Five Famous Cryptids of the United States

Cryptids are animals (such as Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster) that have been claimed - but never proven - to exist. Many famous cryptids find their roots in folklore with their stories being passed down regionally through generations. Contrary to popular belief, cryptids don’t have to be supernatural, mythical, or even all that strange – though many popular creatures acquire these characteristics as their legends grow.

These are five popular cryptids of the United States.

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is commonly described as a large, muscular, bipedal ape-like creature, roughly 6-9 feet tall, covered in hair described as black, dark brown, or reddish. The enormous footprints for which the creature is named are claimed to be as large as 24 inches long and 8 inches wide.

One famous example of a Bigfoot sighting was the Patterson-Gimlin film. This film is an American short motion picture of an unidentified subject which the filmmakers claim was a Bigfoot. The footage was shot in 1967 in Northern California and has since been subjected to many attempts to authenticate or debunk it.

The filmmakers were Roger Patterson and Robert “Bob” Gimlin. Patterson died of cancer in 1972 and “maintained right to the end that the creature on the film was real.” Gimlin has always denied being involved in any part of a hoax with Patterson and mostly avoided publicly discussing the subject from at least the early 1970s until about 2005, when he began giving interviews and appearing at Bigfoot conferences.

As their stories went, in the early afternoon of Friday, October 20, 1967, Patterson and Gimlin were riding northeast on horseback along the east bank of Bluff Creek. At a turn in the creek, they “came to an overturned tree with a large root system almost as high as a room.” When they rounded it, they spotted a figure crouching beside the creek to their left. Gimlin later described himself as being in a mild state of shock after first seeing the figure. 

Since the original sightings, there have been many other sightings, most of which have been deemed hoaxes.

According to urban legend, the Goatman is an ax-wielding half-goat, half-man creature that has the head and hindquarters of a goat and the body of a human.

The story of the Goatman is that a scientist who worked in the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center was experimenting on goats until one experiment backfired and he was mutated, becoming goat-like himself. He then began attacking cars with an ax, roaming the back roads of Beltsville, Maryland. A variation of the legend tells of the Goat-man as an old hermit who lives in the woods, seen walking alone at night along Fletchertown Road.

According to University of Maryland folklorist Barry Pearson, the Goatman legends began "long, long, long" ago with the earliest sightings dating all the way back to 520 BCE as the satyrs in Greek mythology and were further popularized in 1971 when the death of a dog was blamed on the Goatman by local residents. Pearson says "bored teenagers" keep the Goatman legend alive by repeating the story and suggesting that the creature attacks couples frequenting the local lover's lane, subsequently stirring interest in sites like Fletchertown Road.

This creature is often described as a flying biped with hooves, but there are many variations. The most common description is that of a bipedal kangaroo-like creature with a horse or goat-like head, leathery bat-like wings, horns, small arms with clawed hands, legs with cloven hooves, and a forked tail. It has been reported to move quickly and is often described as emitting a high-pitched, blood-curdling scream.

According to popular folklore, the Jersey Devil originated in a Pine Barrens resident known as “Mother Leeds.” The legend says that Mother Leeds had twelve children, and upon finding she was pregnant for the thirteenth time, she cursed the child in frustration crying that the child would be the devil. In 1735, Mother Leeds was in labor on a stormy night with her friends gathered around her. Born as a normal child, the baby changed into a creature with hooves, a goat’s head, bat wings, and a forked tail. Growling and screaming, it beat everyone with its tail before flying up the chimney and out into the forest. In some versions of the store, Mother Leeds was a witch and the baby’s father was the devil himself.

There have been many claims of sightings involving the Jersey Devil.

According to legend, while visiting the Hanover Mill Works to inspect his cannonballs being forged, Commodore Stephen Decatur sighted a flying creature and fired a cannonball at it with no effect.

Joseph Bonaparte also claimed to have seen the Jersey Devil while hunting on his Bordentown estate around 1820.

In 1840, the Jersey Devil was blamed for several livestock killings, with similar attacks reported in 1841 accompanied by tracks and screams.

In Greenwich in December 1925, a local farmer shot an unidentified animal as it attempted to steal his chickens, and then photographed the corpse. Afterward, he claimed that out of 100 people no one could identify it.

On July 27, 1937, an unknown animal with red eyes was compared to the Jersey Devil by a reporter for the Pennsylvania Bulletin.

In 1951 a group of Gibbstown, New Jersey boys claimed to have seen a “monster” matching the Jersey Devil’s description.

During the week of January 16 through 23, 1909, newspapers published hundreds of claimed encounters with the Jersey Devil from all over the state. Among these alleged encounters, there were claims that the creature attacked a trolley car and a social club in Camden. Police in Camden and Bristol, Pennsylvania supposedly fired on the creature with no effect. Other reports initially concerned unidentified footprints in the snow, but soon sightings of creatures resembling the Jersey Devil were being reported throughout South Jersey and as far away as Delaware and western Maryland. The widespread news coverage created panic throughout the Delaware Valley, causing a number of schools to close and workers to stay home. During this period, it is rumored that the Philadelphia Zoo posted a $10,000 reward for the creature. This reward prompted a variety of hoaxes, including a kangaroo equipped with artificial claws and bat wings.

Mothman is described as a bipedal, winged humanoid. Despite his name, he is in no way moth-like and has an appearance more like that of a large humanoid owl. His coloration varies from black, gray, to brown, although it is usually the darker shades. He is often reported to be about 7 feet tall with a wingspan of about 10 to 15 feet, plus the ability to fly over 100 mph. Sometimes Mothman is described as not having a head with the two huge red eyes set in the chest. These eyes are reported to be glowing, or at least reflective.

On November 15, 1966, two young couples from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette, were driving through an area known to locals as the “TNT area,” the site of a former WWII munitions plant around midnight when Linda noticed two large, glowing red eyes in the darkness beside the old North Power Plant. They soon learned that these eyes belonged to something humanoid, about 7 feet tall with wings folded against its back. Roger stalled in the road for a minute inspecting the creature. The four realized that this was no ordinary bird when the creature spread its wings and pursued them down Highway 62 to the Point Pleasant City limits at speeds exceeding 100 mph.

After this original sighting, other people reported similar sightings. Two volunteer firemen who saw it said it was a “large bird with red eyes.” Mason County Sheriff George Johnson commented that he believed the sightings were due to an unusually large heron. Contractor Newell Partridge told Johnson that when he aimed a flashlight at a creature in a nearby field, its eyes glowed “like bicycle reflectors” and blamed buzzing noises from his television and the disappearance of his dog on the creature.

More and more reported sightings came in over the course of the next year. The first mention of Mothman in the newspaper came in the Point Pleasant Register on November 16,1966, with the headline: “Couples see Man-Sized Bird… Creature… Something.” Later an anonymous Ohio newspaper copy editor dubbed him “Mothman.”

The sightings came to a halt in 1967 after the collapse of the Silver Bridge and death of 46 people on December 15, 1967. Writer John Keel, in his book, The Mothman Prophecies, surmised that the Mothman sightings the Point Pleasant locals had were premonitions about the bridge collapse.

Sightings didn’t only happen in West Virginia. Alleged sightings of Mothman have occurred all over the world. Some conspiracy theorists believe he was at Chernobyl before that disaster, when the planes struck the World Trade Center buildings on 9/11, and at a mine collapse in Freidburg, Germany in 1978. According to Georgian newspaper Svobodnaya Gruziya, Russian UFOlogists claim that Mothman sightings in Moscow foreshadowed the 1999 Russian apartment bombings.

Some believe that Mothman tries to warn people about disasters about to happen, while others believe he is a harbinger of destruction.

The skunk ape is described as a humanoid creature reported to resemble the Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest, but is typically shorter in comparison, has long patches of fur on the shoulders and arms similar to an orangutan, and is often described as a mottled rusty-red color as opposed to Sasquatch’s brown or black coloration. Some reports also describe the creature as having pale coloration around its eyes or face, similar to a gibbon. It is named for its appearance and unpleasant odor.

The skunk ape, also known as the swamp cabbage man, swamp ape, stink ape, Florida Bigfoot, Louisiana Bigfoot, Myakka ape, swampsquatch, and Myakka skunk ape, has been a part of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama folklore since the settler period. Seminole myth speaks of a similar foul-smelling, physically powerful, and secretive creature called Esti Capcaki, which roughly translates as “cannibal giant.” One of the first reports of a large simian creature in Florida came from 1818, when a report from what is now Apalachicola, Florida spoke of a man-sized monkey or ape raiding food stores and stalking fishermen.

Reports of the skunk ape were especially common in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1974, sightings of a large, foul-smelling, hairy ape-like creature, which ran upright on two legs were reported in suburban neighborhoods of Miami-Dade County, Florida. In 1977, after a rash of sightings by dozens of eyewitnesses across several Florida counties, a failed-to-pass bill was proposed to the state legislator to make it illegal to “take, possess, harm, or molest anthropoids or humanoid animals.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptids

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/trail-floridas-bigfoot-skunk-ape-180949981/?no-ist

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https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Mothman

https://nerdist.com/article/mothman-why-we-are-so-obsessed/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatman_(Maryland)

https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Goatman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_ape

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigfoot