My Memories of the Famous “Beast of Bladenboro”

June 26th, 2008 | webmaster | Beast of Bladenboro

By Doris Hester Avant

I am not sure of the exact date we began to hear about the creature that came to be known as the Beast of Bladenboro. I do know that by January of 1954, he had become very infamous and our small town had been invaded by thrill seekers form all over the country.

In January 1954, I was a junior at Bladenboro High School and I lived on Butler Mill Road, which was a sparsely settled country road just off 211 Highway. We were surrounded by trees and fields, and some distance off the road there was a small pond known to us as Butler Mill Hole. This pond, which we visited a lot in the summer, was surrounded by woods, and there was a canal that ran from it all the way across the road near our house. You need to understand that this was a very quite, lesscrowded, relaxed area and most peop0le who lived on this road worked for the Bladenboro Cotton Mills.

Sometime in January of that year, we were all to be shaken by the phenomena of the Beast. Surrounding the Bladenboro Cotton Mills was the mill village where hundreds of people lived in mill owned houses. To my knowledge, this was the first reported sighting of the beast. It was reported by The Charlotte Observer that animals were being killed in the mill village by a strange animal that sucked the blood from its victims. The paper reported at one time that a resident living in the village had seen this strange vampire-like animal and reported it to the local authorities.

As the news spread all around the country by the press, Bladenboro became the destination for a large number of big game hunters trying to be the one to stop the beast. Pretty soon my neighborhood near the Butler Mill Hole became the area where a huge number of hunters had supposedly tracked the beast. There were hundreds of hunters with dogs and guns and huge lights to light the swampy area all hoping to be the one to claim the beast as their own. Absolute panic and hysteria was in the air. This went on for days and nights until someone in town killed some kind of animal and some local people hung him up on the theatre marquee and put some closure to the beast story.

My Personal Encounter with the Beast

As I told you before, I was a junior in High School in January of 1954. I was a cheerleader for the Bladenboro Bulldogs and it was basketball season. Some out of town parents would not allow their children to come to Bladenboro to play because of all the stories of the beast, but this particular night, we did have a game at the high school. My boyfriend, now my husband, had a beautiful Chrysler convertible, and he drove me home after the ballgame. As we turned onto Butler Mill Road, the whole sky was lit up. It looked like day. We knew the hunters were in the swamp. As we drove into my yard, you could hear the dogs howling and it was a very spooky situation. However, my friend, being the gentleman he was, got out of the car to walk me to the door. As we wre standing on the porch, saying our goodnights, SUDDENLY, out of nowhere something went running across our yard, and to make a long story short, my friend was left standing on the porch. I was inside so quickly that I did not even know what happened to him.

Fortunately, whatever it was running in our yard that night did not attack my husband, and we now can tell our children the story of the night their dad kissed the door frame.

For years after all this happened in Bladenboro, no matter where we would go, especially to the Charlotte area, if people found out where we were from they always would ask about the Beast, even to this day.