STATE FILE · RI
Cryptids of Rhode Island
What cryptids are in Rhode Island? The best-known are Carbuncle Pond Serpent and Block Ness Monster.
The smallest state has a modest but colorful store of uncanny lore, much of it rooted in its colonial and seafaring past. The best-known local beast is the Glocester Ghoul, a fire-breathing creature said to roam the woods of the rural northwestern town of Glocester. According to the legend, it was first described in the 1830s by a man searching for Captain Kidd’s buried treasure, and storytellers disagree about whether it is a hellhound set to guard the loot or simply a misremembered bear.
Cryptids reported in Rhode Island
REPTILIAN · 1890s
Carbuncle Pond Serpent
Carbuncle Pond and Carbuncle Hill, Coventry, Rhode Island
A giant serpent with a glowing red gem in its forehead, said to haunt the woods of Coventry, Rhode Island, until the jewel sank in Carbuncle Pond.
FOLKLORE
LAKE & SEA MONSTER · 1996
Block Ness Monster
Old Harbor, Block Island (New Shoreham), Rhode Island
A 14-foot serpent-like skeleton netted off Block Island in 1996, put on show, then ‘kidnapped’ from a freezer – most likely a basking shark.
HOAX / DEBUNKEDThe legends of Rhode Island
Rhode Island’s most famous folk belief is not a monster at all but a vampire scare. In 1892 the family of Mercy Brown, who had died of tuberculosis in Exeter, exhumed her body from Chestnut Hill Cemetery in the belief that she was draining the life of her sick relatives – one of the last documented cases of the New England vampire panic, which historians link to fear and helplessness in the face of consumption.
The state’s quiet places – the Great Swamp of South Kingstown, the forests of Arcadia and the George Washington Management Area, and the Block Island coast – make atmospheric settings for these tales. Bigfoot reports are very rare here, and most strange-creature stories are best enjoyed as folklore.
Hotspots
Rural northwestern Rhode Island, haunt of the legendary Glocester Ghoul.
Burial place of Mercy Brown, center of the 1892 vampire scare.
Large wetland management area with a long, dark history.
The state’s largest recreation forest, deep woods by Rhode Island standards.
Sightings timeline
- 1890sThe legend in print Carbuncle Pond Serpent
Versions of the Carbuncle Pond story were being repeated in Rhode Island publications by the 1890s, explaining the unusual names of the hill and pond.
- 1931<em>The Legend of Carbuncle Pond</em> Carbuncle Pond Serpent
Historian John Williams Haley published a short pamphlet retelling the legend, now held by the Rhode Island Historical Society.
- 1955The <em>Providence Journal</em> retelling Carbuncle Pond Serpent
A newspaper feature told how a chief threw the carbuncle into the center of the pond, and suggested that garnets in local rock might lie behind the story.
- June 1996The <em>Mad Monk</em>’s catch Block Ness Monster
Fishermen Gary Hall and J. T. Pinney hauled up the skeleton while netting for monkfish and displayed it on the Old Harbor breakwater, where crowds gathered for two days.
- Summer 1996The monster is “kidnapped” Block Ness Monster
The remains disappeared from biologist Lee Scott’s freezer before they could be sent for study. Anonymous islanders later said they had taken it to keep it on the island; it has never resurfaced.
- September 22, 1996National headlines Block Ness Monster
An Associated Press story carried the mystery nationwide, quoting fisheries experts who believed it was a basking shark and islanders who preferred a monster.
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