In this week's Landmarks DailySouthtown a painting of the Piasa, which translates to 'Bird of Evil Spirit' according to writer John W. Allen, occupies a bluff along the Mississippi River in downstate Alton, Ill.
People walk up to get a closer view of the Piasa painting on a bluff wall outside of Alton, providing perspective on how large the painting is.When costumed kids arrived on his front stoop he was wholly unprepared, and “didn’t even have a can of pop to give them,” as he tells the story.Ever resourceful, he grabbed some ketchup packets from the remnants of a recent fast food dinner and thrust them deep into the trick-or-treaters’ bags.
Unlike the small monsters going door to door on Halloween, accompanied by superheroes, princesses and other pop culture characters, other monsters have garnered worldwide notoriety because their origins aren’t linked to published works of fiction. The large, winged creature etched into the rock is a re-creation of an image first reported by 17th century explorers. Its first entry in the historical record was a report by the famous French missionary Jacques Marquette in 1673. The giant petroglyph was mentioned in the accounts of other European explorers until 1699, when “no other mention of it had been found until more than a hundred years had elapsed,” according to John W.
A historical marker tells the story of the Piasa at Piasa Park near Alton, Illinois, where a contemporary depiction of a legendary monster is painted on the rocky side of a bluff. It’s more likely, Allen wrote, the Piasa was a representation of the Thunder Bird, which looms large throughout Native American mythology. The modern legend affixed to the ancient effigy has a nice combination of anti-violence messaging and a self-sacrificing leader story, but a more entertaining, Halloween Piasa legend, attributed only to my imagination, might link the fiendish beast, bolts of lighting flashing from its eyes, to the mysterious abandonment of the ancient city of Cahokia.
Dogs were brought in to track the creature but lost its scent in an area that was “too thick and bushy to walk through.” Other residents in the area reported a “large ghost in their backyard” around the same time.