The Cloak Woman...and the Cloak Man

A bizarre figure known as the Cloak Woman haunted the town of Schuylkill Haven, in Schuylkill County, back in 1911. The Call of Allentown reported on February 11 and 18 about the mysterious figure which followed some women to their homes. The figure was itself followed on Haven Street, where several men said that it wore women's clothing and a red tam o'shanter cap. When seen next, by several young girls, the mysterious Cloak Woman wore goggles of some type and a long shawl. Then, in the Prospect Hill area of town, multiple Cloak Women were seen.

In a bizarre twist, Tony Rossi, sexton of St. Ambrose Church saw a masked, dark-cloaked figure loitering in his churchyard. After lying in wait the next evening, Rossi attacked the figure. When cornered, it turned out to be a man, who claimed that he was disguising himself in order to spy on his wife.

By some bizarre coincidence, at around the same time, during the years of the early twentieth century, the streets of Manheim here in Lancaster County were being haunted by the Cloak Man. This was a mysterious figure - clad all in a billowing cloak - who would approach women walking through Bull Alley (present-day Ferdinand Street). Who exactly he was remained a mystery, and the Cloak Man faded away in the years that followed. The figures of the Cloak Man and Cloak Woman are both similar to the Woman in Black, a female form, replete with luminous eyes, which haunted the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton metropolitan area some fifteen years before.

These black-clad mystery figures seem to have been an integral part of the era, from the pulp hero The Shadow to the Mad Gasser of Mattoon and beyond.

Whisper down the lane: dismantling a legend

In his seminal work Wild Talents (1932), pioneering anomalist Charles Fort tells the story of how "a man and his wife, named Kring, had been butchered, and their bodies had been burned." Thereafter, he gives account of no less than two unidentifed bodies found nearby, one of them a "well-dressed man," near Johnstown (Cambria County).

That's not quite the way the story happened. I can't really fault Fort for misunderstanding - he was relying on an account from a Philadelphia newspaper, one that was likely a second- or third-hand account. And anyone in any sort of paranormal/unexplained field knows how accounts get changed and altered over time. Moreover, Fort's story was likely based on one written before anybody knew the full story.

As it turns out, as I was searching for more information and references to the case, I came across a report on a Johnstown-area paranormal site - it was then I realized that the story has changed yet more in the modern day, that the well-known Johnstown-area urban legend of Becky's Grave is also based on the same event. Supposedly, the grave of a woman named Becky Kring is supposed to visit the Snavely Cemetery in Elton. Becky was a young girl, killed when only 18 for supposedly being a witch.

However, as it turns out, no Rebecca Kring is buried in Snavely. She is actually buried (with her husband) in Dunmire Cemetery, a burial ground several miles away. And far from a teenaged witch, Rebecca Kring was 83, her husband 79.

To chart the metamorphosis of this story, we'll examine a few contemporary news reports.

The first article, reproduced on the aforementioned paranormal website, appeared in a Johnstown newspaper (the clipping didn't specify which one) and is merely a description of the fire and of rescue attempts.

About half-past 10 o’clock Wednesday night the village of Elton, containing between one hundred and two hundred people, seven miles south east of this city, in Adams Township, Cambria County, was thrown into a state of great excitement by the breaking out of a fire. Most villagers had retired for the night, and it was the men about Ickes’ Hotel who, being still astir, first discovered the flames.

The fire was discovered to be in the rear part of the residence of Samuel Kring. Flames were shooting through the windows. In front some of the men broke open the door and windows, but a tremendous volume of flame and black smoke burst through the openings thus made, but prevented entrance to the building. Several desperate attempts were made by persons to force their way into the house, and water was freely applied from a hole cut through the ice in a dam near by, in the hope of rescuing Mr. and Mrs. Kring, who slept in a room on the first floor, but every such attempt proved futile, the heat and suffocating smoke being more than anyone could endure, and the poor old couple were of necessity, abandoned to their fate.

The flames made rapid headway, and not only quickly consumed the building in which they originated but communicated with one adjoining and destroyed it. The former was a two story plank, occupied and used as a kind of warehouse. Both belonged to Mr. Kring.

As soon as the flames had spent their fury, water was thrown in considerable quantities upon the charred timbers at the corner of the house in which the room was located where the aged couple slept, in the hope of finding whatever of the bodies the fire had not consumed. The search soon resulted in the uncovering of the blackened and roasted remains of both Mr. and Mrs. Kring.

Nothing but the trunks was left. Mrs. Kring’s was found in one corner of the room where the bed had stood, and Mr. Kring’s in another corner where there had been a lounge, indicating that she had been sleeping in the bed and he on the lounge. The remains were not disturbed at the time, some of the people thinking that an inquest should be held, and that the remains should not be interfered with until viewed by a jury. Word was accordingly sent to Squire Henry Fye, and he arrived yesterday morning. After an investigation he decided that an inquest was not necessary. The remains were thereupon taken from the ruins and placed in a house near by.

As to the origin of the fire, nothing has been definitely learned. There was a stove in an out-kitchen adjoining the rear of the house, and there was also one in the sleeping room. It is thought that in someway the building caught from on of these, probably from the one in the bed chamber, the resulting smoke quickly stupefying the old couple, and rendering them helpless victims of the flames.

Their extreme age too, was against them, Mr. Kring having attained his seventy-ninth year and Mrs. Kring her eighty-third. She was quite feeble, but managed to do her own work unaided, and there was nobody at the house but herself and her venerable partner.

Pay attention to the italicized quotes; I believe they may account for the next permutation of the story. It seems that there may have been some suspicion of foul play, as in a story in the Bradford Era (February 3, 1892). Building on the reports of the condition of the bodies, it remarks on a series of murders in Cambria County (which may or may not have actually been murders). The first body was found on December 4, in the woods near Gallitzin. It was believed, but not proven, to be a suicide. Another body was found near Frugality (Fort's first "well-dressed [corpse that] could not be identified") but it was determined to be that of George Myers, who had been robbed of $800. Another body was discovered only a few days before the Kring tragedy, near Bethel. That one, however, was badly decomposed (but male) and nobody could accurately say when his fate befell him, or even what fate it was. This body was evidently Fort's second "well-dressed man, who bore no means of identification". Both of Fort's other bodies, it can be seen, precede the Kring tragedy. The article goes on to note that the same killer was responsible for the "horrible butchery of old man Kring and his wife and the cremation of their bodies", but I can determine no reason for supposing this. I think it's pretty likely that Fort's clipping from the Philadelphia Public Ledger was based on this article.

The third article appeared a week later, presumably after the inquest mentioned in the first, in the Indiana Progress (February 10, 1892). It returns to the idea of merely a fire; "the fire originated from an over-heated stove in the bedroom." Gold, which would have survived the fire, was still present, but all the Krings' other money was presumed destroyed in the fire.

How exactly the story of this tragedy became associated with a legend of witchcraft, I don't know; my only thought would be possibly someone heard about the fire, and presumed a burning at the stake?

Murder at the Fairgrounds

The York Fair, first held in 1765, has played host to concerts, funnel cakes and, if some folks are to be believed, ghosts. For all the historical events surrounding the Fair which would potentially give rise to paranormal happenings - the original location of the fair in what is now Penn's Park was a potter's field burial ground and the fairgrounds themselves were used as a camp by soldiers during the War of 1812 - the ghost story most often told didn't get its start until the 1920s, after the Fair had moved to its current grounds on Carlisle Road.

In 1924, the road going by the Fairgrounds was still known as Dover Road. Around that time, a New Jersey woman named Alice M. Abbott spurned her quiet mother-and-housewife role, ran off with a judge, went to Pennsylvania (settling in Ye Olde Author's own hometown of Columbia) and changed her name to Peggy Larue. She became a devoted drinker and was most likely inebriated already that August night in 1924 when she was picked up by a man named Dorwart. Larue and Dorwart met up with Fred McLean and Lenora O'Bryan at a restaurant on George Street in York. Eventually they made their way to the fairgrounds, Larue "full of dope and whisky" and "dead to the world". In other words, well and truly sauced.

It seems that Ms. O'Bryan stole McLean's gun while he was passed out drunk. He retrieved it from her later, shooting her in the cheek; then, rather unnecessarily, he shot Larue, who was still lying drunk in the grass. Finally, to make it 3 for 3, he shot Dorwart in the hand as he ran away. McLean was arrested, and though he felt remorse for killing Larue, he didn't feel bad at all for shooting O'Bryan.

In February, 1925, an article appeared in the York Dispatch describing encounters with phantom forms at the fairgrounds. One man heard a woman's screams coming from the grounds, with others hearing the screams and, in one case, a woman yelling "For God's sake, don't shoot!" Yet another man later claimed that he had seen a woman that January dressed in white, who he took to be a nurse, looking mournful. She disappeared near a snowbank.

It should also be noted that this man was illiterate - as most backwoods farmers were in those days - and so wouldn't have read the newspaper articles which said that Larue (or Abbott) was a nurse.

In most of these cases, there were environmental factors possibly contributing to the experiences. The man who first heard the screams noted the howling winter winds; the second man's sighting of the woman in white took place just after a snowstorm.

The fields where Larue and her companions were shot was to the north of the Fairgrounds; the same fields, today, are part of the Fair itself. I'm not aware of any modern-day reports of the phantom.

The Imp of Clark Alley

January of 1880 saw the appearance of one of the most bizarre phantoms I know of in West Clark Alley in York, on the block between Beaver and George Streets.

Sometimes he comes in the form of a man and puts on the airs of a horse-thief; then, again, he struts along in the shape of a huge demijohn on two legs, and not infrequently like a rolling beer barrel, tapped at both ends. The horse-thief shape is never interfered with but the other two forms are chased up and down the alley, but, like the will-o-the-wisp, are never captured.

A few days later, a search party comprised of what were apparently Victorian ghost hunters sought the apparition, which had this time appeared as a young boy selling newspapers. It promptly vanished in a puff of smoke, or perhaps in a puff of logic like God confronted by the existence of the Babelfish, but left behind a scrap of paper covered in unintelligible characters.

Sometime later the pooka of York appeared to a woman on King Street in the shape of a tall woman dressed in black (the appearance of such black and white female spirits is certainly a favored appearance for ghosts).

Another haunting on South Court Alley was also attributed to the mutable spirit. In this case, however, the haunt was purely auditory. And possibly none too mysterious, either, as a stable was plagued by the sound of some demonic entity throwing hay around! Oh, the horror!

I haven't ever heard of a phantom appearing as a dancing bottle of liquor or as a beer barrel!

Return of the masks (oh my God!); and some words on Springheeled Jack

Apologies to Mark Morrison, wherever you are, for referencing your late 90s R&B hit 'Return of the Mack' in the title of this post. Seriously, try singing the post title in that song in place of the chorus. Well, it sounds OK in my head, anyway.

Anyway, I'm back. I know, I've said that before but I think I mean it this time. As you can see, I've changed the look and layout of the blog to reflect a change in direction. I'm going to try to relay those supernatural goodies here in Pennsylvania that aren't cryptozoological or monster-ish and aren't going to make it into my book. But which are nevertheless nifty. I might also mention the stuff from surrounding states that is once again not monster-ish.

Also, I had received word from noted Springheeled Jack researcher Theo Paijmans that there aren't really any primary sources on the 1905 attack on Julia McGlone in Philadelphia attributed to a Jack-type apparition. I'll be altering my write-up for the book accordingly.

Extraordinary evidence

Over the past few years I've been almost pessimistic about some phenomena - let me explain, before I'm dismissed out-of-hand as a "scofftic" or something. I've begun to ask myself what sort of evidence would really be necessary to prove things. For example, take the UFO mystery - or actually, say something less nebulous, like the identity of Jack The Ripper. Say through some discussion or discovery of long-lost files or something, you find out, 100%, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who Jack was. What would it take to convince others? We could come out with proof, explain succinctly the identity and provide the original files, maybe, to back us up. But look at it from someone else's point of view: no matter your evidence, there's a certain number of folk in whatever mystery field that will always view it as nothing more than yet another theory. Even if indisputable evidence were provided, people would say that you hoaxed it, or misinterpreted something... regardless of what happens, there's a subset of the populace who want it to stay a mystery forever. Although I used the Jack example, obviously this same logic follows through for Bigfoot, UFOs, eastern pumas, the Loch Ness Monster, ESP, the Great Siberian Explosion, or what have you.

Really Mysterious Pennsylvania by Stan Gordon

Pennsylvania-based UFO, cryptozoology and general Fortean researcher Stan Gordon is releasing a book, Really Mysterious Pennsylvania, today. Stan has done some extensive work on the possible UFO crash at Kecksburg and was one of the main chroniclers of the horribly strange Bigfoot encounters in the state back in the summer and autumn of 1973.

Return of the bullbeggar

A few months back, I had mentioned Virginia's traditions of the English goblin known as a bullbeggar and the presence of Bullbeggar Creek in the northernmost part of Virginia's eastern peninsula.

Now there come reports of what may be cougar on the eastern peninsula. Could these actually be the bullbeggars reported further north? Melfa isn't that far south of Bullbeggar Creek and besides, I can't see any reports where the witnesses actually claim beyond a shadow of a doubt that what they saw was a cougar. It's "a big cat-like thing".

It's interesting that Melfa, again, is right up the road from the town of Painter, 'painter' being a colloquial term for what would otherwise be called a panther. Also in a bizarre bit of synchronicity, the town of Exmore (which conjures up parallels with a certain English big cat) is nearby also.

Chad Arment's The Historical Bigfoot contains an account of the 'Bogey of Craddock Marsh', which seems to be likely situated about 7 miles west of Painter along Craddock Neck Road. However, as written the account is apparently of cries of 'yahoo' heard in the marsh and no description of the actual beast. Could it have been a 'cougar' as well?

The name Painter seems to suggest a previous knowledge of cat-like beasts. It should also be noted that some of the more southerly sightings are from just outside a sizable wildlife refuge.

I'm Back

I've decided on the direction of the blog. I'll be reporting things that occur on the East Coast, though I'll try to avoid Pennsylvania things for now, unless it's too late for their inclusion in the book, although (for now) Maryland is still fair game. The book, by the way, I think I'll title (at least for now) The Hills Rise Wild (provided Arkham House is cool with that), although as always anyone's free to suggest other titles. I dig that one, though I suppose it could give someone the idea that it's focused on New England. The following's a preliminary list (though in no order) of what's to be included in the book:

A. Deep in the Bowels of... Berks County: Lock 49 and Others
B. Sightings of the Jersey Devil in Pennsylvania
C. Sasquatch in Pennsylvania
D. Supernatural Sasquatch (the weird UFO, bulletproof, phasing, etc. encounters)
E. Thunderbirds of Northern Pennsylvania
F. Big Cat Sightings
G. Phantom Hounds, Black Dogs and Werewolves
H. Other Animal Ghosts
I. A section on things from my neck of the woods in Lancaster County
J. The Rest of the Weird (all the guys that don't fit anywhere else)

And probably other stuff I'm forgetting.

Book updates and blog uncertainty, still

So I've begun work in earnest on the book, and I've begun gathering as much information as I can on cases (descriptions, etc.) and I'm going to try my hand at a bit of statistical work painting a better picture of what certain critters really look like. I've completed a good-sized chunk of the chapter on sightings of winged monsters in Pennsylvania, and I've also completed some work on a chapter on high strangeness Bigfoot reports. That one's kind of on hold as I've discovered some unexpected references embedded in the "weird" abilities. I have a potential publisher lined up as well.

More opinion time: should I put Maryland stuff into the book, or just concentrate on Pennsylvania and maybe do a Maryland follow-up? Or should I just wait and see how long the Pennsylvania section turns out being?

I still haven't decided what I'm doing with the blog, so bear with me and don't give up. It'll be back eventually in one form or another.

Readers, input! Questioning the future

I've begun to question what direction I should take Masks in. I've recently started more seriously tossing around the idea of writing a book or two on things and I don't really want to keep posting things on here as that would make a book sort of irrelevant. I'm mulling over whether I should switch focus to breaking news, or maybe to a more general worldwide focus rather than strictly regional.

Thoughts?

The wild man of Morgantown

On September 20, 1874, the Williamsport Sun-Gazette ran an article about a hair-covered "wild man" which had been seen near Morgantown (Berks County), in a region enclosed by hills and ridges. It was nearly seven feet tall and uncommonly for a Bigfoot frequently walked on all fours. It was described as having "altogether a horrible appearance."

The Bigfoot creature was reputed to steal pigs and sheep from mountain farms, and to utter a "demonic laugh" as it did so. A group of hunters pursued the beast, but it yelled and leaped and vanished into a forest.

More Biscardi Bait

A video was posted on January 5, 2010 on YouTube. It was posted anonymously by someone using the name "bobywade517". The attached description says that sightings of a white Bigfoot had been taking place in this Pennsylvania town, though, oddly, it's not mentioned at all what town that is. It obviously, therefore, can't be confirmed that there even were Bigfoot sightings here, and the creature in question sounds like a guy breathing heavily in a mask and looks like someone in a store-bought costume. Chalk one up as fake.

The only white Bigfoot I'm aware of seen in Pennsylvania is a four-foot one seen in Carbondale this summer. Otherwise, I'm drawing a blank.

The Seven Gates of Hell

The story of the "Seven Gates of Hell" in York County really has nothing to do with either the cryptozoological or zooform realms. In fact, it scarcely has anything to do with the paranormal realm. But it is a topic I'm semi-obsessed with, since we visited there a few years back, and writing about urban legend creatures in Maryland brought it back up to the surface.

It's a pretty famous urban legend in south-central Pennsylvania: a massive fire in an asylum on Toad Road, a bunch of dead inmates. Several inmates escaped and were killed in the woods surrounding the asylum by over-zealous locals. There was a path leading back to the asylum, and either the city of York or the original administrator of the facility - versions vary as to who it is - constructed seven gates along the path. Why the administrator would do this, I don't know. Story goes that the city did it to curb trespassers.

Supposedly, supernatural things happen as you pass each gate. The last gate is, variously, withing the asylum or right outside the asylum. A moot point, because nobody's ever made it past the fifth. So how they know there's seven is up in the air.

Some versions have it that the home of Nelson Rehmeyer (the tale of Rehmeyer's Hollow and the murder of Nelson in 1928 is one of the more famous tales of Pennsylvania's darker history, although the Hollow is, of course, changed in legend) was near the asylum.

A good story, but there's some problems. First of all, there is no Toad Road as mentioned in the tale, and never was. Second of all, the gate shown above is the only one. It's a plain red cattle gate off Trout Run Road. The stories will say that the gates are just invisible during the day, but then explain how I went out there at night and didn't see any other gates.

Some stories will tell you there's one of the dreaded phantom black SUVs that'll patrol the area. Well, having been there, I can vouch that there is an old man in a pick-up truck that tried to scare us off. I've later heard that the entire Seven Gates area is this old man's backyard - and there's a lot of modern houses in the woods, so he's not some creepy hermit-type.

To put a bit of a cryptozoological angle on it, there was a rumor that Bigfoot hunters at one time trampled through the woods here. Whether that's true or not, I don't know.

But like all good urban legends, it's based on something. Though how many people know it, I don't know.

When this region of York County was originally settled and the roads laid out, the road that would later become Trout Run Road continued north along the banks of Codorus Creek and eventually emerged to intersect what is now known as Furnace Road, right by Codorus Furnace, an old iron furnace dating to the Revolution. And at the intersection stood a house. The extension leading up to Furnace Road has been inaccessible for years.

It's no longer there, but I recall seeing it when my grandmother and I made trips up to the furnace in my younger years. The house in question stood at the curve leading up to the furnace and was a ramshackle wooden affair, the kind of place which looks like a fire waiting to happen. Probably not a coincidence, then, that it was indeed a fire which destroyed the house totally. In front of the house was a row of trees growing along the road, and every tree had one or more 'No Trespassing' signs on it. Some variants of the tale had it that the administrator of the asylum was paranoid and had signs posted.

I talked to various people from York County, and was able to determine that the asylum version of the tale seems to have appeared in the late 1960s or 1970s. My grandfather, who's been in York County since the 1950s, reminded me about this house and told me that back at that time it was home to an old hermit who he said had claimed that he was a doctor. My mother mentioned that there was a road kids would drive back along.

Given that, I've been wondering whether the hermit was the basis of the tale, whether Toad Road was the old extension of Trout Run, and whether the asylum of the story may have been a simple wooden house that was, despite the stories, still standing until a decade ago. I also have come to wonder whether the original version was merely kids driving the road when the extension was still accessible hassling the guy; after the hermit died in the 1970s, the story was confused with that of Rehmeyer's Hollow (many of the elements of the Hollow story, or the urban legend thereof rather than the true one, feature in the Gates story - a portal to Hell, a number of murders, a fire). I have seen pictures of the Rehmeyer house in 1928 and it was a similar wood-frame affair to the 'Hermit House'. It's possible that the similarity in the appearance of these two houses contributed to the confusion.

Weird creatures of Maryland

"A Field Guide to the Monsters and Mystery Animals of Maryland", a Strange Magazine article by Mark Chorvinsky and Mark Opsasnick, gives a listing of many strange creature, the majority of which were one-off sightings. Some of these are given below:

Another Odenton Humanoid: Odenton in Anne Arundel County was home to a famous sighting of the Patuxent Swamp Monster in 1968, but on May 27, 1989 two children playing at a home on Brietwert Avenue saw a creature in the clearing behind the home. It was 3-4 feet tall, with a white stripe on one leg of its dark brown furred body.

Boaman: The Prince George's County News (October 27, 1971) gave an account of this creature. The half-human, half-serpent was reportedly seen slithering around alongside the Lanham-Severn Road near the Lanham Inn. This area is south-west of Lanham-Seabrook. A legend was given that a young girl was "chewed up" by the Boaman. The area of the Lanham Inn is extremely urbanized and near a railroad track.

Buggerman: The boundaries of Charles County are patrolled by a creature known as the Buggerman. It is said that he prevents local children from crossing the boundaries of the county. He is variously described as a ghost, or more interestingly as a great hair-covered black man.

Catoctin Mountain Imps: A "troop of horned and cloven demons marked all over with spots like a leopard" were seen in this South Mountain ridge by a resident of Frederick in 1883. The rather stylish demons haven't been seen since.

Cabbage Head Man: Butch Dory claimed to have seen a humanoid entity emerge from a lake on 54th Street in College Park. Dory and his friends reportedly shot at the creature to no avail.

Cow People: A number of cow-folk have been reported over the years, the first being a Victorian-era tale from Dorchester County of a wildman who ate marsh grass and suckled from cows. A bipedal cow-creature was seen near Bel Air in February 1978, and a cow woman was reported from Charles County in the 1970s. this one, though, turned out to be a hunchbacked man.

Eggheads: These creatures were seen by Dan Long in October 1973 near Westover (Somerset County). Long was in the Pocomoke Forest with some friends when he claimed that he saw a number of glowing white humanoids with large egg-shaped heads near the Perdue Farms facility. However, the entire account must be called into serious doubt as Long admits he was drinking in the woods.

Goblin Damned: These ill-described "questionable shapes" were seen several times on the railroad bridge spanning Big Seneca Creek near Clopper (Montgomery County).

Jabberwok: Not to be confused with the Jabowak described below, this reptilian humanoid was seen across Frederick County from Creagerstown to Thurmont in the 1880s.

Jabowak: This tall and horrible-faced animal prowled McMurray Street in Frederick in 1870. At one point, a dog was shot and killed as the culprit.
Posted by A

Urban Legends of Maryland, Part III: Bunnyman

What has to be one of the more laughably-named urban legend figures out there hails originally from the area of Fairfax, Virginia although stories of the axe-wielding, bunny-suit bedecked psychopath range into suburban Prince George's County, Maryland, home of the Goatman (with whom stories of the Bunnyman are confused).

Incredible as it may seem, the Bunnyman stories may have been based on real events. The Washington Post ran two articles detailing things that happened near Fairfax, Virginia in October, 1970; in one, an Air Force cadet reported that he had been visited by a man in "a white suit with long bunny ears" who ran out of some bushes, shouted a warning about trespassing on private property, and threw a hatchet at the car. Later that month, another article detailed a bunny-suited man wielding a long axe chopping at a home under construction, also near Fairfax. A security guard distinctly reported a figure about 5'8" and about 160 lbs. in his early twenties.

The Bunnyman was reported to have assaulted a church sign near Greenbelt, Maryland in the 1970s. Supposedly, in 1971, a young man in Hyattsville reported that a white bunny-suited man pounded on his door one evening and used an axe to attempt to gain entry. He also chopped two pillars on the porch. He was also reported from another home nearby.

Legends from Harford County tell of a ghostly rabbit-type creature, called the Witch-Rabbit, which haunted Rocks. In the manner of the Celtic pooka, it was reputed to shift shapes from one animal to another and thus to elude hunters. Could the Bunnyman be a similar "Witch-Rabbit"?

Check out the rest of the Urban Legends of Maryland mini-series:

Part One: Pigwoman
Part Two: Goatman

Urban Legends of Maryland, Part II: Goatman

The region near Bowie (Prince George's County) is the haunt of a variously-described monster named Goatman. Some will have it that he is a man with a goat's head. Others, that he is a goat-legged human figure, a traditional satyr. Still others, that he is a 6-foot tall hairy humanoid, a typical Bigfoot. Whatever the case, the stories of Goatman could have their origins in August 1957, when a gorilla-like creature was reported to be prowling around Brown Station Road in Upper Marlboro. Over 200 reports of the Abominable Phantom, as the creature was called, were received by police in the space of a week.

According to Marylandghosts.com, a Washington Post article appearing in November 1971 reported that a dog belonging to April Edwards of Bowie was killed, its severed head the only part of it that was found. The head was discovered by Willie Gheen and Ray Hayden. The night before, Ray's brother had encountered a 6-foot tall bipedal hairy creature which made whining, squealing sounds near the railroad tracks at Old Fletchertown Road.

The autumn of 1976 had Francine Abell seeing a grayish-brown, round-shouldered animnal with reflective red eyes cross the road in front of her car on Route 198 and then step over the guard rail and disappear. In March 1977, a NASA engineer witnessed a Bigfoot-type tossing a dog onto the road at I-95 and Powder Mill Road in Beltsville. In August 1982 a sighting of a gorilla-like animal was made in a field near the United States Agricultural Research Center (USARC) in Beltsville, a building with other bearings on the Goatman legend as seen below.

In August 2000, a number of construction workers saw a 12-foot tall Bigfoot-like creature roaming around suburban Prince George's. This seems unusually tall for a Sasquatch, if not exaggerated.

An undated encounter with Goatman was described by "thestereogod" in Weird Maryland, surfacing from the military housing complex near Andrews Air Force Base. A quadrupedal figure which later rose onto two legs was seen near a stream, and later hoofed footprints were found in the area.

The legendary version of the origin of Goatman has it that a scientist working at the USARC in Beltsville (above) became the axe-wielding beast-man, though the mechanism differs from teller to teller: some have it that the scientist simply went mad, and took up residence in the wooded lands. Others will have it that through a horrible accident, the scientist was mutated into a goatish figure. Yet another variation has the scientist working on a cure for cancer when this happened (living near a large pharmaceutical lab as I do, I can confirm that sheep and presumably goats are indeed used for generation of various vaccines and such -along with its area of origin, that makes this version sound as if it could be a response to the anthrax attacks immediately post-9/11).

Yet another variant of Goatman surfaces from Depression-era Anne Arundel County, and seems more believable. In this one, Goatman was an accident victim who suffered brain damage. In the accident, his head was disfigured and appeared to have two horn-like projections. He wandered the wilds, killing and eating animals raw, armed with a shotgun or sickle. He was apparently quite misanthropic.

Like all good urban legend figures, Goatman has particular haunts, though it's difficult to pin down just one. Of course, as mentioned above, one of his preferred regions is the area around Fletchertown Road near Bowie. Some also have him taking up residence at the Glenndale Asylum, and abandoned mental-health facility near Lanham-Seabrook - or maybe, as some variants have it, he is a former resident of the hospital.

Goatman is also reported to frequent the area around Lottsford Vista and Ardmore-Ardwick Road in Mitchellville as well as Tucker Road in Oxon Hill, where a satyr-like phantom terrorizes amorous teenagers.

In the area of Largo, Goatman is said to be tremendously fast and aggressive, running at speeds of up to 60 MPH and then launching himself at passing cars, accounting for a number of car accidents.

In another typical urban legend fashion, the stories of Goatman are hopelessly confused with other urban legends. One of the more notable of these is the notorious "Crybaby Bridge", which features in several urban legends nation-wide. The Crybaby Bridge associated with Goatman is on the border with Anne Arundel County, on Governor's Bridge Road. The bridge in question is an iron trestle, and legend has it that you can hear the crying of a baby who supposedly was hung from one of the iron beams. Some variants, though, claim this as Goatman Bridge, and the crying is no ghostly infant but Goatman himself. Another is on the Lottsford Vista Road.

As discussed in a previous post, the stories of Goatman and Bunnyman are inextricably linked. In fact, some variants have it that Bunnyman resembles a goat and that Goatman is simply a variant name for that figure. Some of the areas of Bunnyman legends, such as Greenbelt, are squarely in Goatman territory.

Goatman seems to have a notable antipathy towards dogs. The Bowie sighting discussed above involved the killing of a dog, and many have claimed to have seen Goatman throwing dogs off of overpasses on the Washington Beltway. Bigfoot also often have a dislike of dogs, the Beast of Seven Chutes and Momo having been seen with dead dogs. This is also a feature of the Mothman of West Virginia.

One wonders whether the frequenting by hairy hominids, etc. of the area near the USARC is due to the easy availability of prey animals such as goats and sheep.

Whether Goatman is a Bigfoot or NAPE, a strictly urban-legend figure, or something else entirely, is up for dispute. However, it does seem something has taken root in Prince George's County.

Check out the rest of the Urban Legends of Maryland mini-series:

Part One: Pigwoman

The naked phantom of Manheim

Der Nockisher Mon, or The Naked Man, is an apparition supposedly haunting the neighborhood of Buchtown south of Manheim, Lancaster County. It was seen by Mary Ann Litzenberger sometime around the beginning of the 1900s. As Litzenberger said:

To my astonishment as I gazed across the field nearby, I saw the ghost of a stark-naked man rise up from a fence corner and slowly walk across the field, not looking right or left, but having a worried look on his face.

"I yelled with all my might to my sisters, saying in Dutch, 'A nockisher mon! Don't you see him?' But they insisted they didn't see anything of the kind.

After talking with a neighbor, Litzenberger went on:

She informed me that there really was such a spook, that she had seen it too, at different times. She explained that there had been a dispute about the correct line of the property, and the ghost of the farmer-owner verified it by stepping it off where it should be.

Why the ghost was naked, we may never know! Perhaps it was not a ghost, but a free-roaming spirit manifestation like the other "wild men" throughout history.

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.

Henry W. Shoemaker, Part VI: The Gorilla

In 1922, Shoemaker wrote Allegheny Episodes, which contained a tale called "The Gorilla". The tale, a story of murder and revenge, was a fictionalized account based on actual incidents which took place in the early 1920s in Pennsylvania and Maryland. These events are chronicled by Chad Arment.

The first incident, and apparently the one Shoemaker's story was based on, took place in December, 1920 when Samuel Bolig, 13, was attacked by a "gorilla" on his father's farm in Globe Mills (Snyder County), and his knee dislocated in the attack. It was said that the gorilla was an escapee from a circus in Williamsport. It was later reported that no other inhabitants of the area had reported sightings of the ape.

However, as an article on the case in the North American BioFortean Review reveals, a whole flap of sightings surfaced in 1921 from Adams County and surrounding areas.

1. Gettysburg (Adams County), January 19: The gorilla was spied sitting on a rock at Mount Rock. The only Mount Rock I could find is in Cumberland County, but it is described as very close to Gettysburg.

2. Idaville (Adams County), January 20: An animal described by some as a gorilla and by some as a kangaroo (shades of the Dorlan Devil) was pursued on Snyder's Hill and also on Pike Hill. It fled towards Cumberland County. Several hams were stolen from William Chamberlain's smokehouse and attributed to the gorilla.

3. Sunnyside (Cumberland County), January 24: Another sighting. A hunt was launched.

4. Waynesboro (Franklin County), January 26: Harry Shindledecker saw the gorilla near the baseball fields on Chestnut Street.

5. Rouzerville (Franklin County), January 26: The animal was seen by Henry Needy crouched at his brother's farm. Needy and two others hunted the gorilla, which they cornered at Mike Lookabaugh's farm, but it escaped. At one point, the hunters killed a black dog which they took to be the gorilla. The newspaper reported that Rouzerville had not known such excitement "since Lee's battered and disorganized legions came thundering down the mountain after the Battle of Gettysburg".

6. Monterey (Franklin County), January 26: In the evening, the animal was seen near the golf course on Mentzer's Gap Road by William Flohr and Maurice Molesworth. It was described as being about five feet tall. It approached them on all fours and made gurgling sounds.

7. Chambersburg (Franklin County), January 27: The gorilla was seen by Paul Gonder, who was gathering wood near Black's Gap.

8. Pen Mar (Franklin County), January 30: John Simmons saw the gorilla in broad daylight.

9. Rouzerville (Franklin County), February 2: The gorilla was seen crouching alongside s fence making a gurgling sound.

10. Franklintown (York County), February 9: Abraham Lau shot at what he thought was the gorilla and found he had shot his neighbor's mule.

11. Jack's Mountain (Adams County), February 9: Harvey Minnich and Frank Rodgers saw the gorilla as they were returning from York to Waynesboro.

A few weeks later, the editors of the Waynesboro Press ran another story of a supposed gorilla killed by William Quimby, a farmer in Queen Anne's County, Maryland. The encounter supposedly took place at Willoughby, a widely-dispersed handful of farms south of Starr and right on the southern border of the county. This story was apparently meant to close the case of the Pennsylvania gorilla, but it is unclear what, if anything, this case had to do with the Pennsylvania ones.

Henry W. Shoemaker, Part V: Undead mountain lions

Shoemaker recounts several tales of various superstitions held about the mountain lion, including several of animated taxidermy mounts. The stories of the animated cougars seem to be unique to Snyder County and environs.

In Centerville (Snyder County), in 1864, a hunter killed a mountain lion and mounted it on the roof of his home. The lion's mate is supposed to have leapt upon the roof and knocked the mount to the ground, scooping it up and carrying it into the forests of Jack's Mountain, where the mounted cougar is supposed to have returned to life. A similar tale originates from Troxelville, again in Snyder County. Here, the skin of a mountain lion left mounted in an attic is reputed to have been encountered, still mounted, stalking the forests of the White Mountains.

The body of a mountain lion killed by Lewis Dorman on Shreiner Mountain on Christmas Eve, 1868 as well was reputed to leave its case at a New Berlin museum on Halloween and to hunt mice! The panther's body is now kept at Albright College.

The Senecas (an Iroquoian tribe living around what is now Warren County) believed that the souls of tyrants and unfaithful queens passed into the bodies of panthers, and for this reason the cougar was hunted. The early German settlers believed that cougars glowed at night, and that their eyes flashed green fire.

Henry W, Shoemaker, Part IV: Long-tailed bobcats

Shoemaker's pamphlet "Felis Catus in Pennsylvania" describes an incident on January 16, 1922 in which a wildcat was killed in Nockamixon (Bucks County) by 16 year old Tunis Brady. Frightful screams had been heard in the vicinity for three years. A detailed description of the dead animal quoted in the pamphlet describes a cat about 2 1/2 feet in length and a foot in height, with a broad head. It was a smoky gray color, with yellowish patches on its undersides. It had an 11 inch long tail which was bushy and rather like a raccoon's. It had a white spot on its throat and was marked with black stripes. At the time, it was believed that the animal may have been similar to a European wildcat (Felis sylvestris) and the original article describing Brady's kill is quite clear on its not being a bobcat (Lynx rufus) or lynx (Lynx lynx).

Elsewhere in Shoemaker's article it is described how just such an animal was kept in the Philadelphia zoo, and labelled an "Indian Devil". Similar animals were to be found in the Blue Ridge Mountains and also in the Chestnut Ridge area in the western part of the state. In around 1920, Daniel Trouts killed two similar wildcats in the same area as Brady's kill. Robert Lyman's Forbidden Land describes these wildcats as being recorded from Potter County.

Karl Shuker has noted that long-tailed specimens of the normally short-tailed bobcat and lynx have been recorded. In fact, despite the early denials, the size of the animal and coloration meshes perfectly with commonly-accepted traits of the bobcat. The striped markings of the animal may not line up perfectly, but as some lynx subspecies such as the Iberian lynx have coats with a striped appearance, this is not out of the ordinary either.

Furthermore, bobcats can be melanistic (black). I have been wondering whether a melanistic long-tailed bobcat could account for some of the sightings of "black panthers" often recorded. Also, a wildcat with similar markings to the Nockamixon one could account for sightings of "tigers".

Henry W. Shoemaker, Part III: Peter Pentz's maned cat

Another of Shoemaker's tales of the Lock Haven area in Clinton County was the account of a bizarre cat killed by the 'mountain man' Peter Pentz in 1798.

Shoemaker says that Pentz was visiting with Isaac Dougherty near McElhattan Run when they heard a commotion among Dougherty's animals. They found a steer dead, a large maned cat crouched over its body. Pentz and Dougherty tracked the animal up the side of Bald Eagle Mountain, eventually tracking it to a cavernous den in a 'bare place' (large rock-strewn clearings common to the area). Here, the two killed the maned cat and its mate, and captured three cubs.

Chad Arment points out that elsewhere in his writings (Extinct Pennsylvania Animals vol. 1) Shoemaker theorizes that Pentz's cat may have been "a modification of the prehistoric lions which Prof. Leidy called felis (sic) atrox". It is intriguing that such a similar idea to that espoused by Loren Coleman and Mark A. Hall was made over a half century before.

In the same passage he mentions that the Indians of Manhattan Island, New York, said that male cougar were maned. He also mentions later that the skin of a cougar killed along the Greenbrier River in West Virginia had a tail similar to that of an African lion.

In his original recounting of the tale, Shoemaker theorizes that the cat was an aberration of the normal cougar; it is perhaps possible that the genetic traits of Panthera atrox still exist in the genepool of the cougar accounting for lion-like attributes.

Recent studies have indicated that prehistoric lions including P. atrox lived until 13,000 years ago.

Henry W. Shoemaker, Part II: The White Wolf of Sugar Valley

A white wolf haunted the earliest settlers of Sugar Valley, near Loganton (Clinton County) around 1840. The wolf was first encountered by Philip Shreckengast of Tylersville near his barn. It had apparently been eating some animal as its mouth was bloodstained. Shreckengast managed to sever the wolf's tail by slamming the barn door. The wolf was also seen in the graveyard at Brungard's Church by a preacher, who said it was yelping "like a yellow cur that had had boiling water poured on it" as it ran out of the gate.

Granny McGill, a supposed witch living near Lock Haven, told Jacob Rishel that before contacting George Wilson (the killer of two "werewolves" in Wayne Township) they should attempt to locate a black lamb born during a new moon in the Autumn of the year. One was eventually procured, and the wolf was indeed trapped and killed.

The pelt was described as being shaggy and long-haired, almost like an Angora goat, rather than short-haired like the average wolf.

The head of the wolf was displayed mounted on a pole near Jacob Rishel's home. Children were afraid to pass by the head. It was reported that the jaws of the severed head moved, and that the eyes flashed green, and that as long as it was present it warded away wolves from Rishel's farm.

Shoemaker also recounts in his account of the white wolf in "Wolf Days in Pennsylvania" that another wolf which he likened to the French Beast of Gévaudan terrorized the area around Carroll, although no date is given for this event. This wolf was killed by John Schrack, who also had the pelt of the white wolf, as it was attempting a 16-foot leap over a stockade fence at a sheep pen. One of its paws was impaled on the top of the stockade for a good luck charm (elsewhere Shoemaker mentions that this tradition was a widespread one in Sugar Valley and elsewhere).

Pennsylvania black dogs

On Mysterious Britain & Ireland, Part Two of my piece on American black dog mythology, focused on Pennsylvania.