The Coatesville Creature

Loren Coleman reported on Cryptomundo on an old account of something near Coatesville, Pennsylvania - from the Lebanon Daily News, February 15, 1939:

A mysterious animal - described by witnesses as having a small head, a neck a foot long, the jumping ability of a deer and a scream like that of two cats - was reported prowling through Chester county woods today.

There were some who received the reports with skepticism, but Sylvester Scott, 31-year-old farmer, vowed he saw the what-is-it and three times had heard its eerie wail echoing over the countryside. Others said they had been “gunning” for it.

Scott declared the creature appeared one day in a field where he was spreading fertilizer.

“It stood two or two and a half feet off the ground,” he said. “It was colored like a deer in front, with white on the flanks. It had paws, remember, and not hoofs.

“It jumped just like a deer, about two feet up in the air. It had a very small head on the end of its neck, which was a foot long anyway. It was a fast runner, all right. It ran away from my dogs - beagles - and they didn’t seem to want to follow. Neither did I.”

One hunter said he thought it was a charmois [chamois], while others declared it might be some sort of a African Springbok.

“It screams only at night,” said Scott. “Once I fired my shotgun at the place where the noise was coming from, but it got away. Others have heard its wail, which does not seem to come directly from the monster itself, but issues in an unearthly scream all around you.”

The periodical Doubt (the account is repeated in Pursuit) places a "monster described as a cross between a giraffe, a dog and a deer, that wails like a woman" in Coatesville in February, 1946. Whether it is an error in transcription of this account or whether it is a separate one, I don't know.

The story of the Snallygaster

The Blue Ridge Mountains are home to Maryland's own version of the more famous Jersey Devil, the Snallygaster (derived from the German schnellegeist or 'fast spirit'). The Snallygaster was first sighted in 1909, during the major 'flap' of sightings of its New Jersey cousin, although traditions of it reputedly dated back much further. The creature was winged, beaked and clawed. A James Harding saw the creature, and claimed it had one eye and the features of a tiger and a vampire. In 1932, George Danforth and Charles Cushwa, two revenue agents, saw the beast lying dead in a moonshine still. Its body was destroyed. Perhaps its fate - drowned in homemade whiskey - was an indicator of the whole story's origin.

The transparent thing

The Paranormal News reports that in August of 2009, near Route 15 in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, a strange humanoid apparition was seen. The creature descended from a tree and ran across the witness' yard. It was about three feet tall, with skinny legs and bird-like feet. The witness described the creature as nearly transparent in appearance.

A western Pennsylvania river monster: the Ogua

Native American lore placed a monstrous creature called the Ogua in the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. The Ogua was a chimerical creature shaped like a turtle, with a 15 foot tail and two heads that emerged from the water by night to hunt and kill deer, snaring them with its tail. Some Natives had stories that it was a monster generated by the legendary chief Hiawatha. European settlers reputedly encountered the beast, and an account is supposed to exist in the collection of West Virginia University.

The blue dwarf cyclops of Indiana County

The UFO Roundup newsletter for September 29, 1996 reported on the sighting of an unusual blue dwarf. The sighting occurred in the northern portions of the county, and was made by two 9 year olds. The creature they saw was roughly 4 feet tall, and swung its arms as it moved. The blue creature had a cone-shaped face, one eye in the place of its nose, four fingers and a proboscis or antenna protruding from the top of its head. Although something was made of the UFO sightings in the area at the time, the dwarf sighting had no apparent UFO connection.