America is a big country. Enormous, in fact. And it turns out that when you have vast mountain ranges, impenetrable swamps, ancient forests the size of small European nations and a population with a healthy appetite for a good story, you end up with an extraordinary catalogue of creatures that science has not yet got around to confirming and probably never will. These are the cryptids of America. Part legend, part folklore, part something that made a very large noise outside the tent at three in the morning that you are absolutely not going to investigate.
Here are ten of America's most extraordinary cryptids, where to find them and what to do if you do. We suggest running.
1. Bigfoot, Pacific Northwest
No list of American cryptids begins anywhere other than Bigfoot, the undisputed heavyweight champion of unconfirmed creatures and America's most beloved mystery. Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch from the Halkomelem word meaning wild man, is described as a large, bipedal, hair-covered humanoid standing anywhere between six and ten feet tall, weighing in at an estimated 400 to 800 pounds and apparently doing an excellent job of never being captured, photographed clearly or found dead despite being reported across the Pacific Northwest for over a century.
The most famous piece of evidence is the Patterson-Gimlin film of 1967, shot in Bluff Creek, California, which shows a large hair-covered figure walking away from the camera with a stride that biomechanical analysts have described as inconsistent with a human in a costume. Costume makers, for their part, have described it as entirely consistent with a very good costume. The debate continues.
What is not disputed is that Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest have extensive traditions involving large forest humanoids that predate European contact by centuries, lending the legend a cultural depth that goes considerably beyond a man in a fur suit.
Visiting: The Pacific Northwest generally, with concentrated sightings around the Cascade Mountains and the forests of Washington, Oregon and Northern California. The Bigfoot Discovery Museum in Felton, California is an excellent starting point. The Olympic Peninsula in Washington is particularly active for reported sightings.
Interesting fact: The town of Willow Creek in California calls itself the Bigfoot Capital of the World and has a wooden Bigfoot statue in the town centre that has been there since 1986. Nobody has stolen it, which suggests even thieves have a certain respect for the legend.
2. The Mothman, Point Pleasant, West Virginia
The Mothman is one of America's most dramatic and most genuinely unsettling cryptids, partly because the sightings are so consistent, partly because they are associated with one of the worst disasters in West Virginia's history and partly because a creature described as a seven foot tall winged humanoid with glowing red eyes is just objectively terrifying regardless of whether it actually exists.
Mothman sightings in Point Pleasant began in November 1966 and continued for approximately thirteen months, clustering in the area around an old munitions plant known as the TNT Area outside the town. On the 15th of December 1967, the Silver Bridge connecting Point Pleasant to Gallipolis, Ohio collapsed during rush hour traffic, killing 46 people. The Mothman sightings stopped almost immediately afterwards. Whether the Mothman was a warning, a cause, a coincidence or a large owl seen under very stressful circumstances is a question Point Pleasant has been asking ever since.
John Keel's 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies documented the sightings in detail and the 2002 film of the same name brought the legend to a global audience, none of which has made Point Pleasant's relationship with its most famous resident any simpler.
Visiting: Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The Mothman Museum on Main Street is excellent and contains original newspaper reports, investigation files and a genuinely impressive collection of Mothman merchandise. The Mothman Statue in Gunn Park is one of the more unusual public artworks in America.
Interesting fact: The Mothman Festival held annually in Point Pleasant each September is one of the most enthusiastically attended cryptid festivals in the world, drawing thousands of visitors to a town of approximately four thousand people. The locals have embraced their unusual legacy with considerable good humour and excellent catering.
3. The Chupacabra, Puerto Rico and the American Southwest
The Chupacabra, whose name translates from Spanish as goat sucker, which is not a name that inspires confidence, first emerged in Puerto Rico in 1995 following a series of livestock deaths in which animals were found drained of blood with puncture wounds on their bodies. The creature was described by witnesses as reptilian, standing upright, approximately four feet tall with large oval eyes, grey skin and a row of spines along its back. It spread rapidly into the mythology of the American Southwest and Latin America, where livestock deaths have been attributed to it ever since.
The American Southwest version of the Chupacabra tends to look rather different from the Puerto Rican original, being described more as a hairless, mange-ridden canine with an unusual gait and an alarming appearance. Several specimens have been caught and photographed over the years, all of which have turned out to be coyotes or dogs with severe mange, which is either a complete explanation or a very convenient one depending on your perspective.
Visiting: The Rio Grande Valley of Texas has the highest concentration of reported Chupacabra sightings in the continental United States. Cuero, Texas in particular has become something of an unofficial Chupacabra capital following several high-profile incidents in the 2000s.
Interesting fact: In 2010, a rancher in Texas named Phylis Canion displayed what she believed to be a preserved Chupacabra at a press conference. DNA testing later identified it as a coyote-dog hybrid with mange. Canion was not entirely convinced and continues to maintain her position, which is frankly understandable.
4. The Jersey Devil, Pine Barrens, New Jersey
The Jersey Devil has been the official state demon of New Jersey since 1939, which makes New Jersey the only state in America to have formally adopted a cryptid as a state symbol, a distinction the state wears with appropriate pride. The creature is described as having the head of a horse, the wings of a bat, cloven hooves, a forked tail and a blood-curdling scream that has been reported echoing through the Pine Barrens for over three hundred years.
The origin legend involves a woman known as Mother Leeds who, upon discovering she was pregnant with her thirteenth child in 1735, declared that the Devil could have this one. The Devil, apparently taking this literally, obliged. The resulting creature flew up the chimney and into the Pine Barrens, where it has reportedly been causing trouble ever since.
The Pine Barrens themselves are one of the most extraordinary landscapes in the eastern United States, a vast area of coastal plain forest, cedar swamps and sandy soil that occupies over a million acres of southern New Jersey and has its own distinct ecosystem, its own dialect community and more than enough atmosphere to sustain three centuries of devil sightings.
Visiting: The Pine Barrens, southern New Jersey. The town of Leeds Point, where Mother Leeds allegedly lived, is considered the creature's birthplace. The Pine Barrens are freely accessible and contain excellent hiking. The Leeds Point area is a short drive from Atlantic City if you need to decompress afterwards.
Interesting fact: During a particularly intense wave of sightings in January 1909, schools and businesses closed across southern New Jersey as residents refused to venture outside. Police departments across the region reported being inundated with calls. Whatever people were seeing that week, a significant number of them were seeing it.
5. The Skunk Ape, Florida Everglades
Florida has many things that the rest of America does not, including alligators in suburban swimming pools, a news category known simply as Florida Man and its very own version of Bigfoot. The Skunk Ape gets its name from the powerful and deeply unpleasant odour that witnesses consistently report, described variously as rotting vegetation, sulphur, methane or something that has been dead for considerably longer than is ideal. It is described as a large, upright, hair-covered humanoid, similar to Bigfoot, but apparently considerably less pleasant to be near.
Sightings have been reported throughout the Florida Everglades and surrounding areas since the 1960s, with a notable spike in reports during the 1970s. The Everglades provide ideal habitat for something large that wishes to remain unseen, being approximately 1.5 million acres of subtropical wilderness containing more ways to die than most people would like to think about.
The most famous piece of photographic evidence is a series of images sent anonymously to the Sarasota County Sheriff's Department in 2000, allegedly showing a large hair-covered creature in a garden. Investigators noted it also looked entirely consistent with an escaped orangutan, which raises its own set of questions about Florida.
Visiting: Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park, southern Florida. The Skunk Ape Research Headquarters in Ochopee, Florida is a genuine highlight, run by a man named Dave Shealy who has dedicated decades to documenting the creature and sells excellent merchandise.
Interesting fact: Ochopee, Florida, where the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters is located, is also home to the smallest post office in the United States, a converted irrigation pipe shed approximately 61 square feet in size. Ochopee is, in short, an overachiever.
6. The Wendigo, Great Lakes Region
The Wendigo is one of the most ancient and most genuinely disturbing figures in North American cryptid and folklore tradition, originating in the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Great Lakes region and the surrounding forests. Unlike many cryptids that exist primarily in the realm of tabloid journalism and blurry photographs, the Wendigo has deep cultural and spiritual roots that deserve to be treated with considerably more respect than the average blurry footprint.
In Algonquian tradition, the Wendigo is associated with winter, famine and the taboo of cannibalism. It is described as an emaciated giant, perpetually hungry, that grows larger as it consumes and yet is never satisfied. The concept of Wendigo psychosis, documented by anthropologists, describes a condition reported among some Indigenous communities in which individuals believed they were transforming into a Wendigo, craving human flesh. Whether this represents a genuine culture-bound syndrome or a misinterpretation by outside observers is a matter of ongoing academic discussion.
In contemporary cryptid culture the Wendigo has become a popular figure in horror fiction and camping stories, described as a tall, gaunt, antlered creature stalking the forests of the north. Its cultural origins are rather more complex and rather more interesting than this.
Visiting: The Great Lakes region generally, with particularly strong traditional associations in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and the forests of Ontario across the border. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota is the most atmospheric setting for contemplating what might be moving between the trees.
Interesting fact: The town of Roseisle in Manitoba, Canada held a Wendigo festival for several years, which is either very brave or very much the kind of thing you do when you have run out of other ideas for community events. We mean this with genuine affection.
7. The Flatwoods Monster, Flatwoods, West Virginia
West Virginia is clearly doing something to deserve two entries on this list and we respect that commitment. The Flatwoods Monster, also known as the Braxton County Monster, appeared on the 12th of September 1952 when a group of boys in Flatwoods saw what they believed to be a UFO land on a nearby hill. They went to investigate, accompanied by a local woman named Kathleen May and a National Guardsman, and reported encountering a ten foot tall creature with a spade-shaped head, glowing orange eyes, a dark body and a hissing, acrid-smelling mist that made several witnesses feel physically ill.
The encounter lasted approximately ten seconds before the creature glided towards them and the group fled. Several witnesses reported symptoms consistent with exposure to an irritant gas in the days following. A subsequent investigation found a circular impression in the grass at the reported landing site and tracks described as consistent with a skid mark.
The Flatwoods Monster occupies an interesting position at the intersection of cryptid and UFO phenomena, and the incident remains one of the most thoroughly reported and least satisfactorily explained close encounter cases of the 1950s.
Visiting: Flatwoods, Braxton County, West Virginia. The Flatwoods Monster Museum on Main Street opened in 2016 and documents the 1952 encounter in impressive detail. The hill where the encounter occurred is accessible and locals are generally happy to point you in the right direction.
Interesting fact: A Japanese toy and character company called Kaiyodo became so fascinated by the Flatwoods Monster that they produced a detailed action figure of it, which became enormously popular in Japan. The Flatwoods Monster is significantly more famous in Japan than in most of the United States, which says interesting things about both countries.
8. The Loveland Frogmen, Loveland, Ohio
The Loveland Frogmen are exactly what they sound like, which is either the most ridiculous or the most alarming thing on this list depending on your feelings about amphibians. They are described as bipedal, frog-like creatures approximately three to four feet tall, reported near the Little Miami River in Loveland, Ohio in a series of encounters that began in 1955 and have continued sporadically ever since.
The original 1955 sighting involved a businessman who reported encountering three such creatures on the roadside at three in the morning, crouched in a triangle formation and holding a device that emitted sparks. This is already more detail than most cryptid encounters provide. A 1972 sighting by a police officer who reported seeing a large frog-like creature leap over a guardrail added law enforcement credibility to the legend. A second police officer reported a similar sighting two weeks later on the same stretch of road.
In 2016, a couple playing Pokemon Go in Loveland reported seeing a large bipedal frog near the river. This is a sentence that would not have made sense in 1955 but somehow fits perfectly into the Loveland Frogman legend regardless.
Visiting: Loveland, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. The Little Miami River area where the sightings have been concentrated is freely accessible. Loveland has embraced its unusual legacy and Frogman merchandise is available locally.
Interesting fact: The 1955 witness who reported three frog creatures holding a sparking device also described one of them raising the device above its head, at which point he drove away at speed. We consider this to have been an entirely reasonable decision.
9. The Beast of Bray Road, Elkhorn, Wisconsin
The Beast of Bray Road is Wisconsin's contribution to the American werewolf tradition, a large wolf-like or bear-like creature reported walking upright on two legs along a rural road near Elkhorn in Walworth County. Sightings began in the late 1980s and were compiled and investigated by a local journalist named Linda Godfrey, whose resulting book The Beast of Bray Road is one of the most thorough investigations of a regional cryptid ever produced.
Witnesses describe a powerfully built creature with the face of a wolf or German Shepherd, covered in dark grey or brown fur, capable of moving on either two or four legs and apparently unconcerned about being observed. Multiple witnesses have reported seeing it feeding on road kill on Bray Road itself, which suggests a creature either comfortable in its surroundings or simply very hungry.
The Beast of Bray Road belongs to a broader category of American werewolf reports that Godfrey has spent decades investigating, finding consistent features across accounts from witnesses who have no knowledge of each other's experiences. Whatever people are seeing in the rural Midwest at night, a significant number of them are describing the same thing.
Visiting: Bray Road, near Elkhorn, Walworth County, Wisconsin. The road is a regular rural road and is freely driveable. Elkhorn is a small city approximately an hour south of Milwaukee. Local businesses have embraced the legend with appropriate enthusiasm.
Interesting fact: Linda Godfrey, the journalist who first reported the Beast of Bray Road sightings in 1991, initially approached the story as a lighthearted local oddity and ended up spending the next three decades investigating werewolf reports across North America. This is what investigative journalism can do to you if you are not careful.
10. The Dover Demon, Dover, Massachusetts
The Dover Demon is one of the most unusual and most visually distinctive cryptids in American folklore, reported over a period of approximately 25 hours in April 1977 by four separate witnesses in Dover, Massachusetts. The creature was described consistently as small, approximately four feet tall, with a large watermelon-shaped head, glowing orange eyes, a thin body with long fingers, no nose or mouth visible and skin described as pale and rough like sandpaper.
The sightings occurred on two consecutive nights, with the first witness reporting the creature on a wall along Farm Street at around ten in the evening. Two further witnesses reported it on the same road later that night, and a fourth witness reported it the following night on Springdale Avenue. All four witnesses drew sketches of what they had seen independently, and the sketches are remarkably consistent.
The Dover Demon has never been satisfactorily explained. Suggested explanations have included a young moose, a baby horse, a foal, an alien and a prank, none of which accounts convincingly for four independent witnesses producing consistent descriptions over two nights. It remains one of the more puzzling cases in American cryptid history and one of the few with multiple witnesses whose accounts genuinely resist easy dismissal.
Visiting: Dover, Massachusetts, approximately twenty miles southwest of Boston. Farm Street and Springdale Avenue, where the sightings occurred, are ordinary suburban roads. Dover is a wealthy commuter town with excellent road access from Boston and absolutely nothing about it that suggests it should be famous for a two-day cryptid encounter in 1977.
Interesting fact: One of the original 1977 witnesses, Bill Bartlett, who made the first sighting, later became a professional artist. He has maintained the consistency of his account for nearly fifty years and still lives in the Dover area. His original sketch of the creature is one of the most reproduced images in American cryptid history.
Find These Locations and Hundreds More on HauntMap
America's cryptid tradition is one of the richest and most varied in the world, a reflection of a vast and diverse landscape that still contains more wilderness than most people appreciate and more unexplained things moving through it than anyone in authority is entirely comfortable acknowledging.
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Download the HauntMap app on iPhone or Android and start mapping your own encounters today. And if you do find yourself face to face with something large, unexplained and apparently uninterested in social distancing, remember that HauntMap's report function works perfectly well at a full sprint.
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