Case file · Cryptid
The Van Meter Visitor
Over several nights from 29 September 1903, people in Van Meter, Iowa, reported a winged, foul-smelling creature with a glowing horn on its head; Dr A. C. Olcott said he fired a shotgun at it.
1903 CE · 41.53, -93.95 · status: claim
The account
The first report came from toolmaker U. G. Griffith, who saw a light moving over the rooftops. The story ran in the Des Moines Daily News and grew as other papers retold it. Van Meter now holds an annual festival with tours of the 1903 sites.
The sceptical view
Skeptoid's Blake Smith places it among the sensational flying-monster stories common in papers of the time and suggests the original writer, local man Harry H. Phillips, may have made it up.