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+--- Thread: The Van Meter Incident. (/showthread.php?tid=1476)
The Van Meter Incident. - BIAD - 11-12-2023
It's strange how we quickly take things for granted and for the subject of air travel, I'm sure 727Sky would agree that
soaring the heavens and travelling across the globe in such an easy fashion (for passengers, at least!) isn't such a big
deal anymore.
But back in 1903, one might suggest that Orville and Wilbur Wright didn't convey such aloofness as they prepared their
contraption at Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina to attempt such an audacious task. However, over in the Hawkeye State
there had already been witnesses to controlled flight. Aerial passage that would bring trepidation and confusion to the
residents of a small town in Iowa.
............................
It was the end of September in the thirty-plus year-old mining town of Van Meter and those who knew that more hard
work laid ahead of them when the sun came up, they enjoyed being deep in the arms of Morpheus and dreaming of a
time when the leaves would return to the trees. But for U.G. Griffith, a seller of the finest farm tools this side of Cedar
Falls, his travels of prospective vending had caused him to arrive home well after the witching hour.
Turning onto Van Meter's Main Street, Mr Griffith's weary expression changed to wonderment as he saw a dazzling light
blazing out into the darkness from the top of Mather and Gregg’s two-story hardware establishment. Slowing his vehicle
and straining his neck to get a better view, the harrow and hoe merchant witnessed the strange beacon seemingly leap
across to another building on Main Street. Determining sleep would make a better partner than wee-hours sleuthing,
Mr Griffith urged his Ford Model A to take him from this unusual story.
............................
The Next Night.
For reasons long lost, Doctor Alcott would spend his nights making soft snoring sounds in his downtown office. If the
slumbering pracitioner had opened an eye at the ticking clock above the heavy cabinet that held his potions of cure, he'd
have groaned that it was only almost a half-hour past midnight. But what would happen next would far eclipse any alarm
bell from the device.
The searing radiance that was bathing his room was coming from outside his window and promptly grabbing his firearm,
the Doctor rose to see who was playing silly buggers at such a late hour. Hurrying outside into the empty street, Alcott
stared at the thing that was clinging to the exterior of his place of business. It was a creature half human and half animal
with bat-like wings and a single horn-like appendage in the middle of its forehead. Staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed
at the eye-hurting aberration, he saw that the grody incandescence was emanating from this cornet.
Physicians being known all across the developed world for their patience, a terrified Dr. Alcott raised his gun and fired
five shots at the creature and whatever the ugly beast had found the medical practitioner's premises interesting, took to
flight and fled.
............................
The Next-Next Night.
October had begun and Peter Dunn wasn't taking any chances. His bank was the only depository in Van Meter and nobody
perpetrating an elaborate hoax to steal his money was going to fool this bank teller. Armed and waiting in the quietness of
the darkened vault-room, Dunn watched with flinty eyes for the ruse to be attempted. One hour past midnight, that narrowed
gaze would widen when the cashier would hear a strange noise outside the bank's window.
Peter first thought it sounded like someone was being strangled, a gargling and gasping just beyond the barred-frame. With
a set jaw, the bank teller slowly crept closer to the bizarre resonance and that was when he was bathed in the lambent light.
Stumbling back in shock, Dunn peered through his fingers at the dazzling beam sweeping the interior of his premises. It was
moments later he glimpsed the source of the glare and raising his gun, fired at it. The large leathery-winged creature failed
to withdraw anything that night from Peter Dunn's repository and so vacated the scene quickly.
............................
And The Night After That.
O.V. White was asleep in his room over the hardware store on Main Street when a sound similar to what Dunn had heard
only twenty-four hours before drew him from his repose. Recalling the panicked gossip of this alleged visitor to Van Meter,
Mr White snatched up his gun and hurried to the window.
He couldn't be sure, but whatever had made the rasping noises was now perched on the cross member of a telephone pole
on the other side of Main Street. Just like those who'd came before him, White aimed his firearm and fired and recoiled at
the sudden burst of light immersing his bedroom. Later, Mr White would say he gagged at a noxious odor that had invaded
his place of trade.
Around the time the hardware retailer was realising he was another witness to the Van Meter monster, a fellow-merchant
called Sidney Gregg was awakened by White’s gunshot. Opening his front door, he peered down Main Street and saw the
dark shape perched atop the telephone pole. Sidney would later report the thing was at least eight feet tall with a beak like
a bird, bat-like wings and four legs. As he stood watching, the creature lowered itself from the telephone pole in the manner
of a parrot with the use of its beak.
In the solitude of the mid-western night, Mr Gregg stood in the shadows of his doorway and stared at the ungodly phantasm
arriving on the ground and then with bated breath, he slowly realised what was now happening. The motionless monstrosity
was listening and like an un-agreed stand-off they waited, the seller of sundries and the beast from another world.
It was at that moment a passing mail train tore along the tracks outside of the town of Van Meter and the laconism of the
weird situation was broken. Startled by the loud noise, the dark thing crouched down as if getting ready to vault into the air.
But instead of taking flight, a stunned Sidney Gregg watched the beaked brute flap its wings and hop away like a kangaroo
down Main Street. Gaining momentum in its odd gait, the monster began to run steadily until it extended its huge leathery
appendages and sailed out into the blackness of the night.
............................
Later.
Mining Director J.L. Platt Jr. was a man of little fatuity and held to a more ecclesiastical slant towards the wild blather of
winged demons supposedly terrorising his town. But only a couple of days after the odd events on Main Street, Mr Platt
overheard his employees suggesting the harrowing sightings could be related to some fearsome noises they had noted
coming from the mine in recent days.
When some of his miners brought his attention to peculiar sounds once again coming from an open shaft, noises which
J.L. Platt would later describe “as though Satan and a regiment of imps were coming forth for battle”, his religious
perspective was bolstered when he saw a bright light emerging from the gloom of his mine.
With their hearts in their mouths, men and their Director alike watched a bird-like creature with bat-like wings and a horn
protruding from its forehead scramble out of the pit. Moments later, a comparable -but smaller version of the aberration
appeared and with the eye-watering glare causing their audience to shrink in alarm, the pair took to flight.
With a resolution that would rival David's fortitude against Goliath, Platt gathered a group of armed men and stood watch
at the mine. His cunning scheme was built on the notion that if the pit was their subterranean residence, they had to return
at some point and confirming his miners all had a bullet in their barrels, they waited for their quarry.
The night looked down on the group of men apprehensively staring back into the blackness of the Autumn sky and just as
dawn touched the roofs of Van Meter, the flapping peculiarities came back to their roost. With empty shells falling at their
feet, the determined miners filled the air with lead between them and the leathery invaders, but the hail of bullets seemed
to have no effect.
Cawing their strange rasping cries at the would-be ambushers, the pair of monsters released their noxious odors as they
flapped a route to the mine entrance and succeeded in their goal. But no sooner had the stinking duo of beak and wing
had retreated into the darkness of the pit, J.L. Platt Jr ordered his men to barricade the mouth of the mine and make it a
tomb.
............................
H.H. Phillips for The Des Moines Daily News related the outlandish story to its readers the next day with a tone of sincerity
and being such a crazy tale, other newspapers from around the country quickly picked it up as one of those reports that
counters the bad news regularly printed on their pages. But cleaving to a timeless formula of the muck-raking media world,
it wasn't long before the out of the ordinary saga of Van Meter took on a different, more amusing inflection.
The following day, the Daily News ran another story suggesting Phillips' account may have been exaggerated. Not wishing
to generate doubt among their customers, the broadsheet was quite willing to admit that the good citizens of Van Meter
had encountered some kind of unexplained light and not discerning its reality, fired at it.
As October rolled on, the tale was drubbed fiercely by fellow journals with written pieces ranging between cynics and
disciples of what had occurred in the little town beside the Raccoon River. By the time Christmas of 1903 arrived, whatever
was shuffling around down there in the darkness of that buried tunnel was now just a faint embarrassing memory.
As long as the barricade holds.
RE: The Van Meter Incident. - sailorsam - 11-13-2023
fascinating subject.
I have a copy of the book and haven't read it yet.
Mothman's grandfather maybe?