"Momo" got its name from the abbreviation of Missouri- Mo.-and the first two letter of monster. For a few days of the
summer of 1972, it was the major story of the "silly season," the subject of tongue-in-cheek coverage in newspapers all
over America. The Momo scare was played out in and around Louisiana, a small town in northeastern Missouri. In July
1971 two picnickers in a wooded area north of town reportedly spotted a "half-ape and half-man" with a hideous stench.
Stepping out of the thicket, it walked toward them making a " little gurgling sound," and they locked themselves inside
their car. The creature at an abandoned peanut butter sandwich and ambled back into the woods. The women reported
the incident to the Missouri State Patrol but did not come forward publicly until a year later, and then only after numerous
other had reported a similar sight.

Momo got its name after a series of sightings which began on the afternoon of July 11, 1972, when three children saw the
creature, "six or seven feet tall, black and hairy," standing next to a tree. It was flecked with blood, apparently from the
dead dog it carried under its arm. That same afternoon a neighbor heard strange growling sounds, and a farmer found
that a newly acquired dog had disappeared. Three evenings later, as the children's father Edgar Harrison and some
friends stood talking outside the Harrison home, they saw a "fireball" come over nearby Marzolf Hill and apparently alight
behind an abandoned schoolhouse across the street. Five minutes later another followed suit. Not long afterwards, a loud
growl emanated from the hilltop and seemed to come down and toward the listeners, though its source was not visible to
them. The police investigated but found nothing. An hour or two later, as they poked around the hilltop in the darkness,
Harrison and others found an old building suffused with a pungent, unpleasant odor of the kind that was associated with
Momo's appearances. On several occasions witnesses claimed to have seen a small glowing light which exploded and
left the stench in its wake.

The scare continued for two more weeks, during which others reported seeing a hairy biped with both ape and human
features. Some claimed to have heard disembodied voices. One said, "You boys stay out of these woods," and another
asked for a cup of coffee. Footprints allegedly made by the creature were found on several occasions, but the only one to
undergo scientific analysis was dismissed as a hoax by Lawrence Curtis, director of the Oklahoma City Zoo. A number of
Louisiana residents reported fireballs and other unusual aerial objects. One, described as a UFO with lighted windows,
allegedly landed for five hours on a hilltop. One family claimed to have seen a "perfect gold cross on the moon… The road
was lit up as bright as day from the cross."

Clark, Jerome. (1993). Unexplained!. Washington, D.C.: Visible Ink Press.

Momo