The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago houses two of the most notorious Man-Eaters: the "Tsavo Man-eaters" of late 19th century Africa. Today we tell their story.

I.

In 1898, British colonists in Kenya built a railway bridge across the Tsavo River, entirely by manpower, most of them Indian laborers. The Tsavo River was beautiful, but in the darkness two spirits appeared.

During the nine months of construction, two vicious male lions infiltrated the construction camp at night, dragged sleeping workers from their tents, mauled them to death, and dragged them away, only for rescuers to find the remains of their bodies later. Witnesses described the two lions as strong males, but with no manes around their necks, they looked very strange.

The workers tried every means to save their lives: patrolling together, burning bonfires, and setting up fences covered with thorns, but all to no avail, the two man-eating lions lightly jumped over the thorns fence, brazenly attacked the workers, and the screams echoed in the night every night. Within a few months, 28 Indian workers were eaten alive by lions.

Railroad workers, unable to bear the unspeakable fear, hopped on trains and fled. Construction was halted. Locals reverently call the two man-eating lions "ghosts of the night" and consider them demonic creatures. The man most anxious was Lt.Col. John Henry Patterson, the British man in charge of the railroad, who vowed to kill the two evil lions.

Two.

Patterson was a lieutenant colonel, engineer, and the first person in the world to discover and hunt the East African giant antelope. As a soldier and veteran hunter, he used many of the traditional methods of catching wild animals in Africa: food poisoning, trapping, and lasso, but the two lions were cunning and never fell for it. In the end, he had to do the stupidest thing: wait.

Patterson insists on staying up late to keep watch, even though his outpost looks rickety and fragile: a simple shack supported by only four swaying posts, and on several occasions, he deliberately leaves bodies uncollected in an attempt to attract lions. His weapons were powerful, two of the standard British rifles of the day: the Lee-Enfield Short rifle and the Martini Henry rifle.

Finally, on the night of December 9, he spotted one of the lions and shot it in the hind leg. The lion fled, but soon returned wounded and aggressively pursued Patterson, who this time shot it several times with a Lee-Enfield short rifle. His body was found nearby the next morning. The male lion was so large, measuring nine feet eight inches (three metres) from nose to tail tip, that it took eight workers to bring the body back to the camp.

Twenty days later, a second cannibal was killed by Patterson in the same way. According to his memoirs, the second lion, who had been shot five times, still roared to his feet and tried to fight him back, so he switched to a Martini-Henry rifle and fired three more shots, two in the chest and one in the head, before finally killing it.

The ghost was dispelled, and the railway workers returned to work, finally completing the Tsavo Bridge in February of the following year.

After completing the feat, Patterson received a silver bowl from the supervisors and workers, along with a thank-you note: "You saved our lives, may happiness be with you all your life."

Patterson later turned the two lion skins into a rug and sold them to the Chicago Museum of Natural History in 1924 for $5,000, along with the skull, which was put on permanent display.