Cryptid US Read online

  Cryptid U.S.

  Tales of Bigfoot, Lake Monsters, and More From Across America Tyler Houck Contents

  Introduction 5 1. Bigfoot and Friends 6 Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest 7

  The Monster in Fouke 10

  White Bigfoot at Lake Worth, Texas 14

  The Legend of the Ohio Grassman 17

  Florida: They Stink! 28

  MoMo: Missouri Monster 30

  Wisconsin is Bigfoot Territory 36

  2. Lake Monsters and Other Aquatic Critters 40 Champ 40

  Rocky, The Monster in Rock Lake 43

  South Bay Bessie 44

  The White River Monster 48

  The Flathead Lake Monster 51

  3. Skies Filled With Monsters 55 Thunderbirds 55

  Mothman 67

  The Van Meter Visitor 78

  Pterosaurs: Alive After 65 Million Years? 80

  4. Wolfmen and Werewolves 88 Chicken Stealers and More in Ohio 88

  The Beast of Bray Road 99

  Dogmen in Michigan 103

  More Sightings From Across the U.S. 110

  5. Strange Beasts Galore: The Dover Demon and More 120 Dover Demon 120

  The Green Clawed Beast 124

  Bishopville’s Lizard Man 125

  Frogmen in Loveland 136

  Chupacabras 138

  Watch out for the Giants! 143

  A Horned Hog Monster 146

  The Jersey Devil 148

  6. Out of Place Creatures 161 Alien Big Cats 161

  Kangaroos on the Loose! 168

  Sewer ‘Gators 173

  Mysterious Snakes 175

  7. Continue the Search for Cryptids 180

  Acknowledgements 186

  Bibliography 187

  Picture Credits 194

  About the Author 195

  Introduction

  Monsters have been with man since the beginning of time. Every culture has stories of some type of beast, be it a dragon, cyclops, or witch. No one today believes in things like that, but people still tell stories of strange, unknown creatures.

  Almost everyone today has heard of at least one of these monsters. Ape like creatures are seen all over the world, and are called different names depending on where you go. In America(and in this book), they are called Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and many other names. In Australia there is the creature called the Yowie, Nepal has the Yeti, China has a wildman called the Yeren, Russia has the Alma or Almasti, Sumatra has the Orang Pendek, and so on.

  Lake monsters are also seen all over the world. The most famous, by far, is the Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie, seen in Scotland. The first recorded sighting of the monster or monsters occurred in 565 A.D, and they have continued until the present day. Coming in a tie for second are Champ in Lake Champlain, which is located between New York and Vermont, and Ogopogo of Okanagan Lake, in Canada.

  The United States has had more sightings of Cryptids(hidden or unknown animals) than anywhere else. Aquatic Monsters are seen in many lakes and rivers, huge ape men are said to live in the wilderness, giant, presumably extinct animals are seen flying in the skies, and a menagerie of other unknown beasties are seen all over the country.

  The creatures in this book are from every corner of the great U.S.A, and range from Bigfoot, to Lizard Men, Werewolves, and Lake Monsters. Now you start your journey investigating all the unknowns of the U.S….

  1 Bigfoot and Friends

  The giant, hairy, ape-like creatures known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch have been seen all over the U.S. since the first people came to America. There seems to be several types(if not separate species) of these creatures across the country. For example, Bigfoots seen in the Eastern part of the country and in the south seem to be a bit smaller and more aggressive than those in the pacific northwest. The Fouke Monster, seen near Fouke, Arkansas, has been known to attack humans. Bigfoot on the western side of the country tend to be tall and shy. They try to hide as soon as they see they have been spotted.

  The top state for sightings of Bigfoot or Bigfoot-like creatures is Washington. Number two on the list for the most sightings in California(The famous Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film was shot in this state) and number three is Oregon. The other two states on the top five list are states people don’t often associate with Bigfoot. Number 4 is Ohio(where I live). The Ohio Bigfoot even has it’s own nickname, the Grassman. Florida, in the number five spot, also has it’s own Bigfoot called the Skunk Ape.

  Those are the five best places to see Bigfoot, but there are some states where there have been very few sightings. Don’t even bother trying to find evidence of a Bigfoot in Hawaii. They just aren’t there. Delaware also has few sightings, along with Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas. But, always remember, just because there aren’t many Bigfoot sightings in these states doesn’t mean the creatures are not there (except for Hawaii).

  The Pacific Northwest has more Bigfoot sightings than anywhere else, and that is where we will start our journey into the Cryptid U.S.

  Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest The date was October 20, 1967. Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin were in Bluff Creek, California, trying to find a Sasquatch. As they came to a dried up creek bed, they saw a strange creature. Patterson’s horse reared, and fell backwards upon him. He quickly got up and pulled out his camera. He filmed about a minute of footage of what some believe is a female Sasquatch.

  A frame from Patterson’s film

  Many people consider Patterson’s film the best piece of evidence for Bigfoot. But, many people will also say “ That’s just a guy in a gorilla suit!” That would be true, but a suit of that quality would be very, very, very expensive in 1967, and the film has never been proven to be a hoax by scientists.

  The first Sasquatch sighting by a European occurred around 1000 AD. It took place on the eastern side of North America, far away from the Pacific Northwest. Leif Erickson and his crew saw large, hairy, “wild men” when they got to America. According to Leif, the wild men “lived in the woods, had a rank odor, and a deafening shriek.”

  An early encounter in the Pacific Northwest took place in 1934. A prospector named Albert Ostman was camping near Toba Inlet, British Columbia. One night as he was sleeping, he said a Sasquatch grabbed him and carried him away from his campsite while in his sleeping bag. The Sasquatch carried him for three hours until it dropped him on a plateau. A family of four of the creatures surrounded him. He said there were three adults and a “child.” They kept him in the area for six days.

  Ostman said one of the creatures stood eight feet tall. He had his gun with him, but didn’t shoot any of the creatures because they had done him no harm. He said the Sasquatch fed him a “sweet tasting grass” while he was there. He said the female would collect leaves, wash them, and then stack them up.

  After he had been held captive for almost a week, Ostman decided that it was time to try to escape. He gave the big male Sasquatch some of his snuff, and it made him groggy. It was then that Ostman escaped.

  In 1957, over 24 years later, Ostman decided to tell his story because he had seen other stories in the paper. He didn’t tell his story because he, like most witnesses, didn’t want to be thought of as crazy.

  Many Sasquatch researchers like John Green have cited this story as evidence of the creature’s existence. Some researchers, however, do not believe his story. Bigfoot researcher Peter Byrne says “I will not accept Ostman’s story without more evidence.”

  Another story, from 1955, describes William Roe’s encounter. At first, he thought the creature he was seeing was a bear, but then realized it was something much different. He said it was six feet tall, three feet wide, and weighed a
pproximately 300 pounds. It was covered with dark brown fur with silver tips. It was a female. However, he said “It’s torso was not curved like a female’s.”

  Another encounter occurred in 1940. The Chapman family said they were visited one day by an eight-foot tall Sasquatch. Mrs. Chapman and her children, who were at home when the creature appeared, fled. When her husband got home later, he found a heavy fish barrel overturned, and the contents were scattered all over the cabin. Huge footprints, 16 inches in length, and 8 inches wide, circled the house. The stride was four feet.

  Another incident occurred the same year as Albert Ostman’s kidnapping in 1924. Fred Beck said that he and four other miners were attacked in the middle of the night that July. Several “apemen” pelted their cabin with rocks and pounded on the sides of the cabin, trying to break in. Before the attack, Beck said they had shot and possibly killed one of the creatures, which could have caused the other’s aggressive behavior. In 1967, Beck wrote a book about the experience. He argued that the creatures were

  from another dimension (and some Bigfoot researchers think they are), and that he had seen them in psychic visions his whole life, along with other things. Speleologist William Halliday argued in 1983 that hikers from a nearby camp had thrown rocks and faked footprints. Others think that

  pranksters harassed the miners.

  ABOVE: Jerry Crew and a Bigfoot Footprint The name “Bigfoot” did not come around until 1958. A bulldozer operator named Jerry Crew (pictured above holding a footprint cast) found large, human-like footprints at the site where he worked. The crew working there was overseen by Wilbur Wallace, brother of Raymond Wallace. After Ray’s death, his children came forward and said that their father had made the footprints. However, whatever made them had enough strength to toss around giant fuel drums weighing a few hundred pounds.

  Bigfoot creatures are still seen all over the Pacific Northwest today. The states of California, Oregon, and Washington still have more Bigfoot encounters than anywhere else.

  The Monster in Fouke Lots of Bigfoot researchers say they became interested in the subject after they saw the 1972 movie The Legend of Boggy Creek. The movie, a sort of Docu-Drama, was about a creature called the Fouke Monster seen near the little town of Fouke, Arkansas. As the movie starts, you see swampy bottom lands and heard a strange cry. Then, you heard these lyrics:

  Here, the Sulfur River Flows,

  Rising when the storm cloud blows,

  This is where the creature goes,

  Lurking in the land he knows.

  Perhaps, he dimly wonders why,

  Is there no other such as I?

  To love, to touch before I die,

  To listen to my lonely cry.

  The song goes on for a few minutes while the camera shows scenes of the Sulfur River and swampy areas near Fouke. Many people may think the whole movie is fake, but most of the sightings of the giant, hairy monster in the movie actually happened.

  The Fouke Monster, as it is called, was first seen when settlers arrived in the area. Sightings really took off in the 1900s, when people reported seeing the creature cross the road, seeing his footprints, running into him while hunting in the woods, and, in one case, being attacked.

  In his book Beginner’s Guide to Bigfoot Research, Joedy Cook describes Bigfoot creatures seen in the Texas/Arkansas area(where Fouke is located) as normally being described as “7 to 8 feet tall and weighing 300 to 500 pounds.” This sounds like witnesses descriptions of the Fouke Monster. He also has Fouke in the number 7 spot in the country to look for Bigfoot creatures.

  Fouke’s Location on a map On May 1, 1971, the monster supposedly attacked the home of Bobby and Elizabeth Ford. That encounter is one of the final scenes in The Legend of Boggy Creek.

  The first reports of giant, hairy monsters, however, happened long before that. In 1541, Spaniards wrote of encounters with Native American tribes. They all had different stories of hairy wildmen. By the 1700s, the Native Americans were being pushed out of their homeland by settlers. By 1836, the population of Arkansas had reached 60,000. Reports of “wild man” sightings began appearing in newspapers. The first incident was reported by the Arkansas Gazette and the Memphis Enquirer on May 9, 1851. Two hunters near Greene County spotted a huge, hair covered creature trying to catch a calf in a herd of cattle. When the animal noticed the men, it stopped chasing the calf and just stared at them. Then, it suddenly turned and ran away. The men said the creature looked like a human, but “was of gigantic stature.” The body was covered in hair and the head had “long locks that enveloped the neck and shoulders.” The men also found 13-inch long, human-like footprints. The same article that reported that encounter also told of others. It went on to say:

  “This singular creature has long been known traditionally in St. Francis Green and Poinsett counties, Arkansas sportsmen and hunters having described him so long as seventeen years since.”

  The second report comes from 1856. Another “hairy wild man” was seen. The witnesses described the encounter this way:

  “He was a stout, athletic man about 6 feet 4 inches in height. He was completely covered with a brownish hair about 4 to 6 inches long. He was well muscled and ran with the fleetness of a deer.” The men wanted to capture the creature, alive. One approached it on horseback. When the “wildman” saw him, it “rushed towards him, and in an instant dragged the hunter to the ground. It tore him in “a most dreadful manner, scratching out one of his eyes and biting pieces out of his shoulder and other parts of his body.” The monster then tore off the saddle from the horse. Then, holding the horse by the mane, mounted the animal and rode off on it at full speed across the plains.”

  Other, more well known sightings of the Fouke Monster occurred in the 1900s. J.E. “Smokey” Crabtree told stories of encounters that happened to his family. He talks about them in his book Smokey and the Fouke Monster. The first incident occurred when his son Lynn Crabtree was out hunting. He had a 20-gauge shotgun with him loaded with squirrel shot. That would do nothing to what he was about to see. While he was sitting in a tree waiting for any unlucky squirrels to come by, he heard horses running. They eventually went splashing into a lake. He didn’t think much of it at the time. The horses belonged to a neighbor who let them run loose, so it was nothing out of the ordinary.

  Soon after, he heard a dog howling. He then got up and began to go towards the dog. As he got closer to the sound, he realized that the sound was not coming from a dog, but the huge creature that was standing right in front of him!

  Lynn said the beast stood 7 to 8 feet tall and had reddish-brown hair that was about four inches long. It’s face was obscured by hair, so he could only see it’s nose. Lynn though it must be a man, so he raised his gun into the air and fired off a shot. The creature did not react to it like a man would, however. Lynn then fired a shot right at the beast’s

  seemed

  He then

  parent’s

  head, but it totally

  unaffected! fled to his house.

  Lynn Crabtree sees the monster in The Legend of Baggy Creek

  Smokey went out to the same spot where Lynn had seen the creature after he got back home. He found spots where the trees had been hit by gunshots, but found no shells laying on the ground. Puzzled, he returned home.

  In a more recent sighting, from 2010, a married couple saw a tall, hairy, man-like creature run across the road near Fouke. It seems that the Fouke Monster still roams the Arkansas bottomlands.

  White Bigfoot at Lake Worth, Texas Another, possibly albino Bigfoot was seen near Lake Worth (near Fort Worth, Texas) in 1969. The creature was seen many times that summer and was called the Lake Worth Monster. The monster was also commonly called “the goatman.” But, according to eyewitness accounts, it looked more like a hairy ape-man.

  The only photo of the Lake Worth Monster Charles Buchanan encountered the monster while camped out on the shores of Lake Worth on November 7, 1969. He said he awoke at two A.M. to find a strange cr
eature face to face with him! He said “It looked like a cross between a human and a gorilla or some other kind of ape.” He said the creature pulled him out of the bed of his truck, where he had been sleeping, and threw him on the ground. The animal smelled horrible, and made Buchanan gag. To get it to go away, he did the only thing he could think of: he grabbed a bag of leftover chicken and shoved it into the creature’s face. The creature then grabbed the chicken in it’s mouth and the ran off into the trees and then into the lake. Buchanan said it then swam off towards Greer Island.

  Many encounters had happened in the months before Buchanan’s sighting. On July 10, four units of the Fort Worth police went to Greer Island to search for a beast that had attacked six people. One, John Reichart, said it had tried to grab his wife. He had an 18-inch long scratch mark on the side of his car to prove it. Soon after, 30 to 40 people, including police officers, went out to track the beast. They saw it at the top of an embankment. It howled at them, leaped off of the spot where it was originally standing, and then hurled an automobile tire at the terrified group! Everyone, including the police, jumped into their cars and left.

  Most witnesses agreed that the monster was about 7 feet tall, and weighed about 300 pounds. In the months that followed the first sightings, parties of searchers and hunters made many nighttime hunts in the woods around the lake. They once found 16-inch long tracks. On one occasion, searchers actually saw it and chased its trail of footprints until it went into the lake. Three men said the creature had leaped on their car one night and only jumped off after they had crashed into a tree. Dead sheep were found in the area with broken necks. Some thought that the monster had killed them.

  Allen Plaster was driving down the road one night when he saw the Lake Worth Monster. He managed to get one blurry picture of a tall, white, humanlike creature. That picture is on the previous page.

  No one really knows what the Lake Worth Monster was. Some say it was a group of hoaxers trying to scare people. Hoaxers would have had to have been either very brave or very stupid to be walking around with so many people carrying guns, trying to find the creature and shoot it. Other people said it was a bobcat, but it would be hard for someone to mistake one of the felines for a seven-foot tall ape-man.