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The United States of Cryptids

A Tour of American Myths and Monsters

J. W. Ocker

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social-science

Introduction

  • A cryptid is a creature or species whose existence is scientifically unproven. Maybe it’s been witnessed or rumored to exist, maybe it’s even been caught on video, but there is no definitive physical evidence to examine: no body to dissect, no remains to analyze. Scientists place those creatures in the category of fantasy instead of zoology. Cryptozoologists, though, who study and pursue cryptids, place them in the entirely separate category of cryptozoology.May 10 2024 12:36PM
  • A cryptid can even be an ordinary animal that is supposedly thriving where it couldn’t be, like a population of alligators in the Manhattan sewers, or freshwater octopuses.May 10 2024 12:37PM
  • But sanctifying your snallygasters isn’t just tourist-trapping or trappings for tourists. Embracing a local monster can bring a community together around a shared identity. Outside of sports teams, that can be difficult to come by these days. But if you’re the town that found a giant turtle living in your local pond in the 1970s or were attacked by a vampire cat in the 1950s? That’s yours alone to own, and you can name a park after it, theme a business around it, build a museum or a statue honoring it, and propose legislation to protect it and its habitat. Wherever cryptids are celebrated, the story is so much more important than the science.May 10 2024 1:08PM
  • Many who love cryptids love them more as symbols of the natural world than as secrets of it. Cryptids are hopeful concepts: hope that the world is still a diverse place full of discovery. Hope that humankind hasn’t zoned every square inch of the planet for McDonald’s franchises. Hope that we haven’t grown bored with our mother planet, that she still harbors wonders for us. Cryptids exist: as stories, as monuments, as symbols.May 10 2024 1:09PM

Chapter 2

  • The wampahoofus is a large mammal of vague description, possibly like a deer or a goat or even a boar. The ambiguity is due to the fact that documented encounters are rare or nonexistent. Its defining characteristic, though, is its legs. They are shorter on one side than on the other. On flat land, those uneven legs make the beast like a bicycle without a kickstand—unable to hold itself upright. However, the asymmetry is uniquely adapted to the steep hills and mountains that are its natural terrain.May 10 2024 1:12PM
  • Tyron quotes a man by the name of Bill Ericsson from North Haven, Maine, to explain how these lopsided creatures might have migrated across flat land to mountains in other states. According to Ericsson, the beasts compensated for their shortened sides by leaning those short sides against each other, with their longer legs on the outside, stabilizing each other “like a pair of drunks going home from town.” Nature finds a way.May 10 2024 1:12PM
  • Other accounts claim that males and females have opposing short sides (left for females, right for males). That means males can only travel clockwise around a mountain and females counterclockwise, meeting at opportune times to mate. Still others believe that which sides are short and which are long is a random trait and not a marker of sex. That means any two wampahoofuses can meet, and when they do (and if they are not ready to start a family), they must fight to the death since neither can turn around.May 10 2024 1:12PM

Chapter 4

  • This puts Perry, New York, in an extremely strange position: it’s a town that celebrates either a lake monster that never existed, or a hoax that never happened. Which is a super-cool predicament—but hard to edit down into a town motto.May 10 2024 1:22PM

Chapter 5

  • The story of the Jersey Devil is a strange one: part colonial folklore, part classic cryptid sighting, and part supernatural boogeyman. It begins on a stormy night in 1735, in what would become the town of Leeds Point on the coast of southern New Jersey (another name for the creature is the Leeds Devil). Mother Leeds was pregnant with her thirteenth child, a thirteenth child she wasn’t enthusiastic about. So she cursed it—and then she delivered a monster. It was horse-faced, long-necked, and horned, with bat wings, a forked tail, and two legs ending in hooves. And it was ferocious. It attacked everybody in the room, and then flapped up the chimney like a reverse Santa Claus into the storm to haunt the Pine Barrens.May 10 2024 1:22PM

Chapter 6

  • But Maine has something more interesting than a famous cryptid: it has a famous cryptozoologist. And that cryptozoologist has a great museum. The International Cryptozoology Museum is in Portland, Maine, of all the places in the world, simply because that’s where Loren Coleman lives.May 10 2024 1:25PM
  • Coleman, who’s in his mid-seventies, has been interested in cryptids for more than sixty years, ever since he watched the 1958 Japanese yeti film Half-Human, which fascinated him so deeply that he immediately headed to the local library and discovered the works of some of the founding fathers of cryptozoology: Ivan T. Sanderson, Willy Ley, and Bernard Heuvelmans. These days, it’s hard to find a cryptozoology book that doesn’t reference him or a cryptozoology documentary that doesn’t feature him, regardless of whether it’s a work of skepticism or fanaticism. He’s found a comfy niche between fringe and fact, caution and crazy, rigor and rebellion. He sees cryptozoology as a subdiscipline of zoology, not a pseudoscience, and not paranormal. He’s got no time for that level of weirdness. “I absolutely hate the Fresno Nightcrawler,” he told me.May 10 2024 1:25PM
  • he had to drive to gas stations in faraway towns and ask if anything weird had been going on in the area. “Information centers were the worst for that kind of information, but gas stations were great.”May 10 2024 1:26PM
  • “Also, most people are interested in bigfoot these days,” he continued. My ears perked up at that observation. Bigfoot has been a thorn in my side throughout this project. Every state seems to have a town that commemorates bigfoot, often over their more interesting local monsters, which is bad news for a book that needs a wide variety of cryptids to work.May 10 2024 1:27PM
  • Bigfoot are an invasive species. Coleman said, “They used to be interested in yeti and the Loch Ness Monster, and then all of a sudden, this California notion that there was some hairy creature out there became very popular. People started finding those stories in their backyards.”May 10 2024 1:27PM
  • I pressed him about that universal fascination with bigfoot, leading him with the idea that maybe bigfoot is more believable than other cryptids like, say, a lizard man or a hodag, but he gave me a much more surprising answer: “It’s narcissism. People are interested in themselves and what’s closest to them. And bigfoot is basically a wild human. People like Mothman because that’s scary and people like to be scared. That’s why there are horror films. But people would rather talk about bigfoot. When people come in here, and I ask them, ‘What’s your favorite cryptid?’ They almost always say, ‘Bigfoot!’ ”May 10 2024 1:27PM
  • The statement was, “a cryptozoologist needs to believe nothing but be open to everything.” “I still believe that,” he said. “I need to hear everyone’s stories. If someone says they saw a purple people eater, I want to hear it. Although it doesn’t mean that at the end of that process, it needs to go in a case file. When I sign books, I often sign them, ‘Enjoy the quest.’ ”May 10 2024 1:28PM

Chapter 26

  • The city of Norfolk, Virginia, has embraced the mermaid as its mascot, although no one in the city has ever seen one. The archetype of the mermaid spans the globe and dates back thousands of years. It is most often imagined as half woman, half fish (top and bottom, respectively), although there are various permutations on the form and gender. The mermaid is often considered more of a fantasy creature than a true cryptid, although cryptozoologists have posited various cryptids as the source of the mermaid myth—everything from undiscovered species of pale seals to aquatic primates.May 10 2024 1:40PM
  • On November 30, 1999, at a lunch event of 300 local business and government leaders, an attorney named Peter Decker (known locally as Uncle Pete) proposed an idea that his wife Bess had suggested to him after visiting Chicago. In the Windy City, Bess had witnessed the newly installed “Cows on Parade” public art exhibit, a series of 300 fiberglass cows dotting the city. They had been manufactured by the city and sold to local businesses, who then hired artists to decorate them. The goal of the exhibit was to encourage residents and tourists to visit all the cows, as well as the businesses and organizations that sponsored them. The event raised millions of dollars for charity and served as a unifying element for the city. The now-named CowParade has since gone global and been adapted by hundreds of cities.May 10 2024 1:41PM
  • At that Norfolk breakfast, though, they zagged away from the cow aspect and zigged toward the fantastical. “Why don’t we become Mermaid City?” they proposed. The Deckers liked the idea because mermaids were nautical, and Norfolk was definitely nautical. The idea was embraced, and the city cranked out 130 fiberglass mermaids for the ensuing event. The scaly women were designed to look like they were mid-swim, one arm outstretched in front, the other trailing back parallel to their flowing hair, with their fins kicked up so that their bodies formed the shape of a smile. Local businesses and artists transformed each one into a unique creation.May 10 2024 1:41PM

Chapter 29

  • The chupacabra is described as a three-to-four-foot-tall reptilian creature with a hunched shape similar to a kangaroo, sharp fangs not at all similar to a kangaroo, glowing red eyes, and a row of spikes down its back. It might be furred, or it might be scaly. Some even say it looks awfully similar to classic gray aliens with their domed heads and large eyes. The primary evidence of the existence of chupacabras is their victims: dead, exsanguinated farm animals with puncture wounds in their hides, as if their blood had been sucked out of them by desperate vampires. And that’s where the cryptid gets its name: chupacabra is Spanish for goatsucker.May 10 2024 1:39PM

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