Phantom Kangaroo - United States

United States

Many of these sightings are very similar to reports of the Jersey Devil.

Tennessee, 1934: During mid-January 1934, an atypical kangaroo was reported to have killed and partially devoured several animals, including German Shepherd dogs. One witness, Reverend W. J. Hancock, described the animal as looking like a large kangaroo, running and leaping across a field. Another witness, Frank Cobb, soon found more evidence of the kangaroo’s activities: a dismembered German Shepherd. A search party followed the kangaroo's prints to a cave, where the trail ran out. The kangaroo was never found.

There have been recent attempts to label the story as a hoax by the late Horace N. Minnis, of the Chattanooga Times. However, Minnis was not a newspaper correspondent for the area at that time.

Chicago, 1974: In the early morning hours of 18 October 1974, Officer Michael Byrne and Leonard Ciagi of the Chicago police were called to investigate a report that a kangaroo was standing in someone's porch. After a brief search, the officers located the animal in an alleyway, but were unable to capture it.

After the Chicago incident, kangaroo sightings were reported in Illinois and Wisconsin. The kangaroo was seen the next day by a paperboy, and again on the 23rd in Schiller Woods. Another police officer saw it on 1 November in Plano, just outside the city. He reported it jumping eight feet from a field into the road. Half an hour later it (or another one), was seen back in Chicago. It was then seen on the following three days in the surrounding countryside, and finally on the sixth, near Lansing. A few days later, there was a rash of sightings in Indiana.

Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, 1978: two men photographed a large kangaroo beside the highway. Loren Coleman compares the pictures to a Bennett's wallaby.