McMullen: On the hunt for the Beaman Monster

“Take care out in those woods. Northwest Pettis County is an unforgiving place after dark. The monster owns the night. Turkey, Muddy, Heath creeks are its preferred paths — chicken is its favorite food. The monster has also been linked to couple of missing hippies from the ‘74 music festival who may be in the traveling party. Travis this not a joking matter — it is real and it is important. 

Best Wishes brave young soul ...”

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I got more e-mails than I usually do when we printed the column where I announced my intention to search for the Beaman Monster. That particular e-mail was from a person who asked to remain anonymous. Some expressed concern; others just wanted to tell me about their monster experiences. 

Emily Nelson, of Beaman, was raised with stories of the Beaman Monster. “My dad and some other friends would all be drinking — my mom would drive the truck with the guys in the back and they all had lassos. We would drive the gravel roads of the country so that they could rope the Beaman Monster,” she wrote.

Now that’s an image I’d like to see — and it’s certainly a way to go, but I don’t quite think my hunt is going to go down quite like that.

“I was once told that during the day while ‘he’ sleeps, he looks like a large bale of hay. To this day, as I drive down the road and see a bale of hay out in the middle of a field with no others around it, I look at it,” she continued, “Its a habit that came from my childhood.”

Now I love hearing stories and details about the monster, but I still hadn’t found the person I was looking for until I was contacted by Daniel Gertz. He and his family live about a mile north of Beaman and he offered the use of his property to me. I was as surprised as you probably are right now. I managed to find someone who both lives near Beaman and is willing to suffer a fool columnist for a couple of hours or so.

In fact, he and his family seemed quite excited about the idea. “What excitement we felt as we read your article!,” he wrote, “The Beaman Monster intrigues our family, and we often talk about it.”

So we sent a few e-mails back and fourth and finally decided on Friday, Oct. 30. I guess it is probably a bad idea to look for mythical beasts on a night that is affectionately known as “Mischief Night,” but that’s just the way it is. Anything we hear or see might just be teenagers messing around in the woods, but that’s all right.

Daniel’s whole family came along for the ride, too: his wife Janet, his son Michael, his daughter Marissa and a local girl named Hannah Drew.

“Our daughter, who is 8 years old, loves to talk about the Monster,” he wrote, “When I read your article to her, she was ecstatic! She has a bag packed with things to give to the Beaman Monster and his family if we find him.” 

The Gertz family invited me to have some pizza before we set off on our hunt and the air was quickly thick with excitement — due mostly to the two little girls who were growing increasingly loud as they pondered our impending adventure.

We set off along Highway 0; everyone had a light source — Daniel had a lantern, I had my trusty LED flashlight that I got when I was a counselor at Hemophilia camp, and Michael was leading the search party with his massive red Maglite. There was no reason to believe that we’d come upon anything that couldn’t be taken out by a couple of good hits from that thing.

The air that night was cool — some might even describe it as cold. The tree line ended up breaking the wind pretty well. The moon was just a sliver short of full.

We veered into the woods when Michael found a path that he was happy with and the way down was a bit too steep for this particular opinion columnist. The soggy leaves that covered every square inch of ground were just making the situation worse. I was amazed that I managed to make it down to the bank of the creek. We stood and took in the sights and the sounds around us, but the bubbling of the creek made it hard to hear much.

I was sure that we needed to get away from the creek. Sure, we could stake it out and hope that this was the particular body of water that the monster was going to utilize to quench his thirst, but I’m under the impression that such a beast would avoid noisy places like roads and creeks if he could help it.

We discussed where to go next and Michael wanted to cross the creek right there.

“I don’t think we should cross the creek,” said Janet. Daniel and I agreed and the girls seemed a little uncomfortable in the short patch of woods that surrounded the creek. 

“I’m not going there,” said Marissa frequently. She said it about every second step as we ascended down toward the creek and I got the impression that she was more comfortable with land that was a bit more flat and didn’t have quite so many trees to run into.

Fear seemed to grip the youngest members of the party quicker than they might have hoped. They were a short walk from the Gertz house at any given time but the nature of the darkness that surrounded us was getting to them.

We walked back up the small incline and headed down Highway 0 again toward the bridge on Olive Branch Road. We did find some creatures that we weren’t expecting to find in the open field behind the Gertz’s home — but you’ll have to read about that in Friday’s digital column on The Sedalia Democrat Web site.