Tag Archives: cryptid

The Crocodile Who Walks Like a Man

Age: 20

“On a stormy night a small charter plane was scheduled to land at Boeing Field.

Authorities have never been able to determine who chartered the plane – only that the pilot and passenger were carrying illegal animals into the country.

The plane hit bad turbulence and, after noting the plane losing altitude the radio tower reported hearing a voice in the background yelling something about “it getting out of its cage.”

There was no further radio contact, but a few minutes later the plane tried to make an emergency landing at Paine Field – but failed and went down deep in the woods.

When authorities found the crash site they only discovered the pilot’s body. Coroner’s reports indicated that he died not from the crash impact, but rather from ghastly bite wounds all over his body.

A zoologist from the Woodland Park zoo studied the bites and concluded that they were probably caused by something in the crocodile genus, but with no recorded bite pattern.

Since the crash there have been numerous reported sightings of the crocodile – always at isolated houses or locations deep in the forest.

One such house was originally thought to have been abandoned until clawed footprints were discovered in the flowerbed outside a shattered second story window.

The footprints – hind legs only – were soaked in aviation fuel leading authorities to speculate that the croc may well have mutated from long years of exposure to the runoff waste from Paine Field and the Boeing manufacturing facilities.

But the company denies any such possibility and insists that such stories are merely malicious rumor designed to slander their good name.

this is the story of The Crocodile Who Walks Like a Man that my dad would tell me and my siblings as kids.”

Context: The informant is from Washington state, which is home to many Cryptids. This could be due to the amount of wilderness that surrounds the state. The informant has shared that her father grew up hearing multiple wilderness cryptid stories, and he passed these stories to her when she was a kid. She considers herself a superstitious person, and believes in many of the cryptid stories she was told growing up.

analysis: This legend is a clear statement about how manufacturing facilities around wildlife is dangerous and harms the local communities around them. Its a warning about the predatory nature of big companies, and how little they care for the general publics health as well as the wildlife around them. In a literal sense, these facilities cause massive pollution and harm to the surrounding environment and the animals. There’s paranormal consequences to allowing these companies to invade, pollute and deforest. Its a classic example of folklore used to comment on an institution or company.

Mothman

Age: 19


Date of performance: 4/5/25


Language: English


Nationality: British American


Occupation: Full-Time Student


Primary Language: English


Residence: United States

Text:

The Mothman is a cryptid described to be dark and significantly big winged figure.

Context:

Located in West Virginia, there was a bridge built that the people adored, the Silver bridge in Mason County to be exact. So when the bridge collapsed into the river, theories begun to spur. Individuals, speculated that a cryptid known as the Mothman was to blame, claiming to have seen and heard the creature moments before the incident. Some even claimed to have been told by the Mothman himself that he was gonna take down the bridge.

Growing up, my informant heard a joke about Mothman, unaware of the cryptid until he asked his dad about the legend.

My informant doesn’t inherently believe the Mothman exists, but is intrigued about the amount of stories brought forth by the community that made it feel so real and almost believable.

Analysis:

I believe that the Mothman sightings are an interesting concept that can be perceived as real to those mislead by some of the stories spread around by it. The abundance of it all can be seen as overwhelming to those new to the cryptid, which I would be inevitable due to all of the person statements declaring his presence

The Demon Dog of Valle Crucis

The Informant

The informant (AW) lives in North Carolina and recalls a personal memorate encounter with this cryptid.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/HfwPEA4b2EKGPWYg6

There was no fencing around the cemetery, simply along the road.

Text

Outside of a small town called Valle Crucis (Valley of the Cross) up in the mountains of North Carolina is an old church along the 194 highway with a graveyard inhabiting an alleged “demon dog.” One evening, when the informant was traveling from his brother’s college to Valle Crucis, he passed by the church’s cemetery, and as his father was driving past the church, he gazed out and noticed a large shape blurring through the cemetery. At first, he mistook it for a black bear but thought it was strange for a bear to be in a cemetery at that hour, but as they got closer, he realized it was a large, black dog roaming through the headstones of the graveyard. Later, he encountered in a local newspaper discussing the Demon Dog of Valle Crucis as large as a man with smouldering eyes smoking with the fire of hell. His personal memorate assures at least the existence of a dog that could be mistaken for a “hellhound,” though he does not report anything about its “demon” nature.

Analysis

This particular memorate is interesting as the informant maintains his stance on superstitions instead of correcting for his cognitive dissonance. Despite the encounter and having made the connection between his encounter and the subsequent urban legend reported in the news, he comfortably reaffirms that he does not believe it was a demonic dog and has no answer for what it was. When I asked the informant if the “dog” was large enough to be mistaken for a bear, he responded “yeah, but you know, black bears aren’t that big.” As the informant does not actively believe superstitions, even an encounter with a supposed cryptid did not change his mind, and while he comfortably lives admittedly not knowing what he saw, he is certain that it’s probably not a hellhound but rather just a large dog that happens to be roaming a cemetery. That is a fair point as the origins of why this creature became a reported cryptid is likely not only due to its unusually large size but also its location of sighting being a church cemetery, lending itself to more soul and divine related superstitious interpretations by a fairly religious population. Ironically enough, belief in such a demonic entity on what should be a holy resting ground would also suggest that the church and by extension God is failing to protect the souls resting in the hallowed grounds from demonic invasion. This cryptid is a good example of how the folk are more likely to ascribe superstitious traits to strange coincidences when contextualized by a meaningful location such as a church cemetery.

Childhood Bigfoot sighting in San Bernardino Mountains

Nationality: American
Age: 25
Occupation: Student
Residence: Redlands, CA
Language: English

Text:

AB: “Okay, so when I was eleven years old, I remember I had spent a lot of time in elementary school fighting against the superstitions of the other kids, arguing with them that their beliefs weren’t real. Then one day, in the winter, I was snowshoeing with my younger brother in the San Bernardino Mountains.”

[Younger brother who was present at AB’s retelling]: “I was there?”

AB: “Yeah, you were. We were walking through the woodchip field in the forest. The snow was really deep and at some point we got separated. All of a sudden, I saw this large, dark figure walking in between two trees. I knew it was bigfoot because it was walking weird – they have this really weird way of walking, I’ve never been able to replicate it. Then because the snow was so deep, I fell down and it took me like two minutes to get back up because I was wearing snowshoes. When I looked back at the trees, there was nobody there. 

“I knew about bigfoot because I watched a lot of TV specials about him, discovery channel stuff. My friends had also told me about bigfoot. But then no one believed me when I told them about what I saw, and people kept making little snide comments about it. My family just won’t let it go even now. I would say I grew up in a very ‘scientific-minded’ community. So over the years from all this pestering from everyone, I just stopped believing in Bigfoot altogether.”

Context: Informant AB grew up in a rural community in Southern California called Forest Falls. His parents are both psychologists and members of the Seventh-day Adventist church, which is a Protestant Christian denomination that generally condemns belief in all supernatural beings except for demons, angels, God, and Satan. AB does not currently identify with Adventist beliefs and describes himself as agnostic. Among family and friends, AB is known for his sarcasm, intelligence, and argumentativeness. He is currently pursuing a doctorate of psychology at an Adventist university.

Analysis: AB’s story serves as a memorate to the legend of Bigfoot. The details he describes correspond with several popular characterizations of the cryptid (i.e. tall, dark fur, elusive, lives in forests). Interestingly, AB’s parents are both from the Pacific Northwest, where the legend of Bigfoot/Sasquatch has the most cultural weight in the contiguous United States. AB notes that he was not inclined to believe in any supernatural beings before his personal experience, and he then faced skepticism from his family and peers to such a degree that he felt forced to give up his belief once again. AB’s experience demonstrates the dynamics of folk belief in social circles that discourage ‘superstition’ and reflects dismissive attitudes towards children’s beliefs and experiences.

DeerMan

JC is a student who grew up in Topanga Canyon, a town in the mountains of LA. The area is surrounded by dense woods and tons of wildlife.

JC- In like 2020 in COVID when my friends and I wanted to hang out but we couldn’t hang out inside together, we would camp in my backyard and set up tents and all sleep in the tents overnight. I live in kinda a rural area and my backyard backs up to a hill that’s pretty wild, a type of woods. My friends and I developed this legend about this creature called the DeerMan, that comes out at night and terrorizes us while we’re sleeping. He’s half man half deer. I would mess with my friends by going out at night and tapping on their tents and stuff and then in the morning when we all woke up I’d be like ‘guys, did you hear the DeerMan last night?”. The lore extended and eventually, there became this second character. There used to be this owl that would hang out in a tree by my house and we all started calling him Skeekee the Wise and we built up this lore that Skeekee the Wise and DeerMan were mortal enemies and Skeekee the Wise is the defender of all things good and DeerMan is the perpetrator of evil, and the two of them are at a constant clash for power. Skeekee the wise was our protector.

Analysis: 

2020 has already been historically categorized as a very crazy and strenuous year. For the groups of graduating high schoolers across the country, it posed an even harder challenge. All of the things people had worked their whole lives to achieve suddenly didn’t matter in the blink of an eye. COVID was a mass trauma event, almost everyone alive was affected by it and is still dealing with the effects. It was a time that taught people the importance of having a support system and community, especially once those moments of connection are taken away. JC and his friends were lucky to have a way to still see and support each other through this hard time. DeerMan was a completely fictionalized character that existed only within the confines of this group of friends. Creating this character and having an evil figure to jokingly mess around with was a good way for the group to distract themselves from the problems they were facing. When they were hanging out, the only thing they had to worry about was DeerMan, all of the other things going on around them didn’t matter as much. This creature helped them release tension by pranking one another and distracting themsleves with its lore and details. Furthermore, Skeekee the Wise also served a similar, but opposite role, being the character that represented their hope and the promise that one is always protected and that good will always prevail. Having these characters with these themes to connect with was a healthy way for the friends to process what they were going through. From just being an owl that lives in a nearby tree to suddenly transforming into a figure of all that is good in the universe, Skeekee the Wise also perfectly shows the way that myths and cryptids are created all the time by everyone around us. Everything imagined has truth and reality instilled within it.