By Jerome Pearson
June 2015
The movie titled “The Thing from another World” is a 1951 American black-and-white science fiction/horror film. The story concerns a U.S. Air Force crew and scientists who travel to the North Pole to examine an aircraft crash located near a scientific outpost. Once there, they discovered a flying saucer and an extraterrestrial pilot whom they bring back to the lab, frozen in a block of ice, for further study. It’s not long before it was learned that the THING from another world was a super-intelligent man with the ability to both regenerate lost limbs and reproduce through spreading seeds—thaws out and begins to wreak havoc. They are then forced to defend themselves against this thing when it is accidentally revived.
The “Thing from another World” became unstoppable alien bent on world domination. The movie “presents a world that is caught in the unsteady balance between ‘Us and Them’—that is to say, between the normal people and the people who are a little too brainy for their own good”. The movie was released in 1951 during the Cold War period, which was certainly a scary time throughout the world. However, it was only a movie!
Twenty years later in fall of 1971, another scary creature was discovered, and was appropriately (perhaps coincidentally), called “THE THING”. Only this time, “THE THING” was not found in the artic by mad scientists but was rather found in roaming various communities within Clarendon County, South Carolina to include, Summerton, St. Paul, Davis Station, and Davis Cross Roads.
For several months, starting in the fall of 1971 and ending somewhere around the spring 1972, THE THING haunted and terrorized our community as we received no help from the Federal Government. As a matter of fact, even the news agencies showed no interest in our predicament. Each day when I got home from school, I made sure to watch the evening news from start to finish. But there was never a mention of “THE THING”!
Our military was in its 8th year of what was appearing to be an unending war in Vietnam! Our President at the time was only concerned about a potential 2nd term in office; he and his henchmen were too busy breaking into the Watergate building trying to ensure a 2nd term and could care less about what was happening in our tiny community. I felt as if we were being abandoned by our own Government!
Of course, we did not have CNN back then; we probably could have used Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon camped out in our town for months “breaking news” all over the place! They could probably have interviewed a local Pastor who preached one Sunday that “my baby seen The Thing! And I know it’s a sign from God being communicated from the mouth of a babe that the world is finally coming to an end”.
More specifically, in our community THE THING was an unidentified scary creature that began roaming the local areas and killing everything in its way. Although the Thing was supposedly some wild and super animal that was seen by multiple witnesses, there was never a consensus on its exact identity. When asked what THE THING looked like, witnesses would give varying and often conflicting descriptions. An adult night-school class had seen a reflection of the THING in one of the school’s newly installed stained-glass windows one very cold night; the Thing, they said, looked like some type of mountain-lion. Following one weekend, I arrived at School and was informed by a classmate that his grandfather had seen THE THING the previous Saturday jumping across interstate highway I-95 with a mule in its mouth.
Preachers began preaching about the end of time and saying that the arrival of THE THING was only a confirmation that the “End of Times” was immediately upon us. THE THING had powers that we had never seen in other creatures. These powers were so super and unusual that the entire story exuded an air of fantasy. People were reporting that some of their chickens, pigs, cattle and in some cases, dogs were being killed off. The assumption was that it had to be THE THING killing all these animals, and that given the chance; it would kill humans as well.
Throughout this time THE THING was spotted in multiple locations and in multiple forms. I recall seeing what I thought was THE THING crossing highway near Davis Cross road as the School bus traveled from Summerton to Spring Hill one day. My heart almost dropped, but when I looked around, no one else seemed to notice. So, each day as the bus neared that area, I would become panicky. During the nighttime, no matter how sleepy I became, I made sure that I went to bed only when my siblings were already in the bed room. I was afraid that THE THING was always waiting for my entry; he would be out to get me because I had seen him previously from the school bus window.
One Monday morning, I was informed that the high school cafeteria had been broken into over the weekend and food was taken. Some folks claimed that they saw THE THING exiting a broken window earlier that Sunday morning; other folks claimed that it was only an elementary school student name Norris Dubois.
One man in Davis Station, whose wife had just given birth to a very unattractive baby boy, began accusing her of being unfaithful; THE THING, he said, was the likely culprit. However, he failed to realize that his 3 older children would never be mistaken for a member of the “Jackson” family either!
During high school football games that fall, local guys who would normally try to get into the game for free by crossing through the local graveyard and jumping a ditch, now because of THE THING, had to enter through the normal gate like everyone else. Cars would be coming through the paying-gate with 2 passengers in the front seat, 3 in the back seat, and four un-paying passengers in the trunk.
Our School was surrounded by a fence and was the only school I ever attended that had one. The male teachers were mostly responsible for patrolling the area, but they were often distracted by other things. The School was overseen by a bull-dog of a principal named “Choice”. There were two teachers with the name “Wilson”; one big and one was small, both appeared frightened; a teacher named “Miller” who was pre-occupied with doing the “camel walk” or slapping around a spoiled student who he could not stand; another teacher who taught history and wore a big white cowboy hat, but really specialized in writing love letters to some of the 8th grade female students; a very tall teacher named “Pompey”, who taught math with food stuck in his mouth; and relatively young teacher name “Pack”; well perhaps we should not say what he was up to!
THE THING haunted us during the fall and winter of that year but finally disappeared during the spring! In the blink of any eye, the thing had disappeared and was never seen nor spoken of again.
When I reflect on this story today, I realize that although THE THING was supposedly seen by multiple witnesses, in multiple locations, and in multiple forms during that year, there was still no absolute proof of its existence.
But for those of us who had seen it, he was as real as anything we had ever encountered and will remain a frightening part of our delightfully dubious memories.
Wait! Did I just hear something?
Grraaaaauuuu!
Jerome Pearson