The Terrifying Creature of Lake Conway

The woods around Lake Conway where  
Skunk Ape has been seen.

The woods surrounding Lake Conway in Faulkner County, Arkansas are home to a large number of living things, mostly birds, raccoons, snakes and little creepy crawlies. The lake provides some of the best fishing for bass and crappie in the state, but there are reports of a different type of animal that resides there. The kind that comes out after dark. The kind the fishermen and visitors only speak about in hushed tones while anxiously looking over their shoulders in the blackness of night. The kind the fishermen & visitors pray they don't encounter in the dark woods.

The sightings started in early 1970. People began calling in to game wardens and police to report strange observations of something that looked like a man, but obviously wasn't. The witnesses reported the creature as being between 7 and 8 feet tall and ape-like. It was most often seen emerging from the woods to wade in the shallow areas of the lake, evidently looking for food. One thing was common with each of the sightings - the brute was always accompanied by an incredible stench. It was soon given a name - "Skunk Ape."

Near the site where Lee reported his frightening
encounter with Skunk Ape 

One reported encounter proved to be especially disturbing. On a hot and muggy night in August, 1985 a fisherman named Lee was alone in his flat-bottom boat not far from the shore. The fish had stopped biting so he decided to reel in his line and head back to the boat ramp. He heard a sudden commotion behind him in the water and when he turned, he could see something big thrashing around. It seemed to Lee that maybe a large beaver had been under water, had gotten caught in somebody's trotline and was trying to extricate itself from the entanglement. Looking at it more intently though, he realized it wasn't a beaver as it was much to large and had longer hair covering its body than a beaver. As he sat in his boat trying to determine exactly what it was he was seeing, the monster stood up. It was like something from a nightmare! The water was five feet deep and the hairy thing's head was at least three to four feet above the water.

The creature caught site of Lee and seemed to be just as surprised to see him as Lee was to see the creature. The two locked eyes for about five seconds, but it seemed like forever to Lee. Suddenly the beast started moving closer to Lee and his boat, grimacing and making deep-throated, angry growling sounds. Totally frozen with shock and fear, Lee couldn't move or make a sound. All he could do was watch with horror as the beast came closer and closer, never taking its eyes off Lee. When the creature got within about 15 feet of him though, an horrendous stench hit his nostrils and shocked him into action. He turned to grab the .22 pistol he always carried in his tackle box, but as he turned back around with his gun outstretched, he found the monster had quickly covered the distance between them and with a single vicious swing of his powerful arm, knocked Lee out of the boat.

Lake Conway

Not seriously hurt, but disoriented, Lee came up gasping for air and grabbing for something to steady himself. He managed to find the side of the boat and cautiously pulling himself up enough to peek over it, saw that the monster was no longer paying any attention to him. What had caught and was keeping his attention was the stringer of fish that was hanging over the other side of the boat. Fish by fish, it was pulling them from the line and eating them whole in one or at most, two bites. Lee ducked back behind the side of the boat in fear, worried that if he made a break for it, the creature would immediately attack him.

The last of the fish was quickly consumed and the beast began rummaging around in the boat, slamming stuff around, looking for more food. When everything turned quiet for several minutes, Lee could stand it no longer and slowly pulled himself up to peek over the side. As he did so though, the creature was still there and saw the top of Lee's head poking up. Obviously angered, the brute lifted the 300-pound boat clear out of the water as if it was nothing and Lee found himself once again staring into the eyes of the monster!

Fearing for his life, this time Lee reacted at once and began half-swimming and half-running through the chest-deep water as fast as he could for the shore about 75 yards away. As he got near the water's edge, he turned once to look behind him and became weak with fear as he saw the monster was coming after him! Just 10 yards from the shore, but knowing he couldn't outrun it, Lee thought of his family and began screaming at the top of his lungs for help. Somehow he safely made it the last few yards. Running a short way into the trees, he didn't hear footsteps behind him so he turned once again to look. The creature was nowhere in sight. The only evidence it had even been there was the overturned boat floating in the water in the moonlight.

The area of Lake Conway where several sightings
have been reported.

Since that first sighting, there have been numerous reports of the Skunk Ape. Anglers often talk about having a feeling of dread, a sense of being stalked as if something just out of sight was watching them, waiting for them to walk into its trap. Strange noises are often reported coming from the woods in the night. Some have reported hearing the creature scream in the middle of the night as if it was celebrating a fresh kill. They say the sound will turn one's blood into ice water.

So what exactly is the Skunk Ape? The scientific name is hominid cryptid - hominid means "great ape" and cryptid means "a creature that has been suggested, but cannot be scientifically proven to exist." To many around Lake Conway though, that the creature exists is a fact. In certain parts of the lake, most locals will not even go outside after dark. The monster may not yet be proven, but for sure, something is definitely out there.

Reports of sightings still come in several times each year. So if you are brave, or perhaps just foolhardy, break out your fishing gear and head to Lake Conway after dark... and hope the only thing that tugs on your line is a big bass.

 

The Island With No Heart

Hart Island

On the western edge of Long Island Sound in New York lies the small, uninhabited Hart Island. Just 131 acres, it was once known as "Heart Island," but somewhere in its sorrowful history it lost the "e." Nobody is allowed on the island today, nobody but convicts and the guards that supervise them. The only other people allowed are the ones who will make this island their forever home. They are the dead.

For a few months during the Civil War, the island was home to over 3,500 Confederate prisoners of war. It was filthy, unsanitary, full of misery and the men were given barely enough maggot infested food to live. Almost 10% of them died before the end of the war and the deceased were buried in unmarked graves on the island.

An outbreak of Yellow Fever in the 1870's resulted in hundreds of people being quarantined on the island. Most of those who succumbed to the illness joined the unlucky Confederate prisoners who would never leave the island. A women's insane asylum was opened on the island in 1885. This facility only accepted chronic cases and experimental "cures" were carried out there for a number of years, treatments that are now looked upon as barbaric and cruel. The poor women housed here endured untold suffering and anguish. Not all of them survived and they too joined those who had gone before them in the unconsecrated grounds in unmarked graves. In the early 1900's, the insane asylum was closed and a boy's reform school was housed in the former asylum building. The boys housed there were delinquents, most of them petty thieves, bullies and incorrigible. Punishment, both corporal and mental, were liberally doled out as the administrators thought warranted.

Hart Island Insane Asylum building today.

During World War II, the military took over the island and used it to house & discipline over 2,800 servicemen who had been court marshaled for offenses. In the years after the war, the island was used as a tuberculosis center and as a rehabilitation center for alcoholics. In every use of the island, suffering and sadness was a common theme. And most everyone who perished on the island, was buried on the island, usually dumped in a mass grave or at best, in an unmarked grave. This alone would be reason enough for the island to be haunted, but what came after the alcoholics were removed makes the island's history even darker.

 The New York City Department of Corrections was given oversight of the island and it was turned into the world's largest publicly funded potter's field - a graveyard for the homeless, the indigent, the mentally ill, the unknown, the unclaimed and the unwanted. Today, over 1 million bodies have been buried on Hart Island, all interred without a prayer said over them, with no remembrances, no marker. No friends, no relatives come to the burial. Convicts from Riker's Island prison come one day every other week to stack 150 adult coffins in each bulldozed trench. Little wooden coffins holding the remains of babies are laid in mass grave trenches dug to the size needed for however many little coffins there are. There are so many mass graves that the trenches are now dug over burial spots from 50 years before as enough time has gone by that the wooden coffins and bodies buried there have almost fully decomposed. Sometimes the convicts find bones in the dirt dug for the new trenches. They throw the larger bones in the trench before unceremoniously throwing the dirt back on.

Riker's Island inmates burying the dead on
Hart Island (Photo courtesy New York Post archives)

No doubt there are many restless, angry and insane souls on the island. The convict workers do not stay overnight here. They come early in the day and leave before dark. Even during daylight hours though,witnesses report feeling like someone is watching them everywhere they go; that eyes of the dead are watching them even before they get off the boat taking them to the island. The gutted and decaying buildings still bearing the disturbing graffiti of lost souls domiciled on the island over the years, are often reported to house shadowy figures, shadows only seen out of the corner of the eye, shadows that are not there when looked at straight on. It is said that whispers are often heard in these buildings, whispers that sound like children's voices.  

The only witnesses to these hauntings are the inmates and guards that come there to bury the dead. No others are allowed on the island. The No Trespassing rule is strictly enforced. Even people that have family members buried here have a hard time getting permission to visit their deceased relatives. The few that are granted permission are, once per month, escorted on a ferry to a pier and then restricted to a small covered gazebo about 20 feet onto the island. They are permitted to say a few words and are then escorted back to the ferry.

Many of the convicts refuse to come back after working the burial detail only once or twice . Some of these hardened criminals just can't take the number of babies being buried there. Handling and placing the little coffins by hand, one on top of the other in row after row, is too sad even for them. Others have an experience with the ghosts they don't want to take a chance on repeating. One inmate claimed he plainly heard children's voices crying out inside the old insane asylum building. He said it was children crying and begging for help. A lot of convicts simply say they will not volunteer for the work detail again and refuse to talk about the island or any experiences they may have had there.

Hundreds more unclaimed bodies continue to be buried here every month. More lost souls. More restless, angry souls. The dead never stop coming. The island may be off limits to everyone but the workers, the guards with guns, and the departed not to prevent vandalism, but for a whole different reason. You probably shouldn't attempt to find out.