Cryptids and folklore creatures
Sea monsters, snowmen and tall-tale beasts: where each story began, who reported what, and how the sources explained it.
Sea monsters, snowmen and tall-tale beasts: each page here follows one creature back to the earliest accounts we could read, and says who reported what and when. None has been shown to exist, and the sources are often the first to say so. When C. K. Howard-Bury reported the tracks his porters took for the abominable snowman in 1921, he added that Tibet was "not the only country where there exists a bogey man".
Sea and lake monsters
- KrakenA sea monster of Norwegian lore so large it was taken for an island, described by Bishop Erich Pontoppidan in the 1750s as round, flat and full of arms.
- Sea serpentA giant serpent reported at sea; its best-known appearance was in the harbour of Gloucester, Massachusetts, in August 1817.
- Loch Ness MonsterA creature reported in Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands, whose sightings drew thousands of visitors and newspaper coverage around the world in the 1930s.
- Champ (Lake Champlain monster)A serpent-like creature reported in Lake Champlain in newspaper stories of the 1880s.
Wild men and hidden beasts
- Bigfoot (Sasquatch)A giant, man-like creature of North American folklore, named after oversized footprints found at a California logging site in 1958.
- Yeti (Abominable Snowman)A hairy, man-like creature of the Himalayan snows; the English name "abominable snowman" comes from the British reconnaissance of Mount Everest in 1921.
- Mongolian death wormA deadly worm of the Gobi Desert in Mongolian belief, recorded by the American explorer Roy Chapman Andrews in the 1920s as the allergorhai-horhai.
- ChupacabraA blood-drinking creature first reported in Puerto Rico in 1995, blamed for livestock found dead with puncture wounds.
American tall tales and scares
- Jersey DevilA creature of New Jersey folklore whose supposed hoofprints in the snow set off a scare across three states in the winter of 1909.
- SnallygasterA part-bird, part-beast monster of Maryland newspaper tall tales, said to live in a cave on Sugar Loaf Mountain.
- HodagA horned, spined beast of Wisconsin and Minnesota loggers' tales, and a hoax the logging camps played on newcomers.
- JackalopeA jackrabbit with deer antlers, a tall tale of the American West first mounted by two taxidermist brothers in Douglas, Wyoming.
- Michigan DogmanAn upright, dog-headed creature of Michigan folklore, made famous by an April Fools' Day song on a Traverse City radio station in 1987.
- Beast of Bray RoadA wolf-like creature said to walk on two legs near Elkhorn, Wisconsin, first written up in a local weekly in December 1991.
Modern sightings
- MothmanA winged, red-eyed creature reported around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1966, now the town's best-known legend.
- Flatwoods monsterA towering, man-like figure that a group of boys and a local woman reported near Flatwoods, West Virginia, on 12 September 1952.
- Dover DemonA small creature with glowing eyes that teenagers reported in Dover, Massachusetts, on two nights in April 1977.
- Fresno nightcrawlerA pair of white, legs-only figures seen walking across a Fresno home security video in 2007, now an internet legend.
Sightings and explanations
Many stories came with an explanation almost as soon as they spread. In 1887 W. H. H. Murray turned a field glass on the Lake Champlain "sea serpent" and found a long line of plover, and the paper that printed his letter thought his solution "will perhaps apply to many along shore mysteries of the same sort". The naturalist Henry Lee argued in 1883 that giant squid lay behind the Kraken and many sea serpents.
Tall tales
Others were jokes from the start, spread by newspapers and loggers: the Hodag of the Wisconsin logging camps, which a Rhinelander postcard calls a hoax that took in "a great number", and Maryland's Snallygaster.
What is left out
Creatures that belong to living Indigenous traditions, such as the wendigo and the thunderbird, are not treated here as monsters of folklore.
Sources
- Mount Everest: The Reconnaissance, 1921 (C. K. Howard-Bury and others, 1922), C. K. Howard-Bury and others, Mount Everest: The Reconnaissance, 1921 (London, 1922), Internet Archive, p. 141
- Evening Capital (Annapolis, Md.), 6 June 1887, Evening Capital, 6 June 1887, page 1, Library of Congress, Chronicling America, page 1
- Sea Monsters Unmasked (Henry Lee, 1883), Henry Lee, Sea Monsters Unmasked (London, 1883), Internet Archive, Preface
- The Hodag from Rhinelander, Wisconsin (postcard, North Wisconsin Post Card Co.), Postcard, The Hodag from Rhinelander, Wisconsin, North Wisconsin Post Card Co., Rhinelander, Internet Archive, reverse
Last reviewed September 28, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research