Krampus: The Christmas Monster Iowa Didn't Want

Krampus approaching a small Mississippi River town

Krampus had a very clear role in the old world, and it wasn’t subtle.

In the Alpine parts of Europe—Austria, Bavaria, and a few neighboring regions—Christmas came with rules. Saint Nicholas rewarded good kids. Krampus handled the rest. He was hairy, horned, loud, and carried chains and sticks because apparently subtle parenting hadn’t been invented yet. If children behaved, great. If not, there was a half-goat demon lurking nearby to remind them consequences were real.

Krampusnacht wasn’t a cozy night with cocoa. It was grown men in terrifying masks running through the streets, clanging chains, and scaring everyone within range. Kids were meant to be afraid. Adults were meant to remember that winter was dangerous, life was fragile, and order mattered. It made sense in mountain villages, where darkness came early and folklore was taken seriously.

Then Christmas crossed the ocean.

Before Bigfoot, There Was the Lockridge Moster

Tracks in the mud, scatnottered turkey feathers--not human

October 1975. Lockridge, Iowa. Population small enough to know who’s in church and who’s not. Then something started killing turkeys. Not clean kills, either—these birds were torn apart, like something angry had come out of the timber hungry for chaos.

A farmer named Bill Beavers made the first call. Said he found ten-inch footprints stamped deep in the mud, wide as a man’s palm. “Didn’t look like no animal I ever seen,” he told the Fairfield Ledger. The cops came out, looked around, scratched their heads, and left with nothing but cigarette smoke and a few plaster casts that didn’t make sense.

Beavers said he saw it one night—black, hairy, broad shoulders, eyes catching the light. He fired his gun, it ran. Left behind that smell every farm kid knows: wet fur and something rotting. The Des Moines Register ran a short piece about it—“Iowa’s Own Monster,” they called it—and suddenly the little town of Lockridge had more reporters than cattle.