THE DETROIT FREE PRESS, June 13, 1964

• Sister Lakes, Michigan
• The Dewey Lake Monster
• Bigfoot - Sasquatch - Cryptid
• "Monster Town, U.S.A."

The front page has a banner heading: "''Beast Town' Booms: Get Your Monster Kit (7.95)" (see images)
Complete with all 30+ pages, light toning at the margins, tiny binding holes along the spine, generally in nice condition.

Background: The June 1964 flap surrounding the Sister Lakes (or Dewey Lake) Monster represents a fascinating moment in mid-century American folklore, where genuine local panic rapidly transformed into a full-blown commercial media circus. The mania erupted following a June 9 encounter near Dewey Lake, Michigan, when residents reported seeing a 9-to-10-foot-tall, 500-pound, foul-smelling hairy beast with glowing eyes. Within days, the story made national headlines—even making front-page news under headings like "'Monster' Scare Idles Pickers," as terrified migrant farmworkers temporarily refused to harvest local strawberry fields. As thousands of armed thrill-seekers and monster hunters descended on the area, turning Sister Lakes into what newspapers dubbed "Monster Town, U.S.A.," local merchants wasted no time capitalizing on the chaos. Drugstores did a brisk business selling novelty $7.95 "Monster Kits"—which humorously contained a wooden mallet, a net, a flashlight, a squirt gun, a baseball bat, and a stake—while nearby gas stations sold "monster getaway gas" and drive-ins flipped "monster burgers". Though law enforcement, conservation officers, and zoologists quickly dismissed the sightings as misidentified wildlife, hoaxes, or heat-of-the-moment mass hysteria, the June 1964 issue stands out as a classic example of how a small-town cryptid scare could instantly capture the American imagination and spark an opportunistic boom in pop-culture merchandising.