Bladenboro is a small town located in SouthEastern North Carolina. Surrounded by swamps and forests. Looking at it today, most wouldn’t think it was the location for one of the greatest string of monster sightings North Carolina has ever seen!
On the night of December 29th, 1953 a woman heard the people next door’s dogs barking, then whimpering. She went out to see what was going on, and that’s when she saw it. A large cat-like creature took off and vanished into the darkness. She described it as being a dark colored feline around 4 feet long.
Unfortunately the dogs did not survive the incident, their remains were found in the nearby woods. Oddly enough, no flesh was really taken off the dogs, but their blood had been drained.
Just a few nights later on New Years Eve, the beat struck again! Killing two dogs on a farm at the edge of town. The dog’s skulls were crushed this time, but again no flesh was eaten and the blood was drained.
On January 2nd, a search party was formed to try and track down the creature. Two more dogs were found dead with their blood drained that day, but the search party didn’t have much luck. That evening a local man stepped outside of his house to investigate after hearing some dogs howling and witnessed the creature. He described it as being about 4 foot long, bushy and resembling a bear or a panther.
Each day more and more people started joining the search party, folks began coming from out of town to join the effort. On January 5th some tracks were found and the group went to investigate the area. Unfortunately one of the hunting dogs got attacked with a drug off into the woods. The vegetation was so thick there was little they could do to help the poor dog as it got pulled away.
That evening there were more sightings! A man living near the cotton mill went outside after hearing his dogs barking and sounding agitated. When he saw what he described as the biggest cat he had ever seen. He estimated it to be 3-4 feet long, 20 inches high and very dark colored, he also noticed it had the face of a cat. As he reached for his shotgun, it vanished into the darkness.
Not far away a woman stepped outside her home to see what was causing her dogs to act up as well. When she did, she saw what she thought looked like a big mountain lion. The creature charged at the woman, but broke off its attack and vanished when she let out a big scream.
After several days had passed and even more sightings occurred, on January 14th a man reportedly hit a large spotted cat with his car, killing it. I was said to have weighed somewhere between 75-90 pounds. Many believed this was the beast, others believed it to be a Bobcat. Others believed it was still out there somewhere…
Source ; Monsters of North Carolina by John Hairr
