TYPE FILE · 20 CRYPTIDs

Humanoids & Strange Beings

Goatmen, frogmen, little people and other strange two-legged beings.

HUMANOID · 1952

Flatwoods Monster

Fisher farm hillside, Flatwoods, Braxton County, West Virginia

A ten-foot figure with a glowing face and spade-shaped hood that seven witnesses met on a West Virginia hillside after a light fell from the sky in 1952.

REGIONAL LEGEND

HUMANOID · 1971

Goatman

Fletchertown Road, Bowie, Prince George’s County, Maryland

A half-man, half-goat said to stalk the back roads of Prince George’s County, Maryland – a 1970s legend fed by teenagers, folklore archives and the press.

REGIONAL LEGEND

HUMANOID · 1977

Dover Demon

Farm Street and Springdale Avenue, Dover, Massachusetts

A small, hairless figure with a melon-shaped head and glowing eyes that three teenagers reported in Dover, Massachusetts, over two nights in April 1977.

LOCAL LEGEND

The tall steel railroad trestle over Pope Lick Creek in Louisville, Kentucky, seen from below

HUMANOID · 1980s

Pope Lick Monster

Pope Lick trestle, Fisherville area of Louisville, Kentucky

A goat-legged figure said to haunt a towering railroad trestle east of Louisville – a legend that has drawn people onto a deadly, active train line.

LOCAL LEGEND HUMANOID · Mid-20th century

Melon Heads

Back roads of southwestern Connecticut; Kirtland, Ohio; Saugatuck, Michigan

Small, big-headed figures said to lurk along wooded back roads in Connecticut, Ohio and Michigan – a teen legend with no real asylum behind it.

REGIONAL LEGEND HUMANOID · 1973

Pascagoula River Creatures

Pascagoula River, Pascagoula, Mississippi

Gray, clawed, legless beings that two Pascagoula shipyard workers said floated from a glowing craft and seized them by the river on October 11, 1973.

REGIONAL LEGEND

HUMANOID · 1883

Nain Rouge

Detroit, Michigan

Detroit’s red-faced imp, said to have cursed founder Cadillac and to appear before disasters – now chased out of town each spring by a costumed parade.

FOLKLORE

Artist’s impression of a Hopkinsville goblin based on witness descriptions: a small figure with huge ears, big eyes and long clawed arms

HUMANOID · 1955

Kelly–Hopkinsville Goblins

Sutton farm, Kelly, near Hopkinsville, Kentucky

Small, glowing-eyed beings that a rural Kentucky family said besieged their farmhouse for hours in August 1955 – the case behind “little green men.”

REGIONAL LEGEND

HUMANOID · Pre-colonial

Pukwudgie

Southeastern Massachusetts, especially Freetown–Fall River State Forest

Small, gray-skinned forest people of Algonquian tradition – foes of the Wampanoag giant Maushop – said to linger in southeastern Massachusetts woods.

FOLKLORE

A group of North American river otters – the “land otters” of Southeast Alaska – along Ward Creek in the Tongass National Forest

HUMANOID · Pre-colonial

Kushtaka

Southeast Alaska (Tlingit homelands)

The Land Otter Man of Tlingit tradition in Southeast Alaska – a shape-shifting being linked to people lost at sea, later recast by outsiders as a cryptid.

FOLKLORE

HUMANOID · Pre-colonial

Menehune

Kauaʻi and Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi

The legendary master builders of Hawaiian tradition, said to raise fishponds and stone walls in a single night – still debated by Hawaiian scholars today.

FOLKLORE

HUMANOID · 1837

Spring-heeled Jack

London’s outskirts, Aldershot and Liverpool

A leaping, fire-breathing phantom who terrorised Victorian London in 1838, later spotted at Aldershot and Liverpool – part prankster, part urban myth.

FOLKLORE HUMANOID · 1820s

Tommyknockers

Gold and silver mines of Colorado’s Front Range, around Idaho Springs and Central City

Little mine spirits brought from Cornwall to the American West, said to knock in Colorado’s gold and silver mines – warning, teasing or guiding the miners.

FOLKLORE HUMANOID · 1932

Pedro Mountain Mummy

Pedro Mountains near Pathfinder Reservoir, Carbon County, Wyoming

A tiny seated mummy found by Wyoming gold prospectors in the 1930s and promoted as proof of a race of little people – later identified as an infant.

HOAX / DEBUNKED

Spirit Mound, a lone grassy hill rising above the prairie north of Vermillion, South Dakota

HUMANOID · Pre-colonial

Little People of Spirit Mound

Spirit Mound Historic Prairie, near Vermillion, Clay County, South Dakota

Small beings of Lakota, Otoe and Missouria tradition said to guard a lone South Dakota prairie hill – the ‘little devils’ Lewis and Clark sought in 1804.

FOLKLORE HUMANOID · 1971

Pigman of Northfield

Devil’s Washbowl and Paine Mountain, Northfield, Vermont

A white-haired, pig-snouted figure that frightened teens at a 1971 high-school dance in Northfield, Vermont, said to lurk in the Devil’s Washbowl.

LOCAL LEGEND HUMANOID · Pre-colonial

Deer Woman

Oklahoma and many Native nations of the Plains and Eastern Woodlands

A spirit being of many Native nations who appears as a beautiful woman with deer’s feet, and who punishes men who harm women and children.

FOLKLORE

HUMANOID · Pre-colonial

Trauco

Forests of the Chiloé Archipelago, southern Chile

A stunted, footless forest man of Chiloé’s folklore who fells trees with a stone axe, curses men with a glance and is blamed for bewitching young women.

FOLKLORE

Snow-covered slopes of Ben Macdui with Cairngorm in the distance – the mountain where the Big Grey Man is said to roam.

HUMANOID · 1925

Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui

Summit plateau of Ben Macdui, Cairngorms

A towering grey figure – or just heavy footsteps in the mist – said to stalk Ben Macdui, Britain’s second-highest peak, in the Cairngorms.

REGIONAL LEGEND HUMANOID · 1956

Derry Fairy

Woods of Derry, New Hampshire

A two-foot green creature with droopy ears and filmy eyes that a Derry, New Hampshire, man said he met while cutting Christmas trees in December 1956.

LOCAL LEGEND