Cryptids of North America #14: Virginia

Artist credit: LipstickKissPress on Etsy

It’s good to be back on the road again after such a long time away.

Last time on “Cryptids of North America,” way back in November, we talked about the hidden animals lurking in the mountains and valleys of West Virginia, including the Flatwoods Monster, Sheepsquatch, the Grafton Monster, and the ever-illustrious Mothman. Now, let us look at the state West Virginia would still be a part of today if not for the Civil War.

The original state of Virginia is probably better known these days as the home of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the New World (hence Virginia’s nickname, Old Dominion). It’s also known as the “Mother of Presidents,” since eight of them were born there (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson), and as the place where both the American Revolution and the Civil War ended.

Virginia hasn’t made as much impact on the cryptozoological world, however, probably because, as the top comment on this Reddit thread jokes, West Virginia got all the good cryptids in the divorce (and then Kentucky got the rest, according to the thread’s creator). Even so, my research turned up thirteen spooky critters roaming the dark corners of Old Dominion (which, as always, were revealed to me through the work of Monica Gallagher and Kaitlyn Bullock, as well as the book Monsters of Virginia by L.B. Taylor). Let’s take a closer look.

The Bunny Man

No, we’re not talking about the Donnie Darko guy. That bunny man merely informed you that the world is going to end. This Bunny Man would sooner take matters into his own hands with the hatchet he always carries with him if you had the misfortune of bumping into him on a moonless night.

As with most urban legends, the details vary, and the story has spread as far as Washington, D.C., and the city of Culpeper in Culpeper County. But the center of the legend has always rested on the Colchester Overpass, a Southern Railway overpass located near the tiny town of Clifton in Fairfax County.

In life, the Bunny Man was supposedly named Douglas J. Grifton, a criminally insane inmate at Lorton Prison who was being transferred by bus from an insane asylum in 1904 when the bus crashed. Out of the twelve inmates being transported, only two survived: Marcus Wallster and Grifton. A manhunt eventually turned up Wallster’s mutilated corpse hanging from Colchester Overpass. Stories vary as to what became of Grifton. Some say he was never caught. Others say the authorities cornered him on the overpass and that he got run over by a passing train. Either way, it was to be the start of a series of gruesome murders that always ended with mutilated bodies being hung from the overpass by their necks with their throats slit and their torsos eviscerated.

The first such incident allegedly occurred on Halloween night in 1905, when a bright light suddenly swallowed up a group of teenagers partying under the overpass. In the next instant, they were hanging dead from the bridge, the boys on one side and the girls on the other. Another similar incident, occurring on Halloween 1906, left six dead and only one witness, Adrian Hatala. The police didn’t believe her when she claimed a bright light swallowed her friends, spent the next five seconds screaming in terror and agony, and reemerged dead and strung up by the neck, and she was sentenced to Lorton Prison. She would be released in 1913 when nine more teenagers turned up dead at the overpass. Bodies allegedly turned up at the overpass again in 1949 and 1976.

Does that story sound a little too far-fetched to you? Brian A. Conley, the archivist for the Fairfax County Public Library, agreed and decided to track down the truth behind the legend for himself. He points out that the Douglas Grifton story cannot possibly be true; Lorton Prison wasn’t opened until 1910, there was never an insane asylum in Fairfax County, and neither Grifton nor Wallster’s name appears in the county court records. On top of all that, there are no records of any mass murders ever occurring at Colchester Overpass, either in newspapers or police reports. But there are a couple of incidents from October 1970, reported by the Washington Post, that may have planted the seeds for the legend.

The first occurred on the 22nd of that month, when Air Force cadet Robert Bennett and his fiancée parked his car on Guinea Road in the unincorporated community of Burke and were suddenly confronted by a man wielding a hatchet and shouting, “You’re on private property, and I have your tag number!” The witnesses disagreed on what the man was wearing: Bennett said he was wearing a white suit and long bunny ears on his head, while his girlfriend said he was wearing a white capriote (a pointed hat worn during Christian services in Italy, Spain, and other Hispanic countries that has become infamous for its appropriation by the Ku Klux Klan). Either way, the Bunny Man proceeded to throw the hatchet through the front window, at which point the two fled to the nearest police station. The hatchet has since been displayed at a local museum.

Later, on Halloween, Paul Phillips, a security guard working for a local construction company, was doing his rounds on Guinea Road when he caught the Bunny Man on the front porch of a new house, whacking away at a support beam with another hatchet. The man started ranting about people trespassing on his property and warned Phillips that if he didn’t leave him alone, he would “bust him on the head.” Phillips went to his car to fetch a handgun, but by the time he returned, the Bunny Man had left. Phillips later described the man to police as 5’8”, 160 pounds, and appearing to be in his early 20s.

From there, public hysteria began to spread, with further attacks on parked motorists being reported, and even rumors of murders and pets being eaten. The final official encounter with the Bunny Man was with a construction worker who claims that a man calling himself the “Axe Man” called him on the phone to complain about construction companies dumping tree stumps and brush on his property, and to demand that someone come to him to talk things out. Police arrived at the location, but the Bunny Man was a no-show.

So, in the end, the Bunny Man turns out to be less of a supernatural serial killer and more of a disgruntled local rebelling against urban sprawl in the only way he knew how: petty vandalism. While Colchester Overpass has been definitively proven not to be associated with the real Bunny Man, it remains popular with legend trippers and ghost hunters, to the point that police often patrol the area around Halloween to discourage them from disturbing the neighborhood.

The Creature of Dismal Swamp

This isn’t the first time I’ve discussed the Great Dismal Swamp in a supernatural context, but it is the first time I’ve discussed one of its cryptozoological mysteries at length.

The so-called “strange Dismal Swamp monster” was first described in the March 20th, 1901, issue of the Richmond Dispatch, which told a harrowing tale of a creature that killed seven of Edward Smith’s dogs, ate two of them, and attacked Smith as well. Local merchant L. Frank Ames took it upon himself to hunt the beast down. While he successfully tracked it down, none of the bullets he fired hit their mark, and the six hunting dogs he took with him refused to give chase. The creature growled at him and disappeared into the trees. Later that night, it appeared at Henry Jordan’s house, where it “sat defiantly on a covered wall.”

It was consistently described as a bipedal creature covered in shaggy, yellow hair with glowing eyes and canine features. It often left mutilated pets and livestock in its wake, and hunters were constantly patrolling the swampy landscape, trying to put an end to its rampage once and for all.

About a year later, around the week of March 21st, 1902, it appeared that their efforts had finally paid off. According to the Little Falls Herald, Harrison Walker had finally cornered and killed the beast. However, shortly afterward, Whit Walker came forward to claim that the creature had visited his home, indicating that there was more than one.

While sightings don’t appear to be as common as they were at the turn of the 20th century, the beast still appears to be lurking in the area. A commenter on this To Contrive & Jive article claims to have been driving his son back to Chowan University after a Baltimore Orioles playoff game when a hairy bipedal creature stepped out onto the road. The witness described it as having lanky arms, large hands, and yellowish-orange fur. The witness claims that the creature briefly gave chase when he tried backing away from it, but then made for the embankment and dove into the swamp, where the witness saw it “speed off faster than a motor boat under the water.”

Those seeking a rational explanation for the sightings have proposed that Dismal Swamp was besieged by an escaped polar bear (I feel that an albino black bear would be more plausible, but I’m no expert on the local wildlife). Paranormal enthusiasts have been quick to connect it to Bigfoot or the Dogman urban legend. Whatever its true identity, it’s probably as good a reason as any to stay away from the swamp at night.

The Dreaming Creek Troll

Artist credit: Kaitlyn Bullock on DeviantArt

Not much information exists about this strange humanoid figure. The only sources I could find online describing it were Kaitlyn Bullock’s graphic and a single Facebook post. Still, I think they gave me a good enough portrait of just what kind of entity we’re dealing with here.

This troll supposedly lurks along Dreaming Creek, which runs through the Windsor Hills just outside of Lynchburg. According to the Facebook post, locals have apparently noticed something strange haunting the woods in the area for the past two decades (as of 2013, when the post was written). One anonymous resident is quoted as saying, “There is definitely something out there…Some kind of presence.”

What form that presence takes seems to vary from witness to witness. One described the being as an “amorphous black specter that stirred up small whirlwinds of leaves...like a dark vortex.” Others have described it as more of an impish, dwarf-like creature resembling something out of a fairy tale, which harasses the locals by tapping on windows and tipping over their garbage cans.

Perhaps the most detailed description comes from two witnesses who seem to have stumbled across the troll while walking in the woods. “We heard a rustle, when suddenly in our path was what looked like a troll. It was hard to see, but it had on dark leather clothes and what looked like a leather cap. It had a bare human-like face and was muttering to itself and making a noise that sounded like a laugh. Suddenly, it brandished what I think was a small knife, and we got the hell out of there.” Other witnesses have reported sensing a strong presence before the troll shows up, leading some to believe it possesses telepathic powers.

While it seems childish to claim that a creature straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales is lurking just an hour’s hike away from one of Virginia’s largest cities, that hasn’t stopped the residents around Windsor Hills from embracing their strange little neighbor, with some affectionately naming him Rufus.

The Dunlora Witch

Virginia’s answer to the Bell Witch legend may be the most frightening thing to happen to Charlottesville aside from the Unite the Right rally of August 2017…assuming it’s true, of course. You’ll see.

The legend says that in the summer of 1920, a Boy Scout troop went camping in the woods near a house called Dunlora Plantation. The scout master was unaware at the time, but the mansion had long been rumored to be the lair of an evil witch who had bought it off the original owners and used it to conduct dark magic rituals. Nevertheless, all seemed to be going well on the first evening, as the master and his six young charges set up their tents, cooked dinner, and went to sleep.

Later that night, however, their leader was awakened by a strange noise. Convinced that the boys were fooling around rather than getting their proper shut-eye, the master went over to the boys’ tents to tell them to knock it off. Much to his shock and horror, however, the tents were empty. Trying to console himself with the assertion that his Scouts were simply playing a harmless prank, he called out their names until he noticed a flickering light in the distance.

Having no other leads to go off of, he followed the light until he found himself standing in front of the Dunlora house. He noticed that the front door was open and invited himself in, still calling out the boys’ names. He thought he heard a child’s voice coming from the cellar, so he searched the cellar next. He found nothing in the large and empty room except one of the boys’ hats lying on the floor. He then heard what sounded like a footstep on the stairs behind him. Thinking that the prank had finally run its course, the Scout master turned to confront his pupils.

He was greeted instead by the wicked witch herself, her eyes glowing and her sharp teeth exposed in a mocking grin. The terrified master pushed past her and fled up the stairs, rushing to find a road that would take him back to civilization and safety. He could hear the witch giving pursuit and see her wild eyes staring back at him from the trees. But the most horrible sight of all came when he stopped to catch his breath and saw the Scouts standing in a row on the dirt road behind him, their stomachs cut open and their organs spilling out. The overhwelmed Scout master finally passed out.

The next day, a police patrol found him lying in the road, babbling incoherently. When they found the campsite, they were horrified to discover the Scouts’ disembowled corpses lying in their tents, with some of the organs piled on the campfire. There was blood on the Scout master’s knife, and so he was arrested for the murders. He was deemed unfit to stand trial due to his obvious instability and was thus confined to a hospital for the criminally insane. All the while, the Scout master swore up and down that it was the witch who murdered the boys, not him.

Shortly afterward, those brave enough to travel up the road to Dunlora Plantation swore that they saw seven fully grown trees that weren’t there before. Six were straight and healthy-looking, while the last was bent and gnarled. It is said that the souls of the six dead Boy Scouts are imprisoned in those trees, as well as the tortured mind of their hapless master.

Does this all sound a bit too much like a horror movie to be believable? You may be right, because there’s actually no record of any story involving the Dunlora witch that exists before this post was published on the Facebook page for the horror film production company Blumhouse in January 2016. There is a Dunlora village that exists within Charlottesville, but none of the retellings of the legend agree on the address of the witch-haunted plantation. Indeed, this Reddit thread has no less than three commenters claiming to have either grown up in the house in question or personally known someone who did. The place that most closely fits the description of the witch house is a plantation owned by Major Thomas Carr, built in 1730, that supposedly contains a graveyard of some of the plantation’s enslaved inhabitants.

In any case, local residents are not too pleased with the attention the Dunlora witch legend has brought to their community, with ghost hunters constantly trespassing in their search for the witch house. As Kenny Thomas, the caretaker of the Carr plantation, has said, “The plantation has been here since 1730. It’s been in the hands of the same family ever since then. I have heard the stories before, but nothing from the family itself, or anything about Boy Scouts. We tell people that it’s private property, and we live here - that it’s not abandoned, and [to] please respect our privacy.”

Considering that this whole story seems to have been conjured out of basically nothing only a decade ago, there’s probably no reason for legend trippers to even be in the area in the first place.

The Fort Monroe Moat Monster

Fort Monroe, located near the city of Hampton on Old Point Comfort (the southern tip of the Virginia Peninsula), has existed in some form or another since the days of the Jamestown colony in 1609, when it was known as Fort Algernourne. It was rebuilt and recommissioned as Fort Monroe in 1834, where it stood guard over Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads until its decommissioning in 2011. It is best known for its role in the American Civil War, during which it remained in Union hands despite being in a Confederate state. Thus, it became a sanctuary for thousands of escaped slaves and a prison for Jefferson Davis for the two years following the war.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has since been rumored to be haunted by the spirits of those who walked past its gates during its 177 years of operation. Jefferson Davis is still said to haunt his old casemate cell, and his wife is said to rattle windows at night. His Union rival, Abraham Lincoln, is said to wander in Quarters No. 1, while Edgar Allen Poe (who was briefly stationed at the fort during his short military career) has been spotted near Chamberlin Hotel. There has also been a “lady in white” (rumored to be the wife of a captain who murdered her when he discovered she was having an affair) seen near the chapel and the moat, a man in 18th century dress seen standing near the dining room fireplace, and even a ghostly grey cat, complete with a disembodied little girl’s voice calling for it.

But the most unusual anomaly at the fort is the mysterious sea creature that some say has been seen swimming through the moat. I haven’t been able to find much information about this aquatic being on the Internet, however. The best I could dig up was this Facebook post, which offers an undated account from a soldier who saw something “larger than any fish” near the Postern Gate, and a Geocities page that somehow offers even less detail. Neither gives any detailed descriptions of what the moat monster even looks like.

While the writer on the Geocities page does speculate that the “monster” may be related to Nessie or other such lake and sea monsters, she also opines that it may be nothing more than a stingray or skate that became trapped in the moat during high tide. Hell, with information this sparse, it could be a humpback whale for all we know!

The Goochland Devil Monkey

We’ve discussed devil monkeys on this blog before, when I covered the one that supposedly terrorized Danville, New Hampshire, in September 2001. The basic summary is that these are creatures resembling a cross between a baboon and a kangaroo, ranging from 3 to 8 feet tall, and are highly aggressive. While mainly spotted around the South and Midwest, they’re apparently also common in the Appalachians.

They first appeared in Virginia in 1959, when Mr. and Mrs. Boyd and their daughter, Pauline, were driving through the mountains outside of Saltville. A creature that Pauette described as having “light, taffy colored hair, with a white blaze down its neck and underbelly… it stood on two large, well-muscled back legs and had shorter front legs or arms” suddenly burst out of the woods and attacked their car, leaving deep scratches in the sides. It also attacked two nurses from Saltville who were driving home from work a few days later, ripping the top off their convertible before they were able to escape.

Another wave of encounters occurred around the Marion/Tazewell area in the mid-70s. A creature similar to the one the Boyds encountered tried to yank a man out of his truck by his arm, while a couple driving near Saltville reported seeing a strange animal with shaggy grey-brown fur, a long muzzle, pointed ears, and kangaroo-like hind limbs leap across the road in front of their car, climb a fence, and disappear into the woods on the other side.

Another notable sighting occurred south of Roanoke sometime in the 1990s, when an Ohioan was driving down to North Carolina’s Outer Banks with her daughter. She recalled passing a sign reading “Red Wolf Crossing” when a strange animal suddenly leaped out onto the road in front of her. “This definitely was not a wolf,” she later recalled. “It was all black with very short, sleek fur, pointy ears, and a long, thin tail. It seemed catlike, yet not like any cat I’ve ever seen. When it stood on its hind legs, it was easily about six feet tall. Its torso looked very much like that of a very thin man, and its head resembled a man, almost with a pointed beard. However, its hind legs were more like a wild cat or dog, very muscular and thin.”

The creature stood still in the middle of the road and stared at the car for a minute or two before it presumably got bored and hopped away, clearing both lanes in a single bound. The daughter was asleep in the backseat and thus missed the whole thing. When the witness later inquired with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they were at a loss as to what she had encountered. She insisted it wasn’t a wolf or a dog, and no animal known to science in North America can jump as far as the animal she reported. Maybe it was a misplaced kangaroo?

In the 21st century, the Virginia devil monkey has mainly become associated with Goochland County, likely thanks to this series of blog posts from December 2010. The author claims to have gathered accounts from several eyewitnesses, including a story about a devil monkey supposedly blocking traffic in Oilville on the week of the 5th. He also tells of people being afraid to let their dogs outside and of parents being relieved about schools closing due to winter weather, as they didn’t want their kids outside while these things were lurking about. He also ominously notes that deer have disappeared from the area, and chastises the local sheriff for dismissing the whole thing as a hoax. I unfortunately have no idea how that whole story ended, since the blog posts abruptly stop after the 17th.

The Not-Deer

The humble deer, especially of the white-tailed variety (aka Odocoileus virginianus), has become synonymous with innocence, gentleness, and natural beauty, especially in the wake of the classic Disney film Bambi. Well, maybe for those who don’t remember the second half of that film, or who don’t live in their natural range and see how ugly things can get during mating season (or haven’t had to deal with them jumping into the path of oncoming vehicles). However, there is a creature from Appalachian folklore that prompts even some of the most experienced foresters to ask, “When is a deer not a deer?”

The not-deer is said to resemble a perfectly normal deer at first glance, until one takes a closer look and discovers something about their appearance or behavior that makes the cervine plunge headfirst into the uncanny valley. These characteristics include (take a breath; this’ll be a long list): double-jointed or elongated limbs, joints bending in the wrong direction, barrel chests, thick necks, forward-facing eyes (more similar to a predator than a grazing herbivore), multiple eyes, misshapen antlers, malformed heads, pointed ears that twitch a little too precisely, adults moving like clumsy newborns, unusually bold or aggressive behavior around humans, self-harming behavior, or even walking on their hind legs without any difficulty.

Most investigations of the legend have pinpointed the term “not-deer” being coined in 2019 in this Tumblr post, in which the author claims to know some friends who once saw a deer walking on its hind legs along the Blue Ridge Parkway, which runs through the Appalachian region of North Carolina and Virginia. She says such stories are common along the parkway and that if you see one, it’s best to “hit the gas and get the hell out of there.” What happens to any person who doesn’t flee the area is left up to the reader’s imagination.

According to this Skeptical Inquirer article about the legend, the not-deer is most commonly reported in the area of the United States spanning from North Carolina to Connecticut and Pennsylvania, although there have been some sightings reported as far away as Texas or even Norway. Some of the most notable sighting reports have come from the cryptid’s very own subreddit. Here’s few of them:

1951: Blogger Sharon A. Hill claims to have uncovered two not-deer sightings from the pre-Internet era. The first, which supposedly occurred in 1951 but wasn’t reported until 20 years later, was in the first issue of Fortean Times magazine. In it, Mrs. Laub of Calumet, Oklahoma, claims to have seen an animal in a field near her house that resembled a deer at first but had elongated limbs, long hair, pointed ears, a bushy tail, and huge pads where there should have been hooves. Overall, the creature resembled a bizarre deer-wolf hybrid.

1971: Hill’s other pre-Internet sighting comes from noted paranormal investigator Jerome Clark, who claims that his father once encountered an animal along a roadside in Canby, Minnesota, that looked exactly like a deer, except it was smaller than normal and had a long tail resembling that of a horse. Clark claims that his father shot at it to scare it off, and was unnerved to see it not react at all.

April 12, 2012: A user on r/Hunting recounted something strange that happened to him around Thanksgiving weekend. He had shot a doe that walked up to his feeder, and as he walked toward it, knife pulled out to finish it off, he suddenly was overwhelmed by a strange mix of apprehension, fear, and paranoia. He became so convinced that an “ominous presence” was watching him that he turned back toward his deer blind and half-expected to see himself back in his deer blind, gun drawn. “In short, it felt like I became the deer.” The feeling dissipated once the hunter shoved the knife through the deer’s heart to finish it off.

Commenters offered a bevy of suggestions as to what happened. It may have been that he suddenly became overwhelmed with emotion over the thought of taking the animal’s life. It may have been a head rush, adrenaline wearing off, hypervigilance about potential dangers in the woods, or a brief dissociative episode. No one suggested anything supernatural was going on, though.

Summer 2012: Redditor naturalbornchild shared his encounter on r/notdeer, which took place while he was spending the summer at Lake Conroe, Texas. He recalls seeing a doe one night at 9:30 that seemed off in the streetlamp’s glare. It was bigger than normal and heavily muscled, with a thick neck and swollen cheeks that made its head resemble a cow’s. The deer stood in the middle of the road for about a minute before it started to walk away. However, that just revealed more strange aspects about the animal: “Then she walked away slowly into another patch of woods on the other side, but not like how a deer normally trots, but like a person with 4 legs would. I'd never seen the joints above the hoof move like that.”

September 25, 2014: A 4chan user posts one of the earliest “not-deer” type stories, which was later reposted on r/creepygreentext in 2019 under the title “Anon goes hiking.” In it, the user claims to have had several frightening experiences after he and his parents moved to a 60-acre farm when he was 13 or 14 (he never specifies where it was). First, he and a group of friends went hiking one evening and were startled to find a spot in the woods strewn with animal organs and body parts, as well as a large cow carcass that appeared to have been there for months. When Anon got the courage to explore the area again a week later, he was unnerved to find that all the animal remains had been cleaned out, even the cow corpse. As he started to head back home by the light of the full moon, he noticed “something moving across the field not more than 30 yards away.” It was a “really weird looking thing with pointed ears and an elongated snout crossing my path on all fours while moving in a way that reminded me of a deer trying to learn how to walk immediately after having been born. Only it doesn’t look like a deer, more like a cobbled-together toy of one. And it’s fucking enormous.” Luckily, it didn’t notice the witness, and once he was sure it was out of earshot, he made a break for his house.

A few days later, Anon was in his bedroom at 2 or 3 in the morning, reading a book by candlelight, when he heard tapping on his window that escalated into what sounded like “someone slapping it with an open palm.” As he grabbed a baseball bat in his fear, he heard a scratching sound traveling through his wall, like “someone dragging a collection of industrial-grade rakes along the outside of my wall.” Then his dog started barking at the side entrance with such fury that it woke his mother. When he had calmed the dog down, Anon opened the door to investigate and was confronted by a severed pig’s foot illuminated in the porch light’s glow. He and the dog spent the rest of the night standing guard at the door.

January 23, 2016: Reddit user cgan posted this story on r/Cryptozoology, telling of two strange deer they, their grandmother, and their uncle encountered in upstate New York on the shores of Lake Ontario one winter in the early 2000s. “They had all grey fur, long dark almond-shaped eyes that stared intently, [and] their antlers were two long jagged horns protruding straight out from their skull.” Eerily, when the grandmother snapped photos of the deer, they didn’t show up in the pictures, and when they went out to investigate the area the deer walked through a few minutes later, they found no tracks.

They claim to have had a second encounter with the same two deer a few years later. They and their cousins were walking down a forest path in the region when cgan says they were overwhelmed with a sense of dread, “like the feeling you get when you are sitting outside the principal’s office waiting to be called in.” As the hikers scanned the surrounding landscape, they were shocked to see the same deer they had seen a few years ago. Ominously, “both of the deer simultaneously turned their heads the second we looked at them,” and locked eyes with their human observers for about 10 seconds. The ghostly cervines then strolled over a hill and out of sight. The witness recalls them making no sound as they walked, despite the ground being covered in dead leaves and dry brush.

March 9, 2018: Reddit user TheStormbrewer posted a particularly harrowing encounter on r/Paranormal. He claims he and two friends were camping on a mountainside in eastern Washington near the Canadian border when the night air was suddenly rent by piercing screams. They could hear the creature approaching them up the mountainside at a rate of about 25mph, and grabbed their rifles in terror. Nothing could have prepared them for the source of the screams. “It was a deer, bounding in huge leaps, screaming, entirely on its hind legs. This deer was hopping like a pogo stick with its forelegs held in front of it. The look of pure terror in its eyes reflected in the firelight will haunt me forever.”

March 9, 2019: User Godzylaaa98 posted his frightening encounter with a deer-like monster to r/BackwoodsCreepy. He recounts going on a mountain hike in northern Serbia, first with a large group and then alone because he wanted to walk the trail at his own pace. After taking a tumble on a downhill slope, he was surprised to see a deer walk onto the trail right in front of him, showing an unusual lack of fear. The hiker noticed other unusual features, such as its lifeless eyes, which left him uneasy. The “deer” then proceeded to open its mouth, which the witness was shocked to discover was full of razor-sharp teeth, and utter “an ear-shattering scream…I watch quite a loot [sic] of horror movies and I'm yet to come across a scream so demonic.” It then calmly walked into the woods on the other side of the trail.

May 11, 2020: In her investigation of the not-deer legend, Skeptical Inquirer writer Autumn Sword claims that the oldest TikTok video she could find by searching #notdeer was from this date. In it, @ohthatsfantastic claims to have been hiking near her grandparents’ house when she saw a doe that suddenly locked eyes with her. That was when she noticed an alarming aspect of the doe’s anatomy: “I notice that all of her knees are bent backwards. Any direction a deer knee is supposed to go, her knees don’t.” She did not give a more concrete location for the sighting, and didn’t respond to any of Autumn’s queries as to what she meant by the deer’s knees being “bent backward” (technically speaking, deer don’t actually have knees, at least not in the same way we humans do).

December 2021: Possibly the most famous “not-deer” sighting was from Reddit user squamx, who posted pictures of a deer with piercing blue eyes to the r/Albany subreddit. While several commenters jumped in to immediately label the creature as a not-deer, others pointed out that deer with light-colored eyes are perfectly natural, albeit less common than those with brown eyes. It may be that the light color is accentuating the horizontal pupils, which are normally hidden by the darkness of brown eyes. Others suggested it might be a hybrid with a Sitka deer that had escaped into Central New York two years earlier.

Many paranormal enthusiasts have been quick to claim that these “not-deer” are spirits, demons, or aliens poorly disguised as deer. Some have even gone as far as to connect them with wendigos or skinwalkers. Both connections are rather spurious. Wendigos were never described as deer-human hybrids in the original Algonquin myths (that appears to have been an invention of Larry Fessenden for his 2001 film Wendigo), and skinwalkers only ever shapeshift into predatory forms in Navajo folklore (something that fellow Skeptical Inquirer writer Noah Nez explains in Autumn Sword’s article). Plus, the fear of the latter stems more from the black magic they wield rather than the forms they take.

Most online sources discussing the not-deer have noted that numerous diseases and other pathologies can explain their unusual appearance and behavior. The cowlike heads so frequently reported can be explained by “Bullwinkle syndrome,” in which a sinus infection will cause the deer’s nose to swell. Epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) produces swelling in the head, neck, and tongue; internal and external bleeding; cracked hooves; indifference to humans; and weak, clumsy movements. An imbalance of hormones in male deer, usually caused by damage to the reproductive organs, can cause the phenomenon of “cactus bucks,” in which the testosterone deficiency causes the antlers to remain in the velvet stage and grow uncontrollably.

But the most commonly cited disease to explain the not-deer is chronic wasting disease (CWD), sometimes colloquially known as “zombie deer disease.” This horrific ailment, caused by prions that attack the deer’s brain cells, can cause rapid weight loss, tremors, repetitive walking patterns, excessive drooling, teeth grinding, antisocial tendencies toward other deer, and a lack of fear around humans. It can even incubate in an infected deer for months or even years before symptoms appear, thus maximizing the risk of an epidemic.

Interestingly, the Skeptical Inquirer article notes an outbreak of EHD around Boone, North Carolina, in 2018, about a year before the famous Tumblr post that coined the term “not-deer.” Sure, it could be unrelated, but it’s certainly one hell of a coincidence.

The Oozelfinch

This exceptionally strange avian anomaly has the honor of being the official mascot of the US Army’s Air Defense Artillery Branch and the former mascot of the Coast Artillery Corps. It also has its origins in Fort Monroe, thus adding another supernatural legend to the citadel’s storied history.

The story goes that on one night in 1905, CAC Captain Henry MacPhearson Merriam walked out of the Fort Monroe Officers’ Club and was surprised to see a strange bird perched outside of it. He didn’t give a detailed description, but did emphasize its bulbous eyes, as well as the fact that it seemed to fly backward.

While stories of other sightings were reported in the aftermath, it’s widely agreed that Merriam likely made it up, not only because he was a noted storyteller but also because he was drunk at the time. Nevertheless, the Oozefinch quickly gained mythic status among Fort Monroe’s military personnel, with many adding to the myth to explain the bird’s strange characteristics. Its eyes were described as able to see all around it at all times to gather maximum information, and its backward flight was said to be necessary to keep dust and dirt away from the eyes, which were said to have no eyelids. Its backward flight speed was even exaggerated to supersonic levels, and it was even said to rip Soviet warplanes out of the sky during the Cold War. Its eyes were said to be able to turn 180 degrees inward, a symbol of its powers of introspection.

In 2016, the Oozlefinch was commemorated with a historical marker commissioned by the Oozlefinch Craft Brewery and erected on Stilwell Drive in Hampton. That’s how you know a cryptid has really made its mark on the world!

The Red Devil

Artist credit: Dylan Reader on Artstation

This fiendish imp first appeared in the Nottoway County community of Crewe in 1968 while a local woman was giving birth. The only witness was her son, Bob, who had just been sent onto the front porch by his father to wash his hands. As he stepped onto the porch, he was startled to see someone who wasn’t his older brother. It had pinkish-red skin, large, shining eyes, and no noticeable nose. Bob recalled being so paralyzed with fear that he couldn’t even speak, and his brother never saw it, despite also being on the porch. Indeed, when it departed, it moved “lightning fast.” Bob never told anyone about the creature until his father was on his deathbed ten years later, who didn’t believe him.

The Red Devil resurfaced in May 1992, when local high schooler CM and his friend were out on an after-school hike at 4:30. Suddenly, a furry red creature standing 2-3 feet tall emerged from the brush and let out a shrill laugh. CM’s friend immediately started running, and the imp chased him for about 10-20 feet before veering off into the wilderness and uttering another evil laugh.

By June, the Red Devil had somehow made its way to Horntown on the Delmarva Peninsula. A motorist named JP had been driving along Red Hills Road when his truck’s undercarriage scraped along the road. As he got out to inspect the damage, he was startled by a weird noise in the bushes. As he slowly worked his way back to the driver’s seat, a pair of red, furry hands emerged, followed by a 3-4 foot tall satyr-like creature sporting a large grin. JP immediately floored it out of there.

The Red Devil apparently hung around for a while, since a couple parked on Red Hills Road saw it staring at them through their window in 1995. It fled into the woods as soon as they noticed it.

A similar creature was spotted by JS while he was driving down a back road in April 1997. He said he thought it was a white-haired dog until it suddenly stood up on two legs and walked away. Two months later, Chincoteague resident BCM claimed to have seen it on Chandler’s Crest. They described it as three feet tall, with white fur, angled legs, deep-set dark eyes, a pointed head, and thin arms ending in clawed hands. This one was meeker than its red-haired cousin, as it ran off on all fours when the witness made a sudden movement.

The last reported sighting took place in Lynchburg in August, when someone claimed their neighbor’s boyfriend had seen the Devil ten years earlier. They described it as having brown fur and a bare, human-like face that seemed to be murmuring and laughing to itself.

So, what was this thing? It seems easy to connect this creature to the fair folk and other mischievous nature spirits of old, like Robin Goodfellow, Puck, or Pan. Self-proclaimed “ghost historian” MJ Wayland has connected it to creatures from Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) folklore named “Geow-lud-mo-sis-eg.” He never explains how he thinks creatures from a tribe indigenous to the St. John’s River basin in New Brunswick made their way down to Virginia, though.

The Richmond Vampire

The W.W. Pool Mausoleum, aka the supposed vampire’s lair

This ghoulish urban legend, originating in Virginia’s state capitol, has its roots in an infamous local disaster: the Church Hill Tunnel collapse on October 2, 1925. From its opening in 1873, the tunnel had always been unstable, thanks to being built on clay rather than bedrock, which tended to swell when it rained. On that day, a steam locomotive hauling ten flat cars was traveling through the tunnel, which was under active repair. 150 feet worth of the tunnel suddenly caved in, trapping the train inside. 200 workmen managed to escape before it was too late, but three of the train workers were lost, with only engineer Thomas Joseph Mason’s body being recovered before the authorities declared the tunnel too dangerous to enter and sealed it for good. A fourth worker, fireman Benjamin F. Mosby, died later that day at Grace Hospital from scalding injuries caused by a ruptured boiler.

It may be with Mosby that the legend of the Richmond vampire begins. Some retellings of the legend state that when rescue crews tried to enter the tunnel, they were confronted with an unearthly, blood-soaked creature feasting on one of the dead train workers. It had jagged, sharp teeth and skin that hung loosely from its muscular torso. It escaped the tunnel and fled toward the James River. A posse pursued into Hollywood Cemetery, where it disappeared into the mausoleum of William Wortham Pool, a bookkeeper at a local tobacco factory who had died three years before at the age of 80.

While the so-called “vampire” is almost certainly an exaggerated retelling of Ben Mosby’s ill-fated escape from the tunnel, that hasn’t stopped many locals from suggesting that some ancient evil had been awakened during the construction of the tunnel. Others have suggested that W.W. Pool had risen from the dead as a vampire. Such rumors might have been inspired by the fact that Pool’s best friend, Samuel R. Owens, died on the exact same day as him, as well as the rather exotic design of his mausoleum, which features a distinctly ancient Egyptian look (likely inspired by Pool’s membership with the Freemasons). In addition, the two “W’s” carved into the facade are said to resemble fangs, which probably doesn’t help quiet active imaginations.

And those active imaginations were hardly in short supply, since Hollywood Cemetery is located right next to the Virginia Commonwealth University. Rumors of vampires seem to have begun sometime between the late 50s and mid 60s, with students coming away from nighttime strolls through the cemetery with stories of apparitions hanging around the Pool mausoleum (which almost certainly weren’t the result of adrenaline or hallucinogens, no sir!). The legend shifted from oral history to text in the April 30, 1976, issue of the Commonwealth Times, and thus, the legend of the Richmond Vampire was born.

Smithy

Virginia’s resident Loch Ness Monster analog is another of those lake monsters that seem rather dubious, given that its home is a reservoir rather than a natural lake. Indeed, Smith Mountain Lake didn’t exist until 1963, when the Smith Mountain Dam was erected on the Roanoke River.

It seems that there is so little to this creature that all I could find on it online was this single paragraph on the It’s Something Wiki, which is copypasted under the DeviantArt page for the picture I used above (L.B. Taylor’s book doesn’t even mention Smith Mountain Lake, let alone Smithy). Here it is in full:

Smithy is an aquatic cryptid that is rumored to live in Smith Mountain Lake - a large reservoir created in the central highlands of Virginia in the United States by the damming of the Roanoke River in 1963. The first reported sightings of Smithy began in the summer of 1979. With few exceptions, most reported sightings have occurred very near the Smith Mountain Dam, either shortly after the warning alarms were sounded to signal the periodic activation of the dam's hydroelectric turbines, or while the turbines were running. While some locals speculate Smithy is an unusually large catfish, some sightings suggest this mysterious creature is more serpentine or reptilian in appearance.

And that’s everything I’ve got for Smithy. Maybe someone who lives closer to the area has more information, but that’s all you’re getting from me.

The Werewolf of Henrico County

Henrico County is best known today as the home of Virginia’s capital, Richmond, before Richmond became an independent city. It has attracted attention from paranormal enthusiasts for a strange creature said to be lurking in its wilder places, one that seems to resemble the lycanthropes of medieval folklore.

Stories about the supposed werewolf have circulated for a century, with some sources even claiming that it’s the ghost of a Civil War-era soldier who took the form of a wolf to scare his enemies. Appropriately enough, its territory is centered on the Confederate Hills Recreation Center in Highland Springs, and it has been described as standing six or seven feet tall with grayish-white fur. It is also described as rather noisy, often rending the night air with unearthly howls unlike any known canine species, especially when the moon is full.

Trying to find any sighting reports with dates attached is difficult for this thing, though. The only exception I could find was on the beast’s Spooky Appalachia page, which describes an October 2011 incident in which the cops received calls about a large, upright-walking animal that was stalking local neighborhoods and screaming in the night. One woman recalled going out to walk her pit bull one night through a wooded area, only to be surprised when the normally fearless dog suddenly froze in terror and desperately dragged its owner back to their house. When the woman investigated the spot the next day, she found a track that looked canine but was far too large to have been made by a dog, coyote, or fox.

Spooky Appalachia also tells of a young couple parked near a boat launch who were suddenly spooked by a deep, guttural howl. As they searched with flashlights for the source of the sound, they were suddenly confronted by two large, white-haired dogs who stood completely still and stared menacingly at them for ten minutes until a passing car spooked them.

Another interesting report, this one coming from The Werewolf Page Myths, comes from a woman who claims to have been sitting at a picnic table behind her boyfriend’s parents’ house, smoking cigarettes with said boyfriend one afternoon, when a pack of white canines came walking across the backyard, with the pair left unnerved by their seemingly trance-like demeanor. They also recalled hearing howling noises at two or three in the morning on many nights, which sounded like no animal they were familiar with. They also recount a somewhat humorous anecdote involving the parents’ cat, which they let out one night and were surprised to see slam against the screen door and come back inside covered in feces. The mother joked that a bear wiped its ass on the helpless feline, then threw it back into the house, and it remained an indoor cat for the rest of its life.

Some locals, like paranormal investigator Jake Fife, have argued that the Henrico Werewolf is a hoax, as he could find no evidence that stories about the creature predated the early 2000s. Then again, maybe it won a fight with the Richmond Vampire and claimed its territory as its own.

The Woodbooger

You thought we’d finally found a state that Bigfoot hadn’t managed to reach yet, didn’t you? Nope, Virginia still has plenty of places for a hairy hominid to hide, especially in the western half, where the Appalachian Mountains run through it (also, the state has 62% forest cover, the 11th-highest in the country). Granted, if the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization website is to be believed, Bigfoot sightings are less common there, with only 91 recorded.

Oddly enough, though, they’ve cataloged no reported sightings in Wise County, home of the independent city of Norton, despite it allegedly being home to a Bigfoot-type creature known locally as the Woodbooger. The admittedly strange name apparently came about because the creature became something of a local boogeyman of the woods, with parents warning their children not to wander into the woods at night, lest the Woodbooger steal them away, never to be seen again. And it was no idle threat, for there were enough stories about strange footprints, unearthly howls, and dark shapes moving through the trees to warrant a mention of the creature in the November 24, 1892, issue of the Old Post newspaper.

The stories of the Woodbooger eventually grew in popularity to the point that the Animal Planet TV show Finding Bigfoot came to Norton in 2011 to look for it. They learned at a local town hall meeting that the creature’s territory centered on Flag Rock Recreation Center, and many witnesses came forward with reports of large manlike figures moving through the trees and deep, guttural growls echoing through the night. Here’s one encounter reported by a man hunting on High Knob, as recounted on Spooky Appalachia:

I was up in my tree stand around dusk when everything went dead quiet. Then I heard heavy footsteps coming up behind me — two legs, not four. I thought it was another hunter, but when I turned, it was something massive, dark brown, broad-shouldered. It looked right at me, then turned and walked back into the trees like it didn’t have a care in the world.

A group of teenagers claimed they had been camping near the Lower Norton Reservoir when they were awoken at around 3 a.m. by the sound of branches snapping and heavy footsteps. While they didn’t get a good look at whatever it was, they did see a pair of eyes glowing amber in the flashlight glare about eight feet off the ground. They quickly packed up and left.

Another report came from a hiker who claimed to have discovered 16” tracks on the Chief Benge Scout Trail. He said they crossed a muddy stream bed and were spaced too far apart and sunk too deeply into the muck to have been made by a human.

Even after the Finding Bigfoot team had concluded its search, it seems that the Woodbooger’s celebrity status only grew. The city of Norton even passed a resolution in October 2014 declaring the city to be a sanctuary for any Bigfoot-type creature. Since then, the city has capitalized on its popularity by opening the Wood Booger Grill, selling a line of t-shirts at Home Hardware, hosting the annual Woodbooger Festival every late September, and erecting a statue in the creature’s honor at the Flag Rock Overlook. You ever wonder if the real Woodbooger ever stumbles across it while traipsing through the woods at night and gets confused?

But the Woodbooger isn’t the only Bigfoot roaming through Old Dominion, according to eyewitness testimony. Let’s close out this chapter of our Fortean road trip with a few other Squatchian encounters:

1879: The oldest Bigfoot sighting in the state, according to the Horror Collection, was in Craig County, where a family hosting a party was startled to see an eight-foot-tall hairy creature peering into their kitchen window. The party crasher was scared away when someone waved a lantern at its face.

Early 1970s: Ben Keyes claims to have had an encounter one evening while vacationing at Chippokes State Park along the James River. He was searching the shoreline for a missing ski when he was suddenly overpowered by a noxious odor resembling a cross between a skunk and a rotting fish. The source of the odor soon made itself apparent about twenty feet away, in the form of an 8-9-foot-tall creature covered in shiny black hair, with arms so long they touched the ground and a face resembling that of a Cro-Magnon. Keyes turned off his flashlight and slowly backed away from the creature until he was standing chest deep in the river. When his sister came along in a speedboat to pick him up, he was so pale that his sister was genuinely worried he was suffering from a medical emergency.

When he and his sister later gathered the courage to investigate the spot, they found massive footprints and a lingering odor, and heard something crashing through the brush away from them. They also learned about two elderly farmers in the area who claimed to have had something steal muskrats from their traps, which left behind eighteen-inch footprints and a horrible odor. One of the farmers even caught sight of it on a hillside clearing with a muskrat in its fist.

1975: A Highland County dentist claims to have shot a deer and then went back to his truck to fetch his knife. He returned to find a seven-foot-tall hairy creature tucking the kill under its arm and carrying it away. The witness said it emitted a “cesspool-like” smell.

July 1978: A young couple was driving along Route 17 near Churchview when they pulled over to inspect an animal carcass, which they took to be a large dog. As they took a closer look, the man became spooked by something crouching in the woods. As they drove away, the figure emerged from the forest, picked up the carcass, and carried it away. The witnesses said it looked more like a monkey than a man, with arms hanging below its knees, and had “long furry ears swinging around following its head, much like those old aviator hats with long ear pieces.”

March 1995: Manassas resident William Dranginis was out metal detecting with some friends at an abandoned gold mine in Culpeper County one afternoon when someone said they saw a man spying on them from behind a tree. The “man” briefly stuck its large head out from behind the tree, then took off running down the hill with incredible speed. While some tried to claim it was a bear, William insisted that it was a creature built for speed and agility. “I have never seen such massive shoulder muscles,” he later recalled.

The men returned the next day to investigate. They found a single 13 ½-inch footprint, then became spooked when they heard two of the creatures whistling at each other, and fled the scene. They kept investigating for several more months until a local homeowner had to tell them to knock it off because whatever they were chasing kept coming around his place and scaring his dogs. Dranginis has since become the founder of the Virginia Bigfoot Research Organization.

November 1997: A search party looking for a missing hunter in Lee County discovered him semiconscious at the edge of a field with his clothes tattered. When he had recovered from the shock, he explained that he had been following the blood trail of a deer he shot, only to be shocked when he found what he had thought was a man scavenging from the corpse. When the indignant hunter protested, the “man,” which turned out to be an eight-foot-tall creature covered in thick hair, screamed at him and flung him toward the trees, knocking him out. He had no memory of how he got to the field.

January 2003: A boy was out hiking with his father on the Powell’s Creek Loop in Leesylvania State Park when he saw an apelike creature. He described it as at least a foot taller than his dad, with black hair like a gorilla’s, black skin, orangutan-like fingers, a pointed cranium, and a muscular chest and arms with wide shoulders. The boy thought that the creature was angry that he was making eye contact with it, and that it “swiftly loped away.”

October 2004: A squirrel hunter, this time outside of Big Stone Gap in Wise County, was terrified when a “demonic” sound suddenly ripped its way through the trees. As he fled in the direction of his truck, something that was “yelling like a madman” started chasing him. The yells soon devolved into groans and then weeping, “like something in terrible anguish and pain.” He has since said that Bigfoot recordings come the closest to what he heard on those slopes.

July 2005: One would think a military base would be the last place a Bigfoot would ever show up, yet that’s exactly what former Marine Andrew Bird claims happened one summer night while he and two others were out on night maneuvers on Marine Corps Base Quantico. The trio had gotten lost when their compasses experienced a “distortion anomaly,” which caused them to travel in a circle. As they regained their bearings and set out on a new course, they were startled by what sounded like a falling tree. When they turned their flashlights toward the sound, they were surprised to see an eight-foot-tall creature covered in reddish-brown hair, 20-30 feet off the ground, pulling two large trees together.

The Marines quickly lost their nerve and started running. They could hear the beast crashing noisily through the brush in pursuit of them. After five minutes, they finally reached their pickup point and immediately told the driver to floor it. They caught one last glimpse of their pursuer as they left. Bird swears that it was too large to be a black bear and that it overall resembled a “large orangutan.”

Incidentally, Bird’s isn’t the only Bigfoot-type creature reported in MCB Quantico. There is another sighting dating back to July 1957, where R.A. claims to have been alerted to the presence of a seven-foot-tall creature with light brown hair by the dog that lived at the barracks, which was scared away when the witness fired a shot over its head. Later in February 1994, Brian Robertson claimed to have spotted a dark eight-foot-tall figure standing behind an oak tree during a nighttime training exercise. The shoulders were so broad that they poked out from either side of the tree.

June 2007: A group of campers outside Sanford in Accomack County reported hearing howling noises at around 2 a.m. that sounded like a cross between a woman’s scream and a guttural roar that lasted for ten minutes. When the calls repeated the next night, at 1:30 a.m., the campers decided to pack up and leave. BFRO investigator Aaron B. argues that the vocalizations are consistent with other recordings of supposed Bigfoot vocalizations.

June 28, 2014: Ryan O’Neal claims to have been boating along the Intracoastal Waterway near the Great Dismal Swamp with his father when a strange figure covered in dark brown hair suddenly stood up on two legs along the shore. The senior O’Neal managed to snap a picture of the creature on his cellphone before it fled the scene. The O’Neal also described an earlier incident in the region in which he and his father saw a pair of glowing eyes leering at them from the bushes. The creature fled when the elder fired a shot into the air.

September 9, 2015: A motorist driving along a rural road in Bedford County at 11:38 p.m. slowed down when she thought she saw a deer illuminated in her headlights. She soon realized the creature was actually a bipedal apelike creature covered in reddish hair. The creature was carrying a smaller animal in its arms, which the witness took to be its baby. The witness described the infant creature as resembling a “Wukie” (actually referring to Wookies, the hairy alien race from Star Wars that Chewbacca is a member of). The headlight beam only reached up to the adult Bigfoot’s waist, so the witness didn’t get a good look at the upper half. She later reported the sighting to the county sheriff’s office, but they didn’t take her seriously. She investigated the site the next day and found tracks and a dead deer that she is sure wasn’t there before.

August 2019: Three campers at First Landing State Park are spooked by a large dark figure moving alongside a marsh trail. The sighting was ominously preceded by darkening clouds and a sudden downpour.

April 2020: A creature that Squatchable.com refers to as the “Shanoa Specter” is spotted outside of Luray in Page County by a pair of hikers who saw a large, shadowy figure darting between the trees on a misty morning.

October 2021: A lone hiker in Grayson Highlands State Park spots a large, hairy silhouette casually strolling through a foggy meadow.

July 2022: A group of four hikers in Jefferson National Forest claimed to hear heavy footsteps approaching their trail and then saw a towering figure slip into the underbrush. A recent squall added to the encounter’s ominous ambiance.

May 2023: Six friends had just departed from Troutdale for a guided backpacking trip through the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area when they suddenly stumbled across a large set of footprints. As the group struggled to make sense of them, a massive, shaggy figure suddenly emerged from the pines, paused to survey the hikers trespassing on its land, and then disappeared again.

Well, that return to the world of cryptids was fun while it lasted. For now, though, I must return to the world of animation and get started on Part Five of my “1001 Animations You Must See Before You Die” series, and then get started on that 2022 retrospective I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I don’t know when I’ll have the time to return to my road trip and talk about the cryptids of North Carolina, but I’ll certainly be letting you know when that time comes.

Until then, stay safe, stay away from the Bunny Man Bridge, and I’ll see you all very soon, I hope. Bye folks!