27 Years Later, One City Still Recovering From a Rampage

Large monsters Rampage through an industrial area of Buffalo, NY in 1986.

In the summer of 1986, the world looked on in horror as a trio of monsters went on a Rampage across North America, devastating cities across the US and Canada. The attack went on for more than a hundred days, with the Army waging war with helicopters, tanks, and soldiers. In some cities, entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. Eventually, all three creatures were subdued, and the process of rebuilding began. In most places, anyway. Go to Chicago or Kalamazoo, and aside from a few memorial plaques, you might not even realize those cities had ever been attacked. Travel to Buffalo, NY though, and it’s a different story. The wrecked buildings still remain, scars from nearly three decades ago.

“It frustrating, because a lot of people treat it like some kind of game” says Matt Costello, a lifelong resident and renowned local street hockey player “they think – oh ha ha, some monsters came and punched our buildings. Isn’t that funny? But there are consequences, and we’re the ones who have to live with them.”

This building was partially spared from monster damage, as it contained a plugged-in toaster that shocked one of the creatures and discouraged it from punching it more.

“Look at that building,” he says as he points out what had been at one time a factory. “The lizard one punched damn hole right in the side of it. And nobody ever fixed it. The factory had close, so I guess it’s just as well that most of the people who worked there got eaten.”

“Yep, a monster punched it” – official city building inspector’s report.

The hole-punched building is hardly unique. Across the street, the crumbling base of another skyscraper juts out like the stump of a felled tree. “That one was getting double-teamed,” explains Joe Sanabria, who lived in the building at the time, but managed to escape by distracting the monsters with a local delicacy known as a Super Mighty, “the gorilla one, George, he was on one side, and the giant werewolf, he was on the other, and they were just climbing the building, punching the shit out the all windows to look for people, bags of money, goldfish, whatever. Then they both punched the building on the same floor at almost the exact same time, and the top half of the building just collapsed.”

This factory shows damage from where, according to one witness “a huge goddamn werewolf just took a big bite out of the side of it, for no real reason. Fucking werewolves, what the hell.”

No one can say for sure why the damage never got cleaned up, but in a city that’s used to being snubbed by the national media, many blame the press. “Maybe the problem was that when it happened, we were one of the cities that didn’t get news coverage,” says local celebrity impersonator Justin Wetter, “the newspapers covered it in Cleveland, and Toronto, and even in Joliet, wherever the hell that is. But not us. So I don’t know if people even realize we got hit, too.”

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