The Monster of Partridge Creek

The brave and handsome Georges Dupuy takes listeners on a journey to the past in his 1908 account of a strange beast in the Yukon. Scientists and skeptics alike have tried to cast doubt on his tale over the years, but do scientists really know what they're talking about? Dupuy says not. And really who would you rather listen to? Big science, or the guy who says dinosaurs are still around? 

Transcript

They told you that someone was coming “in about a week” to fix your broken air conditioner. After two weeks you stopped planning around it. You tried to minimize how often you were in your house altogether. You turned it into an adventure, visiting places after work you’d never been to and being a tourist in your own city for once. By the time you got home, it was cold enough to sleep, and you slept well, tired from seeing and doing so many new things, even if you did wake up sweaty. You were almost sad when they called you that morning to tell you they’d finally gotten around to it. You decided to take the day off because you really didn't trust the maintenance guys at your complex. But you didn’t think about being home all day in the July heat. You did everything you could to beat the heat; you took a cold shower, drank ice water all day, and had your cheap fan running for whatever good that would do. You even let yourself get ice cream, something you tried not to eat much anymore. You watched some nature documentary about Alaska, making a day of celebration around your AC supposedly being fixed later that day. The documentary took you back to your own childhood, and you felt like you could almost smell the cold winter air even in the heat. Watching the snow fall on the TV had you feeling like the temperature was dropping inside your apartment, even though that couldn’t be possible. But when you found yourself grabbing a jacket from your coat rack, you knew something wasn’t right. When you saw your breath, you knew they must have fixed it, and just not told you, but something had gone wrong. You left a voicemail, they didn’t pick up. You turned the tv back on, and felt even closer to those youthful years you spent in alaska yourself. You watched a grizzly bear walk across the screen, and it felt like your seventh birthday party was separated from you by only minutes not decades, the day when you’d had the closest encounter you’d ever had with a bear in your life. You and your friend had been playing outside when one wandered up. You hid in the outhouse as it pawed at the door. You remember it feeling like an eternity, like decades had passed before it left, and you didn’t even breathe the whole time. You came back to the present a bit when you heard someone coming up your stairs. You were ready for the heat to come back now, and you got up to open the door for maintenance. But as you turn the knob, the door cracks. All you catch is a glimpse of long claws and filthy fur, as your door is smashed open by; The Podcast Inside Your House.

The Monster of ‘“Partridge Creek.”

By GEORGES DUPUY. (jeorgh  Dupwee)

[M. Georges Dupuy, the well-known French writer and traveler, who has made many explorations in the Polar regions, here relates a most troubling experience from the frozen steppes of Alaska. M. Dupuy, whose good faith is beyond question, takes full responsibility for his narrative, which is, it may be noted, however remarkable, in no way contradicted by known scientific facts. The drawings which accompany this article have been made from sketches and descriptions supplied by M. Dupuy.]

THE story which follows is in no sense a romance. I wish, in the first place, to ask the readers of the following narrative to believe that I am in no way attempting to impose upon their credulity. Concerning the amazing spectacle I am about to describe, I report nothing but plain facts, however astounding and apparently incredible they may seem at first glance, precisely as they appeared to my own eyes—and I am possessed of excellent sight—and to those of my three companions —all three white men—without counting five Indians of the Klayakuk tribe, who have their camps on the shores of the River Stewart.

The following are the names of the three ocular witnesses who are ready to testify to the truth of my assertions: the first is my hunting companion for many years, Mr. James Lewis Buttler, banker, of San Francisco; the second is Mr. Tom Leemore, miner, from McQuesten River, in the Yukon Territory; and lastly, the Reverend Father Pierre Lavagneux, a Canadian Frenchman and missionary at the Indian village of Armstrong Creek, not far from McQuesten.

In the course of ten years’ rambling in the four quarters of the world it has been my lot to witness a great number of amazing spectacles, and the strange experience of which I speak had become no more than a vivid recollection when, a few days ago—on January 24th, 1908—the following letter reached me at Paris. It came from Father Lavagneux, who passes his life with his flock six hundred miles north-west of the Klondike. I give it here word for word:—

“Armstrong Creek,“ January 1st, 1908.

“My Dear Son, — The ‘trader’ of McQuesten has just stopped here with his train of dogs and sledges. He has had a hard journey from Dawson, by Barlow, Flat Creek, and Dominion. I expect to receive by him in another fortnight fresh provisions and news of the outside world. To-day is the first day of the New Year, and I want this letter to express my affectionate wishes for your health and happiness. I hope it will give me the pleasure of receiving you under my humble roof, here, at the other end of the earth. I will not believe that you will let your old friend in the Great North leave his old carcass to the Indians (who will some day or other make his coffin out of branches) without seeing him once more.

"I have received your book, the reading of which has given me the greatest pleasure. By the way, you are wrong in regard to that poor fellow, John Spitz. Alas! he is no longer mail-carrier of the Duncan district. He died, poor fellow, at Eagle Camp, soon after you departed, not having survived the wound he received from the ‘bald-face,’[1] which you will remember.

“Talking of ferocious animals, will you believe me when I tell you that ten of my Indians and myself saw again, on Christmas Eve, that horrible beast of Partridge Creek passing like a whirlwind over the frozen surface of the river, breaking off with his hind feet enormous blocks of ice from the rough surface? His fur was covered with hoar-frost, and his little eves gleamed like fire in the twilight. The beast held in his jaws something which seemed to me to be a caribou. It was moving at the rate of more than ten miles an hour. The temperature that day was forty-five degrees below zero. At the comer of the ‘cut-off’ it disappeared. It is undoubtedly the same animal that we saw before. Accompanied by Chief Stineshane and two of his sons I followed the traces, which were exactly like ​​those which we all saw—Leemore, Buttler, you, and I—in the mud of the ‘moose-lick.’ Six times, on the snow, we were able to measure the impression of its enormous body, the same size as we found it before, almost to the twentieth of an inch. We followed them to Stewart, fully two miles, when the snow began to fall slightly and blotted out the traces.”

It was on receipt of this letter that I decided to write the story of my own experience, which it recalled so vividly to mind, and of which it afforded a striking confirmation.

The Story of My Friend Buttler.

The station of McQuesten, that far-off corner of the strange country of the Yukon, where the eight months of winter are so terrible but the short summer so marvellously beautiful, was on four occasions my chosen retreat during the eight years that I have known the North. A friend of mine in San Francisco, Mr. Buttler, who had come to Dawson City in order to purchase gold-mining concessions, had promised to join me in order that we should go hunting together. I was taking my coffee one afternoon in the veranda of Father Lavagneux’s cabin when all at once I heard someone whistle from the farther bank of the river. A bark canoe, paddled by two Indians, was coming up the river in the shadow of the trees. Buttler was with them.

“My dear fellow,” he said, smiling as I met him, and endeavoring to hide his visible agitation, “I have something very strange to tell you. Do you know that prehistoric monsters still exist?”

I broke out laughing, and together we returned by the little path which led to the Father’s house. When Buttler had taken off his muddy boots and was ensconced in a comfortable seat he began to recount his story as follows:—

“Leaving Gravel Lake, where I arrived on Tuesday evening, my last stage was the mouth of Clear Creek, where I knew that you would send someone to meet me. Traveling was frightfully bad—forty miles of marshy country. At last, at nightfall, I descended a hill, and had the pleasure of seeing Grant’s cabin, which was lighted up. Grant was at home, and a good supper was waiting for me. Early the next morning ​​(yesterday) he came to tell me, in his reserved and silent manner, that three fine moose were feeding quietly behind the plateau of Partridge Creek. After swallowing a hasty mouthful all four of us—Grant, your two men, and I—started out from the hut. We made a wide détour. At the top of a hill, where we had hidden ourselves, all of us stretched full length on the ground, we perceived, a short distance off in the valley, near a ‘mooselick,'[2] three enormous moose moving slowly forward and quietly browsing on the moss and lichens. All at once they gave three simultaneous bounds, and, one of the males giving vent to the striking bellow which these animals utter only when they are hunted or mortally wounded, the three went off at a mad gallop towards the south.

“What had happened?"

“We decided to approach the spot where the animals had taken fright so suddenly. Arriving at the ‘moose-lick,' a spot about sixty feet long and fifteen wide, we saw in the mud, and almost on a level with the water of the ‘lick,' the fresh imprint of the body of a monstrous animal. Its belly had made an impression in the slime more than two feet deep, thirty feet long, and twelve feet wide. Four gigantic paws, also deeply impressed, had left at each end of the main imprint, and a little to the side, footprints five feet long by two and a half feet wide, the claws being more than a foot long, the sharp points of which had buried themselves deeply in the mud. There was also the print, apparently, of a heavy tail, ten feet long and sixteen inches wide at the point.

“We followed the tracks of the monster in the valley for five or six miles, and then, at the ravine of Partridge Creek—a place which the miners call a gulch—they ceased suddenly as if by enchantment.”

The next day, at five o’clock in the morning, Father Lavagneux, Buttler, Leemore, a neighbouring miner hastily summoned, myself, and five men of the tribe, crossed the River Stewart in two canoes. Neither of the first two guides, who were overcome with terror, nor the sergeant of the Mounted Police, who received our story with scepticism, nor the letter-carrier, would consent to accompany us.

All day long we searched, without result, the valley of the little River McQuesten, the flats of Partridge Creek, and the country between Barlow and the lofty, snow-covered mountains.

At last, towards evening, tired out, after having toiled for a long time through the great marsh, we lighted a fire at the top of a ​rocky ravine. The sun was setting. Lying by the fire we let our eyes wander over the glittering expanse of marsh which we had just traversed.

The tea was boiling and everyone was preparing to dip his tin cup into the pot, when suddenly a noise of rolling stones and a strange, harsh, and frightful roar made us all spring to our feet.

The beast for which we had been looking—a black, gigantic form, the corners of his mouth filled with blood-stained slime, his jaws munching something, I know not what—was slowly and heavily climbing the opposite side of the ravine, making the large boulders roll into the valley as he went!

Struck with terror, Father Lavagneux, Leemore, and myself tried to utter a cry of fright, but no sound issued from our parched throats. Unconsciously we had seized each other’s arms. The five Indians were crouching down with their faces against the ground, trembling like leaves shaken by the wind. Buttler was already rushing down the hill.

“The dinosaurus!—it is the dinosaurus of the Arctic Circle!” muttered Father Lavvagneux, with chattering teeth.

The monster had stopped scarcely twenty paces from us, and, resting upon his huge belly, was staring, motionless, at the red sun, which was bathing all the landscape in a weird light.

For a full ten minutes, riveted to the spot by some strange force which we could not overcome, did we contemplate this terrible apparition.

We were, however, in full possession of all our senses. There was not, and never will be, in our minds the least doubt as to the reality of what we saw. It was indeed a living creature, and not an illusion, which we had before us.

The dinosaurus then turned his immense neck, but did not seem to see us. His withers were at least eighteen feet above the ground. His entire body from the extremity of his yawning jaws—which were surmounted by a horn like that of a rhinoceros—to the end of the tail must have measured at least fifty feet. His hide was like that of a wild boar, garnished with thick bristles, in colour a greyish-black. His belly was plastered with thick mud.

At this moment Buttler returned to us. He told us that he thought the animal weighed about thirty tons.

Suddenly the dinosaurus moved his jaws, visibly chewing some thick viscid kind of food, and we heard a sound like that of the crunching of small bones. Then, with a sudden movement, he raised himself on his hind legs, and giving utterance to a roar—a hollow, indescribable, frightful sound—and wheeling round with surprising agility, with movements resembling those of a kangaroo, he sprang with a prodigious bound into the ravine.

On the 24th, Buttler and myself, having taken two days’ rest, started for Dawson City, for the purpose of demanding from the Governor fifty armed men and mules.

Here my story ends. For a month we were the laughing-stock of the Golden City, and the Dawson Daily Nugget published an article about me, which was at the same time flattering and satirical, entitled "A Rival of Poe.”

Until next time, take a moment to cherish these last summer days. It will be winter before you know it. Maybe it already is.