Cryptids of North America #10: Maryland

Artist credit: Monica Gallagher of Lipstick Kiss Press

Maryland may be the ninth smallest state in the Union, but like its other tiny cousins, it packs a lot of history and symbolism into its limited frame. It’s the site of our nation’s capital and Antietam Creek, where the Civil War’s bloodiest battle occurred. This association with war even extends to the state’s most popular nickname, the “Old Line State,” which comes from the 1st Maryland Regiment’s stand against the British army during the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, sacrificing themselves so that Geroge Washington and the Continental Army could escape back to Manhattan. Add onto that the state’s surprising geographic diversity (encompassing the Appalachian Mountains, the Piedmont, and the oceanside environment around Chesapeake Bay), and it’s no wonder one of its other popular nicknames is “Little America.”

Maybe that’s why the state is so packed with cryptid legends (19 of them, if Monica Gallagher and Kaitlyn Bullock of CreatureMaps are to be believed). And I’m here to tell you all about them. So grab that popcorn and kindle those campfires, as I regale you with scary stories from Little America. Scuto bonæ voluntatis tuæ coronasti nos.

The Aberdeen Wildman

This hominid entity, which supposedly haunts the oceanside marshes in Hartford County, is best known for the encounter that local Bible teacher and paranormal investigator Frank J. Bennett claims to have had with it on a cold winter day in 1980. He recalls seeing a six-foot-tall dark figure wearing a button-up shirt staring at him from a small island just offshore, which Bennett, clad in a B-52 jacket, thought somewhat strange. Suddenly, the figure started running across the island, screaming and hollering as if Bennett’s presence had disturbed it. Bennett then describes it reappearing in the spot where he first saw it, where it stared at him for five seconds before leaping up fifteen feet into the trees and scampering away amongst the branches.

Bennett claims that the creature he saw did not resemble a Sasquatch or any known primate in appearance or its sounds. It looked like a human, and its vocalizations resembled a human yelling at the top of his lungs rather than the screams and grunts of a great ape. Even so, it was able to swing away through the trees like a chimpanzee. Bennett believes it was some kind of spirit, as he claims to have felt its presence before he saw it.

He also claims to have spoken with others who saw the Wildman, and even wrote a whole book trying to make sense of the encounter (the cover of which can be seen above).

Bigfoot

Come on, it’s a state with forests; of course Bigfoot’s going to be lurking there. Interestingly, though, if the Elk Mound Bigfoot Research Center is to be believed, it seems that the Chesapeake Bay region is the most common place for Marylanders to spot the hairy beast, with twelve sighting reports in Anne Arundel County and eleven from Hartford County. One might expect the Appalachians to be a more fitting habitat for the enigmatic hominids, but that’s just how the cookie crumbles, I suppose.

Here are some of the more interesting sighting reports:

October 18, 1929: According to the witness’ son, a Calvert County resident was hunting from a deer stand outside Lusby near Mesquite Lane when he spotted something strange in the early morning light leaning against a tree. It stood eight feet tall, was covered in dark brown hair, and gave off a skunk-like smell. The creature was startled when the witness sneezed and bolted into the woods. The witness claimed to have seen the creature several more times over the next several days and told his son about the incident several times until his death in October 1992.

November 18, 1967: A man was hunting for deer in Calvert Cliffs State Park when he saw “this big hairy creature” running through the brush 75 yards behind him. The hunter estimated the creature to be nine feet tall and 400 pounds.

Summer 1970-71: It was 1:30 am, and an Annapolis resident was just going to bed in a camper parked in his parent's driveway on Bay Ridge Avenue when he noticed a shadow moving back and forth across the drawn curtains on his camper window. As the creature approached the camper and started tapping on the sides, the witness could see the vague outline of a head through the translucent roof, which would place the figure at approximately 9-10 feet tall. When the witness and his brother investigated the next morning, they found a handprint on the hood measuring 6-7 inches wide.

July 15, 1970: A fourteen-year-old witness was walking her dog and pony in the woods near her home outside Williamsport when she saw an eight-foot-tall creature resembling a cross between a gorilla and a bear standing on two legs about 50 feet away from her. Interestingly, while the witness recalls being scared out of her wits by the encounter, the dog and pony didn’t react in the slightest, a detail that still puzzles her to his very day.

July 21, 1973: A Hartford County resident was riding his motorcycle at 8:30 in the evening when he noticed a hairy creature walking across a field about 400 yards away. It stood 7-8 feet tall, was covered in dark brown hair, had broad shoulders, and walked with “a free-flowing lope type of gait.” The witness reports that others in the area found strange tracks in the region for a few years afterward.

1973-1975: A Hartford County resident was driving her children home through an unnamed state forest at dusk when she noticed what she thought was a person standing on a picnic table. What her headlights illuminated, however, was 7-8 feet tall, muscular, covered in reddish-brown hair, smelled like a cross between rotting meat and feces, had a humanlike face, and small, beady eyes that glowed red. The witnesses floored it past the fearsome critter, who stood and watched them for a few seconds before calmly walking back into the woods with a forward-leaning loping gait.

Summer 1978-79: A pair of 11-12-year-old Anne Arundel County residents were shooting BB guns at Weems Creek near Admiral Heights when a hairy figure lurched out of the reeds 300 feet away. They described the beast as 8-9 feet tall, covered in hair, and with a hunched posture. They ran away almost immediately, so they couldn’t provide many other details. However, they note that they don’t think it could have been a hoax, as the mud would have been a struggle for a costumed man to get through.

November 1981-82: A 13-year-old resident of Anne Arundel County was playing in a creek in the Severn Run Area near the Old Benfield Road when he saw a 7-8-foot Bigfoot standing on a nearby hill looking at him. He described it as being covered in medium-length dark brown hair. He couldn’t make out many other details, partly because the sun was behind the animal and partly because the witness quickly lost his nerve and ran away.

July 1984: Another Hartford County motorcyclist was riding her chopper on Route 165 south of Whiteford when she noticed what she thought was a large, dark person crossing the road in front of her. She was astonished to see the “person” cross the street in just six steps.

September 15, 1993: A Hartford County resident recalls going to his uncle’s hunting camp near Street with some of his buddies to do some target practice when they noticed something walking through the foliage and shaking a tree. The witness spied on the creature through his rifle scope and saw that it was covered in dark brown hair, had long arms, and muscles that formed a V shape on the creature’s back, which would have been impossible had this been a bear. The group was unnerved enough to pack it in and flee the scene.

Later that October, the witness’ uncle was outside the camp at dusk when something charged out of the forest and struck him from behind, knocking him to the ground and scattering his tools. The witness recalls hearing heavy bipedal footsteps and smelling a pungent odor as he rushed to help his stricken uncle. There had been other strange incidents in the area before, including the landowner’s wife having her trailer shaken when something grabbed hold of it, and other incidents where the uncle had been chased out of the woods by an unseen bipedal entity and pelted by acorns.

November 1993: An eight-year-old was staying at his grandparents’ house near Woodstock when he saw something on a woody hillside near a baseball diamond. He described it as a dark, shadowy figure with glowing red eyes. When he ran home to tell his grandparents, they laughed it off, thinking he had just seen a fox. Later, after his parents came to pick him up and were backing out of the driveway, he saw the red-eyed shadow again. He also recalls hearing “low tones” booming out from the woods, which he thinks was the creature trying to communicate.

September 15, 1996: A group of six friends was hanging out in a small valley outside of Gunpowder Falls State Park between 2 and 3 a.m. when they heard what sounded like someone running down the side of a nearby hill, breaking branches as it went. Suddenly, an eight-foot-tall humanoid figure emerged from the woods and into the glow of their vehicle headlights. The creature continued running in the opposite direction from the cars, with one witness recalling a distinct slapping sound resembling that made by a person running barefoot on concrete or asphalt.

August 15, 1998: An Anne Arundel County resident was walking his dog outside his house near Laurel when a large apelike figure suddenly emerged from the woods 100 yards away. The witness estimates its height at 10-11 feet. It was too dark for him to make out many details, like its hair color or facial features, but did make out its long arms and legs and its athletic build. The witness and the beast stared at one another for a few minutes, until it finally dashed off into the woods.

July 15, 1999: A boy had gotten lost in the woods outside LaVale in Allegheny County and was at a creek trying to regain his bearings when he saw a strange creature emerge from a thicket 30 yards away. It was a muscular eight-foot-tall bipedal creature covered in grayish-brown hair. The witness believes it was looking for water, which was growing scarce due to a local drought. It also appeared to have injured its left leg and was limping. The witness was naturally frightened and took off running.

May 2008: A birdwatcher was out at the Oxbow Lake Nature Preserve at around 7 in the morning but was frustrated by the complete lack of wildlife. As she continued her fruitless search for any sight or sound of animal life in the swamp, she started to get the uneasy feeling that she was being watched. At one point, she was overpowered by “a strong musky smell,” and was surprised by a 30-40-foot live tree that suddenly fell over about 100-150 feet away. Figuring that something was trying to warn her off, the witness started making her way back to her car. Just as she reached her car, three to four deep howls suddenly rang out from the opposite side of the lake, as if calling out a final warning.

July 31, 2008: A Navy veteran was hiking in a swampy area of Anne Arundel County when he decided to take a shortcut. Said shortcut caused him to stumble across a nine-foot-tall dark-haired creature that weighed 350-450 pounds. The creature screamed at him and started chasing him off its territory. The witness called his father during the incident, and the father recalls hearing the creature’s horrible screams over the phone. The father suggested his son stand his ground and scream back at it, to which the son apparently told him to go to Hell.

June 2019: A trio of hikers were resting at Black Rock Overlook in South Mountain State Park when they noticed a bipedal figure covered in dark hair walking along a ridge far in the distance. It quickly vanished, and the group’s unease was not helped by a thunderstorm that rolled in shortly afterward.

April 2021: A pair of campers in Pocomoke River State Park in Worchester County emerged from their tent, flashlights in hand, to investigate wood knocks and footsteps circling their site. The torchlight revealed a shadowy creature with glowing eyes that quickly vanished into the underbrush. The pair would discover large footprints in the damp ground the next morning.

August 21, 2022: Martin Cain, a resident of Hebron in Wicomico County, sent a strange image he caught on his trail cam to the YouTube channel Squatch Watchers. Both Cain and the video host believe it shows a grey-haired Bigfoot-type creature carrying a large branch. Cain claims to have seen one in the woods when he was a child and that the creatures had left signs of their presence all over (bent trees, strange sounds in the night, etc.). He thinks the creature must have been running, as the following picture, taken just 0.6 seconds later, shows no signs of the anomaly.

September 2022: A group of four hunters in Green Ridge State Forest in Allegheny County were startled by “low guttural howls,” followed by a tall, dark figure walking through the underbrush on two legs. The hunters described its movements as so smooth that it looked like it was gliding and that the footprints it left behind were 17 inches long.

May 2023: A group of six hikers were setting up camp in Cunningham Falls State Park in Frederick County when they were suddenly overwhelmed by a musky odor. Strange sounds soon filled the woods: breaking branches, tree knocks, and low guttural howls. As the group frantically scanned the surrounding woods with their flashlights, they were confronted by a tall, hairy beast watching them from between two trees. The website I sourced this encounter from doesn’t say how the campers reacted, but I can’t imagine they stuck around very long.

The Blue Dog of Port Tobacco

Don Zimmer’s moody oil painting inspired by the legend, which hangs in the Blue Dog Saloon & Restaurant

Port Tobacco seems like a small and unassuming hamlet tucked away in Charles County (indeed, it’s the smallest incorporated town in the state with a population of just 13), but it hosts what, according to some, may be the oldest ghost story ever told in these United States.

The story tells of a cold February evening a few years after the end of the Revolution when a veteran named Charles Thomas Sims stopped at a tavern on Rose Hill Road, a bluetick coonhound following at his heels. As he became increasingly inebriated, he disclosed an inheritance of gold and property he had recently acquired. This caught the attention of an unscrupulous local named Henry Hanos, who followed Sims out of the tavern with a couple of his friends. They ambushed Sims and the dog and killed them. Hanos then buried the gold he found on Sims’ corpse under a holly tree and left the scene. When he returned a few days later to retrieve his ill-gotten treasure, the bluetick suddenly charged out of the trees with a deep howl of rage. A terrified Hanos was forced to flee the scene without his treasure, and fell ill and died shortly after. The ghostly dog was still said to be guarding its master’s riches as recently as the 1970s.

The Rose Hill property, which hosts the boulder that marks the site of Sims’ murder, has seen a fair share of famous residents over the years, including Gustavus Richard Brown (George Washington’s physician), and Charles Stuart, the White House staffer during the Nixon administration, and Olivia Floyd, a Confederate spy during the Civil War. The claim to the blue dog story being the oldest American ghost story may be disputed by Stuart, who claimed that the story first appeared in 1897 after Floyd encountered the phantom herself. On the other hand, Haunted Maryland author Ed Okonowicz claims to have found evidence that the tale dates back as early as 1658!

No matter the origin of the legend, the ghostly bluetick has been embraced by Port Tobacco as its town mascot, even lending its name to a local restaurant with an oil painting of the dog and a framed manuscript of the tale hanging from its wall.

Chessie

Chessie can be considered as Maryland’s answer to Nessie. Although sightings of supposed sea monsters have been reported in Chesapeake Bay since at least 1846 (when Captain Lawson reported seeing a small-headed creature with sharp fins running down its back off Cape Henry), the first canonical sighting of Chessie is widely accepted as occurring in 1936. The story goes that a military helicopter was flying over the Bush River tidal estuary in Hartford County when the crew claimed to spot “something reptilian and unknown in the water.” Those more familiar with aviation history may scratch their heads at the helicopter detail, however, as the first successful test flight of the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300 didn’t occur until three years later.

A somewhat more believable early account comes from 1943, when a pair of perch fishermen, Francis Klarrman and Edward J. Ward, claimed to have seen a strange dark-colored creature in the waters around Baltimore with a horse-shaped head about the size of a football. Chessie appeared to become especially active in the late 70s and early 80s, with sightings from Calvert Cliffs State Park and in the Potomoc River from Virginia’s Westmoreland County in 1978. One sighting in September 1980, in which witness Trudy Guthrie produced a sketch of the creature, was later proved to be a manatee that had wandered north from Florida.

The most famous Chessie sighting, however, comes from May 31, 1982, when Robert and Karen Frew filmed an unknown creature they saw swimming off Love Point near the north tip of Kent Island. The two minute film shows a dark brown serpentine form that ducks under the water to avoid a nearby group of swimmers then reappears on the other side and appears to swim in a snakelike side-to-side motion. Analysis by experts at the Smithsonian Institute and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory were apparently unable to determine what kind of creature it was, although Johns Hopkins team ran out of funds before they could complete their analysis.

Sightings have continued up to the present day, including one sighting off Fort Smallwood Park in 1997 and another well-publicized encounter in August 2014, in which Anne Arundel County resident Chris Gardner and his friend Dave were parked next to the Magothy River at 1:40 in the morning when a 25-30 foot serpentine creature surfaced just five feet away from their car. It was colored black, had a football-shaped head, and had no fins. Gardner even reported seeing what looked like a hood resembling that of a king cobra. The creature soon slid away into the darkness. Gardner thinks it may have been an anaconda descended from exotic animals imported to the region during the Age of Sail.

Numerous theories have been proposed for Chessie’s true identity, from sturgeons to seals to mutant eels to prehistoric beasts like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. As I hinted earlier, Chesapeake Bay also has a history with wayward manatees. One such sirenian, a male also named Chessie, was first rescued from the cold waters of the bay in October 1994 and returned to Florida, but not before researchers tagged him with a satellite transmitter. He would go on to return to Chesapeake Bay over the next several years then return to Florida of his own accord. He also made treks further up the coast, even making it as far as Rhode Island at one point.

No matter its real identity, Chessie the sea monster has been widely embraced by bayside residents as a local mascot for local businesses and sports teams. It has even become a local symbol for environmental advocacy, even showing up in educational coloring books published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Demon Cat of D.C.

Artist credit: JurassicJinx on DeviantArt

It’s probably no surprise that the District of Columbia has its fair share of ghost stories, given the massively turbulent history of the city. Even the halls of Congress and the White House have several apparitions supposedly dwelling in them. My favorite Beltway phantom tale is the one where Winston Churchill was allegedly surprised to see Abraham Lincoln leaning against the fireplace right as the former was getting out of the bath. The quite nude prime minister remarked, “Good evening, Mr. President. It appears you have me at a disadvantage.” Honest Abe gave an amused smile before disappearing.

There is another much more fearsome specter said to haunt the seats of both the executive and legislative branches, which is said to at first resemble a black or tabby cat no different from the ones brought into the tunnels below the Capitol Building in the mid-1800s to manage the rats and mice. However, it is said to be able to grow to the size of a tiger or even an elephant, much to many a night watchman’s shock and horror. Some accounts also described the cat as having eyes that “glow with the all the hue and ferocity of the headlights of a fire engine.”

The first sighting is said to have occurred in 1862, when the Capitol’s basement was used as a bakery to help with the war effort. A watchman claimed that a giant cat had pounced on him and knocked him down, and that it disappeared when he fired his gun at it. Sightings continued throughout the late 1800s, including an incident where a witness supposedly died of a heart attack shortly afterward.

Perhaps the most ominous legend about the Demon Cat is that it sometimes shows up right before a major national tragedy. It was said to have shown itself on the nights before Lincoln and JFK were assassinated, as well as the night before the great stock market crash of 1929 (but, apparently, not before the January 6th insurrection. Lazy bastard).

Of course, several more rational explanations for how the legend came to be have been proposed. Steve Livengood, the chief tour guide of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, has proposed that the Demon Cat first showed up because, in his words, “the night watchmen were not professionals. They would often be some senator’s ne’er-do-well brother-in-law that had a drinking problem.” He argues that the reports of the Deomn Cat’s unusual size came from guards who had fallen down drunk being licked awake by one of the tunnel mousers and mistaking it for a giant cat in their drunken stupor. When they reported such incidents to their supervisors, their bosses would send them home for the day rather than risk the wrath of their politician relatives by firing them, which led other guards to report similar incidents so they could get sent home for the day.

Coleen Shogan, writing for the White House Historical Association, also speculates that Calvin Coolidge’s cat, Tige, may have played a part in spreading the legend. The 30th president’s cat was famous for sneaking out of the White House, sometimes for days on end, to visit other federal buildings, which Shogan believes may have helped the legend spread beyond the confines of the Capitol basement.

Whether or not you believe the Demon Cat is a literal demon or just a drunken guard’s exaggerated story that got way out of hand, it’s hard to argue with Livengood’s assessment that the legend adds character to the building’s history. Still, he points out that he’s never heard of a modern sighting of the Demon Cat, so maybe we can’t rely on it to tell us when Trump’s going to trigger the next Great Depression.

Dwayyo

The werewolf-like creature, distinguished from other dogman-type cryptids by its long and bushy tail and “officially” known as “Dwayosapientherapsida australopithecus rexus,” first made its presence known to residents of the Blue Ridge region of the state when “frightful screams” started ringing out through the forests outside Middletown in 1944. The first widely publicized sighting of the beast was in November 1965, when a man using the pseudonym John Becker claimed to have been attacked by something that came out of the woods near Gambrill State Park. Becker described the creature as being “as big as a bear, had long black hair and a bushy tail, and growled like a wolf or a dog in anger.” It apparently approached him on all fours, then reared up on its hind legs once it reached him. Becker even gave a name to the creature: Dwayyo, an alternate name for a beast from Pennsylvania Dutch folklore called the Hexenwolf.

The blog Phantoms and Monsters has recorded a possible earlier sighting of the creature by a witness who was 8-11 at the time. The witness was staying at his grandmother’s house on Shank Road in Middletown one night when he got up to use the outhouse. As he walked through his grandmother’s garden, he was unsettled to note that no sounds were coming from the nighttime woods. The reason soon became apparent when a bipedal creature with a head resembling a German Shepherd’s, clawed hands, and eyes that glowed yellow walked through the backyard and into the trees.

Sightings would continue throughout the 60s and 70s. Jim A. claimed to have encountered it in 1966 while camping in Gambrill State Park. The deer-sized animal, which he described as dark brown with a triangle-shaped head with pointed ears and chin, screamed at Jim as he approached and backed away from him with an awkward spiderlike gate.

In 1976, a pair of Thurmont residents claimed to have seen a wolflike creature run across Route 77 on two legs while out on a drive. They described it as standing six feet tall with striped brown hair and muscular back legs. Two years later, two Cunningham Falls State Park rangers reported seeing “a large hairy creature running on two legs.”

The most recent sighting comes from a resident of Myersville in the summer of 2009, who was driving down Coxey Brown Road when she suddenly got the overwhelming sensation of being watched. She noticed a brown shape darting through the trees that suddenly jumped out onto the road in front of her. It was a large doglike creature that stood on two legs, with prominent fangs and black eyes that stared at the motorist with hate and anger. She floored it out of there when the monster lunged at her car.

Interestingly, the Dwayyo is often reputed in local legend as the mortal enemy of the Snallygaster, another prominent Maryland cryptid originating in Pennsylvania Dutch folklore. Still, if the John Becker and Myersville motorist stories are to be believed, it isn’t that fond of humans either, so think twice before trying to recruit it into your Snallygaster hunting posse.

The Goatman of Prince George’s County

There are many urban legends about satyr-like beings across rural America. The one we’re talking about here centers on Fletchertown Road in Bowie, where a half-man, half-goat hybrid supposedly stalks the haunted woods, looking for animals to eat and young lovers to threaten with its axe.

The Maryland Goatman is said to have originally been a scientist named Dr. Stephen Fletcher who was conducting experiments at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center involving animal DNA, apparently in an effort to augment human capabilities. One day, however, one of his experiments went catastrophically wrong, and Fletcher (or his assistant, William Lottsford) was transformed into a human-goat hybrid. Driven mad by the transformation, the monster fled into the woods, stewing in his newfound misanthropy.

While sightings of a hairy six-foot-tall humanoid have been reported in the region since the late 50s, it wasn’t until 1971 that the Goatman truly became a local celebrity. Two factors made this possible: a study of local folklore done in May by University of Maryland student George Lizama (which was later published in the Prince George’s County News), and a report from local resident April Edwards about her decapitated dog, Ginger, who she believed was killed by the Goatman (local authorities argued it was hit by a train).

Soon, stories of the Goatman attacking cars parked on lover’s lanes with an axe started to spread, and legend trippers began searching for his lair, which was rumored to be hidden away in one of several abandoned trailer parks in the region. In addition to his home territory around Fletchertown Road, he was also reputed to hang out around Governor’s Bridge, better known as Crybaby Bridge due to the stories of it being haunted by the crying spirit of a lost infant. Indeed, the Goatman was said to utter disturbing screams of his own. While he was most often seen in a bipedal posture, the Goatman was also sometimes said to run on all fours, and was even rumored to have shapeshifting abilities.

Sightings have diminished in recent decades as the Goatman’s territory has fallen victim to suburban development. Nowadays, many skeptics argue that the Goatman was nothing more than a misanthropic hermit who’s bad attitude was exaggerated to monstrous proportions, especially as the Satanic panic reached a fever pitch in the 1980s. Even if the Goatman himself is gone, he still lives on in the various campfire stories and cultural references of Marylanders to this day.

Moll Dyer

This witch’s tale is probably second only to the Salem Witch Trials as the most dramatic story involving witchcraft from the colonial era.

The story goes that the community of Leonardtown in St. Mary’s County found itself in dire straits one winter in the late 1600s. The crops had failed, leaving the residents at the mercy of the harsh weather, and a plague had left many sick. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the townsfolk began to suspect that supernatural foul play was afoot. They soon found their scapegoat: Moll Dyer, an older lady who lived alone at the edge of town. An angry mob stormed her property and set fire to her hut to drive her out of town. Dyer ran for miles, having only a light shawl to protect her from the frigid winds. Her frozen corpse was found days later, with her right hand frozen to a large stone and the other held toward the sky, as if calling upon the heavens to curse the village. And a curse there was, although the legends vary on exactly what form it took (Blighted crops? Infertility? Child mortality? Familial misfortune? All of them at once?).

Her spirit is still said to haunt the forests around Leonardtown, whether in the form of a restless specter searching for the men who killed her or in the form of a ghostly handprint said to appear on the rock she was touching when she died (which currently rests in front of Tudor Hall, where the St. Mary’s County Historical Socxiety is headquartered). Anyone who touches the stone is said to experience nausea, dizziness, or deep discomfort, and offerings are frequently left by the stone to attempt to appease the witch’s perturbed soul. Several other strange spirits are said to lurk around nearby Moll Dyer Road, including shadow people, will-o-the-wisps, a ghostly white dog that causes car accidents, a “thick, unnatural fog,” and frequent lighting strikes.

Historians have tried to uncover the truth behind the centuries of legends surrounding the story. Such efforts have been complicated by a fire that swept through Leonardtown’s archives in 1831, which may have destroyed relevant documents. Still, we know that a wave of witch trials swept through Maryland between 1654 and 1712 and that a “great epidemic,” possibly of influenza, swept through the southern part of the state between 1697 and 98. The prime suspect for the person behind the legend is a woman named Mary Dyer who was born in Devon, England, in 1634, was working as an indentured servant in the Virgin Islands in 1669, and arrived in Dorchester County on a ship captained by Thomas Taylor in 1677. “Moll” is a nickname frequently given to any woman whose name began with “M.” While no records have indicated that Mary Dyer ever lived in Leonardtown, she has been embraced as the “real” Moll Dyer by St. Mary’s County. At least one alternate theory for her true identity is that she was a Native American, possibly belonging to the Chaptico tribe, which sadly went extinct in the face of colonialism in the early 1700s, with its remnants being absorbed into the neighboring Patuxent and Piscataway tribes.

Regardless of the truth behind Moll Dyer’s story, the witch has been embraced as a local mascot, with Leonardtown celebrating February 26 as “Moll Dyer Day.” Her story has also been cited as an inspiration behind Maryland’s other most famous witch story: The Blair Witch Project.

The Peeping Tom of Illchester Tunnel

This humanoid abomination, also known as “the Blink Man,” “The Tunnel Man,” or even “Illchester the Molester,” is a classic urban legend character who supposedly lurks in Illchester Tunnel. The tunnel runs through an old railway trestle that spans the Patapsco River outside Ellicott City, a suburb of Baltimore. The story goes that if you stand at one end of the tunnel at midnight and manage to stare into the inky darkness for one hour without blinking, then the Peeping Tom will appear at the other end. He will approach one step closer every time you blink until he is standing right in front of you. If you try to stop yourself from blinking a final time, he will tickle you with his unnaturally elongated eyelashes until you are forced to. What exactly the Peeping Tom does to his victims afterward is unclear. What is clear is that anyone who reaches this stage ends up lying dead on the ground, an expression of horror frozen on their face.

Ellicott City has had a long history of suffering at the mercy of the Patapsco River’s frequent floods. One particularly nasty flood in 1868, which killed around 40 Ellicott residents and washed out the viaduct fording the river, directly contributed to the construction of Illchester Tunnel, although it wouldn’t be completed until 1903. Next to the tunnel is the burned out remains of St. Mary’s College, a Catholic school that had long been abandoned when a fire claimed it in 1968. With all that history, it’s probably no wonder spirits are said to lurk there.

This Patch.com article suggests that the Peeping Tom may be a “flimmern-giest” (anglicized as “flicker-geist”), a class of spirits described by 16th century German mystic philosopher Jakob Bohme. Bohme described these ghostly creatures as living at the periphery of our vision and that certain rituals can bring them into greater focus. Perhaps, the article’s author suggests, the Illchester Tunnel acts as a portal into other spiritual realms, and the one-hour staring contest is a method of bringing inhabitants of these realms into ours. I just wish they could have summoned a nicer spirit.

The Pig Lady

This makes the fourth state where an urban legend of a porcine-human hybrid has been told (although the illustration above indicates one from New Jersey that I might have missed). However, the Maryland version, centering on Cecil County, distinguishes itself in two ways: first, it’s a woman this time, and second, this legend is purportedly much older than the others.

The story goes that sometime in the late 1800s, a local woman was caught inside her farmhouse as it burned down. By the time she managed to escape, her face had been horribly disfigured by the flames (some versions say she jumped from the upper stories, which certainly wouldn’t have helped matters). The woman fled into the forest, where she is said to still live to this day. Stewing in her misanthropy, she has since taken to attacking teenage couples on lover’s lanes with an axe. Frequent sites of encounters with her include the Rising Sun town dump (which is apparently a favorite adolescent romantic hangout for reasons entirely unclear to me) and under an old bridge on Russel Road in the hamlet of Colora, where she is said to make her lair. There, cars are said to stall, and by the time the drivers have managed to start it again, the Pig Lady has left hoof-shaped indentations in the paint.

Some stories even claim that the Pig Lady has gained mystical powers which allow her to stall the aforesaid cars, either to pull the hoofprint prank or to make it harder for her victims to get away. Some locals even claim that a weirdly shaped tree with a double trunk resembling human legs was a teenager who disturbed the Pig Lady enough to transform him.

Some folklorists believe that this Pig Lady legend was inspired by a similar urban legend that circulated around England in 1814, in which a woman with a pig’s head was allegedly seen riding around London in a carriage. It is then speculated that English immigrants may have carried the legend over to Cecil County, where it mutated into the Pig Lady legend we hear about today.

According to the blog Southern Spirit Guide, the Maryland Pig Lady is just one of several ghost stories to be found along U.S. Highway 1, which it claims is one of the most haunted roads in America. It stretches all the way from Maine to Key West, so it’s probably most surprising that there may be a few specters waiting for you on your journey.

Snallygaster

Artist credit: loneanimator on DeviantArt

Don’t let this creature’s silly name fool you: this demonic avian anomaly, which is in many ways Maryland’s answer to the Jersey Devil, is a horrifying beast who loves to prey on livestock and children, carrying them to the caves in South Mountain in Frederick County to suck their blood.

As mentioned in the Dwayyo entry, the Snallygaster originated in the folklore of the Pennsylvania Dutch, as the locals called German immigrants, who described it as a half-bird half-reptile chimera with a metallic beak lined with razor-sharp teeth. As if that didn’t make it bizarre enough, some reports also claim it had tentacles coming out of its face or mouth (thus allowing it to brag that it was a Resident Evil mutant before it was cool). The name Snallygaster is an anglicization of the German name for the beast, “schneller geist,” meaning “quick ghost” in English. It was said that painting seven-pointed stars on your barn would ward the beast off, several of which can still be seen in the region to this day.

The Snallygaster really hit the big time between February and March 1909, when the beast reportedly went on a rampage ranging as far west as Ohio and as far east as New Jersey. The Middletown-based newspaper, the Valley Register, described it as having “enormous wings, a long pointed bill, claws like steel hooks, and an eye in the center of its forehead.” It began its reign of terror in an especially dramatic way when it allegedly seized Middletown resident Bill Gifferson in its talons, slashed his throat and drained his blood, then threw his body off a cliff. Sighting reports poured in far and wide. New Jersey residents claimed they discovered its footprints in the snow (how they told them apart from the Jersey Devil’s is anyone’s guess). West Virginians claimed to have seen it try to catch a female resident of Scrabble, while back in Maryland, a Sharpsburg farmer claimed to have found it roosting in his barn and that it had laid a barrel-sized egg.

A Casstown, Ohio resident claimed to have seen it flying overhead, making terrible screeching sounds, and described it as having enormous wings, horns on its head, and a twenty-foot-long tail. Later sightings in Maryland included a Cumberland resident who found the beast sleeping near his brick-burning kiln, which screamed at him when he tried to shoo it away. It was said to have laid another egg in Burkitsville. The 1909 wave ended just as dramatically as it began when a group of Frederick County railroad workers allegedly battled the monster for an hour and a half before it finally flew off toward the Carroll County woodlands.

Sightings would continue to trickle in until around December of 1932 when it allegedly fell into a moonshine still in Washington County and drowned. The remains were subsequently destroyed when the still was dynamited, either by the moonshiners themselves or by law enforcement officials upholding Prohibition.

Nowadays, the 1909 sightings are largely dismissed as a hoax perpetrated by the Valley Register’s editors to drum up new readers. The fact that the Snallygaster rampage happened just a month after the infamous Jersey Devil rampage that January doesn’t help the Register’s case. Nor do some of the more outlandish stories they reported, like one witness who claimed the beast spoke to him after drinking a 100-gallon tub of water, exclaiming “My, I’m dry! I haven’t had a good drink since I was killed in the Battle of Chickamauga.” The widely reported claim that then-president Theodore Roosevelt planned to postpone an African safari to hunt the Snallygaster himself also has no primary sources to confirm it.

There is a dark side to all this silliness, though. Many of the Valley Register reports claimed that the Snallygaster’s favorite prey was black people, especially black men who voted Republican. One Register headline even proclaimed, “The Colored People Are In Great Danger!” Indeed, many folklorists have noted that the white masters of the Jim Crow South would often spread stories of vaguely described monsters and restless spirits to prey upon the superstitions of the Black underclass and keep them in line and that the Snallygaster may have become lumped in with other tall tales of this sort. Indeed, this context makes the story about the monster claiming to be the ghost of a soldier killed at Chickamauga a lot darker, as that battle was a decisive Confederate victory.

That racist baggage hasn’t stopped contemporary Marylanders from trying to reclaim the Snallygaster as a state mascot, however. One of the most prominent efforts to this end is the American Snallygaster Museum, founded by Libertytown resident Sarah Cooper, who hopes to teach the whole history of this curious creature, warts and all so that the creature becomes a symbol for the durability of American folklore rather than a racist dog whistle. The Snallygaster has also lent its name to local beer festivals, distilleries, and even ice cream flavors. It’s also shown up in JKKK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (for better or for worse) video games based on The Blair Witch Project, and the much-maligned Fallout 76 alongside other cryptids of Appalachian folklore like Mothman, the Flatwoods Monster, and the Grafton Monster (although the Snallygaster there bears little resemblance to one Marylanders are familiar with).

Snarly Yow

“Beware of the “Snarly Yow.” Legend has it that the shadow of a black dog used to prowl the heights of South Mountain. One night, a huntsman, famous as a sure shot, encountered the beast. He aimed and fired his rifle. The shot went right through the animal with no effect. He fired again and again, each shot passing through the shadowy beast. Finally overcome with dread, the huntsman fled.”

So goes one legend, written on a plaque outside Boonsboro in Washington County, about this black phantom dog said to stalk the upper Potomac River valley that runs through western Maryland and the West Virginia Peninsula, with its territory apparently centering on Harpers Ferry. The Snarly Yow is described as having dark blue, grey, or white fur with burning red eyes, large lips, saggy skin, and teeth so packed in its jaws that they hindered its vocal abilities, hence the name. Some stories even claim that it can walk on its hind legs.

It is yet another cryptid spun off from the legends of the Pennsylvania Dutch, who told stories of a black dog who would leap out at travelers on the road only to disappear just as suddenly as it arrived. It would also leap out at hunters, who would shoot it or throw rocks and sticks at it, only for the projectiles to pass through the creature’s intangible body.

Snarly Yow has apparently kept this pastime even in the age of the internal combustion engine. Motorists in the region have reported seeing a dog run out on the road in front of them, only to feel no impact tremors when they should have hit it. When they go out to check, they are confronted either with no dog at all or the dog standing completely unharmed behind the car, sometimes snarling at them in an unpleasant manner. It even pulled this trick on a bus full of Middletown schoolchildren who were returning from a field trip to the Washington Monument in 1975. This time, the occupants did feel a bump and were thus extra surprised to see the dog standing behind the bus with not a scratch on it, baring its teeth and vanishing into thin air.

Some stories have claimed, much as with other black dog legends, that seeing Snarly Yow is bad luck and that seeing it three times means you will die shortly after. It’s probably not surprising that the Upper Potomac Watershed is haunted by a ghost dog, given that the region was a hotbed of violence during the Civil War. Harpers Ferry is famously the site of abolitionist John Brown’s ill-fated 1859 raid on the armory to start a slave revolt, which some believe to be the actual start of the war rather than the Battle of Fort Sumter two years later. Turner’s Gap, rumored to be one of Snarly Yow’s favorite spots to pull the disappearing act on motorists, was the site of the Battle of South Mountain in September 1862. And, of course, we can’t forget Antietam, which, as mentioned above, remains the deadliest day in American history, with ten times as many American soldiers killed there than died during D-Day over eighty years later.

So be careful if you see a dog in the middle of the road in that region of the Appalachians. You might just be confronting a harbinger of doom.

The Sykesville Monster

This 7-8 foot tall Bigfoot-type creature was spotted in and around Patapsco Valley State Park during the 1970s and 80s. The first alleged sighting was by an anonymous truck driver in June 1973, who saw it sitting by the road. It got up and fled into the woods upon his approach. The driver said it was caked in mud from the waist down and speculated that it might have been a man on stilts.

Lon Strickler, who had a much more dramatic encounter with the beast a decade later, isn’t so sure. Strickler, who recounted his tale to the BFRO and on his blog, Phantoms and Monsters, claims to have been fishing on the south branch of the Patapsco River on May 9, 1981, when a stray dog started barking at something nearby. Strickler was shocked to see a 7-8 foot tall creature covered in dark, matted hair emerge from the thicket. He described it as making a strange “tick” sound and giving off an odor similar to fox urine. The dog lunged at the beast, which responded by slamming the canine against the ground. It ran away, dripping blood from its neck and hindquarters.

Strickler drove to the nearest phone and called the police. When he arrived back at the site of the encounter, he was surprised to see the area taped off. He was told to leave (he later received a comment from a first responder who claimed that it was federal agents who cordoned off the area and that he saw three helicopters in the air). Strickler was further frustrated when several local news stations refused to talk with him, even though several of them initially seemed interested in his story. Thus, Strickler has taken it upon himself to be the lead investigator of the Sykesville Monster.

He claims to have uncovered twelve more sightings in the 70s and two more from the 80s. These include incidents where the creature broke into chicken coops and a utility shed. Strickler even claims there was a “home invasion” at one point. Perhaps the most intriguing story he uncovered, however, was that of an older fisherman named Phil, who claimed to have seen a humanoid skeleton on the shores of the river in Piney Run Park. It was much larger than a normal human, with a humerus (upper arm bone) measuring 22 inches (for reference, I’m 5’11”, and my upper arm measures only 13 inches). As with Strickler’s encounter, when Phil and other witnesses called the police, the authorities once again taped off the area, and the witnesses even recalled seeing unmarked vans and helicopters arriving on the scene.

Based on these stories, Strickler believes that there may have been a breeding population of Bigfoots in Patapsco State Park during that period and that they likely have moved out due to encroaching urban development. According to Squatchable.com, however, there was a sighting in Patapsco in October 2020 when a jogger running along the Albertson Road Trail claimed to have stumbled across a bipedal creature covered in long black hair standing by a stream. He described the creature as having long arms and deep-set eyes and that they both took off running in opposite directions after the beast growled at him.

Maybe a few Squatches are still there after all.

The Werewolf of Red Hill

The only source I could find for this cryptid was a YouTube video by the channel Reel_Adventures: Dogman Encounters. In it, the video host reads about an encounter that was emailed to him by the witness’s son. The video doesn’t name a location more specific than Red Hill in Western Maryland. Still, Kaitlyn Bullock’s graphic describes this werewolf as lurking around Hagerstown, and the Snarly Yow plaque on South Mountain is brought up towards the end as being related to local dogman encounters, so I assume this Red Hill is located in Washington County.

In any case, the main gist of the story is that the witness, who lived in an orphanage with three of his brothers, was friends with a local named Jim “Jimbo” Thomas and was taken in by Jimbo’s family on weekends and holidays. The encounter with the so-called “werewolf” happened one evening in the early 1970s when the witness, a member of the Army Airbourne Division, was on leave and was riding along with Jimbo as he drove his girlfriend back to her farm at the top of Red Hill. The witness waited in the car while Jimbo walked his girlfriend to the front door and was puzzled to see two red dots hovering eight feet off the ground in the middle of a field. He soon made out the figure the dots belonged to, but he didn’t see any tree branches on which the figure could be sitting.

He yelled out for Jim, who rushed to the car and started the engine. The red eyes managed to keep pace with the vehicle even as it reached 50 mph but gave up the pursuit once it reached 60 and headed back into the wilderness. It was too dark for the witness to make out many details, but he could see he was looking at a bipedal hairy beast with pointed ears.

Jimbo later disclosed some other encounters his girlfriend’s father had told him about. He spoke of an incident when, as the farmer went out on the porch to smoke, he had startled the werewolf as it slept against the screen door and another in which the creature had gotten into the farmer’s hog pan in the middle of the night and mutilated several of them (even decapitating one). The farmer was sure he had hit the beast with a shotgun slug, but it showed no sign of injury as it lept the fence and fled into the darkness.

The witness and his friends and dates continued hunting for the werewolf for several years afterward, sometimes checking abandoned buildings for its den and catching glimpses of the red eyes staring at them from a distance. However, they don’t seem to have had another encounter quite as dramatic as the ones mentioned above.

Wicomico Catman

Yet another half-human hybrid, this legend originates from a single encounter at the Wicomico County landfill in 1980.

The story goes that a group of four witnesses (most likely teenagers looking for a secluded space for their amorous pursuits) were hanging out at the landfill one autumn night when one of them was spooked by a pair of yellow eyes looking through one of the windows. The witnesses immediately fled the scene, but an overwhelming sense of curiosity soon overcame them, and they returned to the landfill with another carload of friends to back them up. After sitting in their cars for over an hour with their headlights shining into the trees, their efforts were rewarded.

They noticed a weirdly shaped animal crouching in the brush. It slunk through the forest like a cat but was far larger than any feline or canine endemic to the Mid-Atlantic region. As the group puzzled over what they were looking at, it suddenly burst into the open and charged at them.

It mostly resembled a typical big cat with a dirty black coat, a long whiplike tail, and paws with long and curved claws. Its face was a different story, as it seemed to the witnesses to be disturbingly humanlike. Its monstrous appearance matched its fearsome attitude as it scratched at the driver’s side door of one of the cars and battered the windows. The witnesses finally left the dump for good that night, but not before the Catman caught its claws in the door handle, causing it to utter a bloodcurdling scream before it pulled itself free. When they reported the encounter to the police, they were informed that an unusual amount of mutilated deer carcasses had been found in the region.

What was the thing that was stalking the county dump that fall? Was it an angry nature spirit or creature from Indigenous folklore? Was it a bobcat mutated by pollution or inbreeding? Was it an entirely new species? The mystery remains unsolved.

Miscellaneous Cryptids

Allegheny Leprechauns: I couldn’t find anything on these misplaced Celtic pixies anywhere on the web. Kaitlyn Bullock’s graphic claims that they guard a hoard of treasure belonging to one General Braddock. I assume he means Edward Braddock, who is most famous for leading the Braddock Expedition into the French-occupied Ohio River Valley in 1755. The expedition ended in disaster on July 9th when Braddock’s force was ambushed in modern-day Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, by a combined French and Indigenous force. 457 British troops died that day, Braddock included. However, his supposed treasure and the leprechauns that supposedly guard it have eluded me.

Boaman: The best I could find on the web was a few passing mentions of Boaman in articles about the Goatman, which claims that they operate in the same territory. Besides that, the only other piece of information is the blurb about it on the Kaitlyn Bullock graphic, which claims that it attacked a child in Lanham (a Washington D.C. suburb) in 1971.

Jabberwocks: While the Snallygaster does bear more than a passing resemblance to the eponymous monster of Lewis Carrol’s famous nonsense poem, these Jabberwocks were apparently different, being spotted all over the state in the late 1800s. The wave of sightings over Frederick County in 1887 is the most well-publicized. Stories from that period include a sighting by a little girl that started the wave, a Frederick resident named James Hill who supposedly caught it and put it on display (although the creature he showed off sounds more like a partially shaved sheep), and a group of Cumberland schoolchildren who saw a woman with a dog’s head lying in a ditch. If you think that that bears no resemblance to the creature featured in John Tenniel’s famous illustration accompanying the original poem, the newspaper editors at the time would agree with you. They called it a “Jabberwock” simply to highlight the utter strangeness of the creature.

Witch Rabbits: Once again, Kaitlyn Bullock’s blurb is all I have to go off of, which describes them as “phantom shapeshifting rabbits that appear on the rocks at Deer Creek” in Hartford County. Maybe they’re part of the same class of spirits as New Jersey’s spook rabbits.

And that’s all for the Old Line State! Tune in for the next entry of “Cryptids of North America,” when we examine the Fortean marvels of Pennsylvania. But that’s for another time. I’m not sure what the next article on this site will be just yet. I’m currently debating whether or not to start my retrospective on the best animated films of 2024, whether I should start my new series on the 1001 Animations You Must See Before You Die, or whether I should finally continue my retrospective on Jurassic Park and review Jurassic World Dominion. Maybe I should just take a break for a few days (after all, I’ve been struggling with a cold for the past week).

Whatever I decide to do, I hope you’ll all stay safe, stay away from the caves on South Mountain, and I will see you all very, very soon. Bye folks!