Cryptid US

by Tyler Houck

  Loveland Frog sightings once again stopped for a number of years, but the creatures were seen again in 1999. In September of that year, a witness reported seeing a “big green thing” in the Little Miami River.

  On July 4, 2002, Jude Tillery and a friend, Johnny H., reported seeing a “big frog lookin’ dude” walk out of the river. Jude said that the thing raided their food before it left. This story is probably a hoax, however, because the two friends were drinking and Tillery said Johnny sprouted “lots of warts” after the encounter.

  The frog men that live in the Little Miami River by Loveland have not been seen in recent years, or, at least, no one has reported seeing them. Maybe we will just have to wait a few more years before the frog men come back, because the period between the clusters of earlier sightings was in the 20 year range.

  Chupacabras The Chupacabras (spelled the same singular and plural) is one of the most famous cryptozoological creatures. The creature (whose name mean “goat sucker”) has been reported in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Spain, Guatemala, and, of course, the United States.

  Chupacabras reports first came from Puerto Rico in 1995, when people from throughout the island reported strange animal deaths. Witnesses described a four to five foot tall creature that had legs like a kangaroo (in one instance, the witnesses said the Chupacabras jumped 20 feet!), spines or quills on its back, a lipless mouth, red eyes, three fingered hands, and fur or leathery skin. Some people say the Chupacabras can also fly, although it is argued over how it can do this. Some say it has wings, but others say it levitates and defies the law of gravity.

  The Chupacabras may have actually first appeared in 1975, 20 years before the first well known sightings. Farm animals, including cows, ducks, goats, and geese, were found dead and entirely drained of blood. There were also reports of people seeing UFOs in the sky. The creature causing the animal deaths became known as “The Moca Vampire” and may have been a Chupacabras.

  Twenty years went by, and then the vampire struck again. This time, people began calling the attacker the Chupacabras. The beast (which some thought was an alien) terrorized Puerto Rico in 1995 and 1996. It wasn’t long until the creature moved out of that area and appeared in other countries.

  In his book El Chupacabra, Dennis McMillan recounts the tale of the time when his son-in-law Dustin and his brother Justin saw a Chupacabras in Bruner, Missouri. The brothers lived close to a church, and, one night after the prayer meeting, returned to the church to turn off the lights in the basement that they had forgotten to shut off. As they walked across the church parking lot, they saw a strange animal lurking in the shadows. They described the creature as about 3 feet tall, and it had a nose like the old TV character Alf. The creature never came out of the shadows, and the boys quickly returned home.

  Chupacabras drawing,

  based on eyewitness descriptions in Puerto Rico Another, similar creature was seen by a 15 year old boy named Tim in Illinois in 1989. Tim was walking home from a friend’s house when he saw the creature on a hill. He described the creature as “bald, with huge eyes, clawed hands, and it was about 3 or 4 feet tall.” He ran home and called the creature a “demon.”

  On March 10, 1996, a resident of Sweetwater, Florida named Teide Carballo saw an “inhuman shape” moving across her property. A few weeks later, another Sweetwater resident, Olimpia Govea, found 27 chickens and 2 goats that had been killed by some unknown assassin. Local officials told Olimpia that her animals had been killed by dogs, but she said they were not. What dog would leave a bloodless carcass? She asked. She also added that her son and daughter-in-law had seen a shadow similar to the thing Teide Carballo had seen pass by their bedroom window. A month later, the Govea family heard a loud noise in the middle of the night and saw lights outside that looked like they were coming from something trying to land on their property. A UFO?

  March 11, 1996 saw Florida’s third animal killing. This time, however, a woman had actually seen the attacker. She said it was not a human and had a strange way of moving. She watched the object until it disappeared in a row of banana plants.

  Now, the Chupacabras was beginning to get famous in Florida as it had done in Puerto Rico. Songs about Chupacabras were heard on radios, video games featured the creature, T-Shirts were made, and a restaurant even named itself after the goat sucker.

  Police in Tucson, Arizona received a call on May 1, 1996 from a man named Jose Espinoza. Something had broken into Mr. Espinoza’s house. He described the intruder as a creature with large, red eyes, a pointed nose, and shriveled features. According to the witness, the Chupacabras had entered the home, slammed a door, and jumped on his seven-year-old son before hopping out the window. Footprints and handprints were found on the walls. Most of the handprints, however, matched those of Mr. Espinoza’s son.

  Espinoza may not have been lying, however, because, on May 2, a dozen goats and a sheep were found dead. Whatever had caused the deaths had also wounded several cows. The rancher on the farm saw the creature later and shot it with a rifle. Despite the wounds, the Chupacabras continued to go to the farm night after night.

  Donna, Texas was the next town in the United States to have the displeasure of being visited by the Chupacabras. Sylvia Ybarra found her pet goat dead in the yard in the middle of May. It had puncture wounds on its neck.

  A man living in California said a Chupacabras had bit his hand while he was sleeping. He felt a tugging on his hand and woke up to see a shadowy figure disappear from the window. He was puzzled because there was nothing but an alleyway outside his window (he lived in a third story apartment.) How could the Chupacabras have gotten up there and just disappear? Did it fly? Possibly. Many people who saw the Chupacabras in Puerto Rico in ‘95 and ‘96 said it could fly by levitating or moving the quills on its

  back.Chupacabras sightings continued into the new century. One night in 2000, a woman named Mary C. saw a strange creature in Maryland. While driving with a friend, she saw a pair of glowing eyes beside a tree. As she approached the tree, the thing jumped out into the road and hopped across it like a kangaroo. Mary’s friend did not see the creature, so she shrugged it off as an injured dog. That is, until a few days later.

  Mary and her friend were driving down the same road, nearing the same tree, when they saw the creature again. Mary described it like this:

  “It had rear legs like a kangaroo, and the front legs were up like a kangaroo’s also. It was no kangaroo. It had a snout like an anteaters and its red eyes reflected in the headlights.”

  Mary also said the creature was hairy and about 3 or 4

  feet tall. It stared at the car (probably in fear) as it ran across the road. “I had never seen an animal around here that looked like that and neither had my friend.” Mary said.

  Another Chupacabras was seen on a golf course in New Jersey that same year. A man saw the animal on the golf course in Brigantine and said it was three feet tall and had spikes on its back. He assured the news reporters that he hadn’t been drinking.

  Another man saw a strange creature on the same golf course later that year. He and some friends went back and searched the area with flashlights. One of them saw two red eyes. The creature was crouched down at first, but then stood up and ran off. They found footprints in the area that they said were not from a fox.

  Another creature people call a Chupacabras is seen in the United States. This creature looks like a canine and is commonly called a Texas Blue Dog. One of the “Blue Dogs” was captured by a couple in Texas in 2014. Jackie Stock and her husband caught the creature one Sunday night and put it in a cage. The creature had claws, was hairless, and looked like a Texas Blue Dog. Brent Ortego, a Wildlife Diversity Biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife looked at the creature and said it was some type of canine.

  Jackie and her husband later decided to have the animal euthanized. Mike Cox, a spokesman for the Texas Parks and Wildlife department, said they would do nothing else and “our agency does not believe chupacabras exist anywhere but in
the imaginations of some”, the usual thing for some wildlife official to say about any cryptid. (The same thing happened with a Dogman report from Ohio.)

  The “Chupacabras” captured in 2014

  What, then, is the Chupacabras? Is it some type of monkey, as some have said, is it a mangy coyote, or is it an alien? Or, is it just some regular, but unknown, animal? It has to be something, because animals don’t just randomly die and have two puncture marks appear on their neck.

  Watch out for the Giants! Imagine running into a huge ape-man, bigger than a Sasquatch, with feet almost 24 inches long. These types of creatures are seen all over the world, and are called “True Giants” by some Cryptozoologists. Native Americans called the creatures “Big Men”, “Chickly Cudly”, “Kookwes”, and many other names.

  True Giant reports in America go all the way back to the 18th century. One extraordinary (and deadly) encounter with a True Giant occurred in the Okefenokee Swamp, located on the Florida-Georgia border. A hunting party went after the giant after footprints 18 inches long and 9 inches wide were found in the swamp. A party of nine armed men went into the swamp to track down whatever made the footprints. What they ran into was a 13-foot tall

  giant.Five of the men had their heads ripped off by the creature before the rifle shots killed it. The four survivors quickly left to avoid any other angry giants. They said the stride of the creature was “a trifle over six feet.”

  An even older report comes from 1793. A man near the Saluda River on the Bald Mountains saw an animal 12 to 15 feet tall, shaped like a human being, except for the head. The creature had no neck. It had feet like a negroe, which were about 2 feet long and hairy. It had large eyes and the hair on its head was about 6 inches long. The man also said that the creatures (yes, more than one) had recently tried to kill several people, resulting in some of them being shot. The people living in that area called them Yahoo, but the Indians called them Chickly Cudly.

  The name “Chickly Cudly” has some significance in True Giant and Bigfoot reports. It is sometimes used as a name for the creatures, and comes from the Cherokee name kecleah kud-leah, which translates as “hairy man.”

  The Cherokee Indians in the southern United States also knew of another giant they called Tsulkalu. The Cherokee said that the giants were twice as tall as them, and lived very far away “in the direction in which the sun goes down.” A group of Tsulkalu once visited the Cherokee, who accepted them as friends, and the giants stayed for some time, but then returned to their home in the west.

  Explorer Samuel de Champlain (who also saw Champ in 1609) was ridiculed for listening to stories about the giant called Gougou from the Gaspe Indians. He described the monster as “of such a size that the masts of our vessel would not reach his waist. He devours many savages, and those who have escaped tell me that his pouch is so large he could fit our whole vessel in it, when they speak of him it is with unutterably strange terror, many have assured me they have seen him.”

  Huge beings known as Stone Giants were known in New York. They were described as huge in stature, and used stones as weapons. They were depicted as cannibals and were said to fight with each other often, uprooting the tallest trees to use as weapons.

  Giants have also been reported in the Western United States. One of those giants was seen in 1902 in Idaho. It was described as eight feet tall, covered in hair, and it looked like a human but “possessed the fierceness of a wild beast.” The giant left behind footprints 22 inches long and 6 inches wide. The tracks only had four toes (which is actually common with True Giant tracks.)

  Other stories told of a “Sasquatch” that was 15 feet tall. The Sasquatch would hurl trees at people it ran across.

  You may be thinking that all the True Giant reports are a century old or just Indian legends, but that is not the case. One report from the western U.S. occurred in Montana in 1977. Three men said they were chased by a fifteen foot creature on August 20th of that year. They first spotted it with the aid of a flashlight and saw it move into the woods. The three witnesses ran to the car at this point, and saw the “animal” walk across a clearing. One of them fired at it to scare it off, but the opposite happened. The giant charged them, and was only 20 feet away by the time the car was started and they drove off.

  The Twawhabitts, a giant cannibal from the American west Zollie Owens spotted a silver-haired, 12-foot creature near Hallsville, Texas, in 1976. A smaller, female creature with red hair stood next to it.

  15-inch tracks were found in Corinth, Mississippi in 1976. Photographs of the tracks clearly show four toes. Similar tracks, also 15 inches long, were found in Lincoln County, Mississippi eleven months later.

  A giant, hairy creature was seen near Fort Gordon, Georgia, in late 1979. The creature was 10 feet tall and left huge tracks.

  Tracks were found in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1994. They were 17x31 inches and had 4 toes. The distance from the heel of the left foot to the heel of the right foot was 6 feet.

  A Horned Hog Monster The Wisconsin Hodag is a classic tale of a cryptid hoax. The story of the creature dates back to 1896, when a lumberjack in the Rhinelander area (who was also a known prankster) named Gene Shepard said that he had captured a “great, hairy, black beast” living near Rice Creek. Shepard said he put a pile of rocks in front of the Hodag’s den to trap it, and put a chloroform soaked rag inside the den to knock it out.

  Shepard then proceeded to take his Hodag on a 10 year tour, keeping it in a dimly lit room. When people came to see it, he moved it around with wires to make it seem real. Many people believed that his Hodag was real, and believed it ate only white bulldogs that were fed to it on Sundays.

  After a while, people forgot about the Hodag. To bring back the popularity, Shepard staged a photo and “recapture” of the creature.

  Shepard’s fake Hodag photograph

  Residents of Rhinelander remember the Hodag over a century after Shepard’s first hoax, and the town now has a Hodag statue (whose color was changed from black to green) and a marker about the creature.

  Hodag statue in Rhinelander

  RIGHT: Hodag Marker

  The Jersey Devil

  New Jersey’s most famous cryptid is the crazy creature called the Jersey Devil. The Jersey devil legend dates back to 1735, the year the creature was supposedly born. The creature seems to be a mix up of several different animals; it has the head of a horse, horns like a goat, batlike wings, a kangaroo body, a forked tail, and hooves. The creature also has short front limbs that end in claws. Witnesses report a height between three and a half and seven feet, and the creature seems to prefer flying over walking.

  There are many variations to the story of the creature’s birth, but the most common one to hear revolves around a “Mother Leeds” in 1735. Mrs. Leeds was unhappy about having a thirteenth child, and cursed it, saying “Let this one be a devil!” When the baby was born, it sprouted wings and flew up the chimney, to live the rest of its days in the Pine Barrens. Some accounts say the Jersey Devil killed Mrs. Leeds’ nurse, some say he killed her, but others say his first meal was a few children in the woods.

  The Jersey Devil was seen now and then throughout the 17- and 1800s, when it was seen before the

  Revolutionary War, eating livestock, warning people of the Civil War, and was fired at with cannons (with no apparent effect). In 1901, folklorist Charles Skinner wrote that the Jersey Devil would soon be forgotten with the coming of a new century, but he did not know how wrong he was.

  It was the third week of January, 1909. The eastern side of the country was in a panic

  because of one thing, the Jersey Devil.

  During that week, the creature was seen

  by thousands of people in at least 30

  towns in multiple states. The Devil was

  first spotted in and around his normal

  home, the New Jersey Pine Barrens, but

  quickly made his way throughout the

  Delaware Valley.

  The firs
t sightings of that week

  occurred on Saturday, January 16 and

  the early morning of Sunday, January 17. That night, the Jersey Devil was seen in Woodbury, New Jersey and Bristol, Pennsylvania.

  Thack Cozzens, from Woodbury, was leaving the Woodbury Hotel Saturday night when he heard a hissing sound and saw “something white fly across the street. I saw two spots of phosphorus, the eyes of the beast. There was a white cloud, like steam escaping from an engine… it moved as fast as an auto.”

  Later that night (2 A.M. to be exact) John McOwen was awakened by the sound of his crying daughter. When he went to her room, he heard a strange noise coming from outside. He looked outside and saw a creature that “looked something like an eagle, and it hopped along the tow-path.”

  Another Bristol resident, Officer James Sackville, saw the Jersey Devil after McOwen. As he was walking towards Buckley Street, he heard dogs barking at something. When he turned, he saw the creature. He said it was winged, hopped like a bird, had the features of some peculiar animal, and had a horrible scream.

  Sackville ran towards the creature and fired at it. The Devil started to retreat, flying close to the ground, but then shot upwards and out of sight.

  The Postmaster of Bristol, E.W. Minster, saw the Jersey Devil at about the same time as Sackville. He had gotten out of bed around two in the morning, unable to sleep. When he was in the bathroom washing his head with cold water to cure his insomnia, he heard an “eerie, almost supernatural sound” coming from the creek outside.

  He looked outside and saw an amazing sight. The creature “appeared to be a large crane, but was emitting a glow like a fire-fly. Its head resembled that of a ram, with curled horns. It had a long, thin neck that was thrust forward in flight. It had long, thin wings and short legs; the front legs were shorter than the hind. Its cry started high but ended low and hoarse.”