Beastly Memories

July 11th, 2008 | webmaster | Beast of Bladenboro

By Gene Norton

I was nine years old when the Beast showed up in and around the Bladenboro area. I remember people talking about animals that had been killed by something that had sucked all the blood out of them. Everyone was on edge for awhile as something was obviously doing this to animals, so the thought was that it might turn on people.

At the time, our family lived on the old Mill Hill village in a two room house. My mom and dad worked on 2nd shift from 2:00 PM until 10:00 PM, so they were not home for a part of the night. My grandmother would come to our house and take care of us until my parents got off work. When it got close to dark, we had to go inside and were not allowed to go outside in
the darkness. We could not go see friends, ride our bike, or any outside activities after dark. My grandma did not even want us to look out the windows, but we would at least look at the curtains when grandma was not watching us. Grandma was so scared that she just knew that if we opened the door the Beast was going to be right there to grab us and drag us off into the night.

We had a lot of Beast hunters in and around the town during that time. They even showed up from towns far away from Bladenboro, complete with dogs and guns. You could hear them after dark, going up and down the streets looking for the Beast. One night, we heard one hunter yell, “there he goes”, and then the sounds of men and dogs in hot pursuit of the beast sounded through the dark. Another night the hunters were in our yard and were searching under our house. There they saw an old dog huddled next to a pillar, quivering in fright of all the activities.

My brother and I listened to the people talk about the beast and the animals that he had killed, but we never did get to see what was doing all the damage. Nevertheless, the Beast was real as far as we were concerned. I don’t remember being afraid, but my grandma and many other adults certainly were.