Ohio's Human-Faced Horror

Village of College Corner Source: FaceBook

Established in 1811, the village of College Corner straddles the Ohio and Indiana state line. Named for its proximity to the present-day Miami University, which was founded two years prior, College Corner has been a pretty sleepy little town, for the most part. However, in the summer of 1892, it would be home to one really weird cryptid. 

There was no official name ever given to the beast, most likely because those who were unfortunate enough to witness it were left flabbergasted. Some called it a devil, while others didn’t even attempt to classify it. Those who managed to eke out some sort of description had this to say:

The creature was 4-5 feet tall, white and winged, with an estimated wingspan of 6 feet across. It had a HUMAN face, framed by long, white hair which covered its head. The strangest detail was the appearance of tusks protruding from the human face. 

Harpy Eagle Source

One gentleman who saw the creature claimed that as he was walking one night, the beast seemed to appear up from the roadbed. He got a good look at its tusks, glimmering in the moonlight. As the man reached for the revolver in his pocket, intending on firing upon it, the creature grinned at him in such a way that the flight mechanism in fight or flight took over and he booked it down the road. Stopping to catch his breath, he turned and saw the creature had vanished. 

If we assume that there is more to this story than just a hoax, then I can’t even begin to theorize what these people were seeing. The closest thing in nature I could find would be the harpy eagle. Harpy eagles are NOT native to southwestern Ohio but could have found itself there in a variety of ways. 

Harpy eagles are SPOOKY to look at because they do have very human-like faces. They’re also pretty big birds. One could easily stand an estimated 4 feet tall with a 6 ft wingspan. And younger harpy eagles are mostly white in color. From the right angle, even the adults may appear mostly white, as their bellies and underside of their wings is white. They don’t, however, have any features that resemble tusks, but this may be explained if the bird was carrying something in its beak that was mistaken for tusks. 

Re-creation of Piasa mural in Alton, Illinois Source: Wikipedia (Burfalcy)

From a folkloric perspective, the most common human-faced bird in local mythology would be the Piasa Bird. The origin and etymology of the Piasa Bird is a whole other rabbit hole, which I won’t include in this blog entry, but check out the image above. This is the recreation of a cliffside mural found in Alton, Illinois (just one state over). The Piasa absolutely has a head with a human face and what appear to be tusks!

Was the College Corner monster just a story inspired by the established folklore of the nearby Piasa Bird, or could there have actually been more than one of these creatures physically existing in the Midwest? Was it a misidentification of a known animal, or was the whole thing one big hoax? 

30 June 1892 The Journal News (Hamilton, OH)