In October 1903, the residents of Van Meter, Iowa, a town of about one thousand people in the rolling farmland of Dallas County, experienced five nights of encounters with something that no one at the time, or since, has been able to explain. The creature was large, bipedal, and appeared to emit a blinding light from a horn or protrusion on its head. It had bat-like wings. It left enormous hoofprints. It emitted a smell described variously as appalling and as unlike anything any witness had previously encountered. And it seemed to enter and exit an abandoned coal mine shaft at the edge of town.
The Van Meter Visitor, as the creature is now known, was not reported by a single eccentric witness. The town’s doctor, its banker, its hardware store owner, and a former town official, among others, provided the accounts. Several witnesses attempted to shoot the creature and reported that it was apparently impervious to gunfire. On the fifth night, multiple armed townspeople gathered at the mine shaft and witnessed two creatures emerge, one larger and one smaller, before they retreated into the shaft as dawn approached. And then they were gone.
The Primary Sources
The Des Moines Daily News originally documented the Van Meter Visitor story in the days following the events of October 1903. The newspaper accounts list specific witnesses by name and occupation, describe the events in journalistic detail, and treat them as news rather than sensational entertainment. This level of specificity is unusual in cryptid accounts from the early 20th century and makes the Van Meter case one of the more verifiable pre-Patterson-Gimlin creature encounters on record.
Researchers Chad Lewis, Noah Voss, and Kevin Lee Nelson investigated the Van Meter events extensively and published their findings in 2013. Their research confirmed the existence of the primary newspaper accounts, identified the locations of the reported encounters, and found no conventional explanation for the events described. They also documented a consistent community memory of the events in Van Meter that persisted through the 20th century despite no significant national attention until their investigation.
What Was It?
The Van Meter Visitor does not fit any single conventional category. Its bioluminescent horn or headlight is inconsistent with any known animal. Its apparent imperviousness to gunfire is unexplained. Its use of a coal mine shaft as a base suggests an intelligent, purposeful entity rather than a lost or confused animal. Researchers have proposed explanations ranging from a misidentified barn owl to a government experiment. It was a genuinely anomalous entity of uncertain nature.
Researchers have noted that the creatures’ behavior suggests a family unit with a permanent den site. This framing makes the Van Meter Visitor sound more like a real animal and less like a paranormal event, while still leaving the bioluminescent horn and the resistance to firearms entirely unexplained.
The Town Today
Van Meter holds an annual Van Meter Visitor Festival that celebrates the creature with events, merchandise, and community pride. The town has fully embraced its cryptid history. The festival brings visitors from across Iowa and the surrounding region each October, close to the anniversary of the original 1903 encounters. The coal mine shaft where the creatures reportedly entered and exited no longer exists, but the approximate location is known and referenced in the festival’s walking tour materials.
