Momo, the Missouri Monster: The Harrison Family Sighting

Louisiana, Missouri, is a Mississippi River town of about 3,200 people, around 80 miles north of St. Louis. In 1972 the Harrison family lived on its rural edge, below a hill that accounts call Star Hill or Marzolf Hill. A metal city water reservoir stood on top of Marzolf Hill. Edgar Harrison, 41, was a Pentecostal deacon who worked for the city waterworks. A year earlier, two women picnicking off Highway 79 north of town had described a creature "half ape and half man."

July 11, 1972. Late afternoon. Terry Harrison, 8, and his brother Wally, 5, were playing in the yard. Terry screamed.

Their sister Doris, 15, looked out the bathroom window. About 50 feet from the house, at the side of the woods, stood something black and upright. "Six or seven feet tall, black and hairy," she said. "It stood like a man, but it didn't look like one." Hair covered it from head to toe. It seemed to have no neck. It was speckled with blood. Under one arm it carried a dead dog.

Edgar searched the spot. He found beaten-down brush, faint footprints and black hairs. One print he cast in plaster measured 10 inches long by 5 inches wide. The family dog, Chubby, fell ill with bloodshot eyes and vomiting.

July 14. About 40 people gathered for Edgar's prayer meeting. Two fireballs, one white and one green, appeared five minutes apart over Marzolf Hill. Something rang against the metal reservoir, as if rocks were being thrown at it. Then came loud growls. The congregants ran down the street.

Others came forward. Fire chief Richard Allan Murray caught an upright figure in his headlights, and it "quickly ran away and disappeared." On August 3, four large prints turned up on the Suddarth farm, about 20 feet apart. Clyde Penrod cast one. Edgar camped on Marzolf Hill for 21 nights in a row.

July 19. Police Chief Shelby Ward led a posse of about 20 men up the hill, conservation agent Gus Artus and Edgar Harrison among them. "We didn't find a thing," Ward said. He barricaded Marzolf Hill and suspected "some kids making noises."

Hayden C. Hewes of the International UFO Bureau camped out on July 22. "We did not see or smell or hear anything," he said. Even so, on August 1 he called Momo likely "an unknown form of hominid." His verdict: "Momo must be taken alive. He's the greatest anthropological find in history."

Years later, retired teacher Priscilla Giltner said three of her former high school students had confessed to a hoax, with a homemade monster suit, putrid smells, odd sounds and faked footprints. "They were just bored," she said. "I will never, ever tell their names." Her claim has never been independently verified. Doris never wavered. In 2012 she said: "It wasn't a man and it wasn't a bear. It was something...else." In 2022 she still maintained it was not an animal known to science.

Six Flags St. Louis ran a "MoMo the Monster" ride from 1973 to 1994. Loren Coleman wrote about the case for the Missouri Folklore Society in 2000. In 2019 Lyle Blackburn published Momo: The Strange Case of the Missouri Monster, and Seth Breedlove of Small Town Monsters released the film MOMO: The Missouri Monster. In 2022, fifty years on, Louisiana's Colorfest took the theme "Show Me Mo Mo."