TYPE FILE · 14 CRYPTIDs

Flying Cryptids

Giant birds, winged humanoids and pterosaur-like creatures of the skies.

FLYING · 1966

Mothman

Point Pleasant and the “TNT area”, Mason County, West Virginia

A man-sized winged figure with glowing red eyes reported around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1966–67 – now a festival, museum and steel statue.

REGIONAL LEGEND

FLYING · 1735

Jersey Devil

Pine Barrens, southern New Jersey

A winged, hoofed devil said to have been born to “Mother Leeds” in the Pine Barrens, and the star of a week of panic across South Jersey in January 1909.

REGIONAL LEGEND

FLYING · Pre-colonial

Thunderbird

Northern Pennsylvania mountains and central Illinois

A giant bird with a wingspan said to rival a small plane, reported over Pennsylvania’s Black Forest and blamed for lifting an Illinois boy in 1977.

REGIONAL LEGEND FLYING · 1994

Batsquatch

Foothills of Mount Rainier, Pierce County, Washington

A winged, ape-like creature with blue-tinged fur said to have landed in front of a stalled pickup near Mount Rainier in 1994 – part bat, part Sasquatch.

LOCAL LEGEND

FLYING · 1730s

Snallygaster

South Mountain and the Middletown Valley, Frederick County, Maryland

A winged, beaked dragon of Maryland’s Blue Ridge: born of German settlers’ folklore and made famous by a 1909 newspaper hoax in the Middletown Valley.

REGIONAL LEGEND

FLYING · 1673

Piasa Bird

Mississippi River bluffs, Alton, Illinois

A winged, horned, man-faced monster painted on the Mississippi bluffs at Alton – first seen by Marquette in 1673 and reinvented by a storyteller in 1836.

REGIONAL LEGEND

Space Shuttle photograph of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, with its large volcanic caldera

FLYING · 1944

Ropen

Umboi Island and the Huon Gulf coast, Papua New Guinea

A glowing, long-tailed night flyer of Umboi that creationist explorers hoped was a living pterosaur – and scientists blame on bats, birds and planes.

REGIONAL LEGEND

Early-1900s postcard of the Rock Island railroad depot in Van Meter, Iowa, with two railroad employees on the platform

FLYING · 1903

Van Meter Visitor

Van Meter, Iowa

A winged creature with a glowing horn said to have terrorized the small town of Van Meter, Iowa, for several nights in the autumn of 1903.

LOCAL LEGEND

FLYING · 1923

Kongamato

Jiundu swamp, Mwinilunga district, Zambia

A red, leathery-winged flyer feared at river fords in north-western Zambia, made famous in 1923 when Kaonde men picked it out of a book of pterodactyls.

REGIONAL LEGEND

A welcome sign and green hills at Moca, Puerto Rico, the town where the 1975 animal deaths took place.

FLYING · 1975

Moca Vampire

Moca, northwestern Puerto Rico

In 1975 a mystery killer left Puerto Rican livestock dead with puncture wounds; a tabloid named it “the Vampire of Moca,” 20 years before the chupacabra.

REGIONAL LEGEND

A tropical beach backed by dense forest on Seram Island in Maluku, Indonesia

FLYING · Pre-colonial

Orang Bati

Seram Island, Maluku

Winged, child-snatching beings said to fly from a mountain on Seram – a legend that has long overshadowed the real Bati people of the island’s interior.

FOLKLORE

FLYING · 1976

Owlman

Mawnan church woods, near Falmouth, Cornwall

A man-sized, owl-like figure reported over Mawnan church in Cornwall in 1976 – a modern legend shadowed by the showman who first publicised it.

LOCAL LEGEND

FLYING · 1932

Olitiau

Assumbo Mountains, north of Mamfe, Cameroon

A huge black, toothy bat-winged flyer that swooped at naturalist Ivan Sanderson in Cameroon’s Assumbo Mountains in 1932 – and sent local hunters running.

LOCAL LEGEND