Trips and quips: Missouri's peculiarities

In 1941, local minister William Huffman was summoned from his home to an airplane crash 15 miles outside Cape Girardeau to pray over the bodies of those killed in the accident.

But according to Huffman, the bodies weren't human.

Or so the story goes.

Missouri has its share of the peculiar and unknown, from tales of ghosts and UFOs to strange places to visit. In this occasional series, the Southeast Missourian offers stories of such oddities, some of them based in fact, others mere speculation, but all served up with a side order of weird.

Two heads are better than one

In 2005, a Delta 10-year-old boy discovered a two-headed rat snake in a tree stump in his backyard.

After a day of show-and-tell at his school, Cody Kneir donated the snake to the Cape Girardeau Conservation Campus Nature Center. At that time the snake was only about a week old. Now about four months old and over a foot long, the two-headed snake -- originally dubbed Jeffrey and Jeffrey the Great by Cody although it has since been determined to be female -- is eating well.

Conservation campus educational specialist Jeremy Soucy said the snake has two independent brains that share all the vital organs.

Siamese snakes are common, but only one in four hatch. Adult two-headed snakes are rare.

Since coming to the nature center, the snake has shed three times.

Soucy said the snake will likely be featured at a reptile exhibit in March, but it will be about a year before the snake is a regular part of the nature center's program.

A grave mistake?

The story of the Indian princess buried in Trail of Tears State Park outside Cape Girardeau got its start in the 1830s, when 16,000 Cherokees were marched 800 miles on foot as part of a relocation project.

About 4,000 Cherokees lost their lives on the trail, including a "princess" named Otahki, according to legend.

While the burial site is real, according to park representative Susan Kelley, the legend is not completely accurate.

"There was no royalty in the Cherokee culture, so there could not have been a Princess Otahki," said Kelley.

Kelley believes the name "Otahki" was actually given to the woman by the local settlers.

According to the park's official explanation, the woman's real name was Nancy Bushyhead Walker Hildebrand, who, depending on which history book you read, was either the sister or daughter of the Rev. Jesse Bushyhead, an ordained Baptist minister who led one of the detachments on the Trail of Tears.

Nancy Hildebrand died after crossing the Mississippi River and camping in what is now the state park. Her husband and brother set up a wooden marker at her grave site, which was then maintained by the local people.

Visitors to the park can stop by the site of her burial, where a pagoda was erected in 1961 in memory of the Cherokee who died during the march. In 2001, the site of named "Bushyhead Memorial" to clarify the story.

Cape Girardeau: the original Roswell?

Some believe Cape Girardeau may have been the site for one of the country's first UFO crashes,even before the government's alleged coverup of a crash outside Roswell, N.M.

The story, as told by Charlotte Mann, a Texas woman whose grandfather was pastor of Red Star Baptist Church from 1941 to 1994, goes like this:

According to Mann, the Rev. William Huffman got a call one spring night from police asking him to accompany them to the site of an airplane crash about 15 miles outside town in case the victims needed a clergyman.

"A car was sent to get him, but grandmother said it wasn't a police car," Mann said.

When Huffman got to the crash scene, he noticed one piece of the wreckage that "appeared to have a rounded shape with no edges or seams," and a "very shiny, metallic finish."

Police officers, "plainclothes men" and military officers were already at the scene sifting through the wreckage. Laid to one side of the scene were "three bodies, not human."

"It was hard for him to tell if they had on suits or if it was their skin, but they were covered head to foot in what looked like wrinkled aluminum foil," Mann said. "He could see no hair on their bodies and they had no ears. They were small-framed like a child, about 4 feet tall, but had larger heads and longer arms."

Their faces had "large, oval-shaped eyes, no noses, just holes and no lips, just small slits for mouths."

Huffman was told by one of the military officers at the scene not to tell anyone what he had witnessed for security reasons. Huffman told his wife, Floy, and their two sons what he had seen when he returned home from the crash site but never spoke of it again, said Mann.

He died in 1959. His wife, who died in 1984, told Mann the story.

A few weeks after the crash, Huffman was apparently given a photo of two men holding one of the corpses found at the scene. Mann's father loaned the photo to a friend but never saw it again.

Leonard H. Stringfield, a UFO investigator, recounted Mann's story in the July 1991 issue of his "Status Report," a monthly publication on UFO activities and investigations.

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Know an unusual story or place to visit in Southeast Missouri? Contact features editor Callie Clark Miller at 335-6611, ext. 128 or e-mail cmiller@semissourian.com