Marne, Iowa. This is a small community with a population of just 149 and is about 60 miles from Omaha and 80 miles from Des Moines. In hopes of boosting that population of this town the Marne Housing and Development Corp has made free land available for private and commercial use

New Richland, Minnesota. New Richland is a town of about 1200 in southern Minnesotaand is about 75 miles from the outskirts of the Twin Cities. This town offers lake recreation and many fine churches. You can get a free 86’ x 133’ plot on the Homestake subdivision on the northwest side of town with the only condition that those people who claim the lots must build a house on the property within one year.

Kansas. The rural areas in Kansas have a declining population and to counteract this, the local governments and development groups made available land for industry and residence.

Beatrice, Nebraska. This city is in the southeastern part of Nebraska. They have The Homestead Act of 2010 which offers land for free on a first-come, first-served basis but with a condition that the applicants must occupy their parcels of land for five years.

Muskegon, Michigan. This county in Michigan launched Muskegon 25 in order to attract industrial employers. According to this program those companies that will bring in 25 full-time jobs or more will be granted industrial park property for building, complete with all services.

Curtis, Nebraska. This city is also knows as Easter City in Nebraska. This city has offered free land for single family homes.

Camden, ME. For people looking to own something near the coast, Camden offers this unique opportunity. This city is offering 3.5 acres of land near Camden Harbor for a business that will create at least 24 jobs.

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A Fact, Not a Fiction?

In those dark days, Mons was also made famous by another, much darker legend. On a night in November, Captain Yeskes and four of his London Fusiliers went on a patrol in No Man’s Land. Several days later their corpses were found, with teeth marks at the throats. And in the British trenches a weird, blood-curldling howl was heard… the howl of the Hell Hound of Mons.

Afterwards, on the battlefields of the Marne and the Somme, near Verdun and Ypres, patrols that ventured out in the darkness between the trenches, were found with the same telltale marks at their throats, while the howl continued to roam through No Man’s Land. Sentries declared they saw a grey form flashing past the barbed wire. The giant Hound of Hell was running there, silently…

In August 1919, the Evening News of Oklahoma published a story of the Canadian veteran Captain F.J. Newhouse. The Terror of No Man’s Land that was stalking among the corpses and dragged soldiers down to their death, was no apparition of a fear-crazed mind, he said. It was no phantom, no hallucination, no fiction… but a gruesome reality of the Great War. 

Captain Newhouse stated that certain facts had been brought to light, as a result of the recent death of Dr Gottlieb Hochmuller in a Berlin riot. Secret documents were found in his house, which proved the Hell Hound of Mons really existed. The creature had come out of maybe the most repulsive scientific experiment the world had ever known, as a giant hound with the brain of a human madman.

Indeed, Dr Hochmuller had roamed the German hospitals until he found a man gone mad because of his hatred of England. With the sanction of his government, Hochmuller removed the brain of this man and inserted it in a giant Siberian wolfhound. The dog lived, grew rapidly stronger and after careful training was released in No Man’s Land.

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Only an Urban legend, and Nothing More?

Could there be any truth in this monstrous horror tale? The surgical procedure Captain Newhouse described, is quite impossible. And the story reminds us of other tales – what we would call now “urban legends” – of alleged atrocities committed by “the Hun”. Most of these World War One horror tales have been proven to be war propaganda and nothing more.

Theo Paijmans, who wrote for the Fortean Times an interesting article on The Hound of Mons, could find no traces of a Dr Gottlieb Hochmuller and his bizarre medical procedures that remind us of the very fictional experiments of Baron von Frankenstein. The sudden disappearance of the creature also has elements of the various legends concerning demon dogs and hounds from hell.

But, as Paijmans points out, perhaps a giant dog really did haunt the trenches, abandoned by his master, hungry prowling the battlefield. And maybe Agatha Christie had some good reason for choosing Belgium during World War One as the setting for one of her supernatural short stories, titled… The Hound of Death (1933).

Other Great War Articles:

A Poet of the Great War, Wilfred Owen

In Flanders Fields

Phantoms of the Great War