Cryptids of North America #11: Pennsylvania

The so-called “Keystone State,” so named for its importance as a center of politics during the American Revolution, is also well-renowned for Gettysburg (the site of one of the most famous and consequential battles of the American Civil War), its status as a central hub of the steel trade (which it lost in the major deindustrialization waves of the 70s and 80s), and its history of religious pluralism, owing to being founded by noted Quaker William Penn in 1681.

Perhaps this, along with the rich folklore of the German immigrants who became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, is what gave Pennsylvania the seventeen cryptids we will discuss in the latest stop of my supernatural road trip through these United States. Inspiration, as always, comes from the graphics created by Etsy artists Monica Gallagher and Kaitlyn Bullock. The book Monsters of Pennsylvania by Patty A. Wilson was also a significant help in the research phase.

Now let’s see what manner of ghouls and goblins are haunting the woodlands of the Allegheny Mountains.

Albatwitch

This 4-5 foot tall hairy hominid is said to lurk in the woodlands of Lancaster County, with its territory centered on Chickies Rock, a quartzite cliff overlooking the Susquehanna River. Their name comes from the Pennsylvania Dutch term for “apple snitch,” a reference to their love of apples, which they love to eat and then harass campers by throwing the cores at them. Some folklorists have speculated that the stories may have first come from encounters with escaped circus or zoo apes during the 1800s. Others argue that the creature comes from indigenous Susquehannock folklore, and that tribal warriors would decorate their war shields with its image. Still others think they’re related to Bigfoot.

Whatever its true identity, stories of encounters with the Albatwitch have been coming out of the area for centuries. Newspaper reports of the creature date back to the 1920s, with a notable surge of sightings between the 1950s and 1970s. One particularly harrowing encounter dating from the 80s involves a boy who got pinned to a tree by an angry Albatwitch, only for the hairy beast to run away when the boy’s father yelled at it. Throughout all this, a local tradition known as an “Albatwitch hunt” started, in which local youths tried to lure the creatures in with apples and catch them in a burlap sack. None appears to have been successful, though.

The Albatwitch really became a local celebrity in February 2002, when local paranormal investigator Rick Fisher claimed to have seen one while driving near Chickies Rock, standing in the middle of the road. Mistaking it for a lost child at first, Fisher was startled to see a stick-thin figure standing five feet tall, covered in dark hair, and eyes that glowed yellow in his high beams. Twelve years later, inspired by Point Pleasant, West Virginia’s celebration of the Mothman, Fisher and local historian Chris Vera started Albatwitch Day, hosted in the town of Columbia every October 14. The festival has proven to be a popular local attraction, with 5,000 attendees recorded in 2024. The popularity of the festival has gone hand in hand with a spike in Albatwitch encounters in the past few years, so the legend is probably not going away anytime soon.

The Beaver Run Snow Gator

This tale began as a simple case of a real animal being discovered far outside its natural habitat, but has since grown into a local legend.

The alligator was first spotted in Westmoreland County’s Beaver Run Reservoir in September 2011 by security guards. When the issue was raised with the state’s fish and boat commission, they were told not to worry, since the reservoir is off limits to the public due to pollution from fracking wastewater, and no residential homes were close enough to warrant concern about the gator potentially invading someone’s yard.

The initial plan was to simply let nature take its course once winter arrived, as the alligator likely wouldn’t survive the cold temperatures. That didn’t sit well with local resident Kendra Fouse, who started a Facebook campaign to rescue the cold-blooded creature, arguing that “it’s animal cruelty. It’s the same as leaving a dog out to die.” Municipal authorities agreed to let workers at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium search for the reptile in late October, but nothing turned up aside from a few footprints.

The winter of 2011 turned out to be unusually mild, however, with some officials believing the alligator may have survived. Thus, the door was left wide open for the gator to become something of a Loch Ness Monster type of legend for southwest Pennsylvanians. There hasn’t been any confirmed sightings of the misplaced archosaur since then, so who knows what really happened to it?

Bigfoot

You know the story with every state he’s visited so far: he’s big, he’s hairy, and if he’s not in a forest near you, he will be soon!

As always, a chronological list of notable Bigfoot sightings in the Keystone State:

Summer 1835: A Susquehanna County youth is out picking berries near Bridgewater Township (not to be confused with the borough of Bridgewater in Beaver County) when he is startled by a whistling sound coming from the bushes. He spins around and is surprised to see the source: a small humanoid creature about the size of an eight-year-old covered in black hair. The creature whistles at him again and runs off.

The diminutive whistler showed itself again two weeks later, this time to a sixteen-year-old Silver Lake resident as he was chopping firewood. The teenager was so shocked by its sudden appearance that he shot at it, at which point the creature fled into the woods.

December 1920: The town of Meiser in Snyder County is terrorized by a gorilla-like creature that breaks into people’s houses and steals their food or slaughters their livestock. The Bolig family is especially hard hit. First, fifteen-year-old Samuel Bolig shoots it in the chest, but it only seems to shrug it off. Then the ape returns on December 10, and when Samuel goes out to shoot it again, it attacks him, strangling him into unconsciousness and breaking his arm and dislocating his knee.

The creature is spotted as far south as Gettysburg in the following months and is described as being seven feet tall with brownish-black hair and thick lips. It mostly walks on two legs unless it needs to run, at which point it drops to all fours. Despite massive hunts and several men claiming to have shot the beast, it was never captured. The creature was last spotted on August 27, 1921, when it crossed the road in front of Ray Weikart’s horse-drawn carriage. Despite rumors of a gorilla escaping from a wrecked carnival train the previous summer, many cryptozoologists argue that its behavior and diet don’t match (ironically, despite their savage reputation, gorillas are mostly herbivorous).

Fall 1926: The “Murderous Monster of Brier Hill” terrorizes the farmers of Brier Hill and Masontown in Fayette County, leaving dozens of mutilated poultry, cow, and pig carcasses in its wake. Despite several armed posses going out to track the monster down, no one even saw the beast during the 1926 rampage. Twelve years later, though, three children ran into a nearby farm raving about a four-foot-tall “furry thing resembling an ape” that had chased them. There’s no solid evidence connecting this creature with the 1926 slayings, but you never know…

1973-74: A wave of Bigfoot sightings connected to UFO activity occurs across the state. It appears to have begun in Beaver County in August, when two teenage girls burst into their house, claiming they had seen an eight-foot-tall, hairy creature walking through the woods with red eyes and carrying a glowing sphere. Their father went out to investigate and thought he returned shortly afterward, only to be informed that he had been gone for hours. It is unknown if he ever recovered his memories.

Later that same month, near Greensburgh, a couple reported seeing a boomerang-shaped object hanging in the sky over the woods near their house, as well as a hairy, bipedal creature observing them from the trees. The creature didn’t react when the husband shot at it, and it soon walked away calmly.

The most dramatic encounter in this wave was the Stephen Pulaski incident of October 25. On that day, Pulaski, then 22, led a group of Greensburgh area farmers out to a field to investigate a mysterious red light hanging over his property. As they approached it, the light landed in the field and turned white. It was a dome-shaped aircraft about 100 feet in diameter. They were shocked to see two 7- to 8-foot-tall, hairy humanoids approaching the craft along the fenceline. Pulaski, beside himself with fear, shot one of them, causing it to emit whining sounds like an infant. The craft vanished, leaving only a bright glow.

The fearful farmers returned to the farm to call the police. When the officer arrived, he and Pulaski drove back to the spot where the UFO had been, which was still glowing. As they investigated, however, one of the hairy creatures charged at them, and they immediately booked it. The light blinked out of existence as they fled.

The group then called renowned paranormal investigator Stan Gordon. By the time he and his team arrived, the animals on the property were growing restless, especially near the area where the light had been earlier. The team’s initial investigations revealed no unusual activity. However, as they were making their way back to the farmhouse, Pulaski suddenly suffered a psychotic episode in which he chased his German Shepherd, growling like a wild animal, and then fell unconscious. He later claimed to have had visions of a man dressed in a dark cloak and hat carrying a sickle who claimed that “if man doesn’t straighten up, the end will come soon” and that “there is a man here now who can save the world.” Pulsaki had no history of mental illness or seizures beforehand.

Also worth mentioning is a bizarre incident from the western part of the state in February 1974, when a woman named Norma grabbed a gun to confront whatever was rooting around her garbage cans. She was startled to see a hairy giant standing right in front of her when she opened her back door, and she immediately fired point-blank into its chest. The creature cried out and then suddenly vanished from existence. When her daughter and son-in-law called shortly afterward, a terrified Norma begged them to come to her house. The son-in-law started walking (they only lived 200 yards away), only to stumble across a group of dark shapes with glowing eyes and shaggy hair that surrounded him at the halfway point. He heard screams that sounded like a cross between a cat’s meow and a shouting person, and immediately made a break for the safety of Norma’s house.

Bigfoot hunters don’t like it when you bring up sightings in the presence of UFOs or with obvious supernatural elements, as most are steadfastly convinced that the creatures are flesh-and-blood biological entities, despite a complete lack of scientific evidence for their existence.

February 2, 1978: York County resident Allen Hillsmeier was carting the garbage away from his house near Muddy Creek with his son Jeff when they noticed footprints in the snow. They have three toes and measure 16” long by 6” wide with a five-foot stride. The father-son pair tried following the tracks, counting over 2,000, before deciding they were getting too far away from the house. Reporters from the Bel Air, Maryland-based paper Aegis came to see the tracks for themselves. As they and the Hillsmeiers followed the trackway further, they came across a mutilated rabbit carcass and a tuft of dark brown, foot-long hair caught on a fence.

Bob Chance, a high school biology teacher who moonlights as a Bigfoot researcher, claimed to have encountered one six years earlier while hiking with some local teenagers, and that it had thrown a large rock at them. Other sighting reports rolled in from other York County residents. A Fawn Grove farmer claimed he saw an upright hairy creature that stood ten feet tall and gave off a horrible stench. A truck driver from Baltimore saw one sprinting across the road near the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station. At the same time, guards working at the plant reported being spooked by what sounded like pigs squealing in the woods, and found three-toed footprints when they went to investigate.

The creature would cross into neighboring Maryland, where it attacked a trio of German Shepherds guarding the Madonna Landfill and broke into a chicken coop in Jarretville. Back in Pennsylvania that December, a hunter reported seeing a seven-foot-tall humanoid crash through the brush, trying to escape the gunshots coming from the direction it was running. The hunter also reported finding three-toed tracks once it had left.

York County reportedly remains a hotspot for Bigfoot sightings to this day.

1979 onward: Ruth Frew began recording strange incidents that started a few months after her family moved to their new house in Bell Township, Westmoreland County. It started with strange growls and hissing coming from the woods from a creature they affectionately called “Mystery.” Suddenly, in spring 1981, they were startled by a loud screech from outside the living room window. Ruth’s husband, Sam, ran out with a rifle. Mystery continued shouting at him until he finally caught sight of the creature in his flashlight beam. Mystery was only four feet tall but was heavily muscled, with coarse hair and eyes that shone reddish-orange in the light. He fired off a shot, but missed.

Later, on August 1, Sam was spooked by what sounded like something walking alongside him as he hiked across the road. The unease turned to horror when he saw a twelve-foot-tall hairy creature walk across a clearing. A local youth later claimed that he saw a ten-foot-tall creature, covered in brownish-black fur, walk across a field near the Frew residence.

Bigfoot researcher Paul Johnson has become convinced that Bell Township is another hotspot for Bigfoot sightings. As recently as September 2006, a motorist named Lisa reported seeing a humanoid beast, approximately six feet tall with reddish-brown hair, run across Route 819 near Apollo. Sure enough, when Johnson went to the site to investigate, the Frew house was just over the hill.

Late 1970s: An elderly couple living in a trailer park in rural Allegheny County are perplexed by what sounds like large animals rummaging through the dumpsters one summer night. They are further spooked by screams coming from the woods. The husband decides to investigate the dumpsters, only to be startled by a seven-foot-tall creature covered in white hair and with glowing red eyes. Later that August, the husband goes to investigate a crashing sound on their front porch, only to have a heart attack when he sees the albino Bigfoot staring at him through the open front door. The police who arrive on the scene initially greet their story with skepticism, until a younger officer screams at the sight of the white Bigfoot climbing into the dumpster. The beast took off into the woods and never returned to the trailer park again.

Early 1980s: Eleven-year-old Eric Altman was camping with some friends at Camp Lutherlyn near Butler one night when they were awoken by a commotion from the counselors, who were shouting at something in the woods to stop scaring the children. As the boys struggled to make sense of what was happening, they heard something large moving through the trees as it made its way into the cornfield. As they retreated to the safety of the cabins, the boys heard rumors that Bigfoot had walked through the campsite.

September 6, 1985: A wave of sightings in East Pennsboro, Cumberland County, begins when Edward Kreamer, his girlfriend, and his cousin witness a 6.5-foot-tall, hairy beast walk across their property, emitting a smell reminiscent of rotting flesh. Kreamer later claimed to see a mother and a juvenile walk across the road in front of his car. Other witnesses would report seeing fangs in its jaws. The local authorities would seemingly unmask the sightings as a hoax on October 11 when a prankster wearing a fur costume and a fanged mask was busted on the roadside, but he insisted that he had only started his prank after the first sighting reports.

November 1993: A former Marine calling himself Dan was hunting on his uncle’s property in a remote region of Clearfield County when he was startled by a grunting cry, followed by what sounded like a large animal crashing its way through the brush in his direction. Dan never saw what it was, as his nerve failed him and he fled the scene, but he’s positive it was a Bigfoot encounter.

July 10, 2000: A Lawrence County resident was fishing in a stream near New Castle when a five-foot-tall white haired man-ape suddenly emerged from the brush and just stood there staring at him. Other reports of a similar creature would emerge from Lawrence and Beaver Counties throughout the years. A white-haired, red-eyed creature standing 6’10” showed itself to a woman near the county line on September 18, 2004, as she was letting her dog out, while a boy and his mother reported seeing one hopping in and out of the trees near New Castle on January 9, 2006. Several pets had been reported missing in their neighborhood over the past few weeks. This has led several investigators to believe that there might be a group of albino Bigfoots living in the region.

July 4, 2006: The Smith family, residing in Wysox, Bradford County, is returning from an Independence Day outing when they hear screams echoing through the woods, which they surmise are coming from three animals calling out to one another. The children decide to explore the woods the next morning and make a gruesome discovery: a dead deer with one of its front legs wedged into the fork of a tree, its back half mutilated and missing a leg, and showing signs of having been clobbered over the head with a large rock. The area is surrounded by broken branches, trees ripped out by their roots, and large, human-like footprints.

March 2007: A wave of sightings begins in the Chestnut Ridge region of the state, centering on Loyalhanna Creek. They started with a father and son who claimed to have heard strange sounds, such as chattering, whistling, and screaming, coming from the woods. An Iraq War veteran fishing at the creek to relieve his PTSD reported seeing a 7-8 foot tall hairy creature stop by the stream to get a drink at 3:30 in the morning on April 22, while several teenagers biking along a trail claimed to see one peering at them from behind the trees that May. The Chestnut Ridge is apparently a hotspot for Bigfoot sightings and other supernatural phenomena, so much so that it has been dubbed “the Twilight Zone of Pennsylvania.”

September 16, 2007: A trail camera owned by Rick Jacobs captures images of a strange creature in the Allegheny National Forest, sparking a brief media firestorm. They depict a large creature covered in black hair that appears to be walking on all fours but has long back legs and an eerily humanoid shape. It has since come to somewhat rival the infamous Patterson-Gimlin film as one of the most popular alleged Bigfoot photos of all time.

Most state wildlife officials insisted at the time that the photos depicted nothing more than a black bear with mange. According to Monsters in Pennsylvania, however, a park ranger actually saw the creature in person that October, eating berries in a field. He claimed that it had several features that didn’t match a typical black bear. He said it shuffled around an embankment on its hind legs for far longer than should have been possible for a bear, and that when it went down on all fours, the back legs were longer than the front, which is highly atypical for the species. Also atypical was the reddish tinge to the creature’s black hair, which, while not unheard of in black bears, tends to be more common in the northwest regions of the continent. The ranger added that he didn’t think it was Bigfoot, but was not sure that it was a black bear either.

Vanessa Woods, an Australian science journalist known for her research into the cooperative behaviors of chimpanzees and bonobos, argued that the creature in the photo was proportionally more similar to a chimp than a bear. It’s clear that whatever is in those trail cam photos is still an unsolved mystery to this day.

Paul Johnson has posited that there are multiple species of Bigfoot roaming around the Keystone State, based on the several reports of three-toed and four-foot-tall individuals in different areas. It’s a bold claim to make, given all the knocks against the creature’s whole existence mentioned in the Darren Naish article linked above. Still, it’s clear the skeptics haven’t stopped the reports from rolling in, as the BFRO has recorded sightings in the state as recently as February of this year.

Butler Gargoyle

This avian anomaly is a more recent addition to the cryptozoological canon, having first emerged in Butler County on March 18, 2011. A local businessman reported to cryptozoologist Stan Gordon that he had been driving on a quiet backroad between Chicora and East Brady when he stopped to let what he at first thought was a deer cross the road. The “deer” turned out to be an eight-foot-tall winged humanoid, with brownish leathery skin, a flat head, pointed ears, claw-like hands, and a muscular build. The witness was especially unnerved by how the creature didn’t even look at him as it crossed the road in just three steps.

That sighting would merely be the first in a wave that took place that spring. Eight days later, two witnesses driving near Kepple’s Corner saw the creature lope across the road in front of them. They described it has having a face that looked “smashed” and took lie detector tests to prove their sincerity. Other sightings from that month included an East Brady motorcyclist (who said it had swept-up eyes and a pointed head and said it looked like it came “straight from Hell”) and two Rimersburg residents (who described further details like a see-through mesh in the wings and a slit-like mouth).

The same businessman who’s March 18 encounter started the sighting wave would encounter the Gargoyle twice more in April. First he saw it in broad daylight on the same road hunched beside a haybale, staring menacingly at the witness with its wings spread out. Later that month, he would see the creature briefly from the back as it walked into the woods.

After that, sightings became more sporadic. There was apparently a wave of sightings in July 2012, although not much detail is forthcoming. The most recent sighting is from June 5, 2017, when a truck driver claimed he was driven off the road by a “winged demon from Hell,” although local law enforcement insisted that he was spooked by a bear.

A similar creature was spotted on the complete opposite side of the state in Allentown in June 1993, when a group of four witnesses parked at Baker’s Point reported seeing a seven-foot-tall winged humanoid walk past their car before taking to the sky. Certain details about the creature’s appearance differ from the Butler County reports (like that it had fur instead of leathery skin and a protruding jaw), but the similarity is rather difficult to ignore.

Butler County may still be better known for being the filming location for Night of the Living Dead, but the Butler Gargoyle is still a fascinating urban legend and works as Pennsylvania’s answer to West Virginia’s Mothman.

Dogmen

It appears that encounters with the werewolf-like cryptid known as the Dogman have been reported throughout the United States since the legend was first popularized in Michigan in the late 1980s, and Pennsylvania seems to be a hotspot for sightings of these creatures. This probably isn’t surprising, given the rich creatures of folklore the Pennsylvania Dutch brought with them to the region, of which the Giwoggle is perhaps the most similar to modern upright canines (more on him later). Several researchers have even created an interactive map of several sighting reports. Here are a few reported sightings in chronological order:

1891: Farmers in Erie County find themselves in a losing battle with a furry bipedal humanoid that keeps breaking into their poultry coops. This upright canine was blamed for six hundred chicken, goose, and duck deaths throughout the rampage, in which it would decapitate the hapless bird, suck out its blood, and cast the body on the ground. Numerous attempts to hunt it down failed, but luckily for the farmers, it soon got bored and left of its own accord.

1899: A Northumberland resident shoots a wolf and follows the blood trail. He is shocked when he discovers a man dead from a gunshot wound at the end of it.

I wonder if this dead wolfman was the same one from the Mary Paul story recounted in Wilson’s book. The story goes that Paul, a farm girl living in Northumberland County in the late 1800s, struck up a friendship with an old hermit who lived in the area. This made the local townsfolk very unhappy, as the old man’s arrival had coincided with an uptick in wolf attacks against livestock in the area. Not helping the rumors was the fact that the wolves never seemed to go after Mary’s flock of sheep. Mary refused to cut off contact with the hermit, although she admitted to seeing wolf packs approach her sheep only to back off whenever the hermit appeared.

The attacks continued for years until one farmer went out one night to investigate a commotion in his barn, only to get charged at by an old, grizzled wolf. The farmer shot and wounded the animal, but waited until morning, fearful as he was of what might happen if he stumbled across it in the darkness. When he followed the blood trail the next morning, he found the old hermit at the other end, dead from a gunshot wound to the chest. The wolf attacks would stop shortly after.

Mary would continue to defend the old man’s honor after his death, and there were rumors that his ghost could be seen watching over her sheep, either in human form or as an old gray wolf confronting any live wolves who got any funny ideas. The area where he died is still remembered today as “Die Woolf Man’s Grob” in his memory.

1990 onward: One of the most famous upright canine stories to come out of the state is the “Bryn Athyn beast,” which supposedly stalks the woods of Montgomery County, with its territory centered on Quarry Lane. It was first spotted by two teenage boys on January 20, 1990, who were cutting across a softball field behind the local Baptist church to attend the 1990 UFC Championship when a strange creature suddenly appeared out of the brush near the diamond. It oddly appeared to glide over the ground, as there was no sound of gravel crunching. One of the witnesses, a then 15-year-old Rich Snow, described it as a shadowy creature as large as a lion. The boys decided to chase it out of a misplaced sense of teenage bravado, only to have the fearsome beast turn the tables on them, forcing them to run for the safety of the security lights of the church parking lot.

The article linked above also mentions a 2006 report where a group of four teenage girls were charged by the beast in a nearby field. It reared up on its hind legs fifty feet away from them, revealing a doglike creature standing 7 to 8 feet tall. It remains a mainstay of local urban legend to this day.

November 2011: A Bradford County resident reports seeing a large wolf-like creature running and jumping on its hind legs along the road near Troy.

July 2020: An Erie resident was walking along the shore of Lake Erie near Ashbury Woods when he noticed something was walking through the bushes alongside him. Suddenly, what he called a “dog-headed man” stepped out into the path in front of him. It was seven feet tall with glowing eyes and two rows of sharp yellow teeth in its mouth. The beast pinned the witness to the ground and started sniffing him all over. Just as the witness was bracing himself for the attack, though, a whistle suddenly rang out from the wilderness, and the dogman took off into the woods.

April 30, 2022: A Berks County resident is taking his 12-year-old daughter through the Birdsboro Preserve on a fishing trip when their travels are interrupted several times by crashing sounds coming out of the woods. Suddenly, the culprit leaps out of the trees, kills a turkey vulture, and starts leaping from tree to tree until it loses its grip and falls down a steep 60-foot rock face. It seems surprisingly unhurt, but the witness notices that it seems diseased and malnourished, with its head and neck being completely bald. It stands 10-13 feet on its hind legs, has human-like hands with 2-3 inch claws, a doglike snout with large fangs, and short hair of varying shades of brown, grey, and black covering its body. As the witness and his daughter stood there, frozen in fear, the dogman clutched the dead vulture to its chest, jumped back up the rock face, and disappeared back into the woods.

Giant Snakes

Pictured: a black rat snake, the largest species in Pennsylvania (recognized by scientists, that is)

Reports of giant snakes in Pennsylvania go back as far as 1833, when a lumberjack working on the Broad Top Plateau in the south central region of the state sat on what he thought was a log while on his lunch break. The “log” started moving, however, and the lumberjack was shocked to see a twenty-foot snake slither away from him. The area has since become a hot spot for giant snake reports, with this PennLive article even claiming that sightings have been reported as recently as 2003.

Other reports from other regions of the state during the 1870s include a 35-foot beast from around Allentown that had a bad habit of eating local cats and chickens, and one that was spotted near Gettysburg on the rock-strewn hill known as Devil’s Den due to its infamous use by both Confederate and Union snipers and artillerymen during the second day of the famous Civil War battle.

The largest snake endemic to Pennsylvania that science recognizes is Pantherophis alleghaniensis, colloquially known as the grey rat snake or black rat snake, which maxes out at only seven feet long. The best scientific explanation for sightings of larger snakes is the possibility of escaped circus or zoo animals or exotic pets, much like the Burmese pythons that escaped into the Florida Everglades. However, not only should the cold winters Pennsylvania experiences kill off these exotic animals, but the largest reported cryptid snakes (reaching lengths of 35-40 feet) are larger than the longest snake ever recorded by science in the entire world (a 22 foot reticulated python discovered near the city of Balikpapan in Borneo, for those curious). The only snake species known to exceed that length, like Titanoboa cerrejonensis, have been extinct for millions of years.

So, what is the truth behind the Pennsylvania giant snakes? Holdovers from a prehistoric era, or tall tales made up by mountain men to scare their kids at the campfire? You make the call!

Giwoggle

This Dogman-like holdover from Pennsylvania Dutch folklore resides in Clinton County and has become so inextricably tied with the county’s history that it has been declared its official monster.

The Giwoggle was first popularized by local folklorist George Rhone, who learned about the stories from his grandmother, Belle Confer, as he was growing up in West Keating Township in the 1800s. It resembled a six-foot-tall werewolf with bird-like talons on its front paws and horse hooves instead of back feet. It led an existence similar to that of the golem in Jewish folklore, as it would be summoned by witches to harass local farmers who had upset them. It mainly kept its reprisals restricted to petty vandalism, like damaging tools, trampling crops, and leaving its tracks all around the barn. One confusing bit of folklore from this Pennsylvania Wilds article tells of a farmer who found his cows “trying to smoke a portion of a cornstalk.” I’m not sure what they mean by that (Had the cows cornered the Giwoggle in a patch of corn and were trying to burn it out? Were they smoking a corncob pipe to calm their nerves?).

In any case, the local farmers had a local hero to call on to fight off the Giwoggle: Isaac Gaines, better known to folklore as Loop Hill Ike. Gaines, who lived in the area between 1837 and 1915 and was the grandson of an escaped slave from Virginia, was something of a mage himself, who would go to farmers’ houses to cleanse them of ghosts or Giwoggles. If that didn’t work, he would track down the witch’s cabin and burn it down. Interestingly, Gaines was married into the Confer family, which would make him George Rhone’s uncle. Could Rhone have been self-aggrandizing to make himself sound like the relative of a badass paranormal investigator? Who knows?

What we know for sure is that Gaines died in 1915 and was buried in Furst-McGonigal Cemetery in neighboring Clearfield County. The Giwoggle legend didn’t die with him, though. When the Jersey Devil was allegedly spotted in Lock Haven during the infamous wave of sightings in 1909, locals wondered if it might be a Giwoggle searching for prey. Even today, the border between Clinton and Clearfield Counties is said to be a hotspot for Dogman sightings. In fact, why don’t I add some Dogman sightings from that area here, just so the Dogman entry on this article doesn’t get overstuffed?

Fall 2001: A Karthaus Township resident calling himself Ed, who was nine years old at the time, recalls an evening when his dog started barking at something on or near his front porch. What he and his mother at first mistook for a stray dog or coyote turned out to be a canine with mangy fur that was easily 6-7 feet long. While it didn’t stand on two legs, Ed still counts it as a Dogman due to its large size.

Late Fall 2001: A deer hunter in Moshannon State Forest sees movement about 45 yards in front of him and is shocked to see a seven-foot-tall upright canine in his scope. It is covered in grayish-black fur, has a 2-3-foot tail, is heavily muscled, and has yellowish-orange eyes. The creature makes a “demonic” low growling sound and starts to advance toward the hunter, only to seemingly change its mind when he clicks off the safety and flees toward the woods.

November 7, 2014: A Clearfield County resident is walking his dogs near the north edge of State Game Lands 331 when a bipedal creature walks out from the brush. It stands 8-10 feet tall and is covered in dark brown hair. The witness reports that he would have mistaken it for a Bigfoot if not for the long doglike snout. The creature did not react to the dogs as they barked at it and continued walking until the forest swallowed it up again.

July 2015: Another Clearfield County resident is driving home from work along Boy Scout Road in Penfield when he illuminates a large brownish-tan creature crouching on two legs in his headlights. The beast turned its head as the driver slowed to take a look, revealing a long doglike snout and glowing yellow eyes. Unnerved by this and the roadkill deer it was eating, the motorist sped away and locked himself in his house with a loaded rifle and a silver letter opener.

The Potter Nondescript

Longtime watchers of this blog may remember Potter County for being mentioned in my first “paranormal triangles” article, where its county seat of Coudersport lent its name to a nearby supernatural hotspot where thunderbird sightings were common. It turns out there was another cryptozoological enigma endemic to what locals call “God’s Country.” This creature bears a striking resemblance to modern conceptions of Bigfoot, except for one notable feature: the six- to seven-inch tusks protruding from its upper jaw.

This walrus-toothed hairy hominid first made its presence known on April 21, 1897, when a man fishing at Nelson Run was charged by a hairy, upright-walking animal that beat its chest and screamed at him. The creature continued to chase the frightened fisherman and his equally terrified horse for a short time before disappearing back into the wilderness.

Local newspapers speculated that it may have been a gorilla that escaped from a travelling circus, until a more detailed description of the beast came from Denton Hill resident William Butler a week later. He claimed to have stumbled across the animal as it was eating a dead woodchuck, and that, much like with the Nelson Run fisherman, it beat its chest and roared at him. Butler also claimed that, at one point, it jumped toward him, covering thirty feet in a single bound. It was Butler who first described seeing the Nondescript’s prominent tusks, and described it as standing six feet tall. The encounter ended when Butler’s dog barked at it, causing it to run away.

Sightings would continue into May, as the creature seemed to move south to the Kettle Creek area of Clinton County. The story seemed to fizzle out in June, however, when a female correspondent for the Potter Democrat accused its competitor, the Potter Enterprise, of making up the whole story. The papers lost track of the monster in the war of words and insults that ensued, and the Potter Nondescript would vanish into the Dark Skies landscape, never to be seen again.

The Purple Glob

Eight years before the classic horror film The Blob portrayed its oversized amoeba-like antagonist oozing its way across the suburbs of Philadelphia, a pair of police officers on patrol in the city would report their own encounter with a real-life gelatinous enigma. Indeed, local film producer Jack Harris reportedly was first inspired to make the film after reading about this incident in a local newspaper.

According to the September 27, 1950, edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, officers Joe Keenan and John Collins were on their rounds at 10 in the evening when they noticed an object resembling a parachute drifting through the sky over a side street between Vare Avenue and 26th Street. When it landed in a nearby field, the officers pulled out their flashlights to get a better look.

They were astonished to find a dome-like mound of purple jelly in the middle of the field, measuring six feet in diameter and a foot tall. They described it as pulsating and noted that it emitted a faint glow when they turned off their flashlights. They also described it as vibrating of its own accord, a feature that convinced the officers that the blob was a living being. One report even claimed that it tried to ooze its way up a telephone pole.

The pair radioed for backup, partly to bring in more witnesses to support their story and to assist in transporting the item. Answering the call were Patrolman James Cooper and Sergeant Joe Cook. When Collins mustered up the courage to touch the blob, pieces of it broke off and stuck to his hand, which evaporated in seconds. Within the next half hour, the rest of the blob followed suit, leaving no trace except the memories it went with the officers who saw it that day, and possibly also the classic horror movie it allegedly inspired.

The Purple Glob of Philadelphia is one of the most famous “star jelly” incidents of all time, which describes a phenomenon involving gelatinous substances of unknown origin falling from the sky. Many paranormal writers have been quick to connect them to UFOs. Attempts by scientists to explain them include attributing them to frog, toad, or worm remains vomited up by predators; cyanobacteria byproducts; slime mold or jelly fungi fruiting bodies; or industrial waste products.

The Raystown Ray

A supposed tourist photo of the monster (dated to 2007 by PennLive)

Move over, Beaver Run Gator! This is the real Loch Ness Monster of Pennsylvania!

Given that Huntington County’s Raystown Lake is a reservoir that didn’t exist in its present state before 1973, one would assume that its recency would preclude a large water serpent from setting up residence there. Yet a strange creature has been reported in the lake since at least 1962, according to PennLive, when it was seen lurking near the ramps for the annual Raystown Ski Club Water Show and almost convinced the organizers to cancel the event. The Ray has been described as a serpentine creature, measuring 50-60 feet in length, with a long neck, reptilian head, and a body that typically remains submerged.

The Ray has its own website, including a page collecting sighting reports. Here is my summary of the reports:

July 1, 1994: Pittsburgh resident John R. Pendal was out boating with his wife and some friends at 9 in the morning when they noticed a “shiny black object” about 40-50 feet off their port side. The object, which they estimated to be 10-12 feet in length, spun and turned over in the water for a minute before submerging, leaving the boaters perplexed at what they had just witnessed.

May 14, 2006: John and a friend were fishing on the lake at 2 in the morning when a large dark object started slowly approaching their boat from 40 feet away. They estimated the object to be 8 to 12 feet long. They didn’t make out many details, as the animal dove under the surface when they shined a flashlight on it.

June 16, 2006: Lee and Lea’s family vacation ended with a bang when they noticed the Ray 100 yards out from Panther Cove. They watched it as it swam around Marty’s Island and vanished into a small inlet.

June 20, 2006: Walter G. was fishing across from the 7 Points Marina at 6 in the morning when he saw what he at first mistook for a muskellunge surfacing to grab a stick. Walter had second thoughts when he noticed that the head and neck, which stuck 3-4 feet out from the water, were oddly shaped like a human leg.

August 3, 2008: Another sighting off the 7 Points was reported by Mike Sieber, who was loading his and his girlfriend’s jet skis back into his truck when they noticed a serpentine head and neck sticking 3-4 feet out of the water. They saw another wake behind the first creature, although whatever was making it didn’t surface.

August 14, 2008: Penny Foor and her boyfriend were night fishing off the 7 Points and the Senoi campground when they were suddenly charged at by an object that looked like an overturned canoe. The object dove under the water 30 feet away, but still left a powerful wake that almost pushed the boat to shore. Foor also recalls hearing similar whooshing sounds from her campsite on land, leading her to wonder if the cove under Senoi is the Ray’s play area.

March 18, 2009: A witness claims to have photographed an unidentified animal near the Raystown Dam. The witness claimed that it broke the surface around 6-7 times, and that it hung around long enough for them to take a photograph.

August 29, 2009: One of the more dramatic encounters was reported by Altoona resident Bill, who was fishing with his son near Snydertown at 6:45 p.m. As they turned south, they suddenly noticed what they described as a “large, thick black snake with a huge head” bobbing 50 yards off the starboard side. The creature had no fins and a diamond-shaped head. Bill noticed that the serpent had small, dark, slanted eyes that faced forward, while his son noticed catfish-like whiskers on its face. The creature writhed in the water for 2 to 3 minutes before diving beneath the surface.

May 25, 2015: Stephen Holoviak was camping at Senoi with his wife when he claims to have seen the Raystown Ray approaching the marina. He doesn’t provide any details, other than that it was too large to be any fish that lives in the lake.

September 23, 2022: Taylor Smith claims to have seen the Ray swimming 50 yards out from the Villa cabins at Lake Raystown Resort one afternoon. He couldn’t make out many details, other than that its mouth was shaped like a pike or muskie and that the head seemed to be swaying back and forth. He ruled out the possibility of it being a wading bird when it dove after 15 seconds and never resurfaced. The only other explanation he can think of is that it was a pike or muskie struggling to swallow its prey.

The photo taken above was also the subject of an investigation in the third episode of the Sci-Fi Channel show Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files. I haven’t seen it at the time of this writing, though, so I don’t know what their investigation came up with.

The Red Devil-Bat of Chester

Chester is best known these days for being the first city ever founded in Pennsylvania, having been established in 1682 by William Penn himself. Paranormal enthusiasts, on the other hand, might know it for a bizarre incident that allegedly happened to Mary Strichter and her family in the early morning hours of August 23, 1928.

Mary claims to have been awoken that night when what she called a “devil” flew into her room. She said it was colored a bright scarlet red, had horns protruding from its head, and emitted a buzzing sound. Her and her daughter’s screams awoke her husband, who found it hiding behind a curtain. The encounter would end rather anticlimactically with the husband clobbering the devil with a chair, wrapping its body in a carpet, and throwing it out a window.

This article on the blog Limitless Possibilities presents several theories regarding the devil bat’s true identity. Several supernatural possibilities are speculated upon. For instance, the article mentions rumors about the Strichter’s house being haunted, and that the previous owner, an elderly spinster, kept several rooms locked. The article also cites theories that the devil bat was a demon, a relative of the Jersey Devil, or a hoax. The most likely theory, however, is that the devil bat was, in reality, just a misidentified regular bat. True, there are no bats endemic to Pennsylvania that have a three-foot wingspan (the largest, the big brown bat, only tops out at around 14”), but the discrepancy can easily be explained by Mary overstating its size in her panic. Additionally, the buzzing sound she described was likely the bat using its echolocation abilities to navigate its surroundings.

Its story might not amount to much once you sit down and think about it for a second, but the red devil-bat of Chester is still an interesting story in its own right. It’s definitely less scary than the Raid: Shadow Legends sponsorship in the Limitless Possibilities blog (seriously, can I not escape that stupid game even in the blogosphere?).

The Ridge Road Monster

Image credit: New World Explorers Society

This emaciated humanoid supposedly stalked the secluded woods around Ridge Road in Blair County in the 1960s and seemingly took delight in harassing the Steele family at their rural farmhouse.

It apparently started on the first day of hunting season one year, as the father, John, went out on a cold morning that soon devolved into light rain. Even though he sat until dusk began to fall, he never saw or heard any sign of wildlife. As he started to make his way back to the house, he saw another person walking on the path in front of him. John, concerned that the person didn’t seem to be wearing bright colors despite it being hunting season, called out to them, but received no response. He became uneasy as he noticed several unsettling details about the figure, like its stick-thin body, lopsided proportions, and its gait, which reminded John of the skeletons in the classic Disney short film “Skeleton Dance.”

John’s unease turned into outright terror when it stepped into the light of a clearing, revealing a seven-foot-tall nude figure that was nothing more than a skeleton with thin grey skin shrink-wrapped over it. The arms hung down below its knees like an ape, and the creature turned toward John to reveal glowing red eyes. Naturally, John leveled his rifle at the beast and braced himself for the worst. Rather than attack, however, the monster simply stepped over toward a sinkhole, uttered a ghastly howl, and slowly descended into the hole as if it had stepped onto an elevator.

Nine years passed, and John, having since taken up work as the local animal control officer, had all but forgotten about the Ridge Road Monster. One night, however, the stray dogs he kept in the kennel on his property began making a huge racket. When John found out that his son, David, had forgotten to feed the dog, he sent his son out with a bag of food and a bucket of water. As he approached the kennel, he noticed that most of the dogs were whimpering in terror. The family pet, a German Shepherd named Bingo, was still growling and barking ferociously in the general direction of the rusty pole light illuminating the front yard. David turned toward the light and was confronted by a stick-thin humanoid with long arms and glowing red eyes. David ran screaming back into the house and told his parents what he saw, fearing they would dismiss him and send him back outside with the hideous figure. To his surprise, though, his father confessed to his own encounter with the creature years before.

While the monster seemed to leave the Steele family alone from that point onward, they would never feel comfortable going outside at night ever again. The creature still seemed to dwell in the Ridge Road area for years afterward, as both the Steeles and their neighbors would hear its ghastly howl ringing out in the night. Some others on the road claimed they saw it and even photographed it. The only consolation for the frightened residents of Ridge Road is that the creature seems to show no signs of aggression, being content to simply stand there menacingly in the shade of the trees and stare at them as they do their farm work.

The Squonk

The Squonk is one of several folkloric entities first introduced to the broader public by William T. Cox’s 1910 book Fearsome Critters of the Lumberwoods. It has since become one of the most famous legendary beasts in American folklore, thanks to its unusual features and behavior.

The Sqounk, found only in the hemlock forests in the northern part of the state, is said to live a cursed existence “because of [in Cox’s words] its misfitting skin, which is covered with warts and moles.” The worst part of this is that the Squonk is painfully self-aware of its hideous appearance and thus only travels on moonless nights for fear of catching a glimpse of its reflection in standing water. The creature cries so often that hunters can follow it by its trail of tears. If the Squonk finds itself cornered with no apparent means of escape, it may even dissolve itself into a pool of tears. It is from this practice that the Squonk gets its “scientific name,” Lacrimacorpus dissolvens. Even in the rare instance where a hunter successfully captures the beast, as allegedly happened with Mont Alto resident J.P. Wentling, it will still vanish into a salty pool of bubbles and tears, leaving the hunter nothing to show for his efforts.

Despite its relative obscurity compared with other Appalachian cryptids like Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster, the Squonk has still left a noticeable mark on pop culture. Whether it’s in the form of the Philadelphia-based performance art troupe Squonk Opera or the references in classic rock songs like “Squonk” by Genesis or “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” by Steely Dan or in the creature’s name being invoked to describe politicans or social media personalities who use crocodile tears to avoid hard questions, it’s clear the beast’s legend has struck a chord with people both in and out of the Keystone State.

The most visible mark of the creature’s legacy is Squonkapalooza, an annual festival that began in Johnstown in August 2023, celebrating all things related to cryptozoology and Appalachian folklore. It’s undoubtedly helped Johnstown become known for something other than the devastating floods that have ravaged the city, most infamously the 1889 flood that left over 2200 people dead.

It makes you wonder if the Squonk is looking down at all this from its hiding place in the hemlocks and feeling a little better about itself now that it can see all those people celebrating its existence.

The Susquehanna Seal

This nebulous river monster is mainly known from a single article from the February 27, 1897, edition of Clinton County’s Daily Democrat newspaper. It has gained a few other nicknames over the years, including the West Branch Dugong or the Kettle Creek Monster.

The article claims that the creature had been spotted several times in the West Branch Susquehanna River for a few years before that point, usually by lumberjacks who often encountered it brushing against their rafts, making the men fear it would tip over. Descriptions of the creature are maddeningly vague, as it rarely ever seemed to surface. The best witnesses could come up with was that it was a “marine animal or sea monster” that was as big as an ox or a hippopotamus. Some lumberjacks also recalled the creature roaring when the rafts bumped into it.

The Susquehanna Seal may still be hanging around if this NorthCentralPA.com article is to be believed. An outdoor guide and his friend claimed to have had several encounters with a large animal in the Northumberland County stretch of the river, and strange noises have been reported as recently as 2017.

Speculation as to the creature’s identity has been rife over the years (a sea lion? A manatee? A prehistoric beast? A fanciful legend?) Whatever it is, though, it has earned its place in the canon of American river and lake monsters.

Thunderbirds

DeviantArtist Art-Minion-Andrew0’s recreation of the lost Hiram Cranmer thunderbird photo

I already described several Pennsylvania Thunderbird sightings in the “Coudersport Triangle” section of my first article on paranormal triangles, but it turns out there are several more where those came from. Here’s another chronological list:

1892: Cameron County resident Fred Murray reports seeing a whole flock of them near Dents Run. He described them as resembling buzzards but with 16-foot wingspans.

August 1897: The town of Hammersly Fork in Clinton County was in an uproar over the disappearance of nineteen-year-old farmhand Thomas Eggleton, who left work one evening and never returned. Rumors began to spread that a massive bird spotted in the area that evening had carried him off. The mystery only deepened four years later when Eggleton turned up alive in a hospital in South Africa, with no memory of how he got there.

His wasn’t the only missing persons case in Pennsylvania to be blamed on these avian anomalies. A Black Forest family heard their four-year-old girl scream in 1937 while she was out picking berries. The family found no trace of her, but did see a large black bird flying away toward the horizon. Seventy-four-year-old Barney Bluff would disappear in a similar manner four years later.

1898: A Centerville farmer captures a strange carrion bird feasting on one of his cows and displays it in a cage. The local school superintendent, A. P. Akeley, is perplexed to see a bird with grey feathers standing five feet tall, which he is at a loss to identify.

1963: Ivan T. Sanderson claims that Leidy Township resident Hiram Cranmer showed him a photograph of a thunderbird that had been killed by local farmers, nailed to the side of a barn, and had the farmers posing in front of it to show a sense of scale. The photo seems to have been lost, however, possibly in a 1967 house fire that also claimed Cranmer’s life.

October 14, 1973: Bob Lyman, son of folklorist and Pennsylvania Thunderbird archivist Robert Lyman Jr., sees three large birds circling the skies over his campsite near Cross Fork Creek. Several other guests and his family are present at his campsite to corroborate his story. He later estimates the grey birds had a fifteen-foot wingspan.

Summer 2010: Two witnesses report seeing a “large bird with a very long beak” while driving on the Coudersport Pike north of Lock Haven.

June 2012: Two girls camping in Chapman Township witness a bird with a 14-foot wingspan and no feathers on its head swooping low over their campsite. The younger of the two is so terrified that she flees for the safety of her cabin.

April 2021: One particularly dramatic encounter occurred in Montgomery County when a local woman pulled into a parking lot on her way to an appointment. She was surprised when a large object she at first mistook for a small aircraft buzzed her car. She quickly realized that it was a giant bird and decided to chase it around the back of the building where her appointment was supposed to take place. She found it perched on the chimney, where she observed its 8-10 foot wingspan, red grapefruit-sized head, brownish-black featherless body, and hooked beak.

Suddenly, the bird turned toward her with “fiery eyes” that flashed greenish-red and orange, causing her to run for the front door. To her horror, the bird followed behind her with its talons extended. She made it inside the office and warned everyone in the waiting room about what was lurking outside. The proprietor went outside to investigate but found nothing besides a few bricks that had been knocked off the chimney.

The proprietor later confessed to having seen the thunderbird three times before in 2016, 2018, and 2020, always in April and always perched on the chimney. He described the bird as resembling “an ugly dark giant eagle” with a 12-foot wingspan, dark red head, dark colored body, and “fiery eyes.” He also claimed to have been charged at by the creature twice.

The Waterford Sheepman

Pennsylvania’s contribution to the Goatman urban legend allegedly stalked the small Erie County community of Waterford in the 1970s and 80s, where it made its home at the historic Waterford Covered Bridge (either under the bridge or in the rafters) and came out at night to terrorize amorous teenagers or feast on the blood of local farm animals.

Probably the most detailed description of the beast comes from Herb Kinney, who claims to have seen it along with a friend while they were out on a nighttime drive in his dark blue Ford Mustang convertible. They pulled into the Covered Bridge as it started to rain, so they could pull the top down, when the bridge’s hellish tenant suddenly confronted them. They described it as being 6-7 feet tall and covered in wet gray fur, with spiraling horns on its head and sharp claws on its hands. The Sheepman leaped forward and grabbed Kinney’s friend, but the frightened teenager fought back so fiercely that the creature was forced to let him go. The boys rushed back to the Mustang and sped away. The Sheepman briefly tried to bash its way through the roof, but was quickly shaken off, leaving it to utter guttural sheep sounds in frustration. When the boys informed the friend’s parents about the encounter, they advised them not to contact the police, fearing ridicule.

The New World Explorers Society blog recounts this and several other encounters with the Sheepman, including one from Baghdad Road resident Marilyn (who claims to have seen it cross the road twice and that it lived in a nearby cave), and Sally B. (who claimed it lived near the dirt road where the farm she grew up on sits and that it carried a hook as an improvised weapon). The writer of the Pennsylvania Rambler blog claimed to have met two local teenagers while exploring the Covered Bridge in the summer of 2018, one of whom claimed that their friend, Eric, had seen it. However, his friend claimed Eric was drunk at the time and jokingly insisted he saw a Chupacabra instead. The article also notes a spate of sightings among a group of Amish farms in the summer of 1973, in which the Sheepman stole tools and killed livestock, even throwing a dead goose at a gutsy matron who tried to chase it off.

Theories as to the Sheepman’s origin range from the demonic to an unknown animal to a shapeshifter to a perverted farmer’s licentious liaison with a hapless ewe. Wherever he came from (assuming he isn’t some boogeyman made up to scare amorous teens into a few more years of abstinence), it’s clear that the Sheepman’s shadow still hangs over the town even as sightings have waned.

The Yellow What-Is-It

Artist credit: Kaitlyn Bullock on DeviantArt

This bizarre humanoid supposedly struck fear into the heart of Berks County for a brief period starting in October 1879 and then disappeared as quickly as it arrived.

The first to see it was the local prison inspector’s son, known only by the name Schmehl. He and his friend, Jared Rissmiller, claimed to have been driving a cattle herd into a field near Topton when they noticed a strange yellow creature lying in the mud near the gate. It was anthropoid in shape but only four feet tall, with long arms ending in two clawed fingers, legs ending in flat and toeless lumps instead of feet, and smooth and hairless skin except on the head, which was furrowed. The creature became startled and leaped at Schmehl, as if trying to grab him, before changing its mind and fleeing into a nearby cornfield.

Schmehl and Rissmiller immediately raced to the local hotel to inform the owner, O. Hinnershitz, of what they had just seen. They gathered a posse to go track down the beast and found it again curled up in a ball on the other side of the cornfield. It jumped up again as the men approached, but it didn’t act aggressively this time. Instead, it just stood there blinking at them. The men noted additional details, like its small face and eyes, as well as horns on its head instead of furrows. The posse moved to capture the creature, but it was too fast and made a break for the woods.

Sightings of the What-Is-It and its footprints continued for another several months, with several armed posses and tracking dogs failing to track it down. One witness, Mr. Heckman, believed it was an escaped gorilla, even though Schmehl and Rissmiller’s description of the creature is probably as far as you can get from a gorilla while still retaining the general shape.

Whatever it was, the Yellow What-Is-It soon disappeared from Berks County, and neither it nor anything that looks like it has been seen since.

And that’s all the cryptids from Pennsylvania that my research was able to uncover. Well, not really; several online lists also included South Bay Bessie and Ogua, but I decided to save those for my entries on Ohio and West Virginia, which will be the next in this series.

For now, though, I think I may take a break from any serious projects until after my family’s Fourth of July party next Saturday. I will instead focus on preparing the ground for my 2024 animation retrospectives, as well as getting started on retrospectives for the best animation of 2022. I won’t rule out doing work on the Jurassic World Dominion review, though. Like I predicted in my holiday update post, Jurassic World Rebirth will be out this week, and I still haven’t finished the retrospective. I definitely plan to have that finished before the end of this year, so stay tuned for that.

I also intend to start the process of getting my driver’s license sometime this week, which will have to begin with me getting together the documents necessary to get a new state-issued ID (mine expired in May 2023, and I need a new one to be eligible for a driver’s license). I don’t know how that will affect my upload schedule, but I am very serious about obtaining a license, so once that ball gets rolling, getting my hours in will be my number one priority.

I would say “Happy Fourth of July,” but I’m sure you all know I’m not feeling all that patriotic this year, so instead I’ll ask you to stay safe, stay away from that suspicious-looking unmarked van, and I’ll see you all again very, very soon. Until next time!