STATE FILE · TX
Cryptids of Texas
What cryptids are in Texas? The best-known are Chupacabra, Bigfoot, Fouke Monster and Goatman, among 7 on file.
Texas is the American home of the chupacabra. In the 2000s ranchers across Central and South Texas reported finding strange, hairless, gray-skinned canines, most famously Phylis Canion of Cuero, who kept the head of an animal she found in 2007. Scientists who examined such specimens identified them as coyotes, dogs or hybrids suffering from severe mange – but the “Texas chupacabra” became a fixture of local news and roadside legend. Hispanic folklore adds La Llorona, the weeping woman said to haunt rivers and creeks from San Antonio to El Paso.
Cryptids reported in Texas
OTHER · 1995
Chupacabra
Canóvanas, Puerto Rico
The “goat-sucker” of 1990s Puerto Rico: a spiny, bloodsucking beast blamed for livestock deaths that spread across Latin America and Texas.
WIDELY REPORTED
HOMINID · 1958
Bigfoot
Pacific Northwest forests, reported across North America
North America’s most famous cryptid: a huge, hairy, upright ape-like being reported from the Pacific Northwest to Florida since the 1958 “Bigfoot” tracks.
WIDELY REPORTED
HOMINID · 1946
Fouke Monster
Fouke and Boggy Creek, Miller County, Arkansas
The hairy, red-eyed swamp beast of Fouke, Arkansas, whose 1971 “attack” on a farmhouse inspired the 1972 cult film “The Legend of Boggy Creek.”
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
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
SPECTRAL · 16th century
La Llorona
Canals of Xochimilco, Mexico City
A weeping ghost in white who wanders rivers and canals at night crying for the children she lost – Mexico’s most famous and most widely told legend.
FOLKLORE
HOMINID · 1968
Minnesota Iceman
Traveling carnival exhibit; later stored in Cottage Grove, Minnesota
A hairy “ape-man” frozen in a block of ice, toured at 1960s fairs by showman Frank Hansen – hailed as a new species, then exposed as a latex model.
HOAX / DEBUNKEDThe legends of Texas
East Texas’s Piney Woods and the Big Thicket, a tangle of swamps, bayous and forest north of Beaumont, are the state’s Bigfoot country, and the region shades into the territory of the Fouke Monster across the Arkansas line near Texarkana. Fort Worth has its own creature: in the summer of 1969 residents reported a hairy, goat-like “Lake Worth Monster” near Greer Island, which threw a tire at onlookers according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. In early 1976, the Rio Grande Valley went through a “Big Bird” scare, with residents of Harlingen, Brownsville and nearby towns describing giant winged creatures.
Austin’s Museum of the Weird displays the Minnesota Iceman, the famous carnival “frozen hominid” of the 1960s. Skeptics point to mangy coyotes, feral hogs, bears, large birds such as herons and pranksters – but in a state this big, the stories keep coming.
Hotspots
Dense East Texas forests and bayous with a long history of Bigfoot reports.
Where the 2007 “Cuero chupacabra” was found.
Site of the 1969 Lake Worth Monster sightings in Fort Worth.
Piney Woods forest north of Houston with frequent sighting claims.
Sixth Street museum that exhibits the Minnesota Iceman.
Sightings timeline
- November 1968A naturalist sees the exhibit Minnesota Iceman
Terry Cullen paid admission to see Hansen’s frozen “ape-man” and became convinced it was a real body. He contacted Ivan T. Sanderson, setting the investigation in motion.
- December 17, 1968Sanderson and Heuvelmans examine the Iceman Minnesota Iceman
Ivan T. Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans studied and photographed the figure through ice and glass. Heuvelmans went on to publish it as Homo pongoides, a new hominid species, in a Belgian scientific bulletin.
- June 1969The Smithsonian calls it a model Minnesota Iceman
After John Napier’s inquiry, the Smithsonian’s staff newsletter reported that the Iceman was a latex-and-hair exhibit commissioned from West Coast model makers. Hansen himself had already begun calling the exhibit a model.
- August 2007The Cuero carcass Chupacabra
Rancher Phylis Canion kept the head of a hairless animal she believed had been killing her chickens. University DNA analysis identified it as a coyote, with one lab reporting some Mexican wolf ancestry.
- August 2008The DeWitt County dash-cam video Chupacabra
Sheriff’s deputies filmed a hairless, long-snouted animal running along a rural fence line. The clip went viral as a “chupacabra caught on tape,” though its look matches a mange-stricken canid.
- February 2013Sold to a Texas museum Minnesota Iceman
The Iceman was reportedly auctioned on eBay and bought by Steve Busti of the Museum of the Weird. As the ice melted in transit, its latex face was clearly exposed.
Latest from Texas
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Videos
ARCHIVE.ORG3:07
Patterson–Gimlin film (unedited)
Roger Patterson and Bob GimlinThe original 1967 Bluff Creek footage – the most famous and most debated minute in Bigfoot history. Marked public domain on archive.org.
ARCHIVE.ORG4:59
The Film That Made Bigfoot A Star
Oregon Public BroadcastingOPB’s short documentary on how the Patterson–Gimlin film turned a regional legend into a global icon – and the hoax claims around it.
▶ VIDEO
Sts’ailes Sasquatch Days in Harrison Hot Springs
Tourism Harrison River ValleyShows the festival celebrating the Sts’ailes people’s Sásq’ets, the being behind the word “Sasquatch” (no archive.org equivalent).
▶ VIDEO
El Chupacabras, a Modern Mystery
Monstrum | PBS StoriedFolklorist Emily Zarka traces both the Puerto Rican and the Texas chupacabra and the real explanations behind them.
ARCHIVE.ORG1:33
John Huffer Thunderbird Footage
John Huffer (Internet Archive upload)The original July 1977 Illinois film of large birds that many cryptozoologists cite – judge for yourself whether they are vultures.
▶ VIDEO
Cryptid: Goatman
Small Town MonstersFeature-length documentary on American goatman legends from an independent cryptid documentary studio.