The Lawton Lycanthrope
In the early seventies, the Sooner State had a werewolf problem…
There’s always been a sense of novelty about the American West.
It’s a place of new things, new experiences, new lands to pioneer and settle, and new sights to see. The west has always been a place for the restless, the unsatisfied, the seekers of newness; even in my humble sphere of exploration—the paranormal, the cryptozoological, and the alien—there’s often a distinct patina of novelty in what the western United States has to offer.
It is, after all, the home of the Roswell UFO Crash, of Area 51 and all the back-engineering of alien spacecraft that goes on there, and many of the earliest sightings of flying saucers. And what are aliens and UFOs if not a representation of the future, of all that’s new and cutting edge and technological?
But it’s always important to keep in mind that the American West is an ancient place, with ancient secrets and forgotten mysteries buried under mountains and landscapes that seem older than time. So maybe it’s no surprise when something out of the old country, the old world, makes an appearance in the Wild West from time to time—a reminder that wherever men go, their old fears and bogeymen go right along with them.
And with Halloween right around the corner, I thought it might be a fitting occasion to talk about just the sort of incident, and just the sort of creature, I have in mind. I’m talking about a little-known cryptid that goes by the suggestive moniker of “the Lawton Lycanthrope.” It has many other names, of course, including “the Wolf-Man of Lawton” and “the Oklahoma Werewolf,” both of which are sufficient to give you a general sort of idea about what we’re dealing with.
If the stories are to be believed, it was a rare instance of Old World sorcery intruding on a place where you’d least expect it to—the fresh-faced, all-American wholesomeness of the West. The place was Lawton, Oklahoma, a typical metropolis of the Great Plains nestled under the watchful gaze of the Wichita Mountains. The city was named after a Civil War veteran and major-general who had the dubious distinction of being the first American general officer to die in an overseas conflict—in this case, the Philippine-American War at the turn of the twentieth century.
Fort Sill is close by, and that’s a point in Lawton’s economic favor; Lawton is also home to some world-class museums, including the Museum of the Great Plains and the Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center, among many other attractions too numerous to list. In short, it’s an excellent jumping-off point to explore the great American Southwest.
And in the memorable year of 1971, Lawton also hosted what can only be described as a genuine American werewolf. Call it, if you will, an American werewolf in Lawton; whatever it was, lycanthrope or not, it was big, hairy, and it scared the hell out of more than a few citizens of this quaint town. In fact, it literally scared one poor fellow half to death…but we’ll get to that later.
The whole strange tale sounds like something out of the files of Carl Kolchak, the Night-Stalker himself, but I can assure you…this one’s as real as it gets.
The story begins in late February of 1971, at around a quarter to eleven one Friday night. A local by the name of C. Edward Green, along with others, noticed a peculiar creature—half-man, half-animal—loping along the 2000 block of Lake Avenue, its posture stooped and its head held low. Those who saw it said it moved on its hind legs, like a man, but every so often it used its long arms to aid its locomotion, and in this fashion—sometimes on all fours, sometimes not—the curious cryptid darted between cars and skulked behind bushes, its furtive manner suggesting an attempt to evade the notice of the occupants of the darkened homes in the neighborhood.
C. Edward Green and the other eyewitnesses might have chalked the whole thing up to a slightly tipsy fellow citizen on one hell of a Friday-night bender, were it not for one very startling and unmistakable characteristic of the bizarre night-prowler: he, or it, was entirely covered in black fur. It seemed to have something like a muzzle, too, very much like a dog’s, surmounted by bright and beady little eyes; it was also barefoot, but this was hardly the weirdest thing about it. All the witnesses were unanimous in observing that the beast-man appeared to be wearing a pair of pants…in fact, a pair of pants that was several sizes too small for the man’s—or monster’s—hulking frame.
Some even said it wore a jacket or shirt of some kind, but this was hardly the consensus; most said the strange apparition went entirely shirtless and bare chested.
As a dutiful citizen, Green called the police and reported the incident, assuming the boys in blue would apprehend the Thing—man or animal—and see that it was no longer a menace to the staid and law-abiding folk of Lawton, Oklahoma.
No such luck.
At around 11:15 PM that night, Green heard the wail of sirens and thought the matter was handled; he went to draw back the curtains to his apartment and observe the thrilling dénouement of the night’s excitement—and found himself face-to-face with the Lawton Lycanthrope itself, in all its manifest hideousness. It was perched on the balcony railing of Green’s apartment, presumably waiting until the coast was clear to make its escape from the fuzz; upon being noticed, the creature leapt from the railing without the slightest concern and alighted gracefully on the ground two stories below, where it shuffled off in its awkward half-human, half-animal way on whatever mysterious errand had brought it to Lawton in the first place.
“He turned in a crouched position and looked at me,” Green later reported. “His face, which was something out of a low-budget horror movie, had a wild appearance. His eyes looked frightened and scared. His hair was very black and bushy, and his face jutted out at the jaw. There was no mask that I could see.”1
No mask that he could see. That’s an important detail, as we’ll soon discover.
But the Lawton Lycanthrope wasn’t done terrifying the residents of the Sooner State—not by a long shot. In fact, it saved its best for last, when it put in its final appearance on the following night and damn near gave one poor soul a heart attack…quite literally. The Lawton Constitution of March 2, 1971 records the hair-raising incident in detail:
‘Wolfman’ A Human Who Believes He’s an Animal?
A 36-year-old Lawton man who suffered a heart seizure Saturday night when he saw what Lawton police have nicknamed the “wolfman,” was recovering at his home today and described the creature as “someone mentally sick who thinks he’s an animal.”
Donald Childs of 1212 H went to his front door about 11 p.m. Saturday night and startled the creature kneeling on all fours at a concrete pond in his front yard.
“I was only about 15 feet from him and he leaped from a crouched position clear into the driveway south of us. It was about a 16-foot leap, I’d say, something I’ve never seen a human do. When he landed from the leap he bounded towards the alley running on his feet but all hunched over like he was some kind of animal,” Childs said in an interview today.
The shocking sight, which Childs termed “indescribable” caused him to suffer a heart seizure. Childs has had heart problems before, he said.
…Childs said the creature was barefoot and appeared to be wearing pants and a red and black checkered jacket.
“I could not see the face distinctly, because it all happened so sudden,” he related, “but he definitely had long hair about his head and acted like he was some kind of animal.”
“I have a cousin who is six-foot-four and a pretty big man. This thing in my front yard was bigger. It scared me,” Childs said.
[…]
The “wolfman” was sighted by at least four parties Friday and Saturday nights in separate sections of west Lawton. All descriptions tend to give police the same general identifications. Reactions of those who have spotted the “wolf-man” range from disbelief to horror. Others who have had a close look describe it as being tall, covered with hair, having a horribly distorted face and at times walking on all fours.
Police received the first report of a sighting Friday night from passersby in the 2000 block of Lake. They reported seeing someone who appeared to be wearing a mask and resembling an ape, Patrolman Harry Ezell said. Witnesses said the individual was running down the street dodging cars, then hiding behind bushes in yards, and then running again.
Twenty minutes later, Ezell said, a report was received from a man who lives in an apartment building in the 2100 block of B, five blocks from the first sighting. Investigating, Ezell said he talked with a man [this would be C. Edward Green] who had reported seeing someone or thing perched on a railing of a walkway outside his second story apartment.
“He told me he first saw the thing when he opened some window curtains about 11:15 p.m.,” Ezell said. “He thought it was all a practical joke because the subject was perched on the railing like some monkey or ape. He thought it was a joke until it turned its head and looked at him, then jumped off its perch onto the grass below.”
“The man told me this person ran from the area on all fours, something like an ape or monkey,” Ezell continued. “He described it as wearing only pants, which covered his legs to near his knees as if it had outgrown them. It was described as a horribly distorted face as if it had been in a fire, and had hair all over its face, upper part of its body and lower part of its legs.”
[…]
Fifteen minutes later, at about 11:30 p.m. a group of GIs at a grocery in the 2300 block of Gore Boulevard, reported being scared by something answering the same description, Ezell said.
[…]
Monday night, [Major Clarence Hill] said he was alerting all patrolmen to be on the watch for the “wolfman” and said he would like to take the subject into custody before anyone else was frightened.
The sightings here preceded a Sunday story in state papers originating in Oklahoma City reporting an incident at El Reno.
An El Reno farmer reportedly discovered a chicken coop door on the ground, apparently ripped from its hinges. On the surfaces of the door and inside the coop on the walls he is reported to have found a number of strange hand prints seven inches wide and five inches long.
The prints left Oklahoma City Zoo Director Lawrence Curtis baffled. He described the prints as those of a primate; an animal like a gorilla or a man that can stand erect.
The incident occurred in December last year and since then Curtis has had reports of similar finds around Stillwater and McAlester…”
The Lawton Police Department never caught the “wolfman”…or so it would seem, since no further reports of the strange creature surfaced, nor any further intelligence as to what it was, whither it went, and whether it was ever apprehended. In subsequent days the police made a great deal of noise about finding a kind of Halloween ape mask tossed away not far from the initial sightings; there was talk of teens and pranksters, and the official verdict was handed down from on high that the Lawton Lycanthrope was nothing more than a lot of hullabaloo over a hoax.
Case closed.
The thing is, talk to the folks in Lawton—and especially the eyewitnesses—and they’ll swear to you that even the strapping, corn-fed teens of southwestern Oklahoma aren’t likely to grow to six-foot-seventeen-and-a-half or whatever and have the outsize proportions of an NFL linebacker; moreover, they’ll tell you there’s no goofy prankster in all these United States and even Texas that can make a sixteen-foot leap without a running start, or tumble off a second-story balcony as if it were nothing.
Still, the policemen said it was all just a hoax in poor taste, so the people of Lawton accepted the official story, and to this day they keep quiet about those strange nights in late February of 1971, when a genuine werewolf visited their city.
Sometimes it’s best to remain quiet about such things…to let sleeping dogs lie, as the old saw goes.
Verdict: All of this begs the significant question: just what in tarnation was the “Wolfman” of Lawton, Oklahoma?2
The obvious answer is that it was a good old-fashioned werewolf, of the classic silver bullets and baying-at-the-full-moon kind. Undoubtedly, the Sooner State’s hapless victim of lycanthropy was some robust individual who was wearing a red-and-black checkered jacket and decent pants at the time of his transformation—these latter, of course, being somewhat too small for the eventual werewolf that the man became, and suffering in the process.
A less romantic but probably (slightly) more plausible explanation is that the so-called Lawton Lycanthrope was actually some kind of lunatic, perhaps a mental patient or even some kind of traumatic burn victim of inordinate strength and agility; maybe this poor unfortunate escaped from a nearby institution, and the authorities wished for reasons of their own to keep this incident a secret. Perhaps the police later apprehended the escapee, and discreetly remanded him to those responsible for his care…and that, as they say, was that.
Another theory that I like is that the Wolfman of Lawton was actually some kind of grotesque scientific or medical experiment conducted at Fort Sill, probably with a view to creating a super-soldier to win the war in Vietnam and fight in any possible future engagement with the Soviet Bloc. The poor victim…er, test subject, escaped to the nearby city to seek help, but, alas, he was incapable of articulating his need, and his hulking and terrifying aspect frightened everyone away anyhow.
Actually that’s just a theory I dreamed up; so far as I know, Fort Sill is just your run-of-the-mill Army base with an emphasis on training artillerymen, with no known secret medical experiments being conducted in underground black-budget facilities. Still, I suppose the theory is no more implausible than the outlandish notion that a real-deal werewolf appeared on the streets of Lawton, Oklahoma in the winter of 1971.
The final theory is that the whole confounded thing was just a hoax perpetrated by some bored teenagers, just as the police said it was. That’s a bit of an anticlimax, but I suppose it can’t be ruled out; teenagers tend to do some dumb things, and dressing up like a werewolf and running around town trying to spook the good citizens of Lawton is about as dumb as they come.
But.
Something just doesn’t add up. For instance, the article quoted above concludes with a cryptic reference to an incident in El Reno, Oklahoma, in which a chicken farmer noticed a torn-up chicken coop and found a number of puzzling foot- or handprints—prints that baffled even the director of the Oklahoma City Zoo.
This is a reference to none other than the “El Reno Chicken Man,” elsewise known as “Oklahoma’s Abominable Chicken Man,” which is an even lesser-known cryptid than the Lawton Lycanthrope…if the two are not in fact identical. As a matter of fact, an article about this strange creature appeared in the Sunday, February 28, 1971 edition of the Lawton Constitution & Morning Press—on the very same weekend on which the sightings of the Lawton Wolfman occurred.
Yeti, Sasquatch, Chicken Man: Oklahoma Area Has An ‘Abominable’
There’s something out there. It walks like a gorilla, leaves hand prints like a man, rips doors off their hinges, and it likes chickens.
For want of a better name we’ll call him Oklahoma’s Abominable Chicken Man.
It’s a long story and it goes like this.
An El Reno farmer walked out to his chicken coop one day in December and found its door on the ground, apparently thrown there after being ripped off the wall.
On the surface of the door, and inside the coop on the walls, were a number of strange hand prints—like none he’d ever seen before. They were about seven inches long and five inches wide.
The farmer called a state game ranger. The ranger had never seen anything like it either and he sent the door to the Oklahoma City Zoo to see what experts could make of the prints.
The experts were baffled too. Zoo Director Lawrence Curtis says the prints appear to be like those of a primate…
The thumb of the print is unusual. Curtis says it crooks inside, as if it were deformed or had been injured.
“It resembles a gorilla,” he said, “but it’s more like a man.”
“It appears that whatever made the prints was walking on all fours. There were some footprints on the ground outside,” he said. Whatever it was was barefoot. Barefoot in December.
Since Curtis got the first print he has had reports of similar finds around the state. A man in Stillwater and a woman in McAlester have told him of discovering similar prints. The woman has a photograph she is mailing to the zoo for comparison.
[…]
“We’ve shown it to several mammalogists and several wildlife experts in Oklahoma and some passing through. All agree it is a primate,” [Curtis] said. “These prints were made by some sort of a man, perhaps one looking for chickens.”
Asked about the wide distances between the points reporting similar prints, Curtis said, “If there is one there is more than one. There has to be more than one unless he’s hitchhiking.”
There are no zoos in El Reno, no circuses and no one known to be keeping a gorilla. In fact the only thing in the area that “keeps” primates—in this case men—is the federal reformatory just on the outskirts of town.
The Abominable Chicken Man is being compared with reports of similar findings from California. In this case people have reported seeing a seven-foot man-like creature wandering in the northern wilds. They call him Bigfoot, after the large tracks he makes…”
This last reference to the legendary Sasquatch of the Great Northwest is an interesting one, to say the least. Writing about the story of the Lawton Lycanthrope in his book Haunted Oklahoma: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Sooner State, Jeff Provine reports that there were even some eyewitnesses who claimed to have observed Oklahoma’s Abominable Chicken Man.
“Hunters and a sawmill owner near Canton said they had seen it,” Provine writes, “a huge, black-furred beast moving through the woods.”3 Provine also records that although some speculated that some sort of “mutated monkey” may have escaped from a nearby research lab operated by the University of Oklahoma, all animals at the facility were in fact accounted for.
Not that a bunch of mad scientists at a state university would ever confirm that they had in fact lost a mutated monkey that was now roaming the countryside eating chickens and scaring people half to death; anyone who’s ever watched a low-budget horror flick could tell you that. Especially a low-budget horror flick from the seventies.
Still, it begs the question: could the El Reno Chicken Man and the Lawton Lycanthrope be one and the same creature? And, at that, could it actually have been some local variant of Oklahoma Bigfoot—perhaps an adventurous member of a small population of such creatures, maybe hiding in the Wichita Mountains, that decided to sample the local cuisine and enjoy a night on the town?
It’s an interesting theory, but I prefer the werewolf angle myself. It has just the right amount of weird that any story set in the great American West positively must have. Now some might argue that there was no full moon on the night of February 26, 1971, which was when the Lawton Lycanthrope made its first appearance. And that’s certainly true; there was a new moon at the time, which meant that the night was as dark as the ace of spades.
But then again, even the ancient sages and demonologists of the old world didn’t agree that a full moon was a necessary precondition for the sort of werewolfery that might have been at work in Lawton.
The Roman author Petronius Arbiter, who included a werewolf tale—probably one of the first—in his famous picaresque novel The Satyricon, does mention a full moon; but Olaus Magnus, the great sixteenth-century Swedish geographer and antiquarian, relates in his Histories of the Northern Races that the werewolves of his acquaintance could assume the form of a wolf at will, through the incantations of sorcerers, or through imbibing a magic potion.
No moon required.
Maybe the same thing happened here. Maybe the Lawton Lycanthrope was merely the victim of a curse or spell by some malevolent, latter-day sorcerer living in Lawton, Oklahoma—just about the unlikeliest place you could ever imagine to find a remnant of old world magic. Or maybe he wanted to be a werewolf; we’ll probably never know. Aside from those few nights of weird occurrences, no one saw neither hide nor hair of the wolfman ever again.
I like to think there’s a whole dramatic back story here: some hapless day laborer or drifter running afoul of a coven of Great Plains witches or sorcerers or something of the kind, and being transformed by them into a ravenous wolfman. And I can’t help but wonder whether some wise old Sooner, knowledgeable perhaps in the lore and magic of the old country, read all about the prowling lycanthrope in the newspaper, and decided then and there to fashion himself a silver bullet and seek out the monster to do what the police couldn’t, and what no one else had the imagination to even consider necessary.
Sometimes I wonder whether a dedicated enough researcher might turn up something interesting in a police blotter from the time—something like a report about the body of a John Doe, wearing a red-and-black checkered jacket and torn jeans, found in a ditch somewhere near Lawton…dead of a single gunshot wound, out of which was fished a silver slug by a baffled medical examiner.
I guess I’m not that researcher. Sometimes, I think, it’s better to leave such things well enough alone.
Anyhow, maybe that wise old Sooner slept better ever afterward, knowing he’d rid the world of an ancient evil. Who knows? These are some of the things I think about. But if you ask me, although Lawton is probably a nice enough place, I think I’ll stay away for the time being; I rather prefer my werewolves to be of the mythical variety.
Ultimately, the best we can say is that the Lawton Lycanthrope is, and probably will forever remain, a very significant question mark…just another one of the many unexplained mysteries of the Great American West…
Haunted Oklahoma: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Sooner State, Jeff Provine (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot, 2021), pg. 120.
I might have cited the recent mystery of the “Amarillo Anomaly” as correlative proof that a wolfman of some sort is definitely prowling in the region of the Texas Panhandle and southwestern Oklahoma even to this day…did I not have it on good authority that that particular “cryptid” was in fact a hoax.
Op. cit., pg. 121.