Beastly Memories
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.
My Memories of the Famous “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.
Ode to our Beast!
Beast of Bladenboro
By M. Elizabeth Mayes
Have you heard the news?
The Beast of Bladenboro is on the loose.
Remembering the Beast of Bladenboro
By Jimmie F. Priest
How well do I remember the Bladenboro Beast? I lived on the Old Mill Village when the attacks started.
One Saturday morning, my friend, Eugene Butler and I skated from our house to my sisters house about six miles in the country. When we got back that Saturday evening, we heard about the beast that was killing dogs and goats at the New Mill Village. The next week we had TV reporters and newspaper reporters riding by our house and asking questions about the Beast.
El Chupacabra
By Kelly Baldwin
While flipping channels the other night, I came across a documentary type program that featured a mythical creature called el Chupacabra. It caught my attention right away because it described a creature that moved about at night and apparently sucked the blood out of its victim! I thought, “Aha, a parallel to the Beast of Bladenboro!”
In The Folk Tradition
By Hiram Hester
Let’s talk about the Beast. That’s right, the Beast of Bladenboro.
In the past few weeks, I’ve learned a lot about BOB. And in the meantime, we’ve joked a lot about him. But on December 29, 1953, something “sleek, black,” a catlike animal, “about five feet long with a round face” terrorized the town of Bladenboro. To this day not a soul knows what the beast was. But as reported by Joseph F. Gallehugh, Jr., in the North Carolina Folklore Journal [Student Issue], August, 1976, it had extraordinary strength and sucked the blood from living animals.
2nd Annual Beastfest `08