Right, but the widespread interest in these events sparked a rather interesting story to come to light. On December 31, 1920, the Greenbrier Independent published a very strange tale from the revered Dr. Milton Humphreys. After a lengthy biography of Humphreys, the newspaper reprinted the story as told to the Monroe Watchman. It comes from when Humphreys served the Confederacy with Bryan's Battery and was encamped near Princeton, WV, although the sightings themselves seem to come from an area of nearby Virginia known as the Narrows of the New River. I'm not sure what the heck these witnesses saw, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't an escaped gorilla...
Here's that portion of the article in his own words:
"In the fall of 1863 the 36th and 60th Va. Regiments and Bryan's Battery were encamped at Princeton. Sergeant A.A. McAllister and Corporal James F. Clark, both of whom were from Covington, obtained furloughs. McAllister took his horse with him and they rode time about. When they returned to camp they told me that they had seen a panther. Questioning them as to the details I saw that it could not have been a panther. They stated that they had never seen a panther before and merely inferred that this was one because they had never seen an animal like it. Their description of it will be given presently.
A year and several months afterwards, in the mid-winter of 1864-5 the 13th Battallion Va. Artillery, consisting of Bryan's, Chapmans, and Lowry's Batteries, was in winter quarters just above the Narrows of New River on the Left Bank. There were two men in Bryan's Battery named Weaver----Aylette and John C. One of these, I'm not sure which (not that I have forgotten the men, but only which was John and which was Aylette) was telling ghost stories one night as actual facts. I ridiculed him for even believing in ghosts, and he challenged me to go with him only two or three miles before day and promised to show me a ghost or supernatural being between early dawn and sunrise. I promptly accepted the challenge, but Weaver changed his mind and said he would not go unless there were several men in the party and some arms. There were several men in the cabin and Weaver proceeded to narrate what we would witness if we would go with him. (Just here I should say that he had previously served in the cavalry and had only recently been transferred to the artillery.) Without pretending to reproduce his actual words, I shall give their substance using the first personal pronoun to denote him.
'You know,' he said, 'down just below the Narrows there begins a stretch of level land about a mile long and maybe a quarter of a mile wide at the middle tapering off to a point at the lower end where the road starts up the mountain. It is bounded on the right by the river and on the left by a mountain or bluff. About two years ago, the cavalry command to which I belonged was stationed here to guard the Narrows and a picket of several men was kept at the lower end of this strip of level land to watch the road where it comes down the mountain. I was several times on this duty and witnessed what I am going to tell. Regularly between early dawn and broad day, and between sunset and dark one or the other of two things happened. One of them was as follows: We would hear a great rumbling up in the mountain and presently a man on a horse would come down through the woods and descend the bluff almost vertically, across the road, pass along by a big log making the earth tremble all the while, until they reached a bunch of alders beside the log and there they suddenly vanished just as a light goes out. The other thing that happened sometimes was this: We would hear the same awful rumbling, and instead of a man and a horse, a beast would appear and pursue the same course till he reached the road, and then he would sit down as a dog sits, in a certain fence corner, always the same one, for fifteen or twenty minutes, then he would go to the log and walk on it till he reached the bunch of alders, when he would suddenly vanish. He was the most terrible thing I ever saw---rough, bony, knotty, of a tawny color, and his head and face just enough like a man's to make him perfectly horrible. Once a large number of men waited for him with loaded carbines; but when he came making the earth tremble at every step, no man dared to fire on him.'
Such was Weaver's story. McAllister was in camp and I am fairly sure Clark was also. I went at once and brought them (certainly McAllister) and questioned them without their knowing anything about Weaver's story, and brought out the fact that the animal they saw was sitting in a fence corner looking across the road and was exactly as Weaver had described him, and that the place was the same. I asked what time of day it was when they passed the animal, and brought out the fact that the sun had just set and they were hastening to reach the ford a mile away before darkness set in.
A great storm came that night and next day when we were trying our one small arm, an Enfield rifle, it burst in the hands of young John E. Lewis hurting him severely. Before we could procure other arms the drivers (including Weaver) were sent home with their horses. Before they returned, Richmond fell, and the Battalion marched to Dublin. Our guns had been left in Lynchburg.
I have no theory as to what the animal was that McAllister and Clark saw, nor how the remarkable agreement between the facts and part of Weaver's story is to be explained; only I am sure that there was no collusion among the men concerned.
Milton W. Humphreys
Monroe Watchman"
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| Greenbrier Independent 31 December 1920 |
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