The Delphos
Wolf Girl - A Possible UFO Connection?
 The following 'Wolf Girl'
/ UFO case was in the end proved to be simple hoax perpetrated by local kids,
though it is included here to illustrate the severe limitations of anecdotal
claims as evidence of psychic powers
and strange goings-on.
In
July 1974, at least four people claimed to have seen a child of about ten or twelve years
old, with blonde, matted hair and wearing tattered red clothing, running through vines and
bushes in a wooded district on the north-west edge of Delphos, a small town in
Kansas. One witness
described encountering the girl during a search for her; she didn't speak but only growled
at him before running off. Children had
also seen the 'girl' eating out of cat and dog dishes.
About 7.30 am in the morning of 22 July, Mrs.
Joe Stout saw the child
in a shed on an unoccupied, overgrown lot. She came
face-to-face with 'her' sitting on a picnic table only five or six feet
away. She wasn't sure if it was a boy or a girl, except that it was
wearing a red dress. It made an odd gurgling sound when she tried to get closer
and then jumped down from the picnic table and disappeared through a small hole in the wall.
Mrs. Stout thought the child was definitely human and not deformed, although it ran on all fours.
She described it as about
the size of a six year old, with
a horseshoe shaped
scar running from its right eye to its mouth. She denied the possibility that it was a monkey or other
primate.
 Mrs. Stout said she saw the child for the second time
around 4 pm, and again about 8.30 pm the same day. During a late-night search of the area,
Mr Stout was scratched on
the shoulder and a neighbour, a teenager called Kevin Marsh, was scratched on
the throat from behind. Both only got a glimpse of their diminutive assailant.
The sheriff of Ottawa County,
Leonard Simpson, organised a posse to search the area, but they found no trace
that anyone or anything had been there..Residents also reported chasing the girl through milo fields,
but officers sent to search the area found no trace of the wild girl. On Tuesday evening the girl was reported by a resident to
be inside a shed. Officers and about 35 residents surrounded the shed, but they
found nothing.
Although sheriff Simpson was sure that people had seen something,
he wasn't convinced it was a child. He suggested that the reports
could have been caused by the large amount of cats and dogs running loose in the
area (!). No children had been reported missing anywhere in the state, and
without any new evidence Simpson announced that he'd closed the case.
According to Simpson, although most people who thought they saw something had,
for some reason, changed their story by the next day
when asked to give statements, the Stouts, Kevin Marsh and another teenager, Doug Kaiser,
maintained that they had seen a little girl. People living in the area
were afraid of what 'she or it' might do next, and parents of young children
told The Wichita Eagle that they were either keeping their children indoors or
well within sight.
Despite the scepticism of some, those who saw something
strongly believed it was a child. Mrs. Stout was convinced she saw a child. She said
objects in the shed, including dolls from a collection formerly kept in barrels
along with some clothes, had been moved during the night, although she didn't
see or hear anyone near the shed. When she first saw the child she noticed that someone had lined the dolls up on the picnic table and covered them
with pieces of cloth.
Newspapers in the area dubbed the mysterious child the 'wolf girl', but there
were no more reports and no trace of her was ever found.
Part 1 | Part
2
Copyright 2003 by Brian
Haughton. All Rights Reserved.
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