American Folklore Monsters
Flatwoods monster
In 1952 two brothers Edward and Fred May along with their friend Tommy Hyer said they saw a bright object cross the sky and land on a local farmer's land. The boys went and told people about what happened, along with a woman Kathleen May, two children Neil and Ronnie, and a National Gauds man Eugene Lemen went to the farm to investigate. They spotted a pulsing red light and used the flashlight in that direction and for a moment saw a tall man-like creature with a round red face with a pointed hoodlike shaped head. In an article for Fate Magazine, it was described as 10 feet tall with a round blood-red face and a large pointed hood-like shape around the face as well as eye-like shapes which emitted a greenish-orange light and a dark black or green body. May also said it had small claw-like hands and a head that resembled an ace of spades. It was said to make a hissing sound and then it glided towards the group which made Lemon drop his flashlight and then the group ran away.
Jersey Devil
The Jersey Devil is a creature that is said to live in South Jersey, it has differing appearances as some describe it as kangaroo-like or wyvern like and its head is like a horse or a goat with bat looking wings, horns, and small arms with claws and cloven hooves and a forked tail. It is said to be a fast feature and has a high-pitched blood-curdling scream. It is said the Jersey Devil began with a woman named Jane Leeds, she is said to have had twelve children and after she found she was going to have a 13th, in frustration said the child would be the devil. On the night she was giving birth on a stormy night the 13th child was a normal-looking child but later changed into a creature that growled and screamed hitting people with its tail before escaping. Other tales say Jane Leeds was a witch and her child's father was the devil.
Snallygaster
In the 1730s in the area of Fredrick County in Maryland, German immigrants settled there. At some point they describe the community being terrorized by a monster they called “Schneller Geist” meaning “Quick Ghost” in German. One of the first descriptions of it was a creature made up of half-bird features
The creature was said to be half reptile and half bird with a metal beak lined with sharp teeth, some versions of it say it had tentacles also. It would be rumored to swoop down without a sound and pick up its victims, carrying them away, and was said to suck the blood out of its victims. A seven-pointed star was apparently able to keep the creature away.
Theodore Roosevelt actually considered proposing his African Safari to hunt the Scallygaster but didn’t in the end. Newspapers in February and March in 1909 tell tales of encounters between local people and a creature with massive wings, a long pointed beak, claws like steel hooks, and one eye in the middle of its head. It was later revealed all these reports were a hoax by a newspaper editor who used German Folklore to create these stories.
Skunk ape
The Skunk- ape is described as an ape-like creature about 5–7ft tall and covered in reddish-brown hair. Its name is from its odor which is said to be close to skunks. The Bigfoot Feild Researchers Organization has claimed 333 sights in Florida, 137 from Georgia, and 100 from Alabama. Many stories of the ape-like creatures exist such as in 1818 when a report spoke of man-sized money raiding food stores and stalking fishermen. Another story of an ape creature was in 1942 where a report said it ran out and grabbed a man's car and hit the door for half a mile before going away.
Reports of Skunk Apes went from the 1950s to the 1970s and in the ’70s two sheriff deputies reported a tall ape-like animal stalking them and they fired at it to scare it off finding hair on a barbed wire fence after investigating. In 2000 the Country Sheriff Office received two anonymous photos showing what looked like a large hairy ape-like creature, an elderly woman had seen an ape-like creature stealing fruit from her trees in her backyard. In 2015 a video taken showed an ape-like creature walking through a marsh, it is said to look and move realistically and the location made a hoax more difficult.
Sidehill gouger
A Sidehill Gouger is a creature that lives on hillsides and has legs on one of its body shorter than the opposite side. This allows them to walk on hillsides but only in one direction and if they are lured or chased they will be trapped into walking in a circle forever. They normally live in hillside burrows and sometimes are depicted as laying eggs. They cannot stand up on level ground and if it sees another Gouger going the opposite direction they fight to the death.
Agropelter
The Agropetler is a creature said to live in hollow trees and to throw wooden splinters and branches at intruders. Some say it moves so quickly that it’s never been seen but a pioneer surveyor was captured by an Argopetler and fed raw fish until the man escaped. The creature is described as having a slender body and the face of an ape with muscular arms and can throw branches as fast as bullets. Another description said it has a head of a gorilla or some kind of ape and a body of a stretched-out starving bear. The Agropelter lives on a diet of birds such as the Owl and Woodpecker and rotten wood. It has pups and they are born on the 29th of February and always give birth to odd numbers.
