2021 has been a year of challenges: life in a pandemic, trouble in the Middle East, political divides, racial strife, you name it.
I just wasn't expecting to add NINE-FOOT TALL BAT MONSTER to the list. But honestly, given the year we're having, it kinda tracks.
I'm a sucker for any good paranormal show on TV. Heck, I'm a sucker for the bad ones, too. I can waste hours contentedly watching people chase ghosts, UFOs, Bigfeet, and any number of things that go bump in the night. Life can get a little boring without some magic now and again. When it comes to chasing the unexplained, I'm all in.
There's endless paranormal shows out there, and they all tend to follow the same formula. Someone reports seeing something scary. A crack team of investigators descends upon the scene with a van full of high-tech gadgets, which they will carefully employ in order to find... nothing. But they'll find that nothing in the scariest and most needlessly dangerous of ways.
"What's that? You saw a UFO hovering above these very woods just eight months ago? Well, we'd better rappel into this cave at 3 a.m. on a foggy moonless night and check it out. You know, for aliens and stuff."
At the end of the show, one investigator will usually conclude the legend is false, while another will offer some grainy video footage or a bone that supposedly proves the location is most definitely haunted by alien goat creatures or whatever. It's ridiculous, but if one of these shows pops on my screen, I watch with bated breath thinking it might just be the episode where they finally film an alien turning a cow inside out (as aliens are wont to do.)
This explains why I found myself last weekend watching the latest episode of "Expedition X," which is a spin-off of "Expedition Unknown," which is itself a reworking of "Destination Truth," and I know all of this because I've sat through every episode of these ridiculously wonderful shows. I'm jealous I don't live anywhere where there's legendary bogeymen.
Or so I thought.
This episode started off like always. The team has been called to investigate the legend of the Van Meter Visitor, a giant bat-like creature reported to have terrorized a small town in 1903. "And now," the show said, "new sightings have been reported. Has the Van Meter Visitor returned?"
"Sweet," I said to myself as I dunked a chip in some salsa -- a chip I would choke on roughly two seconds later as the announcer returned.
"We begin with a recent sighting in the nearby town... of IOWA CITY."
WAIT, WHAT? Van Meter is in IOWA? The bat monster is in our backyard? SHUT THE FRONT DOOR.
As it turns out, Van Meter IS in Iowa, but it's far from what I'd call "nearby" to Iowa City. It's actually southwest of Des Moines. Van Meter is known for two things: it's the home of baseball Hall of Famer Bob Feller, and it's also the home of a 9' winged bat-monster that terrified townsfolk in the fall of 1903. The creature was sighted by several reputable citizens of Van Meter, who did what any reputable citizen would naturally do: they shot it. Repeatedly. Turns out our winged bat buddy is bulletproof. As the old newspaper clippings tell, the creature smelled foul and stalked the citizens of Van Meter for four days, until a posse of townsfolk cornered it in an abandoned coal mine, which they sealed off forever... OR DID THEY?
According to "Expedition X," an Iowa City college student and his girlfriend recently came face to face with a similar monster at a local park -- and he MUST be telling the truth, because he got the monster tattooed on his arm as a permanent reminder of his ghastly encounter. Awesome.
Other than the dude's arm, I've now seen two illustrations of the Van Meter Visitor, and I'm sold. In the first, which I think dates back to the original 1903 news story, it's depicted as a total Game-of-Thrones-style dragon, flying off into the distance WITH A FULLY GROWN HORSE IN ITS MOUTH. In the second, it's depicted as looking kinda like Charizard from Pokemon, but with lasers shooting out of its forehead.
Oh, I'm sorry, did I forget to mention that part? It's a flying bulletproof horse-eating bat monster THAT SHOOTS LASERS FROM ITS SKULL. Not only do we have a cryptid in our 'hood, we might have the best one of all time. Bigfoot can't fly. The Loch Ness Monster isn't bulletproof. Not even Godzilla can shoot laser beams from its skull. Score one for the locals!
"This thing looks like a Pokemon," I texted my friend Jason.
"Maybe Pokemon just exists to desensitize children to the horrors of the world," he replied.
"If so, they did a great job of it," I texted back. "Maybe every time we drive to Iowa City, we're just ignoring the laser dragons flying off with horses."
Driving around rural Iowa for no good reason is, like, my third favorite pasttime. There's barely a back road I haven't been on at some point. I've seen a lot of weird stuff, but you'd think I'd remember a nine foot horse-eating bulletproof laser bat-dragon. Maybe not. Maybe there was a good song on the radio at the time or something.
If you want to hunt the monster yourself, I'd recommend the Van Meter Visitor Festival -- which just happens to be this weekend, and features walking tours, vendors, and cryptid experts from all over the country. Maybe they can figure out a way to trap it in another coal mine. We might not be able to shoot it, but never underestimate Iowan ingenuity - if we put our heads together, I guarantee we can figure out a way to deep fry that sucker and sell it on a stick with a lemon shake-up.
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