Perhaps you already know the story of the Tsavo Lions? The event were commemorated a century later in the 1996 film The Ghost and the Darkness starring Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. Animal attack movies are a cinematic staple, a well-worn genre that requires only the most basic of storylines to raise heartbeats: the primal fascinated terror of man-eaters does the rest. But unlike Jaws, Anaconda, Lake Placcid, or even the Hitchcock classic The Birds, The Ghost and the Darkness was based on a series of real and very deadly lion attacks during the building of the Kenya-Uganda Railway in early 1898. The details were recounted by chief engineer Lt. Colonel John Henry Patterson, employed to build a bridge in 1924.
“I fully expected to encounter many trials and hardships while engaged in building the railway through an inhospitable and savage territory. I anticipated engineering difficulties, perils from sunstroke and fevers, a possible scarcity of food and water, - but never for a moment did I realize that the African wilderness held in its mysterious recesses two prowling demons who looked upon myself and my workmen as a sort of manna sent down from Heaven for their special delectation. All other difficulties were as nothing compared to the terrible toll of human sacrifice exacted nightly by these savage monsters who made Tsavo their headquarters and gave to that district an evil repute which lasts to this day.”
In early 1898, the railhead had reached the Tsavo River, located about one hundred and thirty miles west of Mombasa on the Kenyan coast. Patterson had only just arrived to start work on the bridge when workmen began “mysteriously” disappearing. At first Patterson dismissed the workmen’s stories of devouring lions. But then he had the grisly opportunity to witness the carnage of a Sikh named Ungan Singh, who had been seized during the night, dragged away by the neck, and eaten. Patterson tracked the lion from the furrows made from the victim’s heel to the spot where the lion had devoured Singh: “Here a dreadful spectacle presented itself. The ground all about was covered in blood, morsels of flesh, and the larger bones, but the head was left intact, save for a couple of holes made by the lion’s tusks. It was the most gruesome sight I had ever seen.” Dreadful indeed.
Over the next nine months, the death toll continued to rise, over thirty workers were killed. The lions attacked at night, dragging their victims from their sleeping tents and hauling them through the fences of thorns erected in the hopes of protecting the camp. The lions’ methods, Patterson writes, “became so uncanny and their man-stalking so well-timed and so certain of success that the workmen firmly believed that they were not real animals at all, but devils in lions’ shape.” After months of unsuccessful stakeouts and endless sleepless nights, Patterson finally shot and killed both lions. The first was shot as it stalked Patterson in near pitch darkness of the Africa night. The second only succumbed after six shots.
Patterson had both lions skinned to use as floor rugs. Two decades later the skins were purchased by the Field Museum in Chicago for $5000, but the skins were worn and the way the skins had been cut (not to mention bullet holes) made the process of mounted difficult and the lions appear far smaller than they were in actual life. They are still on display at the Museum.
More information on the Tsavo Lions is available on the Field Museum's site: http://www.fieldmuseum.org/exhibits/exhibit_sites/tsavo/default.htm