Basin Swamp of south central Louisiana.)

But as far as the Honey Island Swamp Monster goes, the sad truth is that when you start doing a little digging, the whole story starts to fall apart pretty quickly.  On cryptid sites there's a lot of buzz about some camera film found amongst Harlan Ford's belongings after his death in 1980, claiming that it had photographs of the Monster.  But I found actual images of the developed film, and... here they are:

To say this is underwhelming falls considerably short.  It further supports my contention that there's something about aiming a camera at a cryptid that causes the AutoBlur function to turn on.

More damning still, though, is something rationalist skeptic and paranormal investigator Joe Nickell uncovered back in 2011.  He was looking into the stories of the Honey Island Swamp Monster, and specifically Harlan Ford's role in perpetuating them, and he found, buried near Ford's former hunting camp on the Pearl River, one of a pair of shoes with an altered sole for making Swamp Monster tracks.

Oops.

Nickell calls this "prima facie evidence of hoaxing."  And I have to admit that if he were alive, Ford would have a lot of 'splainin' to do.  As do his apologists, such as his granddaughter Dana Holyfield-Evans, who still support his claims, especially when it involves television appearances on shows like Not Finding Bigfoot on the Folks, This Seriously Isn't About History Anymore channel.

So sad to say -- because, as I've pointed out before, as a biologist, no one would be happier than me if it turned out there really was a Bigfoot lurching around in the wilderness somewhere -- this one is kind of a non-starter.  Anyhow, you cryptid hunters, do keep looking.  Just because one story turned out to be false, doesn't mean they're all false, right?  Even if the last 562 stories were false, same thing, right?

Of course, right.

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You're a mean one, Mr. Grunch

I grew up in Bayou Country, the Cajun heartland south of Lafayette, Louisiana.  My mom's family was Cajun to the bone, descended from a group of exiled Nova Scotia French who had been there in those swamps for over 200 years.

Cajun folklore is fascinating, and the tales and legends preserve a memory of times long past.  My maternal uncle, who was a fine storyteller, used to scare the hell out of us kids with stories (told in French) of the loup-garou (the Louisiana answer to werewolves) and the feu follet, or "crazy fire," a forest spirit that would lure you in with dancing lights and then steal your soul.  (The only way to escape was to run away and jump across a creek -- the feu follet was unable to cross running water.)

I grew up well-versed in the terrifying legends of the swamps, having not only the family background but a taste for such paranormal scary stuff.  So imagine my surprise when just yesterday I found about a south Louisiana cryptid that I'd never heard of before:

The "grunch."

[image courtesy of artist Alvin Padayachee and the Wikimedia Commons]

Yes, I know, "grunch" doesn't sound all that authentic south-Louisiana-French.  At least it should be "grunché," or something.  But no, it's the "grunch," and apparently it's sort of a Deep South version of El Chupacabra.  Here's what "Gina Lanier, Paranormal Investigator" has to say about it:

As a principal port, New Orleans had the major role of any city during the antebellum era in the slave trade.  Its port handled huge quantities of goods for export from the interior and import from other countries to be traded up the Mississippi River.  The river was filled with steamboats, flatboats and sailing ships.  At the same time, it had the most prosperous community of free persons of color in the South. Many old stories from people who's [sic] family were around at the time have passed many oral traditions down to us concerning the Grunch.  Legend has it that the Grunch dates back to the days of New Orlean's [sic] early settlement and that its name ''Grunch'' comes from the name of a road.

So where did the the creature come from?  Was it always there, grunching about in the swamp?  No, Lanier said.  The grunch was created by the Voodoo Queen cutting off Satan's son's balls:

This Southern cryptid has been called The Vampire of Farbourgh [sic: she means Faubourg] Marigny, and Bywater area dating back to the early 1800's.  The Legend of Marie Laveau tells of how some believe this form of chupacabra came into existence. 

An old Voodoo Hoodoo story says Marie Laveau castrated the Devil Baby when he was born.  Because she wanted him to produce no more of his evil kind.  The two bloody testicles fell to the floor as she used a very sharp hoodoo voodoo blade.  Immediately they turned into a male and female grunch, who it is said actually attacked the great Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.  The grunch are said to have almost killed her with their fierce bites and punching.  The dark evil terror the old Voodoo Queen must have been unbearable as she struggled under their great strength before she fainted.  When she awoke the Grunch and the Devil Baby were gone.  Laveau was near death after this and many have said this is when Marie Laveau gave up her Voodoo Hoodoo ways and went back to being a good Catholic woman.

Well, it's a good story, but all that voodoo hoodoo stuff sounds like doodoo to me.  As you probably figured I'd say.  Marie Laveau was a real person, though; her tomb is in the historic St. Louis Cemetery in the French Quarter, and is a tourist attraction (especially given the fact that devotees still place gifts on her grave).

But the rest of it sounds like your usual silliness.  Of course, this hasn't stopped (un)reality TV from latching onto it, as they are wont to do.  The very first episode of the Destination: America series "Swamp Monsters," in fact, is called "The Grunch."  Here's the description of the episode:

In the mystical lagoons, marshes and swamps of Louisiana’s bayou, Elliot Guidry and his team of BEAST (the Bayou Enforcement Agency on Supernatural Threats) battle the elements while tracking down a pack of the infamous Grunch.  Born of the Devil himself, the Grunch have been terrorizing Louisiana residents for centuries.  These skin and bones, dog-like creatures have ridged backs, stand three feet tall and emit a horrible screech. After following these monsters into the middle of the swamp,  BEAST realizes that the hunter has become the hunted as they’re surrounded by a hungry pack of Grunch.

I commented, in a previous post, that if ever I founded a punk band, I was gonna call it "Government Death Plague."  Now I can add that if I ever found an alternative band, I'm gonna call it "Pack of Grunch."

(You can watch the entire episode for free here, if you don't mind giving BEAST forty minutes of your life that you'll never, ever get back.)

Anyhow.  Predictably, I think the whole thing is easily explained by wild dogs and wilder imaginations.  No need for voodoo hoodoo and devil baby balls.  I still am kind of surprised I never heard about this, growing up; I certainly had an ear for such tales, and more than one family member who was willing to pass along anything that was useful for scaring kids to the near bedwetting stage.  The fact that I grew up down there and never got wind of grunches is a little like the fact that it wasn't until I moved to Seattle that I first heard of cooking "blackened pork chops" and "blackened fish" and so on, a culinary technique that allegedly comes from southern Louisiana.  The only time my mom served anything blackened was when she put a chicken in the oven to roast and got distracted by a neighbor, and only took it out when it was somewhere between overdone and charcoal.  (My dad teased her for weeks about having created a new gourmet dish, "poulet noir.")

But who knows?  I may just have missed that one.  In any case, if you're down in the bayou, you now have an additional thing to worry about, over and above cottonmouths and alligators, not to mention the feu follet and loup-garou.  I wouldn't let it stop me from going there, though.  It's a beautiful place, with great music and even better food, and if I lived there for over twenty years without being attacked by a pack of grunch, I'm guessing you're safe enough.