Thirteen chapters: an opening on why these cases couldn't be told on YouTube and how to read the old reports, ten case files from 1829 to 1924, a chapter comparing them all, and a full list of sources.
Chapter 1
1. Opening the Files
Why these cases kept hitting a wall on YouTube, how each case file is built, and how to read old newspapers with care, from wire reprints to outright hoaxes.
Chapter 2
2. The Bauman Story
Theodore Roosevelt's 1893 account of two trappers on the Bitterroot divide: the ransacked camp, the circling tracks, and the partner found dead with four fang marks in his throat.
Chapter 3
3. The Okefenokee Swamp Giant
The Milledgeville Statesman's 1829 report of giant footprints, five hunters killed and a thirteen-foot giant brought down, set against the strong case that it was a frontier tall tale.
Chapter 4
4. A Terror in the Woods
The San Francisco Call's 1895 report of lumbermen found mangled and torn near the West Branch camps of Maine, including the man who fought the thing off with his axe.
Chapter 5
5. Headless Valley
The McLeod brothers' disappearance on the South Nahanni River and their reportedly headless remains, with the record sorted from the legend and the official explanations weighed.
Chapter 6
6. The Moosehead Lake Wild Man
An 1886 account of a camper found dead and a posse that killed a ten-foot hairy wild man, and the question of where the corpse went.
Chapter 7
7. The Fannin County Wild Man
An 1873 north Georgia report of an eight-foot wild man, a carried-off woman and a mounted posse, and how a later reprint changed the story.
Chapter 8
8. The Red River Mauling
An 1856 report, printed again in 1865, of a hunter dragged from his saddle, an eye clawed out and flesh bitten from his shoulders, with both printings compared.
Chapter 9
9. The Gallipolis Wild Man
The 1869 Ohio attack on a carriage, told blow by blow as printed, until the man's daughter struck the creature with a rock.
Chapter 10
10. The Hancock Wild Man
July 1895 in New York: a seven-foot wild man throws farmer John Cook thirty feet across his yard and makes off with his best pig.
Chapter 11
11. The Mountain Devils of Ape Canyon
Five miners besieged all night near Mount St. Helens in 1924, Fred Beck knocked unconscious, and every explanation offered since.
Chapter 12
12. What the Files Have in Common
All ten cases side by side, separating patterns that point to a real animal from those that point to papers copying and embroidering each other.
Chapter 13
13. Sources
The newspapers, books and archives behind every case file, with notes on single-source cases, changed reprints and where to find digitised originals.
