Cryptids of North America #7: Connecticut

It’s good to be back on the road again!

When we last left off on our tour of the cryptozoological side of Turtle Island, all the way back in April, we examined the anomalous beasts of Rhode Island, of which there was a shocking amount relative to the Ocean State’s diminutive size. Now, however, let’s close out the New England leg of this tour with a look at the Constitution State, which is also quite packed with cryptids despite being the third smallest state behind Delaware and Rhode Island.

Credit goes, as always, to Monica Gallagher of LipstickKiss Press for the series of prints that inspired these articles in the first place. Additional inspiration was taken from the graphic shown above, courtesy of fellow Etsy user Creature Maps (follow the link in the caption for a much better-quality image). I also consulted the 2023 book Connecticut Cryptids, written by Patrick Scalisi and illustrated by Valerie Ruby-Omen, for further reference.

Now, let’s see what makes these 16 Connecticut cryptids tick.

Bigfoot

Image credit: Getty Images (Provided by WTNH Hartford)

It seems that no matter where one goes in this country, hairy hominid stories always follow, even in a state as small and as densely packed as Connecticut. To be sure, though, the Nutmeg State is a lightweight regarding sighting reports, with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization cataloging 22 sightings in its database (half of them in Litchfield County alone). Other similar organizations have cataloged more. Here are some of the more notable reports:

June 19, 1898: The Naugatuck Daily News reported an encounter four Danbury woodsmen had with a creature the paper calls “the Cotton Hollow Wild Man.” The story goes that Jerry Wilson, Howard Bradley, James Durbin, and George Howes were hiking through the woods near High Rock Grove when they were startled to see “a man of gigantic stature” emerge from the brush and stand on the path in front of them.

The quartet would later claim that the giant stood nine feet tall and weighed 500 pounds. It asked them, “How far is it to the next town?” Wilson informed him that it was three miles away, and the giant ran into the nighttime woods without uttering another word.

When the men returned the following day to survey the site, they found footprints measuring 18.5’ long by 5.5’ across, with the heel alone measuring five inches. When they inquired with locals, they found that sightings of this giant were common in the region.

As the commentary from the hyperlink above notes, this encounter fits somewhat uneasily within Bigfoot lore. The article doesn’t mention whether or not the giant was covered in hair or wearing clothes, nor does it mention whether the footprints were shoed or barefoot. Of course, Bigfoot also doesn’t often speak to those who encounter it, especially not in plain English. Nevertheless, it is still a fascinating story.

August 1953: A Fairfield County resident, who claims to have been 5-6 at the time, was picking blackberries with two younger relatives near Housatonic Lake outside Shelton when they saw a 6.5-7’ dark brownish-gray animal walk across some nearby railroad tracks on two legs. He described the beast as having a primate-like face, arms that hung down to its knees, and being thinner and with shorter hair than the creature in the Patterson-Gimlin film.

1964: Two men were driving through an orchard outside Plainville when a six-foot-tall creature covered in white fur ran out in front of them. They would later describe the creature as around 400 pounds, with a small head and a hunched-over posture.

November 1968: A 7-8-year-old boy living on Newton Farm near South Kent in Litchfield County happened to look out the window of his farmhouse when he saw a nine-foot-tall hairy black creature walk across his front yard. He described it as having a long stride, long swinging arms, and eyes that glowed like a cat or raccoon at night when it turned its entire upper body to look at him. When the terrified boy went to his parents, they and some neighbors investigated and discovered footprints 17” long and 6” wide with a six-foot stride that the witness’ 6’3” father failed to duplicate.

June 3, 1976: Karl S., a resident of Monroe in Fairfield County, claims to have been walking to a friend’s house along some railroad when he was 14-15 years old. He tripped over a tie, and as he picked himself up, he saw an 8-9 foot creature staring at him from around 100-150 feet away. Karl describes the beast as covered in dark reddish brown hair 4-5 inches long, with arms that hung down between its knees and hips, a small head and flat face sitting on shoulders 3 feet wide, and that “it had a basketball player build but with more substance.” The creature stood there for around six seconds before bounded into the woods in just 3-4 steps. This all happened along the same railroad tracks where the 1953 sighting occurred.

July 20, 1977: A Middlesex County resident, a child at the time, claims to have been walking home from a friend’s house at 10:30 in the evening when they were startled by a growl so loud it “rattled my insides.” The source of the growl was a hairy white figure spying on the witness from inside a barn window. The witness ran home and returned to investigate with his siblings the next day. The witness estimates that the creature was 8 1/2 feet tall based on the height of the window from the floor.

April 1978: The September 1978 issue of the Florida-based Yeti Newsletter reports that a young boy spotted an eight-foot-tall hairy creature on an isolated farm outside Danbury in Fairfield County. The paper goes on to claim that police officers took plaster casts of 22-inch footprints and that some officers saw it and shot at it.

September 1997: This sighting near Thomaston in Litchfield County is probably the most harrowing to come out of the state. The witness was riding her 19-year-old quarterhorse, Sandy, near a railway underpass where the P&W rail line passes under Route 395. Sandy had stopped to take a drink from a stream when the rider noticed footprints twice the size of her size eight riding boots. Then, the rider was overpowered by a stench that smelled like “foul garbage, garlic, skunk, [and] human body odor rolled into one.”

Just as they decided to leave, the source of the odor came charging down a nearby hill. The witness didn’t get a good look at the creature, but she noted that it was big, bipedal (judging by its footfalls), and uttered screams so loud they could be heard from half a mile away. It chased them for 100 yards before the witness managed to get a stone wall between them and shake it off. Sadly, Sandy never recovered from the shock of the encounter and died a month later.

January 2002: Sixteen-year-old Tim Butterson was camping with his older brother in Barkhamsted State Forest in Litchfield County. They were admiring a deer herd when they were taken off guard by a foul odor resembling rotten eggs and rotting flesh. Then, an eight-foot-tall Bigfoot charged out of the trees and trampled one of the fauns. The brothers threw logs at the beast to get it to stop, and it barked at them and ran away. They would later describe the creature as dark brown with arms twice as thick as Tim’s legs. He also said the animal towered over his brother, who already stood an impressive 6’6”.

Fall 2002: A motorist was driving along Route 169 near the Windham County community of Woodstock when she saw a strange animal cross about 200 feet in front of her. She described the creature as being as large as a gorilla she saw in a zoo once, with large forearms and light blonde hair. The animal crossed into a cemetery, lept over a stone wall, and vanished into the brush.

November 25, 2004: An East Hampton resident and his mother were washing dishes at 11:30 in the evening when they were startled by a loud bang on the other side of their house. When they went over to investigate, they were unnerved to see a dark figure standing 7.5-8 feet tall move past the window. The witnesses immediately ran for the safety of their bedrooms, and the mother would claim that she felt like she was being watched through most of the following morning. The witness would later learn that his aunt, living in the nearby community of Moodus near Salmon River State Park, had been woken up at 3 a.m. that night by a feral scream that sounded like nothing she had ever heard before.

January 12, 2005: A Hartford County resident is looking out his apartment window over the city of Bristol at 8:45 a.m. when he notices “a large gorilla-human-like figure” standing 5 1/2 feet tall emerge from behind a snow drift. It rambles across a warehouse parking lot as if looking for something before it crosses Emmett Street and the railroad tracks into the woods. The witness believes it was a juvenile Sasquatch.

May 2013: A resident of Bethel in Fairfield County was getting out of his car one evening when his German Shepherd puppy went berserk. Upon shining a flashlight in the bushes, he saw a dark shadow crouching behind a tree, poking its head out and staring at him with reddish-orange eyes. At first, the witness dismissed it as a black bear and called his dog inside. The next night, however, he and a friend heard a bellowing roar that he knew could not have been made by a black bear.

April 22, 2014: A firefighter approaching the tunnel on Route 15 outside New Haven claims to have seen a black figure run across the top of the tunnel while he was on his way home from work at 6 p.m. He described the creature as 6.5-7 feet tall, covered in black hair, and with long arms and a long stride.

February 24, 2022: Another resident of Bethel was observing a herd of about 30 deer grazing around Blue Jay Orchards while talking with her friend on the phone when a black figure suddenly emerged from the woods and chased the herd. The witness estimated that the creature stood around 8-10 feet tall based on its size relative to the deer.

Matt Moneymaker, the current director of the Bigfoot Field Researcher’s Organization, has described the Housatonic River basin, which runs through the western part of the state, as one of America’s biggest Bigfoot sighting hotspots, with plenty of cedar and pine groves in which to shelter during the winter and deep river gorges to carry their vocalizations. One may wonder if the same is true of New York’s Hudson River basin which runs parallel to it.

The Black Dog of Hanging Hills

One of two dark-colored canine specters haunting the wildlands of Connecticut, this entity is an unusual spin on the standard “black dog” ghost story that originated in English folklore. Whereas most other ghostly hellhounds are large harbingers of doom with glowing red eyes, like the Barghest, Black Shuck, and the Church Grim, the pup that haunts the rock formations overlooking the city of Meridian in New Haven County is said to resemble a small, friendly terrier. Those who have survived encounters with the apparition have reported that it leaves no footprints, makes no sounds even when visibly barking or howling, and has sad eyes.

Despite its adorable appearance, there is a curse associated with the Black Dog that is best summarized by this folk rhyme: “And if a man shall meet the Black Dog once, it shall be for joy; and if twice, it shall be for sorrow; and the third time, he shall die.” If local folklorist David Phillips is to be believed, six deaths can be directly attributed to that fateful third meeting with the Black Dog of Hanging Hills. The most recent victim is said to be an alpine climber who fell to his death from West Peak on Thanksgiving Day, 1972 (none of the sources I’ve consulted gave his name, however, so it’s difficult for me to verify it).

The story that popularized the legend was published in the Connecticut Quarterly in 1898 by W.T.C. Pynchon (grandfather of notoriously reclusive postmodern novelist Thomas Pynchon). He tells of a pair of geologists named Herbert Marshall and “F.S.” who encountered the phantom dog throughout the 1890s. F.S. first saw the creature in 1891 on a research trip in the Hanging Hills. He next encountered the animal in 1894 when Marshall was accompanying him. Marshall had seen the Black Dog twice before and ended up falling to his death. F.S. would return to the hills in 1897, and his broken body was found in almost the exact same spot where Marshall landed years before.

Many versions of this story claim that Pynchon was Marshall’s accomplice during this morbid misadventure. In reality, Pynchon lived until 1910, when he succumbed to pneumonia in Oyster Bay, New York. Indeed, most folklorists who have looked into the legend tend to agree that Pynchon invented the story out of whole cloth, as he clearly labeled it a fiction narrative in the original publication.

That hasn’t stopped some actual eyewitness accounts from trickling out of the Hanging Hills in the years since. For instance, an anonymous commenter on this Blogspot article claims to have seen the Black Dog run across the road in front of his car while taking some friends on a nighttime drive over Castle Craig. Another sighting report comes from TheGlawackus on r/ghoststories, who claims to have sighted the ghostly pup while hiking on Castle Craig with his girlfriend in 2014. He says the creature appeared blurry as it crossed the trail in front of them, “almost as if Mother Nature had taken the dog in a Photoshop program and used the blur effect on it.” He added that it looked exactly like the illustration accompanying Pynchon’s original story.

So keep a sharp eye out if you ever go hiking in the Hanging Hills. True, it’s likely that most black dogs you encounter up there are just strays or simply accompanying their owners. But you never know…

The Black Fox of Salmon River

Connecticut’s other ghostly black canine tends to take a much more active role in the curse it places on those who try to hunt it, often with deadly consequences.

Black foxes, also known as silver foxes or blue foxes, have historically been highly prized among fur trappers due to their rarity, with some Indigenous fur trappers in New England getting paid as much for one black fox pelts as they were for 40 beaver pelts. According to some native legends, however, there was more to these animals than met the eye. One Narangansett legend, recorded by Rhode Island founder Roger Williams in his 1643 book A Key into the Language of America, tells of black foxes often being seen and never caught because they were actually manitous (the Algonquin equivalent of gods, spirits, and divine powers).

As English settlers settled around Salmon River, they began to tell stories of one such fox, which would drive anyone who saw it mad with the desire to kill it and take its beautiful black pelt for themselves. The fox would lead the hunters on a wild goose chase through the woods, turning intangible so that bullets couldn’t hurt it, and eventually slip away entirely, leaving its pursuers lost and alone at best or dead from the many hazards of the great outdoors at worst.

The Black Fox was immortalized in two different poems composed by two different New England writers, one by John G. C. Brainerd sometime before he died in 1828 and the other by John Greenleaf Whitter in 1831. They tell similar stories of white hunters going after the fox, ignoring warnings from their Indigenous neighbors, and dying in the attempt. Whitter’s version adds elements like the fox being the spirit of a chief cursed to wander due to some unknown crime and the fox’s den being a black cloud that moves just as swiftly as its owner.

Basically, the moral of this story is that if you see a black fox somewhere around the Salmon River region and start thinking you might take that pelt for yourself, don’t.

The Charles Island Guardian

An aerial view of the island, courtesy of YouTuber Stephen Stockmal

Charles Island, located in the coastal waters of New Haven County near Milford, has been subject to stories of hauntings and curses ever since English settlers “bought” it from Ansantawae, chief of the Indigenous Pagusset tribe, in 1639 for six coats, ten blankets, one kettle, 12 hatchets, 12 hoes, 24 knives, and 12 small mirrors. It has since allegedly been cursed not once, not twice, but three times!

The first curse was laid on the island the Pagusset knew as Poquehaug shortly after the purchase when the natives tried to wrest control of the island, which they considered sacred ground, back from the English. When the conflict escalated to the point that the chief’s daughter was kidnapped, the chief declared that “any shelter will crumble to the ground, and he shall be cursed.” None of my sources have confirmed whether or not Ansantawae was the chief in question.

The second was laid by none other than the illustrious pirate Captain William Kidd, who allegedly buried some of his treasure there in 1699 while en route to Boston, where he would be arrested for piracy and murder. He cursed the buried treasure, promising certain death to anyone who disturbed it.

The third curse is associated with the treasure of Cuauhtemoc, the last emperor of the Aztecs. The legend goes that five Mexican sailors stumbled across the treasure in a cave in 1721 and subsequently transported it to Milford, where four of them died of unknown causes. The sole survivor, fearing that the late emperor had laid a curse on the treasure, buried it on Charles Island, thus leaving the island cursed yet again.

The island has since come to be nicknamed “Hard Luck Island” due to the misfortunes that have occurred whenever someone tried to set up a home or a business on its shores. Among the businesses that failed were the first attempt to grow tobacco in Connecticut and a post-Civil War attempt to make a factory that produced fertilizer from dead fish. A Dominican Order monastery, built in the 1930s, was abandoned after a few years due to a string of mysterious deaths, and the island has been abandoned since.

Stories of the island being haunted by the ghosts of Pagusset braves and Dominican monks have persisted ever since. The most dramatic ghost story from the island involves two treasure hunters who dug up an iron chest on the island in 1850. No sooner had they hoisted the chest from the ground when they were startled to see a headless flaming skeleton descending from the sky, screeching and whistling them and spraying them with blue flames as it landed in the pit. The terrified treasure hunters fled the scene, and when they returned the following day, they found their shovels missing and the dirt where they had dug up the treasure smooth as glass. Depending on the version of the story, it either ended with them being committed to an insane asylum or decapitated by the ghosts of Indigenous warriors.

Nowadays, the island is part of Silver Sands National Park and, thanks to its status as a bird sanctuary, is off-limits to visitors between May and August so as not to disturb the endangered bird nests. It is connected to the mainland by a thin causeway at high tide, and visitors are warned to be cautious, as the high tide can quickly sweep an unwary tourist away to a watery grave if they aren’t careful.

Connie

Connie is the name that locals have bestowed upon the hundred-foot serpent that supposedly prowls the waters of the Connecticut River, which winds its way 406 miles south from Fourth Connecticut Lake in New Hampshire (just south of the border with Quebec) until it discharges its sediment into Long Island Sound between Old Saybrook and Old Lyme. This makes it the longest river in New England; long enough to hide a massive serpent, perhaps?

The earliest reports of serpent activity in the river come from the September 8, 1886 edition of the New York Times. The story tells of two fishermen named Colonel Stocking and Silas Sage, who were rowing across the river at 6 a.m. when something struck their tiny vessel with enough force to throw it out of the water. Upon landing, they were greeted by a “big black head” with “eyes as big as small plates” that rose ten feet from the water. Upon reaching the shore, the two men’s story drew a crowd to the shore, who saw the creature rear its head fifteen feet, trailing 100 feet of coils behind it.

The Boston Herald reported another equally dramatic sighting in the spring of 1894. Austin Rice, an elderly farmer from Deerfield, Massachusetts, was walking across a covered bridge when he saw “a big snake” in the water about 25’ away. He got a good look as the serpent reared its head 6-7 feet out of the water. It was black with a white stripe running down its underside, eyes as big as a horse’s, a neck as thick as a man’s leg, and a body as thick as an average stovepipe. He observed that the beast easily swam against the current. It lashed out at Rice when he tried to approach it. It was startled by the sound of hammers from a group of boys working on a nearby houseboat and, after rearing its head ten feet above the water, dove under and vanished from Austin Rice’s sight forever.

Apart from some notable sightings near White River Junction in 1995 and West Hartford Reservoir No. 1 in 2008 (where a resident claims to have photographed a strange creature with a long, spiky tail), Connie seems to have kept a low profile since then. Many locals believe that the serpent makes its home inside the Hog River Tunnel under the capital city of Hartford. Others believe it is a sea serpent that periodically swims upriver, like salmon or the Atlantic sturgeon. Whatever one believes, its clear that the legend of the Connecticut River Monster lives on.

The Danbury Frog People

Image credit: Kaitlyn Bullock on DeviantArt

This family of mutant humanoids is said to reside in Fairfield County, either in the towns of Danbury or Bethel. They are said to resemble frogs, with large and lemon-shaped heads, eyes on the sides, thin and crusty lips (sometimes said to be covered in sores), wide mouths, and slitted nostrils. They have thin and patchy hair and gangly torsos. As one can imagine, they are also said to be reclusive shut-ins who rarely interact with the outside world.

There are numerous reports of Danbury locals seeing them either in public or at their residences. For instance, Redding resident Curtis Gwinn gave his own accounts to the writers of Wierd New England. The first involves him leaving food on their doorstep as part of a Meals-On-Wheels type program (as they wouldn’t come out to greet them) and hiding in the bushes to catch a glimpse, only to see a hand come out the door. Hines goes on to say that he saw two of them at a grocery store, a man and a young girl. “If you saw them from behind, they would look totally normal,” he writes, “but if you turn one around, it’s a monster! I know it sounds mean, but they did look like two frogs.”

Several outlandish theories about the source of their mutations have been posed, ranging from inbreeding to aliens to a new human species, possibly related to the Connecticut Melonheads. Some have pointed to Crouzon syndrome as an explanation for their strange appearance. Going by the images on Wikipedia, though, I feel people with that condition resemble Marty Feldman of Young Frankenstein fame more than frogs (although his condition was the result of thyroid eye disease).

In any case, I felt from the moment I first looked into this story that this was more a case of otherwise normal humans being ostracized due to their unusual appearance rather than a case of supernatural high strangeness. Indeed, reading the accounts posted in the comments of this Damned Connecticut article on the Melonheads, it would seem this is a family suffering the effects of social marginalization, including alcoholism, isolation, and even physical and sexual abuse. So, if you’re thinking of trying to sneak around their property trying to catch a glimpse, maybe think twice before you go harassing them.

The Downs Road Monster

Image credit: Chris Garafola for newstimes.com

This road, which used to connect the New Haven County towns of Hamden and Bethany, now lies abandoned for large stretches of its length, with gates enclosing both ends of the unpaved section. It has since garnered a reputation as one of the state’s most haunted locations, spawning reports of ghostly children, farmers, and Native Americans, and even a colony of Melonheads.

The Downs Road Monster is said to be a Bigfoot-type creature that lurks in the woods around the road. Some reports claim it is 4-5 feet tall and covered in white hair. More skeptical reports claim the stories stem from an albino horse that escaped from a local farm. In any case, the monster is said to be highly territorial, with some rumors claiming that it killed a couple who had parked there for a bit of privacy.

Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger, in episode 152 of their New England Legends podcast, speculate that that story may have spawned from a series of murders that occurred on the road around Christmastime in 1855. The morbid tale centers on 69-year-old Rhonda Wakeman, who claimed to have been resurrected thirty years before after her husband beat her to death and was now tasked by Jesus and his angels with preparing the world for His second coming. That holiday season, Wakeman started experiencing horrible aches and pains, which she blamed on Justus Matthews, a former devotee of hers who had strayed from the cult. Two days before Christmas, two other members of the cult blindfolded Matthews, bound his hands behind his back, and beat him to death with a large stick.

Another tragedy fell on New Year’s Day, 1856, when Matthew’s nephew, Charles Stanford, likely driven mad with grief, went on an unexpected killing spree. He attacked 70-year-old Enoch Sperry in his horse-drawn sleigh with an axe with enough force to partially decapitate the hapless farmer. He then broke into the home of another 70-year-old named Ichabod Umberfield, where he attacked a woman who managed to flee with her young child. Ichabod, who was out chopping wood, ran back inside upon hearing the commotion, where Stanford killed him next to his fireplace. Thankfully, he was apprehended shortly afterward and sentenced to hang, although he died of smallpox before he made it to the gallows.

While privately owned, Downs Road is available for hiking with a permit. Some locals claim the stories surrounding the abandoned lane are exaggerations. Others claim that there is definitely something odd going on there. One commenter on Damned Connecticut, Mako Ruu, claims that her mother saw a Bigfoot-type creature standing 15 feet away from her when she and her friends were having an illicit teenage get together in the woods near the road. Even if all the supernatural stuff is fake, though, many residents agree that the road has an eerie and oppressive feel with all the abandoned structures surrounding it.

The Faceless People of Monroe

In the small town of Monroe in Fairfield County, there rests a dilapidated farmhouse where its elderly caretaker can be seen working on the land when he isn’t chasing curious onlookers off the property. Locals who have seen the lights on at night claim he isn’t alone, though, for he is allegedly the caretaker of a group of humanoid beings with no faces. Their heads are bald, their eyes are covered with a thin membrane of skin, their ears are mere holes, their noses are small bumps with no nostrils, and their mouths are small with thin, almost nonexistent lips.

They seem to keep inside during the daytime, although they’ve been seen walking out in the woods after dark or occasionally crossing the road in front of startled motorists. Indeed, with deformities like that, it’s probably no wonder their caretaker prefers a reclusive existence. What society would ever feel totally at ease with a faceless person?

Theories about their origin range from inbreeding to stranded extraterrestrials to being related to the Melonheads in some way. Whatever they are, though, let’s hope they’re happy with their isolated existence, especially for their sake.

Glawackus

Image credit: Scatha-the-worm on DeviantArt

This fearsome critter, also known as the northern devil cat, is said to lurk around the forests surrounding Glastonbury in the Capitol Planning Region (formerly Hartford County). It resembles a cross between a bear, a panther, and a lion, with fur colored black and tawny brown, and is said to hunt using echolocation thanks to its blindness. Those who look into its eyes are said to experience memory loss. While its stature is diminutive (four feet long and two-and-a-half feet tall), its piercing howl is anything but.

Its story began on January 15th, 1939, when the Hartford Courant reported on a strange creature spotted by a posse that had set out to find an animal that had been uttering blood-curdling howls in the night. When the hunters set dogs on it, it killed some of them and wounded the rest with its claws. It was blamed for livestock deaths, most notably a goat belonging to George Hutchinson, and was the subject of a wave of “Glawackus hunts” across the Berkshire mountains over the next few months.

A pair of local cave explorers, Clay Perry and Roger Johnson came forward to claim they had chased the beast from its original lair in Indian Oven Cave near Ancram, New York, to the Twin Lakes region near Salisbury in Litchfield County. There, Johnson took it down with a bullet to the chest, and the group even posed the creature for a photograph. Needless to say, the whole story was a hoax, with the two eventually admitting that they made their taxidermied Glawackus from a ladies’ fur muffler. Even so, Glawackus sightings continued to be reported, sometimes across the border into Massachusetts, until the 1950s.

Theories as to what Glastonbury residents saw that winter are varied. Some say a mountain lion or a similar big cat escaped from an exotic animal collection. Others say it was a misidentified bobcat. One of the most compelling theories is that the Glawackus was actually a fisher, a large mustelid that was otherwise extinct in Connecticut in 1939 and thus would have been unfamiliar to the average Nutmegger. The mountain lion seems the most likely to me, however, given their infamous howls that often resemble human screams.

The Higganum Mucket

This deranged fish has been described as Connecticut’s answer to the Loch Ness Monster. Dwelling within Candlewood Hill Brook in Middlesex County, it measures 18” in length and resembles a catfish with a lizard-like head sprouting inch-long horns from its skull. It is said to have fierce eating habits, crawl on land (where it often knocks over garbage cans), and leap a dam in a single bound. Its bite is also said to be venomous, although the worst effect it causes in humans is alopecia.

The principal propagator of the legend these days is Arthur Wiknik Jr., a local also known for writing about his experiences in the Vietnam War. He remembered hearing stories about the Higganum Mucket throughout the 1950s and 60s and, correctly believing that such a story would put Higganum on the map, wrote a trilogy of “Mucket Mania” stories, starting in 1982. He would include many wild tales of humans battling the gruesome fish, including one in which a local fire department accidentally sucks up dozens of muckets while drawing water from Candlewood Hill Brook to fight a blaze and returns the next day to find the ruins covered with fried muckets with their tails pointing skyward.

Nowadays, the Higganum Mucket has been embraced by the residents of its home hamlet as their village mascot, with entire festivals and middle school art contests dedicated to the creature. As selectwoman Kate Anderson puts it, “It’s our history. Sure, it’s a myth, but it’s something unique to us. It’s a conversation starter. It’s interesting, too, that it’s bringing out even more stories from third-generation families who’ve been in town for 300 years.”

The Melonheads

Image credit: NocturnalSea on DeviantArt (also, visit his blog if you're so inclined)

The Connecticut iteration of the common Melonhead legend mainly centers on Fairfield County and offers two possible origin stories. The first tells of a mental hospital (either Fairfield Hills Hospital or Garner Correctional Institute) that burned down in the 1960s after about a century of operation. When the bodies were all recovered, about ten to twenty were unaccounted for. These missing inmates are said to have fled into the woods, where they resorted to cannibalism and inbreeding to survive. This produced the swelled heads that gave this group of humans their name.

A more uniquely New England spin on the legend traces its origin back to the colonial era, in which a family from the Shelton-Trumbull region were banished by their Puritan overlords for suspected involvement in witchcraft. In either case, the result was the same; deformed humans with small statures, long and spindly limbs, crooked teeth, and bald bulbous heads who live like wild animals eating whatever they can catch, sometimes including people.

The Connecticut Melonheads’ territory is said to center on a street called Dracula Drive, which has a semi-mythical status since no one can seem to agree on its location. The Wikipedia article on the legend offers seven candidates. The book Weird New England (page 63) favors Velvet Street (running between Trumbull and Monroe) and even provides a few eyewitness accounts. Megan O’Connell claims that a group of Melonheads stole her friend Deb’s blue Ford Granada in the early 80s while she and several high school classmates were hiking down Velvet Street looking for a house where the misshapen humanoids were said to live. The Granada is still said to be in their possession to this day. An account from Shannon Noonan claims that her father saw a Melonhead mother and baby sitting in a car in a parking lot when he was a teenager. Still other stories tell of voices and strange figures being spotted lurking around Saw Mill Road in Shelton by road workers and foresters.

It should probably be noted that Melonhead stories can often strike an ableist tone to more socially conscious ears, as they frequently rely on negative stereotypes of mentally ill and disabled people as unstable and just one trigger away from devolving into bloodthirsty monstrous psychopaths. For better or worse, however, the legend lives on.

The Mystic Pigman

The small seaside town of Mystic in New London County is famed as a popular tourist destination, especially its Seaport, the largest maritime museum in the United States. It is also allegedly home to another iteration of the wide-ranging Pigman urban legend.

Details about this version of the legend are a bit harder to come by. The most I’ve been able to ascertain is that the story stems from an incident in the 1970s in which a group of high school boys were biking across the famous Mystic River Bascule Bridge when they claimed they saw a woman being drowned in the river by a large man. When they ran up trying to confront the would-be murderer, they were shocked to see that he had the face of a pig. The Pigman stared menacingly at the terrified teenagers before he dumped the body and then dove in after her, never to resurface.

If this article talking about Mystic’s tourist attractions (including its local ghost tour) is to be believed, there are records of a woman going missing in the area around that time, and her body was never recovered. Still, the Pigman had the decency to take his own life after, so there’s no chance of him striking again, right? Right?!

The Noroton River Monster

In contrast to its cousin in the Connecticut River, which has the longest river in New England to stretch its fins out, the Noroton River Monster only gets a measly nine-mile-long stretch of water within the Fairfield County panhandle. Yet, for a short period around 130 years ago, there was a serpentine monster terrorizing the residents of Stamford and Darien with its loud hiss, coal black head, and long red tongue.

The first news reports about the serpent appeared in the Boston Daily Globe on August 18, 1889, which claimed that the beast was first spotted eight days before by a clam fisher named Mr. Ruscoe, who claimed to have seen a black snakelike head rise out of the water beside his boat, connected to a body that was pale green. Ruscoe was so terrified that he dropped his clamming forks, rowed for the shore, and ran for a mile until he was too exhausted to go further.

The Daily Globe claims that a dozen more people saw the beast over the next few days, including four women who also ran screaming into the woods and a landlord named Miller, who saw the beast from a tavern he owned near the bridge. However, as this Patch.com article notes, there are no corroborating articles about this incident from any local papers or the New York Times. In addition, when the article’s author reached out to several local historians, they claimed they had never heard of the Noroton River Monster. As such, the author concludes, it’s rather likely that the whole incident was either a hoax or caused by a misidentified wildlife specimen, like an oarfish.

Even if it is a fraudulent tale, it’s still one hell of a fish story.

The Old Saybrook Blockheads

Image credit: NocturnalSea on DeviantArt (also featured in the May 2018 issue of *Cryptid Culture* magazine)

The Old Saybrook Blockheads, who descended upon the coastal community in Middlesex County during the holiday season in the late 50s, could be considered Connecticut’s answer to West Virginia’s Flatwoods Monster, and they even manage to somehow be weirder.

The story goes that on the night of December 16, 1957, a retired teacher named Mary M. Starr was woken up around two or three in the morning by a bright light shining through her bedroom window. When she got up to see where the light was coming from, she saw what she thought was a downed airplane at first, only to realize it was a UFO hovering above her clothesline.

She saw two incredibly strange-looking creatures through the craft’s large square windows. They had rubbery bodies shaped like hoopskirts, featureless arms that had no visible hands, and transparent cube-shaped heads with bright red orbs suspended in the middle. Starr did not notice any legs and estimated that the Blockheads stood about four feet tall.

As Starr continued observing the Blockheads’ vehicle, the windows suddenly faded out of existence, the hull started glowing, and an antenna rose from its top. The glow faded, the antenna retracted, and the UFO seemed to take a complex path through the sky before shooting straight upward into space. As far as we know, the Old Saybrook Blockheads were never seen again.

Pterodactyls

Around two decades after the Glawackus first showed up in their neighborhood, the residents of Glastonbury had a new cryptid problem to deal with, this one being of a more prehistoric persuasion.

The first mention of the Glastonbury Pterodactyl (described as gray or brown with a 6-8 foot wingspan and a long tail) was in a January 1956 newsletter from the Glastonbury Sportsmen’s Association, in which its newly elected president, Richard S. Porter, declared a major hunt to track down the beast on the 21st of that month. Two GSA members who had previously witnessed the flying creature, including E.H. Tyrol, were named as the leaders of the hunt. While a few hunters claimed to have caught glimpses of the winged terror, and Herbert Clark claimed to have found tracks (with one foot webbed and the other clawed, oddly enough), no one was able to capture or kill the beast.

Needless to say, no one was able to serve any pterosaur meat at the GSA’s annual community dinner on the 28th. That didn’t stop Thomas E. Murphy from publishing a recipe for cooking pterodactyl meat, which reportedly consisted of:

-1 lb. of ground pterodactyl meat

-1 onion

-5 carrots

-1 1/2 cup of water

-1 tsp of salt

-1 tsp pepper

-46 oz of vegetable juice

Like with every other “living dinosaur” story from cryptozoological lore, it’s hard to imagine how a living pterosaur population managed to survive undetected in the 66 million years between the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event and the 20th century. Indeed, a part of me wonders if this was nothing more than a hoax perpetrated on the GSA or if it was some kind of publicity stunt. Still, I must admit that the “pterodactyl meat recipe” sounds mighty tasty.

The Winstead Wildman

The small Litchfield County town of Winsted is mainly known for being Ralph Nader’s birthplace and a terrifying humanoid beast known as the Winsted Wildman that left the city in a panic in the late 1800s.

The story began in August 1895 when town selectman Riley Smith approached the Winsted Herald with a harrowing tale. Smith claimed to have been picking berries along Lowsaw Road when his bulldog snarled and cringed at his side. Then, the reason for the dog’s unusual behavior lept out of the nearby brush. Smith described the creature as six-foot tall nude man who was heavily muscled and covered in thick black hair. The man screamed at Smith, leaving him and his dog paralyzed with fear before he ran off into the forest.

The Wildman was reportedly seen by at least two other residents, and reporters from as far away as Boston and New York City descended upon the town looking for the hairy creature. However, the panic soon died down, and the Winstead Wildman was gone as quickly as he first arrived.

That is, until July 1972, when two teenagers reported seeing an eight-foot-tall hairy man walk into the woods near a barn between Winchester Street and the Crystal Lake Reservoir. The Wildman’s most recent appearance was in September 1974, when two couples parked along the Rugg Brook Reservoir reported seeing a “six-foot 300-pound creature covered in dark hair.”

Several explanations have been proposed as to the Winsted Wildman’s true identity. Some say it was a Bigfoot. Others say it was an escaped mental patient, with some identifying Arthur Beckwith, a recent fugitive from Litchfield Sanatarium, as the culprit. Others, like Ray Bendici of Damned Connecticut and Brandon T. Bisceglia of the Hartford Skepticism Examiner, have argued that the whole incident was embellished by the Herald’s then-editor Louis Timothy Stone in order to sell papers, a common practice at the time. The later sightings, they say, could easily be explained by black bears and the fact that the Bigfoot legend was at the height of its popularity in the 1970s.

Regardless of whether it was a hoax or not, though, the Winsted Wildman lives on as one of Connecticut’s most popular cryptids.

Well, that’s all I have for this state. As with some of the other states, there were some cryptids that I couldn’t find much information about, even in the Connecticut Cryptids book, like the phantom alligators or the Lion Rock Guardian (which is apparently another guardian of Captain Kidd’s treasure. The guy must have handed out pirate treasure like he was Oprah). In addition, Monica Gallagher misplaced the Moore Lake Thing in Connecticut when Moore Reservoir is actually on the border between New Hampshire and Vermont. Indeed, I may be adding more cryptids to previous articles in the near future (including this one, as I haven’t really gotten a proper look at Connecticut Cryptids yet).

You can find out the details of that plan when I write an update post later this week. You’ll also find out how I plan to bring the Jurassic Park retrospective out of development hell, whether or not I have anything special planned for Halloween, and whatever other nonsense I plan to get up to in the following months. I can assure you that I also hope to make a new “Cryptids of North America” entry on New Jersey before the spooky season is over, so you can look forward to that.

Happy legend tripping!