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JEANINE’S HAUNTED DAKOTAS
A Compendium of Paranormal Phenomena in the Upper Plains
The Wombleflomp
Posted by QueenieJeanie1964 on 03/04/2001
I first heard about this one from my great-uncle Ralph a couple years before we lost him to pancreatic cancer. Uncle Ralph was a long-haul trucker for forty years, so he had all sorts of crazy stories from all over America, Canada, and Mexico. But the last few years before he retired, he mostly only did short-haul trips.
So one day in the late 80’s, he was taking some farm equipment from Sioux Falls to Rapid City, an easy day trip on the interstate. He picked up the equipment and was on the road before dawn. Knowing Uncle Ralph, he was probably listening to a Patsy Cline cassette. Or some George Carlin standup. He loved Carlin.
Now, if you’ve spent any time up here, you know how we have completely different weather in the east and west sides of the state. There can be a blizzard in Sioux Falls while people are wearing shorts in Rapid City, and vice versa. On this day, the weather had been clear right up until Ralph was crossing the Missouri. He couldn’t see anything on the other side of the bridge but a dark wall of storm clouds. Ralph had been trucking long enough that he wasn’t worried about a little thunderstorm – and at first that’s all it was. Thunderstorms usually pass quick, but this one just kept getting worse. About an hour in, the rain and hail were so thick that he could barely see an inch in front of the windshield. The wind was so strong he was having trouble staying in his own lane – not that he could see the lines in the road anyway. He checked the CB (his handle was “Red-Hot Ralph”), and all the truckers up ahead of him said it was only getting worse. He had no choice but to take the next exit and wait out the storm. He said it was a miracle he didn’t get into a wreck changing lanes to get onto the exit, with how poor the visibility was.
The exit was for a little town called Kadoka. He was lucky to find a freight yard he could park in, cause a lot of times there won’t be anywhere to park a giant truck in these little farm towns. He was about to lie down and take a nap when heard another rig pulling into the yard. He jumped on the CB and bitched about the weather with the other guy for a few minutes and then he went to sleep.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep when he got jolted awake by the worst noise he’d ever heard. It was way louder than the thunder he’d been hearing since the storm started; it was like loud television static, but distorted and high-pitched. He joked with me that it reminded him of Aunt Sheila singing in the shower, but I could tell the memory still scared him.
He still couldn’t see anything outside the cab in the storm, so he got back on the CB and asked the other trucker if he heard that crazy thunder clap. The guy didn’t respond for a couple seconds, and at first Ralph thought he’d fallen asleep too. But then the CB crackled, and his voice came through real soft, not like when they’d talked before.
“You ever heard of the Wombleflomp, Red-Hot?”
“The What-the-fuck?”
“Wombleflomp. It’s a…legend out here. Lives down in the badlands. Only comes out when there’s a storm. My dad always told me it makes a loud sound like TV static mixed with a bomb.”
“...mmmmkay.”
The guy must have sensed that Ralph didn’t have much patience for superstition, so he changed the subject. They talked about stuff they’d seen on the road for a couple minutes until the booming sound interrupted them. It sounded closer this time, and lasted a good ten seconds.
After that, the guy was less talkative. Randy talked, and the guy just said “mmhmm” every so often, like he was distracted. Randy was about to ask him if everything was OK when the sound came back, so loud and close that Randy felt his truck shake. He didn’t get a chance to say “What the hell was that?!” before a huge bolt of lightning illuminated the entire windshield. All he could see was white. There was an awful cracking noise, followed by normal thunder. He caught his breath before radioing the guy back.
“Holy shit! I’ve never seen lightning that close up. Must’ve struck a tree. Hope it didn’t start a fire.” But all he heard back was static. He tried the guy a few minutes later and got static again.
He heard the terrible booming noise one more time that afternoon, quieter and further away this time. The thunderstorm finally passed about a half hour later. All of the sudden, it was bright and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. That’s midwest weather for you.
Randy turned his radio to another frequency and radioed some truckers further west. The storm had passed there too. Randy was about ready to get on the road again, but he hopped out to take a pee first. He saw the other guy’s truck was still there across the yard, so he walked over to let him know his radio might be on the fritz. When he got closer, he almost tripped in a deep groove in the ground next to the truck. They weren’t like tire tracks; it was almost like someone had dug a long trench. But he righted himself (I’m guessing after cussing up a storm) and climbed up on the truck’s side board.
He knocked on the driver’s window. He could see the trucker in there, but the guy didn’t respond. At first, Randy thought he’d fallen asleep. He knocked a little harder, and then he leaned in and got a better look at the other trucker.
Randy had seen a dead body before: a drunk driver collided with his rig back in the seventies, and he had to wait and talk to the cops while the EMTs loaded the body into the ambulance. Awful as it was, the body looked like you’d expect a dead body to look: bloody and mangled. That body didn’t prepare him for this.
The guy was still sitting upright, his seatbelt holding him up. His eyes were wide open. The only way you could tell anything was off was his hair sticking up. That, and the still, expressionless look on his face.
Randy immediately turned away and ran to call 911. He tripped in the trench again and landed on some pointy piece of metal. He had a little limp for the rest of his life.
A couple years later, Randy was doing an overnight haul up to Williston. He parked at a Flying J truck stop to get a shower and get something to eat before going back to sleep in his rig. Right about the time he got there, a thunderstorm rolled in.
Randy was having a beer at the bar in the little diner when another trucker came in and sat down next to him. They started chatting, and the other trucker mentioned how he was glad he didn’t have to drive in the storm. Randy didn’t normally like to talk about the guy who died, but he was a couple beers in at this point, so he ended up recounting the whole story. The other trucker listened without commenting until the end of the story.
“Where’d you say this happened?”
“Little town called Kadoka off I-90.” The other guy paused before responding.
“You ever heard of the Wombleflomp?” Randy froze. “I grew up in that area. There’s a story about a creature that lives out in the badlands. Only comes out in a storm. Makes a noise just like the thunder you described. We all grew up terrified of that thing. I think I heard it once when I was young, but I don’t know for sure.”
Unlike the last time, Randy nodded for the guy to keep talking.
The other trucker told him that it feeds on electricity. It slithers out during a storm and uses its metallic antlers like lightning rods to attract the strikes. It needs to store as much as it can until the next storm.
It doesn’t have a use for humans, but it’s drawn to areas where humans are: telephone cables, power stations, and large metal objects — anything electrified or conducive to electricity. God help you if it’s drawn to an area where you are.”
In the 50’s, there was a real bad thunderstorm, the worst in a decade. It almost turned into a tornado. The water tower in Wall got hit by a lightning strike and exploded. Giant hunks of metal rained down on the town. Killed six people.
There was another bad storm in the early 60s. An entire mobile home park got struck, and everybody inside fried. They found a man in his bathtub with long hair sticking straight up, two feet in the air.
The worst one on record happened around ‘78 or ‘79. The old steel plant in Wanblee. Five-alarm fire. Thirty people were working that day. No survivors.
People nearby reported hearing the awful “thunder” right before all these tragedies.
Randy asked the guy what this thing looks like, and he told him nobody’s ever seen it. They know about the metallic antlers cause they’ve found pieces of them shed on the ground near where the lightning struck. They believe it’s shaped like a big snake.
“Why’s that?” Randy asked.
The guy told him that people always find giant trench-like grooves in the ground after a storm, leading right up to the places where lightning struck.
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