MoMo / Marzolf Hill — 1972

The encounter

In July 1972, teenager Doris Harrison reported seeing a tall black shaggy figure near her family's home in Louisiana, Missouri. Her younger brothers were also associated with the sighting, which quickly became the center of the 'MoMo' or Missouri Monster media story.

The earliest wording preserved through a Missouri Department of Conservation transcript describes Harrison seeing a black object about 50 feet from the house and estimating it at roughly seven feet tall. The simple early description—tall, black and shaggy—is important because later versions of the MoMo story accumulated additional details.

For that reason, this case page keeps the earliest clipping-level account separate from later claims about odor, dead animals or other dramatic elements unless those details can be traced to their own sources. The core case is the Harrison family's reported visual and the immediate media response that followed.