Choccolocco Monster

In the late spring of 1969, the farm country of Choccolocco in eastern Calhoun County, Alabama, filled up with armed strangers hunting a monster. The flap began in May when Margaret Teague, driving home from work at a hospital in neighboring Cleburne County, saw something crouched on its haunches at the edge of the woods on the Iron City Cutoff. She told the county sheriff and The Anniston Star that it was hairy, with an enormous head, and she was so frightened that she turned her car around for a second look and slid into a ditch.

Teague was one of at least eight people who reported the creature over those few weeks. The description kept changing: at first it was gray or black, about the size of a cow, with a hump and big teeth; later it had stringy black-and-white hair that hid its features. Newspaper stories – including at least three that quoted skeptics – drew attention beyond the community, and by early June, carloads of people from neighboring counties were prowling the roads with flashlights and rifles. Local landowners were alarmed, and one woman warned the shooters that anyone who killed her cows would pay.

The legend was explained in October 2001, when The Anniston Star published the account of Neal Williamson, who was then 48 and lived at Nances Creek. As a bored fifteen-year-old, he said, he had taken a cow skull he found and, wearing a sheet or coat, jumped out beside the road as headlights approached, then ran back into the woods before anyone could get a good look. He claimed to have done it only four times: on the fourth, a driver shot at him from a truck, and the monster never appeared again. Williamson admitted that his account could not be fully verified, and Teague’s sister doubted that a teenager in a costume could account for the huge, hairy thing her sister described. But many locals had always suspected the monster was a cow or a bear, and the newspaper called it Calhoun County’s version of the Sasquatch legend.

Interest rose again in 2001 when The Daily Show ran a segment on the monster, and the tale was later included by author Wil Elrick in his 2018 book Alabama Lore. It remains a small but affectionately told part of Alabama folklore, a reminder of how fast a rumor and a few newspaper stories could bring out a crowd of monster hunters.

Described by witnesses as hairy and hunched, roughly the size of a cow, with a huge head, large teeth and sometimes a hump; early reports said gray or black, later ones black and white.

Backroads and wooded edges near Choccolocco, including the Iron City Cutoff, east of Anniston in Calhoun County, in late May and June 1969.

The Choccolocco Monster is a small-town Alabama legend. The community gained wider notice when The Daily Show covered it in 2001, and the story appears in books of Alabama folklore. Local heritage-society members told the Anniston Star they had always assumed the monster was a cow and that it was outsiders who were “all so interested.”