The Dwayyo and others

Linda Godfrey has received this account via her website:

This sighting occurred in late fall of 1976 in Frederick Co. MD near the town of Thurmont. My friend had picked me up at my house and we had gone into town with plans to meet some other friends to drink some beers at a local pub. Since our friends had not yet arrived we decided to take a short drive up Rt. 77 to a field where it was common to observe deer feeding at night.

The field was on the edge of the woods which bordered the areas of the Cunningham Falls State Park and the Catoctin Mt. National Park. We drove off the main road onto a small private access road which led up to the field. Upon arriving we drove the car to a point where the headlights illuminated the area but to our disappointment no deer were to be seen. After spending several minutes there we turned the car around and slowly headed back down the small road from where we had entered.

Suddenly from the left side of the road a large creature, running on two legs, bounded and leaped across the road and disappeared into the brush on the other side. It passed directly in front of us not more than 30 feet away. My first reaction was shock and amazement but I quickly controlled my surprise and decided not to say anything to see if my friend would react and allow me to better determine what had just happened. Immediately he exclaimed “WHAT WAS THAT MAN!!!” In a calm but excited voice I replied “Tell me what you saw”, tell me what you saw!”

We both began to describe to each other the strange sight which had just passed before our eyes. Here I wish to add something that is hard to explain except to those who have had a similar experience. When one sees something that is totally unlike anything one has seen before it is actually hard to put into words or even cognitively recognize what that thing is or what you have seen. It is hard to get a point of reference for something unlike anything you have seen before. Thus we spent the next couple of minutes trying to calm down and decide just what it was we had seen. Needless to say we were both nervous and a little shaken from the experience and decided to continue directly back to town.

Both of us had a good look at the creature. It was likely at least 6 ft tall but inclined forward since it was moving quickly. Its head was fairly large and similar to the profile of a wolf. The body was covered in brown or brindle colored fur but the lower half had a striped pattern of noticeable darker and lighter banding. The forelegs (or arms) were slimmer and held out in front as it moved. The back legs were very muscled and thick similar to perhaps a kangaroo.

I do not recall the tail of the animal although my opinion is that it did have one. It moved in a leaping bounding motion and crossed the distance of the road in front of us in two or three leaps. It was very fast and athletic and was obviously trying to get away quickly. This was not a hominoid type creature; it did not have the characteristics of an ape. It was much more similar to a wolf or ferocious dog however it was definitely moving upright and appeared to be adapted for that type of mobility. I was particularly impressed by the size and strength of the back legs, the stripes on the lower half of the body and the canine-wolf-like head.

After we calmed down my friend and I talked about whether or not we should report what we had seen but we decided not to. I mentioned to him that years previously in the mid sixties there had been reports published in the local paper the Frederick News-Post of some hunters who had reported a similar creature in the Frederick Co. area. At that time they called the creature a “duwayo” (I am not sure the spelling is correct). Because of this we decided this is what we had seen.

That evening we told our friends the story but they weren’t too inclined to believe us unless they could see it for themselves and we were definitely not interested in going back to the area that evening. Since that time I have moved away from the area and have had only a few opportunities to see my friend who shared this experience with me. Every time we’ve met however he always asks me if I remember the night we saw the duwayo.

Mark Chorvinsky and Mark Opsasnick report that there was a sighting of "a large hairy creature running on two legs" made from the Cunningham Falls area where the above sighting took place by park rangers in 1978. And in the 1890s, a local farmer reported seeing a doglike creature 9 feet tall at Camp Greentop, only a bit northwest of this sighting off Manahan Road.

The Duwayo the witness mentions (Dwayyo or Wago) was first reported from Carroll County in 1944. It was reported to have uttered frightful screams and to have left footprints. The creature really became infamous on November 27, 1965 when it was seen by a John Becker at the Gambrill State Park further south along the South Mountain northwest of Frederick. However, no trace of a 'John Becker' could be found (the picture above is a depiction of this creature).

A woman in Ellerton, north of Myerstown, reported hearing screaming or crying sounds and another woman in Jefferson, along the southern reaches of South Mountain, said that she had seen a calf-sized dog chasing cows. University of Maryland students laughably claimed to have encountered the Dwayyo on campus there, and that it originated from the Amazon jungle.

(A 2006 article by Craig Heinselman records a similarly-described creature to the Dwayyo and more specifically to the Shookstown sighting described below from Nevada, where it is called the Whoahaw or Wahhoo. It also likens it to the "bearwolf" of Wisconsin.)

The Gambrill State Park near Shookstown was also the site of the sighting in 1966, by a 'Jim A.' of a screaming creature the size of a deer, dark brown in color. The shaggy-haired creature had a triangular head and pointed ears and chin and back slowly away from the witness. Its legs, he said, "stuck out from the side of the trunk of the body making its movements appear almost spider-like as it backed away."

In just the last post I mentioned the sightings of a "gorilla" further north along the South Mountain in Adams County, Pennsylvania. Some sightings of that creature described it as a kangaroo. That monster made a gurgling noise when it was heard.

Also from this area, stories of werewolves circulated around near Mt. Holly in Cumberland County, as described in Matt Lake's Weird Pennsylvania. In the early 1970s, someone giving his name only as "Skywalker" claimed to have seen a man-sized ape-like creature run across the road in the northern Adams County hills (it is notable that though discussed in connection with the werewolf legends, nothing in the description indicates a Bray Road-type animal).

There are also the sightings of the Dorlan Devil, a leaping kangaroo-type reported from Chester County and the Brandywine Valley. Traditions of the Red Dog Fox, a werefox, exist further south along the Brandywine near Wilmington, Delaware and a sighting of a kangaroo was reported from the nearby town of Concord.

The South Mountain area, of course, is also home to reports of a black dog called the Snarly Yow, described in an article I wrote for Mysterious Britain & Ireland.

The Manor Road Pig-Dog

On the morning of February 6, 2009, two men driving along Manor Road in Baltimore County saw a strange creature amble across their path. The animal had hind legs longer than the fore, and its face was a hybrid of dog and pig features. The two were quite clear that it was neither a dog or bear - it apparently had thinner legs than a bear and didn't move in the same way as a bear. A bear had recently been seen on Manor Road, making it possible that it was a bear, despite the denials.

Manor Road runs east of Loch Raven Reservoir.

The Black Dog of Warfieldsburg

According to Ann W. Whitney and Caroline C. Bullock in Folk-Lore from Maryland, in 1887 two men on horseback were near Warfieldsburg's Ore Mine Bridge, in Carroll County, saw a large black dog on the other side of a fence. The dog passed through the fence, crossed the road, passed through a fence on the other side, and disappeared from view. Whitney and Bullock record that one of the men was amazed at the dog's size - apparently, the fact that it passed through two fences wasn't worthy of his mention.

They also record that a man was told that he could see a phantom dog if he stood underneath a tree near a bridge for an hour. He did so, and sure enough, the dog appeared. He stated that the dog then followed him for a little way. This is similar to the British black dogs, which often follow travellers. Another sighting which bears a parallel to British lore was one by a man driving a wagon down the road, who said that he saw the phantasmal dog dragging a chain. Barghest of the Yorkshire Moors is reputed to engage in just such a chain-dragging activity. This is also a feature of Cadejo of Central American lore, a black hound with hooved feet.

The black dog of Warfieldsburg can supposedly only be seen by an individual once. A cracking whip near the dog will make it vanish. This theory was unsuccessfully tested in the 1920s by one witness, whose whip passed right throught the dog.

The sadly deceased Mark Chorvinsky has recorded a sighting of a phantom hound near Warfieldsburg in 1975 ("Phantom Dogs in Maryland", Strange Magazine 19). Several people driving along the road heard a thud as the car impacted a large black dog. Some of the witnesses distinctly felt the creature underneath the wheels. Yet when the car stopped, the passengers "were amazed to see the dog standing on its huge paws. The beast bared its teeth, showing an ugly red mouth, then vanished as suddenly as it had appeared."

Caterpillars

Researcher Stan Gordon wrote a piece for the Paranormal News detailing a sighting which took place on June 27, 2009. A number of motorists travelling near Mt. Pleasant, in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, reported to Gordon the sighting of a creature which "looked like a giant caterpillar". It was about 7 inches in length, tapered at the ends and thicker in the middle, and appeared to be segmented. It was a blue-white color but the witness noted that it was not luminescent.

Within a few moments, the four witnesses encountered a second worm... and another... and another. In all, six or seven individuals were seen both in the road and beside it.

In September the same year, Brian Seech of the Center for Unexplained Events forwarded a second report to Stan Gordon, this one originating from Youngwood, again in Westmoreland County. This one was of what the witnesses first took to be a snake, about four feet long which before their eyes "broke" into eight smaller creatures anywhere between six and eight inches in length. The witnesses reported that each of these creatures seemed to have four legs, and was of a dark color, with a "shiny wet" texture.

Then, they claimed, the smaller animals assumed a ring-like position and then reformed into a large snake and slithered away.

Chad Arment has noted that the so-called hickory horned devil, the caterpillar of the regal moth, is the largest variety of caterpillar in Pennsylvania and can grow 6-7 inches long. The larvae have a greenish coloration and segmented appearance much like those in the first sighting. The witnesses did not to my knowledge report any sort of horn-like appendages that these larvae sport. Many people on websites note sightings of hickory horned devils from roadways and also note that they are highly visible from a distance.

As for the second sighting, Arment notes that there are a number of species of caterpillars which migrate in what is called a processional pattern; processionally-migrating caterpillars can at times be difficult to distinguish from one another, possibly giving the appearance of a snake. None of these processional caterpillars are known to exist in Pennsylvania. He does believe it possible, however, that there could be some present. The most famous is the pine processionary caterpillar. It is interesting that another detail of the second sighting claimed that after the snake broke apart, its components formed a ring-like pattern before it reformed; just such a pattern is shown in the photos on this page.

I had at first been thinking that the second sighting, at least, may have had some sort of mammalian explanation, rather than an entomological one; the wet-shiny appearance, four legs and dark color practically screamed otter or weasel (the barely 7-inch least weasel is native to the western half of the state). But these revelations (to me) of caterpillars of a similar size and appearance and that there are similarly-behaving caterpillars to the second sighting leads me to wonder whether there may be some as yet unidentified moth native to the state.

And obviously, such a thing would not be outside the realm of possibility at all!

I am in contact with Stan Gordon and will let you know if anything more develops.

Apologies to E.F. Benson for the title of this post, which is shamelessly ripped from the title of one of his stories.

A black-eyed hairy monster in Uniontown

The Paranormal News reports that on July 10, 2009 a hominid encounter was reported from Uniontown, Pennsylvania. The report was investigated by the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, who found that at around 6:00 PM, the witness' car swerved to avoid hitting a figure which approached the road. After a few moments, she saw the creature again running down the roadway. She described a dark humanoid shape, 6 feet or taller, She reported that the entire face wss hairy, and that the creature had round, black eyes with no apparent irises. The long-armed creature had a flat black nose, no visible mouth, and a head that was oddly elongated. Upon investigation, a series of scratches on the car's trunk were found.

Eric Altman of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society also reported that the witness described the being as more of a canine hominid than a Bigfoot.

More on the Conestoga Capybara

From the Lancaster New Era (March 16, 2009):

Maybe it's TJ, who is still on the lam.

But it's not the roadkill on Route 472.

Theories are emerging about the mysterious creature that a mother and son spotted in Pequea Township within the past six weeks.

Tessa Barnett and her son, Austen, who live in Conestoga, saw the reddish, barrel-shaped creature at Cherry Hill Orchards on two separate occasions. They both said it was large, about 200 pounds, had coarse hair and moved in an odd, slithery, scampering way.

Heather Conver, of Conestoga, wonders if it's her escaped goat.

She and her family got the male goat, which they named TJ, back in October.

Sadly, TJ never made it into a fenced pen at their home on Conestoga Boulevard, which is less than a mile from where the Barnetts spotted the creature.

"He overpowered my dad and my husband when they got him out of the trailer," she said. "He just took off."

The family always has an eye out for the reddish-colored goat, which Conver estimated weighs more than 100 pounds and stands waist-high to her.

Neighbors told her they saw him in a nearby farmer's field about a month after he escaped, but no one has reported seeing him since then.JoAnn Thomas, of Manheim, wondered if the creature wandered southeast and was hit by a vehicle along Route 472, in Colerain Township, across from the entrance to Black Rock Retreat.

While on her way to Maryland Saturday, Thomas passed an unusual-looking animal lying dead on the side of the road. It was so strange, she turned her car around to take a second look at it, she said.

The animal had hooves and "an ugly-looking face," she said. "It was not something I had ever seen before."

Thomas said she did not think it was a deer, because she did not see any white on it. Nor was it a goat or a pig, she said.

Troy Groff, a member of the Colerain Township road crew, also saw the animal and said it was a deer, though he agreed it was hard to tell what it was.

"It really got plastered," he said.

So what is the mysterious creature?

Neither police nor state game commission officials have received any reports of unusual animal sightings. Game officials wondered last week if the animal was an escaped pig.

Patrons at the Conestoga Wagon Restaurant in Conestoga, a local gathering place, are wondering what the animal is, said waitress Lisa Thompson. The topic has created some local buzz.

"They were saying, 'How'd you like to run into one of those?' " she said.

Mrs. Barnett still is puzzling over what she and her son saw.

The Barnetts have a German shepherd, which weighs about 120 pounds, she said, so she knows what that size animal looks like.

"This is much bigger than my dog," said Mrs. Barnett, who works during the week in New York as an executive administrator for a Manhattan accounting firm.

She saw the animal as she was on the way to pick up her son, who works nights for the Executive Coach bus company near Willow Street. Austen, 20, saw it while on his way home from that job. Both spotted it between 2 and 4 a.m.

"I really would like to know what it is," Mrs. Barnett said of the animal, which had a long, straight tail. "I am convinced it could be a big beaver — that's what it looked like the most — but it would be too big."

As for TJ, Mrs. Barnett said, "It didn't look like a goat."

But Conver thinks it could be TJ.

Conver's father, Steve Ebersole, saw the story about the the creature in last week's New Era and told her about it.

"He said, 'I think somebody saw your goat.' I said, 'Shut up!' " she said, laughing. "My neighbor said, 'You oughta go out at 2 a.m. and sit there and wait.' "

"I grew up on a farm and animals would get out from time to time," Convers said. "I thought we'd catch him.

"I'm always on the lookout for that reddish-brown animal standing out in the weeds."

A capybara in Lancaster County?

From the Lancaster New Era, March 12, 2009:

Is it an escaped pig?

Or maybe a giant rodent called a capybara?

Or possibly a giant beaver?

Tessa Barnett and her son, Austen, don't know.

All they know is they both saw a strange, reddish, barrel-shaped creature very early in the morning in the New Danville area on two separate occasions in the past six weeks.

"My son and I are totally freaked out by it," says Mrs. Barnett, 50, of Conestoga. "He said, when he saw it, 'I don't want to see that again.' "

Both mother and son saw the animal between 2 and 4 a.m. while passing the Cherry Hill Orchards property in Pequea Township. Mrs. Barnett saw it about six weeks ago, while on her way to pick up Austen, 20, at his job working nights at Executive Coach bus company near Willow Street.

Mrs. Barnett remembers her encounter vividly.

"The animal crossed the road in front of my car," Mrs. Barnett says. "It started out slowly, then it scampered.

"The way I described it is it slithered, it moved so strangely. It was almost like a bear with four broken legs. It looked like a giant beaver."

It had red, coarse fur and a long, straight tail, says Mrs. Barnett, who did not get to see the animal's head.

"I thought, 'What was that?' It wasn't a dog. At first I thought it was a pig. It had short legs."

Mrs. Barnett then wondered if the animal was some sort of escaped exotic pet, perhaps a capybara, the world's largest rodent. A native of South America, it can be seen in some zoos.

Mrs. Barnett works as an executive administrator for an accounting firm in Manhattan during the week. No stranger to either the big city or to Lancaster County, she knows her story sounds a little, well, crazy.

In fact, she did not report her sighting to the police or local officials.

"I told my family about it but I never told anyone else about it because it's weird, right?" she says.

But she also is firm that she didn't dream the animal that passed in front of her car's headlights.

"No, I don't think I'm seeing things. I definitely saw something," she says. "I know animals pretty well. It wasn't a pony or a miniature horse. It was more bearlike."

Mrs. Barnett might have chalked up her experience as one of those once-in-a-lifetime events that can't be verified. But then, she says, her son came home with a similar tale.

Austen saw the same creature on his way home from work early one morning last week. He was sleeping early today and not available for comment.

Mrs. Barnett said her son told her at first he thought the animal he saw, which was standing by the side of the road, was a bear. Then he saw it move.

"The way it moves is so weird," Mrs. Barnett says. "It creeped him out."

Mrs. Barnett saw the animal near the Cherry Hill Orchards store. Her son saw it along the orchard property on the New Danville Pike.

Cherry Hill officials did not return several calls today for comment.

Calls to local police, game commission officials and area residents did not turn up any reports of escaped pigs or pets, but generated some theories on what the animal could be.

"It could be a domestic pig that is escaped and is feral," said Jerry Feaser, state game commission spokesman.

He also said it could be an escaped Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, which some people keep as pets.

Feaser also wondered if the animal could be a nutria, a beaver-like rodent found in Maryland. However, nutria grow to be only 20 pounds, and the Barnetts described the animal as much larger.

Feaser said it is sometimes difficult to estimate an animal's size and not unusual for someone to overestimate weight.

Local game warden Dennis Warfel, who covers southern Lancaster County, said he has received no reports of anyone sighting the animal or any reports of escaped exotic pets.

He agreed with one of Feaser's theories.

"I would think this is most likely a domestic pig that has gotten away from somebody and the farmer hasn't found it yet," he said.

Southern Regional Police Chief John Fiorill said he periodically gets calls about loose pigs but has received none recently.

In the past, some of those calls were in relation to a pig that sometimes wandered from a farm on Slackwater Road.

But a call to the owner of the perambulating porker, named Smeagol after a character in the movie "The Lord of the Rings," revealed it could not be that pig.

"It's been in our freezer at least six months," said Rebecca Francis.

Residents who live along Long Lane, where Cherry Hill Orchards store is, said they had not seen any strange animals.

Clyde Thomas owns a lawn care business across Long Lane from the orchard store. His front window looks out on the property.

He hasn't seen anything but noted that between 2 and 4 a.m., when the animal was sighted, "I'm in the horizontal position."

Lavonda McClafferty, who lives across from the orchard, also has seen nothing.

"I'll be working in the yard all day today," she said, "so I'll be watching."

Mrs. Barnett admits she's a little worried people won't believe her story.

But she notes, "If two people in my family saw it, we can't be the only ones to see this creepy thing."

She does have a sense of humor about the whole strange experience.

Her family watches the television show "South Park," which featured an unusual creature called ManBearPig, described as "half man, half bear, half pig."

"That's what it looks like," she says, laughing. "Maybe that's what it is."

Cindy Stauffer, "Strange-looking, 200-pound creature sighted here"