The Flintville Monster: Tennessee Ghosts & Legends

Link to audio: The Flintville Monster

Welcome to the Tennessee Ghosts and Legends Podcast. My name is Lyle Russell. I am your host, and I love a good Bigfoot story. In this episode, we’ll visit the rural town of Flintville, Tennessee and the surrounding area in Lincoln County. But hiding somewhere in the surrounding hills and forests of the area is supposedly an elusive, mysterious, and aggressive beast, said to stand around eight feet tall and have a terrible skunk-like odor, along with a propensity for violent encounters with the local residents. Today, it is my pleasure to introduce you to the legend of the Flintville Monster.

The Story:

A few miles north of the Tennessee/Alabama border in Lincoln County lies the small town of Flintville, Tennessee. It is a picturesque setting of a small southern town surrounded by rolling hills and fertile farmlands. This quiet country setting is also the reported home of a violence-prone beast.

This cryptid legend first appeared in the press in 1976. A Flintville resident made a wild claim to the city’s police department that while stopped at a stop sign on a rural road, a large hairy arm slapped the hood of her car from the brush off the side of the road, snapping off her antennae. She only caught a glimpse of a shadow before the unseen assailant jumped on the roof of her car, bouncing up and down and denting it in. She described what she saw as a “giant, hairy monster.” The local newspaper picked up the story and printed it, and so began the story of the Flintville Monster.

Others came forward claiming similar encounters after the vehicle attack appeared in the newspaper. Soon after, a Flintville resident named Jennie Robertson reported a close encounter with the beast. Jennie was deep cleaning her home one April morning in 1976 while her young son, Gary Robertson, played in their backyard. She suddenly heard Gary scream and ran out onto the porch to find out what was wrong. She was immediately overwhelmed by a foul smell that she described as “dead rats” as she burst through the screen door. To her horror, she was astonished to see a large hairy humanoid she said that must have been eight feet tall chasing toward the house. The young boy was screaming and running as fast as his legs could carry him. Jennie screamed as well and ran to Gary, snatching up the child and running back to her house, slamming and locking the door just as the beast reached it. She ran to the window to get a better look at what had chased her son, thinking at first it may have been a bear but noted it was definitely not human. She called the police, alerting them of the near kidnapping of her son by someone or, something she could not explain. This being the second case involving a “large, hairy beast” in a short time, the police took swift action. They called a group of local hunters together at the Robertson house to begin scouring the woods. Forming search lines, the searchers plunged into the woods with shotguns and rifles at the ready in search of the mysterious hairy assailant. Long into the quiet moonlit night, the men trudged through the brush for nearly a half mile surrounding the Robertson house and found no sign of the beast. The search was called off for the night with the intention of starting again in the morning, but some of the searchers were doubtful anything would be found until the last search party returned. Three men in the final search group reported that on their trek back, there was a commotion in a thicket along the back fence row. When they went to investigate, they were pelted with rocks but could not see who -or what- was throwing them.

The next morning, the searchers came back to continue and finally found some evidence to corroborate Mrs. Robertson’s report. Hanging from a patch of briars was a clump of matted smelly hair. Beneath that, they reported strange footprints leading deeper into the woods measuring almost 16 inches in length. For comparison, the largest man on the search party wore a size 12. The footprints were strange enough, and the mystery deepened after a forensic lab analyzed the hair sample. It could not be identified.

Over the next few years, several miscellaneous reports were filed in and around Flintville, such as one man complaining that a “7-foot-tall hairy monster” chased him through the woods, howling and screeching at him like an ape. Another woman claimed she hid on the floorboard when a similar creature attacked her car. Several attacks were reported in the early 1980s, including one by a plumber who said his truck’s windshield was smashed by the monster and another by a housewife who said a “black, hairy creature” chased her inside her house and beat on the door. In 1989 a church pastor complained that “something” had destroyed the windshield and antenna on his car. That same week a group of teens reported a “large, manlike ape’ loping across a field at the edge of town. The last official sighting in Flintville was reported in 1993. Since then, the Flintville Monster has gone silent. At least, it went silent in Flintville. It would appear the creature moved to new territory because other parts of Lincoln County started seeing new reports soon after.

On the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization website, Tennessee has 106 reported cryptid sightings without explanation. Lincoln County, where Flintville is, has six of those. The oldest Lincoln County report from the site is from 1987 and comes from a Big Foot sighting hotbed. North of Flintville, Teal Hollow Road runs south from the town of Kelso towards Flintville. There is a two-mile stretch through low forested hills that boasts several reports with subsequent investigations into the claims. I have abridged the 1987 report to include the investigator’s notes along with the original report. It states as follows:

I was 17 and had an 11:30 curfew. I had left my girlfriend’s house a little later than I should and was in a hurry to get home. I traveled from Howell Hill Rd to Teal Hollow Rd. On Teal Hollow Rd I was speeding down a long straight away and saw something on the side of the road. I thought it was a deer or cow at first, so I slowed down. As I got closer to it, it stood up. As I passed it, I was still going fast, about 55 or 60. I then thought it was a person who had crashed their car, so I hit my brakes. By this time, I was past it. I stopped in the road about 100 to 200 yards past it. When I put the car in reverse to back up, I could see that it had walked into the road behind me. I probably got to within 25 to 30 yards of it when I realized it was much bigger than a person. It was dark so I do not have a great description. It scared me. I threw the car in drive and floored it. I drove like a bat out of heck until I got to HWY 64. When I got home, I was still shaking and still had tears in my eyes. I do not know what I saw, but it was big, looked to be 6 1/2 to 7ft and almost half the width of my car. Twenty years have passed, and I still will not drive that road anytime close to dark. I get cold chills every time I think about what happened. It scared the heck out of me, whatever it was.

A cryptid investigator from the BFRO interviewed the man who made the report and added the following notes:

The witness was forthcoming and certain of what was seen. He has only told a few people. The witness repeated several times that what he saw was not a deer, a cow, or a bear. He did not travel this road again, a shortcut off the main highway, for several years. To this day, he will not travel that road at night.

The sighting lasted about 20-30 seconds after the figure stood in the road. Deer were abundant so he was scanning the sides of the road as he drove, looking for eye-shine from deer in case one ran out in front of his car. He saw what he thought was a trash bag or stump in the creek that runs parallel to the road. When he came closer, he was unsure of what was there – a cow? what? Prior to slamming on the brakes, he saw a figure in the creek with a hunched back, like someone with bad posture. When he got beside it, the figure stood. He was driving a ’68 Camaro and the figure was about even with the height of his car, while still in the creek. With the figure being observed in the rear-view mirror, it walked out of the creek and into the road. The figure was about 6 1/2 -7′ ft tall and wide at the shoulders and upper body. He guessed between 3-4 ft. He threw the car into reverse and then drive, squealing his tires as he sped off. It went in the direction of the creek & woods, not seeing if it walked or ran. The area of the sighting is a shortcut off the main road with the nearest home about 5 miles away. There are homes on the road, but not near the sighting area. The road is (or was at the time) a small blacktop road with no lane dividers/ stripes, etc. on the surface. There are woods on both sides of the road for miles.

The next report also comes from the Teal Hollow Road area, this time in 2003 when a local woman reported the beast stalked her niece while out in their driveway. She states:

My niece went out to roll the windows up on my daughter’s car when she heard someone hollering at her. She looked toward a field next to the house and saw something white standing there. It kept making the noise and spooked her, so she ran back into the house to tell us. Shortly after this our dogs started barking. My daughter’s boyfriend took a flashlight out next to the fence to see if he could see anything.

He ran back into the house to get the gun because he heard some movement. When he returned to the fence he shined the flashlight toward the woods again. What he saw stunned him for a few seconds. He said it was a huge white fury creature. He fired the gun, and the creature stumbled and took off running.

While all this was taking place my daughter and niece were standing on the porch and witnessed the whole thing. They saw enough of the creature to describe it as being a huge, white furry creature on two feet instead of four. They also heard the low deep grunt my niece had already heard earlier. They all heard the breaking of tree limbs as it ran off. No one has been brave enough to go into the woods to see if we could find tracks or traces of hair.

After her report, she also added this:

A woman once told me there had been sighting in the area. About 7 years ago my daughter swears she saw a creature run across the road in her rearview mirror. About 6 years ago we had a horse that went crazy one night. When my husband checked it out our fence was broken down with long white hairs stuck in the barbwire.

As before, a cryptid investigator followed up on details of the report with the witnesses. The investigator reported that:

I spoke with the witness and her mother. They live on 66 acres, much of it wooded. There are springs on the property. Several days before the incident they smelled a very unpleasant odor. They assumed it was an animal carcass but could not find the source of the smell. The daughter related the sighting took place about 30 minutes after the niece had gone outside. She was approximately 35 feet from the creature and her former boyfriend was much closer.

The creature was over 6 feet tall with a very broad body, especially in the shoulders. The creature’s face was “between a monkey and a human” in appearance and its hair was “long and coarse, like a golden retriever,” and white in color, “like an old person’s hair.” The creature was standing on two legs and “ran away on two legs like a human.”

So, just what are the people in southern Lincoln County seeing around the Flintville area? With multiple sightings and similar descriptions in and around the same locale, this could be enough evidence to convince skeptics that there is something roaming the woods in southern Middle Tennessee. To date. investigations into the Flintville Monster have not presented any irrefutable evidence that it exists, but as the old saying goes, where you see smoke, there is likely a fire. The volume of reports and accounts, along with the consistent descriptions of light or white hair, large size, terrible smell, and aggressive behavior suggest this legend has merit and that these are not folktales or misidentification of some other hairy species of animal. There are some experts who believe what the people around Flintville are encountering is an aggressive subspecies of cryptid or that it could be a previously unknown type of humanoid primate. Sightings occurring near the Oak Ridge area in northeast Tennessee even suggest a Godzilla-type scenario, where historical nuclear experiments and byproducts in that region have affected a primate species, turning it into something like the Flintville Monster, though that appears to be a fringe theory even among the staunchest Bigfoot believers.

Within the other reported sightings for Lincoln County on the BFRO website, there are two other reports of auditory encounters with what may be this mysterious cryptid. The first instance places a mother and daughter on a walk in the woods near what the website is calling the Elk River/Dellrose Cluster in 2015. This remote area of farmland, low hills, and dense forested property is next to the Hobbs Bridge in western Lincoln County. The mother and daughter were joking about drawing out a bigfoot while enjoying their walk by knocking on a tree with a downed limb as these cryptids are said to do. A few moments later, they heard a howling scream they could not describe coming from the woods about fifty yards behind them. While heading back to the car at a fast pace, they heard it again. Once they reached their vehicle, they claim to have heard loud knocking sounds of thick limbs being smashed into trees but could not see what was causing it. They quickly drove off, leaving the mystery in the rearview mirror behind them.  

In 2017, just a few miles from the Hobbs Bridge encounter, two hunters reported being howled at while driving to their deer stands in a remote section of the Elk River/Dellrose Cluster. They could hear the bellowing loudly over their running diesel truck engine. The driver claims this is the second time in the same area they have encountered the loud howling noise but they have never seen what was making the sound. The last sighting reported from this area comes in 2023 about 4 miles northwest of where the Hobbs Bridge and the hunters heard the howling.

The resident making this report is described as a professional and well-respected local female resident who wishes to remain unidentified. I typically do not put much faith in anonymous reports on subjects like these, however the investigators at BFRO cite her as credible after interviewing her about this incident. Her report on the BFRO website reads as follows:

That night I was up gaming on my computer at 2am. I had turned the sound down just enough that, if my boys were in bed, I wouldn’t have disturbed them. It was still decently loud, however. I always bring in the cats at night because I’ve lost a few to coyotes and cars in the dark. I also have a hole in the foundation of the house that was knocked out to treat it for termites years ago that the cats like to crawl through and hang out under the floor. This night, at first I thought one was still outside. As I was gaming, I started hearing this real deep growl that sounded similar to one of my cats. You know, sometimes cats will do deeper growls as an initial warning and get louder pitched as the threat advances.

The sound seemed muffled, so I assumed my cat was under the house growling at the neighbor’s cat. I ignored it knowing there was no way I’d be able to get my cat in until he ventured out from under the house. The growling grew louder and less muffled. At some point the sound went from this muffled growl into a growl that I can only describe as a cow in distress. At least, that is what I initially thought as it’s the only thing close I could compare it to.

At this point it was loud and sounded like it was right outside my office window, about 4 feet from my desk. I had turned off my speaker to listen because at this point I was completely bewildered to what I was listening to. Was a cow attacking my cat? What the hell was going on? Was it even a cow? We do have cows across the street on the hillside, but I never hear them from in the house, and this sounded right outside my window. I started questioning if it was a cow and knowing that there wasn’t anything out there that posed a threat to me, and fearing for what I presumed was my cat facing off some unknown creature, I flew to my feet to run outside.

For whatever reason as I got up, I glanced at my office window. The curtains were open, and I froze. Staring at me were a set of “eyes”. Around that time all the noise stopped. There is no way to truly explain the shock and terror I felt. These eyes were watching me rather at a side glance. We held a gaze for a couple of seconds. As I stared back, I saw them completely turn and glide away.

I grabbed my cell phone and tried to calmly leave the room to a no window area, which was difficult as all my windows on that side of the house had open curtains
I honestly thought it was a ‘person’ because my initial thought was a peeping tom. I thought it was my creepy neighbor and just assumed he had been snooping.
Then I realized that was unlikely, that he wouldn’t have held my gaze but probably hide, so it must have been my oldest son’s friends out drinking beer in the driveway and screwing with me. It was a Friday night after all.

I ran upstairs to find my youngest son. Just needed to be around someone, maybe get him to go outside and tell them to knock it off as I was still deeply startled.  Upon reaching the top of the stairs, I found both of my boys asleep and that’s when I started to panic so I called my 3rd boy. As I recounted the story I realized, whatever was outside my window wasn’t human because the eyes were a luminescent yellow green… and I was totally dumbfound and relieved. Maybe it was a deer…

The next day, still deeply troubled by the experience, I finally got up the nerve to venture outside and look under the window. Nothing. No tracks or any indication of anything was under my window. I measured where those eyes hit and if said creature was standing flush with the glass it would have stood about 6 feet tall. I am assuming, because he wasn’t right at the window, whatever it was may have been taller. I don’t know why my brain thought ‘human’ as all I saw were ‘eyes’.

I’ve replayed this experience over and over and still cannot completely rationalize what happened. I’ve gone over tons of animal sounds. Thinking back, the growl proceeded into that cow bleating-like sound. Haven’t been able to find anything that could do both. I’ve considered lighting bugs, but the temperature dropped that night to 45*. We don’t have many lighting bugs in April here, and even less at 2 am.

All 3 of my boys have had other odd experiences in the past 3 years around here but I’m unsure if they are related. They’ve told me about seeing a green floating orb, a large crouching creature beside the highway, the disembodied sound of an advancing odd wet-lung sucking-death-rattle and grunting creature in the tree line by the house, something hitting our camper behind the house. My best friend has also told me she saw something large and dark on my parents’ upper deck of their house about 2 miles away back in the 90s.

In the follow up interview by two BFRO investigators, the report continues with their opinions on the story. The first investigator said:

I conducted a phone interview with the witness on 5/23/24 and discussed in detail her sighting through the window as well as the various experiences that her family have had near their home over the years. I found the witness very credible and well spoken. She is a well-respected professional in her field in the lower Tennessee/ Alabama area and prefers to remain unidentified.

When asked about the “eye glow” that she saw that evening, she said it was more like a reflection type of light like you’d see from a deer or similar animal. The eyes were in a three-quarter stance as if the creature was watching with its head slightly turned to the side. As she noticed it, the eyes slowly moved away from the window and disappeared as it walked away.

Living very close to her town I drove down a few days later to her county to see some of the roads and areas that she pointed out during our conversation. According to her landmarks that she provided I could easily see how a few of these creatures could make their way through the surrounding sparsely populated community and not be readily noticed. One road in particular, which is named Vanzant road, she commented in her interview that she “sometimes feels creeped out” when she makes the drive through there. This road is very close to her house (everything in Dellrose is close to her house). Vanzant is a 2-mile gravel road in the country with a few small farms and heavily wooded area on both sides.

She gave me more detail about the other odd occurrences near her home. One in particular was from her youngest son at 16 years old, who had decided to set up his own “apartment” in the backyard in an old RV. Soon he heard scary growling and chortling sounds from the woods behind, as well as a heavy slam against the wall of the camper one night waking him from his sleep.

Another son told her that one evening while driving home a few years earlier, he observed a dark hairy thing with long arms appearing to be feasting on a dinner of roadkill from the side of the road. This area of Tennessee has many attractive elements for sasquatches: Creeks, dense woods, tall hills, deep valleys, plenty of flora and fauna. Based on her truthfulness that I perceived from our conversation along with a quick investigation of her small town and immediate area I do believe her story. I will be returning to this area in the near future for further investigation to be sure.

There are multiple sightings of creatures reported to be a sasquatch all across the volunteer state. While investigating this story, I could not help but notice there is one reported sighting of a cryptid where I live in Coffee County, which is the eastern neighbor of Lincoln County where the Flintville Monster is said to live. The report says:

I was pulling out of my driveway getting ready to leave for work and as I looked to the left, I noticed movement on the embankment by the road. I sat and watched for a little while and a very, very large dark cone headed type person, animal, whatever you want to call it took a step and was in the middle of the road. It just stood there like it was watching me watching it. At first, I thought it was a man but he looked like he was wearing a fur coat and had a funny shaped head. What I saw the thing was very large. The way he came off the embankment wasn’t like any animal or man I’ve ever seen; it was like a very large step down for him and he was there.

It stood there for a few mins and turned and walked across the street into underbrush and trees over by the creek. I waited a little longer and it never came back out, so I went to work. This started a series of strange animals being seen and heard around here. I was the only one to see it in the road but as far as the howl scream type noise several people heard it and we’ve heard it more than once.

My father claimed to keep seeing a very large brownish black bear across the street. The next door neighbors’ grandson was playing in the back yard and came around front and told us there was a big gorilla in the backyard. The sound I have heard at night is a cross between a scream, howl and growl and some nights you can smell a very heavy wet dog smell with a hint of mildew mixed in.

The road incident occurred early in the morning; sun was just coming up but still shadowed in areas. Around maybe 5:30ish am. The others were at different times of the day. The screams are always at night.

After investigating this story, the BRFO investigator tendered the following opinion:

After phone interviews and an extensive on-site investigation, I’ve come to the conclusion this report is accurate. The following can be added:

The witness was 100 yards from the creature during the sighting. The creature was approximately 9’6” tall standing in the slumped position and 4’6” wide at the shoulders. It covered the 10 feet from the middle of the road to the edge in one and a quarter steps. The embankment it was standing on before jumping onto the road was about 4 feet above the road. It leaped across the ditch and to the middle of the road, a distance of 20 feet, from a standing position and without moving beforehand. The leap was in a one-foot forward style. It landed standing.

The color was very dark/black with a dark face. The hair was 6” long and very matted with long, matted clumps hanging from the arms. The hands reached the knees. The hands were human-like, and the fingers were spread apart. Muscles could not be seen for the thick, long, matted hair. The estimated time the creature stood in the middle of the road before it walked off was 10 seconds. The sun was up, but still low. It was just after the springtime change.

The creature would have easy access to about 50 square miles of mostly unpopulated, heavily wooded rolling hills with bluffs and lakes. I found two identical stick structures up the steep hill in the woods behind the witness’ house. The first one was about 200 yards away and was most likely intentionally built. The second one was about 300 yards away and was also built intentionally. There was not a single stick on the ground within 25 yards of the second one. The two were in alignment with the north and south boundaries of the houses below. Both pointed due south.

Increased activity started when the witness moved her horses to another location and quit putting out oats, apples, and other foods. Activities include rocks being thrown onto the roof and metal fence posts being pulled straight up out of the ground.

I have lived in southern middle Tennessee since 2007 and have logged many camping nights and many more hiking miles in Coffee and Lincoln Counties as well as other remote parts of Tennessee. While I cannot explain everything I have ever seen or heard in the woods, I have never personally experienced anything like what is described in these accounts. That does not mean that I discount these stories. When I first investigated the story of the Beast of the Land Between the Lakes, I was incredibly skeptical until I heard a recording of a howl captured by a friend while hiking in that area. It was a sound unlike anything I have ever heard, and the video came from a very credible source. Neither he nor I could describe the sound well, but my best guess would be the mixture of a human scream mixed with a bear growl and a wolf howl. It was enough to make me a believer that something was in those woods that humans may not have met yet.

Bigfoot is not a new phenomenon. Legends of multiple different creatures with similar descriptions and features can be found in different regions and cultures from around the world. For example, there is an Australian Aboriginal belief in a creature called the Yowie that roams the remote parts of the Outback. In Nepal and parts of the Himalayas, the Yeti is a cryptid creature that lives in the snowy mountains and was worshipped by the Himalayan people prior to Buddhism. Remote parts of Russia have the Almasty. China calls him the Yeren. There is a unique South American legend about a similar creature known as the Mapinguari, and another called the Maricoxi. Even within the United States, Bigfoot has many different identities. In southern states, he’s called the Skunk Ape or Swamp Ape. Other parts of Tennessee call him the Tennessee Wildman. The Pacific Northwest names him Sasquatch. The interesting part of these diverse legends is the cultures that believe in them were not communicating with each other prior to modern connectivity. Some of these legends go back centuries among peoples who did not know the other existed, yet their legends are nearly the same. How can that be, unless there was a being that existed there?

Some experts have speculated that these older legends could have been the last ancestors of early man, the proverbial missing links between evolutionary chains of evidence that humans were once ape-like creatures and Neanderthals. For those who do not believe in evolution, even the Bible affords the possibility of Bigfoot’s existence. In Genesis 27:11 declares that Esau, son of Isaac and brother of Jacob, was a “hairy man.” Esau is depicted as the ancestor of the Edomites, a neighboring kingdom of Israel. Another theory places Sasquatch as a Nephalim, one of the antediluvian races of giants that survived the flood of the Earth that was produced by the union of fallen angels and humans. Our modern day Bigfoot is thought to possibly be a remnant of that lost race, or perhaps created in the same way. Despite all this information, no definitive physical evidence of these cryptids is available to us. For now, he remains an unproven legend but, in the hearts and minds of believers, he’s only out there in the woods and hills around Flintville, Tennessee waiting for us to discover him.

Thank you for listening to today’s Tennessee Ghosts and Legends Podcast episode. I invite you visit my website at http://www.lylerussell.net if you’d like to learn more about this and other stories I’m working on. I would like to thank the investigators at the Bigfoot Field Researcher’s Organization website for keeping thorough records of reported encounters and wonderful follow-up reports. You can visit their page and read the reports for yourself at http://www.bfro.net. If you have had a paranormal experience or an encounter with a cryptid, know of a Tennessee legend, or want to recommend a haunted Tennessee location for me to research, I would love to hear about it. Send me a message through my website and tell me about your brushes with the spirit world. I am your host, Lyle Russell, and remember, the dead may seem scary, but it’s the living you should be wary of. Until next time.