Sometime around 1943-44 a story went around the Randolph area that there was some kind of wild animal roaming the local woodlands and fields at night near the fairgrounds. Farmers claimed that their sheep and chickens had been killed, and cows came back from the pastures with their udders all scratched up. There were half-eaten carcasses found lying in the fields. Some people claimed that they heard strange howling and growling and scratching at night. Some were afraid to let their children go outside for fear they would be eaten.
Reporters from the nearby papers came to interview the local “authorities”, who became famous with increasingly exaggerated claims, and these sensationalized versions made news for several weeks. The headlines “Randolph Monster” or “Randolph Wolves” were followed by terrifying stories verified by some of the locals. One Randolph citizen named “Waldo” was interviewed almost every day. The stories got taller and more sensational, and pictures of Waldo with a terrified look on his face and eyes as big as alarm clocks showed up in the papers, along with his stories, which were getting scarier and stranger.
When I voiced my concern about our safety to Dad, he told me that this was all a scam; the cow’s udders we’re scratched by barbed wire, the carcasses found were probably from animals that died and were later partially eaten by scavengers, and the howling Waldo heard was caused by something running on a railroad track in Atwater and pulling 100 freight cars.
Dad had a friend, Frank Petty, who had the job of walking a 20-mile stretch of pipeline north of Kent and inspecting it for leaks and other problems. While talking to Dad one day, Frank mentioned that he had stumbled onto the nest of a mother dog and her pups out in the woods near the pipeline. This caused a light to go on in Dad’s head. He’d had enough of this Randolph monster-wolf foolishness and he now had an idea on how to stop it.
So Dad, Frank, and Bill Petty went to the place where the nest of pups was located. They took me along over the objection of Bill and Frank. I was 10 years old and they were afraid I would “spill the beans”. But Dad insisted, so I was included in this adventure. We gathered up the pups, made a nice nest of leaves in the woods on the Randolph fairgrounds, deposited the pups, and then called the newspaper. They came with cameras and flash bulbs blazing, and took pictures of the pups along with the local heroes – all except for me (to my disappointment). The next day the picture along with the story about the solving of the Randolph Wolves mystery made the front page.
Nothing was ever heard about the Randolph wolves again – no more lacerated cow’s udders, no howling at night, no missing livestock or dead carcasses.
All, that is, except for one more article. I had kept one of the pups as a pet. About a year later the paper sent a photographer to get a picture of the last known remaining Randolph wolf along with it’s owner. I finally had my turn in the limelight. As for “spilling the beans”, I never told anyone what really happened, including my mother. Years later when she finally found out, she couldn’t believe I would hold out on her for that length of time. To this day, I’m sure only a handful of people know what really happened.