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Home , Axehandle hound, Belled buzzard, Black dog (ghost), Cactus cat, Campfire story, Fearsome critters

America’s Fearsome Creatures

By Aoty

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43. A Composite 1. The Abbagoochie 44. Commodore Preble’s Monster 2. The Alkali Monster 45. The Cougar Fish 3. The Altamaha-ha 46. The Cuba 4. Amhuluk 47. The Devil-Jack Diamond Fish 5. Angont 48. The Dewayo 6. Apotamkin 49. The Dew Mink 7. The Argopelter 50. The Ding-ball 8. The Arkansas Snipe 51. The Dingbat 9. The Augerino 52. The Double Rat 10. The Axehandle 53. The Dubuque Monster Reptile 11. The Backus Monster 54. The Duck-Footed Dum DUm 12. The Balloon Fish 55. The Dungavenhooter 13. The Bassigator 56. The Fire-Starter Beast 14. The Lake Monster 57. The Fish-Fox 15. The Beazel 58. The Fish-Hound 16. The Bildad 59. The Flittericks 17. The Biloxi Bay Devil Fish 60. The Flying Serpents 18. The Bird of Winnemucca 61. The Funeral Mountain Terrashot 19. The Black Dog 62. The Gaasyendietha 20. The Black Newfoundland DOg 63. The Galliwampus 21. The Black 64. The Gallywampus 22. The Black Fox of Salmon River 65. The Gazerium and Snydae 23. The Boat Hound 66. The Gazunk, The Flute Bill 24. The Bone-Headed Penguin 67. The Godaphro 25. The Booger Dog 68. The Golden 26. The Boont 69. The Gollywog 27. The Brazilian Trench Digger 70. The Goofang 28. The Bright Old Inhabitants 71. The 29. The Bull of Durham 72. The Giant Lobster 30. The 73. The Giddy Fish 31. Caldera Dick 74. The Gigantic Feathered Creature 32. The Camelce 75. The Gillgaloo 33. The Camp Chipmunk 76. The Glass Snake 34. The Canadian Great Cats 77. The Glawackus 35. The Canandaigua Indian 78. The Growrow 36. The Celofay 79. The Great Leach 37. The Central American Whintosser 80. The Guerrero Serpent 38. The Champlain Animal-Fish 81. The Gumberoo 39. The Chaw-Green 82. The Gwinter 40. The Club-tailed Glyptodont 83. The Gyascutus 41. The Columbia River Sand Squink 84. The Haakapainizi 42. The Come-at-a-Body 85. The Hangdown 2

86. The Hansen Monster of Puget 128. Piasa Sound 129. The Phillyloo Bird 87. The Hibou Blanc 130. The Pinnacle Grouse 88. The 131. The Poopampareno 89. Hill’s Sea Serpent 132. The Powder Snake 90. The Hodag 133. The Prudence Ilse Sea-Beast 91. Hoopajubas 134. The Purington Lake Monster 92. Hoop Snakes 135. The Rhinelapus 93. The Hoot Pecker 136. The Roperite 94. The Horn Snake 137. The Rubberado 95. The Hugag 138. The Rumtifuself 96. The Humility 139. The Santer 97. The Hyampom Hog Bear 140. “The Serpent” 98. The Ice Worm 141. The Seven Headed 99. The Jimplicute 142. The Side-hill Winder 100. The 143. The Skeeteroo 101. The Jonah 144. The Sliver Cat 102. The Kangaroo Cat 145. The Silurian Salamander 103. The Kickle Snifter 146. The 104. The King Buzzard 147. The Snake Monster 105. The Kingdoodle 148. The Snawfus 106. The Lava Bears 149. The Snoligoster 107. Leprocauns 150. The 108. The Leviathan 151. The Snow Wasset 109. The Log Gar 152. The Shoofly 110. The Lucive 153. The Splinter Cat 111. The Luferlang 154. The Split Dog 112. Madrone Monkeys 155. The Squasholiger 113. The Malacca Salamander 156. The Squidicum-Squee 114. The Milamo 157. The 115. The Milk Snake 158. The Stone County Monster 116. The Mi-ni-wa-tu 159. The Stone Spirit Dragon 117. The Mississippi Monster 160. The Sturgeon 118. The Monster Boar of Georgia 161. The Swamp Auger 119. The Monster Mosquito 162. The Swan Valley Monster 120. Moskittos 163. The Sysladobosis Monster 121. Old Al, the River King 164. The Tahoe 122. Old Joe, the Legendary Catfish 165. 123. The Old Fire Dragaman 166. The Teakettler 124. Old Spider Legs 167. The Teelget 125. The Oomph 168. The Terrible Blue Racer 126. The Ozark Great Cats 169. The Three-tailed Banalorous 127. The Painters 170. The Timmerdoodle 3

171. The Tonnage Rat 14. The Hairy Man 172. The Tote-road Shagamaw 15. The “Hairy Toe” 173. The Tree-frog 16. Kuku, The Giant 174. The Tree Octopus 17. The Goatman 175. The Treesqueak 18. The Michigan Dogman 176. The Tripodero 19. 177. The Underground Panther 20. Nain Rouge 178. The Upland Trout 21. The Needle Men and the Black 179. The Wapaloosie Bottle Men 180. The Wamp 22. Old Ferro 181. The Wampahoofus 23. Old Mammy Redd 182. The 24. The Old Man of the Sea 183. The Whaperknocker 25. Old Meg 184. The Whangdoodle 26. Old Tush 185. The Whippoorwill 27. The Popelick Monster 186. The 28. The Ramapo Salamander 187. The Whiffle-Pooffle 29. Razor-shins 188. The Whing-Whang 30. The Rougarou 189. The Whirling Whimpus 31. The Salem Alchemist 190. The Whirligig 32. The Salt Witch 191. The Whistling Whoo-Hoo 33. The Serpent Queen 192. The White of Ononta 34. The Stone Throwing Devils 193. The White River Monster 35. The Soucouyant 194. The Will-am-alone 36. Uncle Kaler, the Windjammer 195. The Windigo 37. The Water-Devils 196. The Windyo 38. The Goatman 197. The Wunk 39. The Witch of New Haven 40. Wizard Dimond 1. The Arctic Giants 2. Big Black and the Her-girls 3. The Burrokeet and Sou-Marie 4. The Catskill Witch 5. The Crab-Claw Zoarites 6. Detroit Werewolves 7. De Witch-’oonman an’ de Spinnin’-Wheel 8. The Fay 9. The Florida Pigman 10. The Giants of the Cordilleras 11. The Gnomes of Catskill 12. The Great Bear Swamp Frankenstein’s Monster 13. The Hairy Kentucky Monster 4

1. The Abbagoochie been suggested as explanations for the beast. >The abbagoochie (pronounced In addition to sightings, it has been the abba-GOO-cheez) is a fierce little creature subject of many and during the resembling a cross between an owl, a fox, time of its "discovery" by the local Tama and a deer. It is indigenous to Costa Rica, where people refer to it as a "dryland Indian Tribe in the state of Georgia, which piranha" because it will eat anything, predates British-English colonization. The including creatures far larger than itself such Altamaha-ha is described as having a as horses and cows. If cornered, an sturgeon like body including the bony ridge abbagoochie will consume itself "in a on its top. Front flippers and no back limbs, devilish whirlwind" rather than allow itself swimming like a or porpoise and to be captured. They mate only once every 6 ½ years. having the snout of a crocodile. The coloring is said to be gray with a whitish-yellow 2. The Alkali Monster underbelly. So far, no physical evidence of >This gargantuan, mono-horned, foul the Atlamaha-ha has been found. It is smelling, reptilian beast is reputed to lurk in sometimes shown to be green, so it can the depths of Nebraska’s famed Alkali Lake, camouflage. devouring all who come near it. Located in central Nebraska, Walgren Lake (formerly 4. Amhuluk known as Alkali Lake) is an eroded volcanic >The monster Amhuluk, whose home is the lake near forked mountain, Oregon, had but outcropping that is reputed to be the nesting one passion-to catch and drown all things; place of one of the most unusual lake and when you look into the lake you see that ever recorded and, if the legends he even drowned the sky in it, and has made are true, the habitat of the only aquatic the trees stand upside down in the water. monster ever reported in the state of Wherever he set his feet the ground would Nebraska. Originally chronicled in Native soften. As three children were digging roots at the edge of the water he fell on them and American , this creature has been impaled two of them in his horns, the eldest described as a gargantuan alligator-like only contriving to escape. When this boy beast with some unique attributes. reached home his body was full of blotches, Eyewitnesses claim that the beast is and the father suspected how it was, yet he approximately 40-feet long, with rough, went to the lake at once. The bodies of the grayish-brown skin and a horny outgrowth children came out of the mud at his feet to meet him, yet went down again and emerged located between its eyes and nostrils. later across the water. They led him on in this way until he came to the place where 3. The Altamaha-ha they had drowned. A fog now began to >Local legend reports a 20-foot-long water steam up from the water, but through it he serpent that dwarfs the size of alligators in could see the little ones lifted on the the region. It lives where the Altahama monster’s horns, and hear them cry, “We River dumps into the Atlantic Ocean, and have changed our bodies.” Five times they had came up and spoke to him, and five thus a host of very real sea creatures have 5

times he raised a dismal cry and begged for >Leading a vengeful existence, resenting the them to return, but they could not. Next intrusion of the logger, the agropelter deals morning he saw them rise through the fog misery to the lumber jack from Maine to again, and building a camp, he stayed there Oregon. Ill fares the man who attempts to and mourned for several days. For five days pass a hollow tree in which one of these they showed themselves, but after that they creatures has taken up its temporary abode. went down and he saw and heard no more of The unfortunate is usually found smashed or them. Amhuluk had taken the children and pinned by a dead branch and reported as they would live with him for ever after. having been killed by a falling limb. So unerring is the aim of the argropelter that 5. Angont despite diligent search I have been unable to >Angont is a vicious, poisonous reptile who locate more than one man who has been the ​ supposedly dwelled in desolate places such target for one of their missiles and yet as caves, forests, lakes, and other depths in survived to describe the beast. This is Big the world. If close enough to , the Ole Kittleson, who, upon a certain occasion, Angont could reach out its coils and thereby when cruising timber on the upper St. Croix, bring about a number of problems to local was knocked down by a partly rotten limb inhabitants, such as disasters and diseases. thrown by an argropelter. This limb was so Due to Angont's abilities, medicine men punky that it shattered on Ole's head, and he sought this reptile out, hoping to gain cures had time to observe the rascally beast before via magical medicine. But its skin was so it bounded from the tree and whisked itself poisonous that nothing good came about off through the woods. from these searches. The Hurons believed in >According to Ole, the animal has a slender, ​ a monster spirit, the Angont, who wore a wiry body, the villainous face of an ape, and horn on his head that could pierce trees, arms like muscular whiplashes, with which rocks, and hills. A piece of this horn was an it can snap off dead branches and hurl them amulet of great value, for it insured good through the air like shells from a six-inch luck. gun. It is supposed to feed upon hoot owls and woodpeckers, the scarcity of which will 6. Apotamkin always prevent the argropelter from >The monstrous Apotamkin is often becoming numerous in any locality. misidentified as a "vampire" by non-Native Americans. But in actual Maliseet and 8. The Arkansas Snipe Passamaquoddy legends, this creature has >The Arkansas snipe has nothing to do with nothing to do with vampires-- the dodgy little snipe. The Arkansas snipe is a Apotamkin is a giant fanged sea serpent that more terrifying creature, a mosquito, a large, lurks in the Passamaquoddy Bay and drags people, especially incautious children, into ugly mosquito that devours horses, cows and the water and eats them. Apotamkin is said hapless campers. One account tells a hunter to have long red hair, and in some stories was lost in Arkansas, so he tied the bridle of was once a woman who was his horse at the foot of a tree and climbed a transformed into a serpent. hill to get his bearings. When he returned, two Arkansas snipes had eaten his horse, 7. The Argopelter chewed the saddle, and spat the horse's 6

horseshoes to see which of them would pick up the bridles. In another version, the 11. The Backus Monster gigantic mosquitoes kill a cow and clean >People of Harry Gann’s Town Perturbed their teeth with their horns. A story by a Sea Serpent or—Something. specialist named Daniel Stamps believed >H. L. Tonskemper, the popular Duluth this story, according to "a friend of Daniel": traveling salesman, was in the city last night "A northern buyer came to town and with a story from Backus for which he sought Danial to find some cattle. So, the vouches that is something out of the next morning, they both started walking in the of stories. It concerns a through the swamp. Soon, they heard the monster, a son of a serpent or—something cowbell that was ringing and they took that and it has the good people down that way in direction. When they came to a clearing, a state of mind that nearly borders on they saw a mosquito standing on a dead cow digcombobulation at present. that blew its bell, shaking it infernally so >Mr. Tonskemper is a careful man and does that the rest of the herd would turn toward not claim to have seen the serpent, but he is him. Apparently, these mosquitoes looked very emphatic in the statement that there is more like raccoons than mosquitoes, and something in it. Just what it is he is not their toenails were so long they could kick a prepared to state and it’s the same way with cow into their belly and get their heart the people at Backus. Any way its pierced.” something. It is about the size of a horse and seems equally at home in the water of the 9. The Augerino lake or on the land. Several parties have >The augerino is one of the fearsome seen it swimming in the lake while fishing. creatures that, they say, lived in the deserts Its gen-eral mein is described as something of Colorado, and is sometimes called the terrible and all who have seen it have been augerine. He lived underground and liked to too badly frightened to pay any particular keep its deen as dry as ever it could be. As a attention to details. It might be a cross result, it attacked all waterways and between a steamboat and grizzly bear or destroyed the dams that the local population something equally bad, or it might be a built. white moose. Anyhow any number of people have seen the monster and hunting 10. The parties are out today to see what can be done >like a dachshund in general appearance, about establishing its true identity. with a hatchet-shaped head, a short >People down the Backus way are said to be handle-shaped body and short, stumpy legs. It prowled about the lumber camps at night very much excited and there seems to be looking for axe or peavy handles, this being little doubt but that there is some freak of the only kind of food it was known to touch. nature roaming the woods and water in that Whole cords of axe handles were eaten by vicinity. Developments will be awaited with these troublesome wild hounds interest. 7

ball, in its natural habitat has to be a 12. The Balloon Fish relentless and voracious predator. >Who has ever heard of a balloon fish? Not the little, puffing fellows that are so 14. The Bear Lake Monster annoying to modest anglers fishing from a >The Bear Lake Monster is reported to dock or small boat, but a huge monster that resemble a brown serpent, but with legs about eighteen inches long on which it plows the seas far away from land, and one marauds along the shoreline. It has a large who is a worthy compeer of the great undulating body, with about 90 feet of unknown and highly respected sea serpent. exposed surface, of a light cream color, >Captain Slocum, of the schooner Saladin, moving swiftly through the water, at a out from Jacmel, Hayti, while in latitude distance of three miles from the point of twenty-six degrees north, longitude observation. Others reported seeing a seventy-five degrees west, descried to the monster-like animal which went faster than a locomotive and had a head variously eastward an object which at first he described as being similar to that of a cow, supposed to be the wreck of a small vessel. otter, crocodile or a walrus. Its size was Altering his course, he ran down to the reported to be at least fifty feet long, and supposed wreck, a distance of about five certainly not less than forty. Some sightings miles. The following extract from the ship’s even spoke of a second member of the logbook will explain the adventure : species and smaller monsters as well.

>”7:30 a.m., June 4, at 6 a. m. the object 15. The Beazel was first... weather murky... and at 7 a. m. >More commonly known as the Fur-Bearing we came up to it. It proved to be a large and Trout, a native fish to the streams of vicious looking sea monster, such as I had Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania and never seen or heard of at any time. The body Maine. They are the size of a salt water, but appeared to be about forty feet long and the can grow much much larger depending on tail about sixty feet, with forked ends, each what they feed on. The size and consistency fork about four feet long. It had two feet, or of their fur coats may also vary, sometimes fins, not unlike those of a sea serpent. The being described as that of a beaver’s, to that creature stood about twelve feet high out of of a silver haired fox. The story of how they the water, and was fully forty feet in came to be is highly contested, ranging from breadth.” being stranded after a race with a mango ,

a migration to feed on the wild game of the 13. The Bassigator west, or the result of pollution of a snake oil >Nothing is known about the genealogy or salesman’s hair growth tonic after the habits of this hybrid-looking predator, the federal government came to collect tax. bassigator. An encounter with him in nature would probably be brief and unpleasant. 16. The Bildad Half aligator, half fish, measures about 22 >If you have ever paddled around Boundary feet in length and eyes the size of a beach Pond, in north- west Maine, at night you 8

have probably heard from out the black and Ned Rightor as guests, ran out to Horn depths of a cove a spat like a paddle striking island for a few days’ fishing. They had all the water. It may have been a paddle, but the the sport they wanted with mackerel and chances are ten to one that it was a billdad bull redfish, and early one Sunday morning fishing. This animal occurs only on this one pond, in Hurricane Township. It is about the started for the eastward pass of Deer island size of a beaver, but has long, kangaroo-like and Biloxi bay. hind legs, short front legs, webbed feet, and >They had traveled possibly three or four a heavy, hawk-like bill. Its mode of fishing miles from the island when, just ahead of the is to crouch on a grassy point overlooking yacht they saw something on the surface of the water, and when a trout rises for a bug, the sound which looked like a giant turtle. to leap with amazing swiftness just past the fish, bringing its heavy, flat tail down with a The course of the yacht was changed so as resounding smack over him. This stuns the to overhaul this strange creature, and when fish, which is immediately picked up and the boat neared the fish the engines were eaten by the billdad. It has been reported slowed down and stopped. that sixty yards is an average jump for an >The yacht came up close to the fish, which adult male. proved to be the largest devil fish ever seen >Up to three years ago the opinion was in that section. During last summer a current among lumberjacks that the billdad was fine eating, but since the beasts are number of these monsters, sometimes called exceedingly shy and hard to catch no one the blanket fish, have been seen, but they was able to remember having tasted the were not longer than five or six feet. meat. That fall one was killed on Boundary >This monster measured in the Pond and brought into the Great Northern neighborhood of 15 feet in length, and was Paper Company's camp on Hurricane Lake, fully seven or eight feet broad. where the cook made a most savory slumgullion of it. The first (and only) man to >When the nose of the fish was alongside taste it was Bill Murphy, a tote-road the step of the yacht, its tail was just swamper from Ambegegis. After the first opposite the foremast, a distance of over 15 mouthful his body stiffened, his eyes glazed, feet, but, to make the measurement and his hands clutched the table edge. With reasonable, the sportsmen came to the a wild yell he rushed out of the cook-house, conclusion that they would give the fish 15 down to the lake, and leaped clear out fifty yards, coming down in a sitting feet as a fair measurement. posture—exactly like a billdad catching a >Commodore Sully secured an improved fish. Of course, he sank like a stone. Since Winchester and went on top of the pilot then not a lumberjack in Maine will touch house to get a good shot. The fish was lying billdad meat, not even with a pike pole. very near the surface, and did not seem to pay the slightest attention to the boat and its 17. The Biloxi Bay Devil Fish occupants. Two shots were fired in rapid >During the week the big power yacht succession, but they did not seem to bother Jeanne, owned by Commodore Thomas the fish in the least. Sully, with John P. Sullivan, Phil Werlein 9

>When the shots were fired the giant sank Our attention was first attracted by hearing slowly and came up again a few feet further some one sing out, “Holy Mother, see that ahead. A dozen more shots were fired from cow with wings.” the rifle, but no impression was made. Fully >We stepped to the door just in time to see half an hour the yacht lay to while its the monster alight with something of a crash occupants tried all kinds of means to wake on the roof of Mrs. Collier’s dwelling house, up the monster of the sea. where it remained for several minutes taking >Werlein finally grabbed a long boat-hook a quiet survey of the land and the astonished and wanted to tie a line to the handle and multitude who stood gazing at that harpoon the fish, but the others were not unexpected visitor. It could not have exactly certain as to the results of such an weighed less than seventy or one hundred experiment, and would not listen to Werlein. pounds, with a pair of ponderous wings, Finally the yacht got under way again, and which when stretched out to the breeze, the devil fish, with a few lazy waves of its must have been fully twelve feet from tip to giant tentacles, dropped in behind and tip. Its color was that of a raven, with the followed the boat for fully half a mile. Then exception that the tips of the wing and tail it disappeared. were white. An “old salt” who happened to >A few weeks ago W. C. C. Claiborne and get sight of the bird thinks he must be a several other fishermen returned with a story renegade member of the condor family. He about three devil fish seen at the island, but says be has frequently met with such their story was taken with a large grain of “Critters” on the coast of South America. salt. Claiborne has a reputation for story telling, but his tale is followed up now by 19. The Black Dog this experience, and the sportsmen are >It is a smaller creature, with the look of wondering if a big yacht, with plenty of your average mountain dog, but entirely harpoons on board might not furnish a lot of pitch black all over that inhabits the lively sport to the sportsmen. Hanging Hills in . The dog is the harbinger of joy, sorrow, and death 18. The Bird of Winnemucca depending on the number of sightings. To >Last Tuesday evening about seven o’clock, see the dog once, is to bring joy and good says the Winnemucca (Cal.) Register of luck to whomever its companion was. To August 9, the people in the lower town were see it twice is to bring bad luck and startled by the sudden appearance of a huge misfortune to that very same person. And a monster we are at a loss to know whether to third time, the viewer will either die on the call fowl or beset, notwithstanding it had spot, or die very shortly afterwards. wings and could fly. It was certainly the biggest creature ever seen in this country 20. The Black Newfoundland Dog with feathers. If a bird, it belongs to a giant >Fog imperials the vessels as well as the species unknown to American ornithology. dories. Most provincetown fisherman can 10

tell you the story of the Black of a few lumberjacks he blocked the Newfoundland Hound. Old “Cheeny” entrance with large rocks. Through a small marshall, who was drowned on the banks hole left in the barricade he inserted a long pole on the end of which he fastened a when his dory capsized in April, told this sponge soaked in chloroform. The hodag, story to me. Cheeny was just a boy, a thus rendered unconscious, was then “salt-passer” on one of the old hand-liners, prepared for it. It was exhibited at Oneida when, so help him God, it happened. County fair. An admission fee was charged >The vessel is well out to sea, off and a quite large sum of earned. Later Mr. Newfoundland. She has not sighted a sail all Shepard captured a female hodag with her day, when suddenly, out of a sea calm and thirteen eggs. All of these hatched. He ​ ​ ​ taught the young a series of tricks, smooth as an oil slick, up pops the great hoping to exhibit the animals for profit. black dog. Cheeny lifts him over the rail and >This ferocious beat had horns on its head, lets him lie, half dead, on deck. The dog has large bulging eyes, terrible horns and claws. webbed feet. A line of sharp spikes ran down the ridge of >”Heave him overboard!” shouts one its back and long tail. Colored photographs old-timer. “He’s the divil!” of it can be obtained at Rhinelander. The hodag never laid down. It slept leaning >But the lad pleads for him, keeps him, against the trunks of trees. It could only be takes care of him, puts him in his own bunk. captured by cutting deeply into the trunks of And finally comes the day when the “soup” its favorite trees. settles thick over the Devil’s Graveyard, in the Bay of Fundy. The helmsman is steering 22. The Black Fox of Salmon River blindly. The dog, standing in the bow, >The Black Fox of Salmon river is said to suddenly barks a warning. The helmsman, be in possession magic powers, entrapping Cheeny Marshall himself, puts her hard any who gaze upon its pelt to search after it over. And the vessel veers in time to clear all their life, but cursing all of their bullets by inches the massive bows of a steamer and arrows to miss, passing right through its looking out of the mist! It happened, Cheeny body, no matter how true the aim. The Marshall assured me over and over, so help hunters that gave chase would come home me God! days later, too exhausted to move, but none too exhausted to recount their grand 21. The Black Hodag adventure. Other times, hunters would say >The Black Hodag was discovered by E. S. the one who pursued the darkling creature “Gene” Shepard, a former well known was never again seen on this mortal earth. timber cruiser of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. It Each mysterious disappearance, the Indians haunts were in the dense swamps of that would attribute this to the whimsical, region. According to its discoverer, this fearful beast fed on mud turtles, water indifferent spirit dwelling within the magical snakes and muskrats, but it did not disdain fox. human flesh. Mr. Shepard found a cave where one of this hodags lived. With the aid 23. The Boat Hound 11

>“Hey!” called Snowshoe Bill, the Big Nobody knows what it eats so we picture an Woods guide, one morning. “The boat is arctic mosquito hovering over his dome. The gone. Did one of you fellows go fishing last penguin’s eggs are shaped like a brick, and have little anti-skid chains on them so they night and forget to tie it up?” won’t roll down the mountain. The high >The tenderfoot flushed. He was always altitude makes the penguin light-headed, and doing something wrong. “I'm the one that maybe that’s why he’s so carefree. had it last,” he conwessed, “and I forgot to tie it up. What do you suppose has happened 25. The Booger Dog to it?” The Booger Dog is not what you might first >“Well,” speculated the guide, “My private think! The Ozark word Booger comes from opinion is that the boat hound got it.” the Scottish Bogle, originally from the Old >“The boat hound! Never heard of English Bogge. It means . The suchathing!” Ozark Booger Dog is a great headless >“Didn't, huh? Well, he's about the meanest spectral hound. The creature has appeared to customer I've ever run into. He sneaks along hunting parties deep in the mountains and is in the dark looking for boats that careless often seen as a black omen associated with folks forget to tie and when he finds one, he the devil. Great spectral dogs have long swallows it right down. He has a great long appeared in Old Europe. In England they body shaped like a boat, with big froglike were said to be the souls of the unbaptized, feet, and four ears. With the front two he can stalking the sere dark with no home in hear everything in front of h'en, and with the heaven or hell. Ancient German lore says back two he hears everything behind him. great demon hounds are the consort of the He has a big mouth like an aligator's.” winter witch goddess Berchta. She and her >“Where does this queer creature keep spectral pack hunt when the winds turn cold himself durning the day?” the tenderfoot and fierce. So, on a cold night in the Ozarks, inquired with a little grin. beneath a clouded sky, who knows what >“He sleeps on the bottom of the lake in the lurks beyond the campfire? daythne, but at night he's wide wake, all right, looking for boats. Just you remember 26. The Boont about him next time you take a boat out, >The Boont, a bear with deer's antlers, young man.” similar to a in how easily a specimen can be made by creative taxidermy. The Boont is notable as the 24. The Bone-Head Penguin symbol of Booneville, , a small Dear little children, now we show the town in the mountains which, sometime in Sphenisus Demersus, bone-head penguin. It the late 19th century, began using a new and is always to be found on top of some high distinct language. The Boont is also the mountain. How it ever got up that high will symbol of the Anderson Valley Brewing always be one of life’s mysteries. It is Company, a beer manufacturer located in closely related to the penholder and Booneville. pen-wiper, but is no relation to the pig pen. 12

27. The Brazilian Trench Digger Before he could procure assistance to attack >A recent bit of news from South America it, the strange creature had buried itself in a has attracted unwonted attention on the part trench of its own making. In another of zoologists to the highlands of Southern instance a Minhocao seems to have Brazil. There is reason to believe that a undermined and drawn off a large pool. A gigantic animal of subterranean habits, as negro woman, who went thither for water, yet unknown to naturalists, exists in the found that the water was all gone, but saw region where the great rivers Paragury and an animal in the vicinity, “as big as a Parana take their rise. It is variously house,” moving rapidly away. This was in described, but all accounts represent it as a the Brazilian province of Parana, where very large trench-digging creature not less some time afterward a young man had a still than three feet in thickness. The inhabitants more remarkable adventure. He saw a pine call it the Minhocao, and believe it to be an tree fall suddenly and without any apparent enormous scale-covered earth worm some cause. Hastening to the spot “he found the fifty yards long, which ploughs up the surrounding earth in movement, and an ground after the fashion of a giant mole, enormous worm-like-black animal in the overturning full-grown trees in its path. middle of it, about twenty-five metres long >Stories of such an animal would be worthy and with two horns on its head.” of little attention if they came from a single >Apart from these views of the animal itself, unknown traveller. As it is, however, they there is proof of the existence of trench-like are communicated to the scientific world by excavations in the South Brazilian an accomplished German naturalists. Fritz highlands, the formation of which must be Muller, long resident in Brazil, who was attributed to living creatures. Nature, the carefully collected and weighed the English scientific journal from which we evidence as to the asserted existence of this have quoted the foregoing description, underground monster. Native testimony accepts the evidence as conclusive on this certainly makes out a pretty strong point. What, then, are the true characteristics probability that some such creature exists. of the animal? The width of the trenches Herr Muller has never seen the animal leaves little doubt that it is large ; a small himself, but from his summary of the native beast would hardly make a gallery accounts furnished to the Zoological underground, twelve feet wide and over a Garden, a German journal of natural history, half mile long, such as was discovered in the it appears to have been seen on at least three valley of the river Cachorros. It is also occasions. It is found only near rivers. To tolerably certain that the Minhocao likes to one observer, who saw it lying on the bank live in damp places. Beyond this, the of a stream, it seemed “an animal of gigantic evidence relating to the animal affords great size, nearly one metre in thickness, not very scope to the imagination. long, and with a snout like a pig, but whether it had legs or not he could not tell.” 28. The Bright Old Inhabitants 13

>Indians of Louisiana, Mississippi, and however, if one in a hundred of these people Texas believe that the King Snake, or Snake ever heard of a cactus cat, to say nothing of God, lived in the gulf of Mexico. It slept in a seeing one sporting about among the cholla cavern of pure crystal at the bottom, and its and palo verde. Only the old-timers know of head, being shaped from solid emerald, the beast and its queer habits. lighted the ocean for several leagues when it >The cactus cat, as its name signifies, lives arose near the surface. There were similar in the great cactus districts, and is accounts among the cherokee people, by the particularly abundant between Prescott and name of the “Bright Old Inhabitants” of the Tucson. It has been reported, also, from the mountains, which grew to a mighty size, and valley of the lower Yaqui, in Old Mexico, drew to them every creature that looked and the cholla-covered hills of Yucatan. The upon them. Each wore a carbuncle of cactus cat has thorny hair, the thorns being dazzling brightness. especially long and rigid on its ears. Its tail is branched, and upon the forearms above its 29. The Bull of Durham front feet are sharp, knifelike blades of bone. >...An enormous bull, painted on paneled With these blades it slashes the base of giant sheet iron, decorated the front of the cactus trees, causing the sap to exude. This Durham factory building and the steam is done systematically, many trees being whistle, by means of a mechanical gadget, slashed in the course of several nights as the imitated the bellow of a bull. Each bellow, it cat makes a big circuit. By the time it is was said, cost six dollars and could be back to the place of beginning the sap of the clearly heard thirteen miles away. The bull first cactus has fermented into a kind of was the masterpiece of J. Gilmer Kerner, mescal, sweet and very intoxicating. This is eccentric and temperamental artist, whose greedily lapped up by the thirsty beast, sign-painting nom de plume was “Reuben which soon becomes fiddling drunk, and Rink.” Raging and triumphant, Reuben goes waltzing off in the moonlight, rasping Rink’s bull began to paw at the ground and its bony forearms across each other and emit flames from its nostrils. As its fame screaming with delight. grew, and it began to appear on barns and signs all across the states and Europe, so did 31. Caldera Dick its life-like qualities. It would shake its head >Caldera Dick was a monstrous old bull in the rain, and whip its tail from side to sperm . There were others big and side. One night, it up and left its purch, tough and mean, but Caldera Dick was letting an enormous iron bull on the loose of bigger, tougher, and meaner-- even smarter-- the countryside, but always returns before than any other whale that ever lived. The dawn. ocean for a circuit of several hundred miles about the caldera was his dooryard, though 30. The Cactus Cat he didn't always stay at home. At times he'd >How many people have heard of the cactus get around Cape Horn into the Atlantic, or cat? Thousands of people spend their he'd turn up in the Japan Sea, or you might winters in the great Southwest—the land of hear of ships running afoul of him almost desert and mountain, of fruitful valleys, of anywhere that boats were lowered for flat-topped mesas, of Pueblos, Navajos, and . But mostly he ranged off Caldera. Apaches, of sunshine, and the ruins of The difficulty was not in striking him and ancient Cliff-dwellers. It is doubtful, getting fast. He seemed to invite that. He'd 14

lie still and calm as you please while a boat You see, a good many year ago the guv'ment was put on to him, but once the dart was decided to use camels for packin' supplies made and the harpoon fairly settled his down in the deserts of Arizony. Some of the tough old hide, there was the devil to pay females escaped and, feelin' sorta lonely, and no pitch hot. He seemed to have a fancy for collecting harpoons. Leastwise, he took they joined up with a elk herd. It wasn't long all that came his way and never gave any before they was matin' with the bull elks and back, until last of all, when he was finally the result was somethin' that was half-camel bested, he was so stubbed with iron, it was a and half-elk. Dog-gonedest animal I ever wonder he could float. And nobody ever seed ... " thrust a lance into him, either, but the one that finished him. He was too smart for that. 33. The Camp Chipmunk ("There were other such notoriously great >Originally small animals, they ate tons of and savage whales, whose reputations larged prune stones discarded from ’s wherever whalemen got together for a gam camp cook shanty and grew so big and , Galera Dick, and , fierce that they killed all of the bears and all described as being heavily scared and catamounts in the neighborhood. Later Paul . Whaler types would often insist that and his men shot some for tigers. the creatures were worshiped by the primitives of South America's coasts and 34. The Canadian Great Cats those of the Islanders of the Pacific and >When they stood before him, the king said Japan.) to Cornu, “Have you ever been closer to death than you are at this moment?” If you 32. The Camelce have and can prove it by a story, I will let >The Camelce is a curious hybrid of the one of your sons gofree.” “Yes,” said Cornu, American elk and the Asiatic camel, created “I have been closer to death. Once I was when camels imported by the U.S. milking cows when twelve great cats came, government for use as pack animals in the and one of them began to purr every loudly, Arizona desert got loose and mated with and I asked him what he’d take for the purr, and he said one cow. I agreed, and then all elks in the wild. The existence of this the cats began to swallow whole all the creature was first reported in an 1875 New cows, and I climbed to the top of a tree, but article about the the tree began to buckle and , and the Newton-Jenney expedition to the Black cats were about to devour me, when a man Hills of . Correspondent R.B. came and shot the cat.” The king agreed that Davenport noted discovering a large Cornu had proved his point and released on of the boys. skeleton that looked to him like the skeleton of a bull elk, but he was later corrected by 35. The Canandaigua Indian Serpent the scout "California Joe" who identified the >Indians living on the shore of Canandaigua bones as those of a Camelce. Said California Lake, , tamed a pretty spotted Joe (as quoted by Davenport): "Well, sir, I snake, and fed and petted it until it took a reckon that there must be the bones of one deer at a meal. It grew so large that it of them camelces I's'eerd so much about. eventually encircled the camp and began to prey on its keepers. Vainly they tried to kill 15

the creature, until a small boy took an arrow experiences. Its head is fastened to its body of red willow, anointed it with the blood of a by a swivel neck ; so is its short, tampering young woman, and shot it from a basswood tail ; and both can be spun around at the rate bow at the creature's heart. It did not enter at of a hundred revolutions a minute. The body once; it merely stuck to the scales. But is long and triangular, with three complete presently it began to bore and twist its way sets of legs ; this is a great convenience in an into the serpent's body. The serpent rolled earthquake country, since the animal is not into the lake and made it foam in its agony. disturbed by any convulsions of the earth. If It swallowed water and vomited it up again, the floor suddenly becomes the ceiling it with men dead and alive, before it died. does not matter, for the whintosser is always there with the legs. Its hair is bristly, and all 36. The Celofay slants forward at a sharp angle. It has been >With these should appear the Celofay of found that a cat's nine lives are as nothing to the one possessed by a whintosser. This Maine. This is a unique beastie, and it is animal may be shot, clubbed, or strung on a only after much consideration and chiefly pike pole without stopping the wriggling, because he doesn’t seem to be any too well whirling motions or the screams of rage. The vouched for that I have not accorded him a only successful way of killing the beast is to place among the “regulars.” He is a sort of poke it into a flume pipe so that all its feet phantom wildcat equipped with strike the surface, when it Immediately starts ventriloquistic powers, and can easily to walk in three different directions at once and tears itself apart. John Gray, of Anadar, project his fearsome squall clear across a Trinity County, California, knows where a section, right up beside you, in fact Or he pair of whintossers live in some broken-up can reverse the situation and toss his ‘yowl country along Mad River. into some distant cedar swamp while he stealthily stalks you with malicious intent. 38. The Champlain Animal-Fish His name reveals his French-Canadian >A monster animal-fish was seen in Lake origin, being an obvious corruption of Champlain opposite Charles L. Parrish’s on “C’est la fee.” Wednesday, November 23, by Lewis Wilkinson, the Port Franklin ferry man. 37. The Central American Whintosser Wilkinson states that the monster or >In the spring of 1906 there appeared supposed shark was from 25 to 80 feet in suddenly in the Coast Ranges of California length and made great speed in the water, an uncanny animal from the region of the throwing water in all directions. The Isthmus. It is not a large beast, but what it lacks in size it makes up in meanness of monster has several times been seen disposition. None of the lumberjacks who opposite Port Henry, also at other places, have met a whintosser on trail or tote road and in appearance has great strength. Sailors care to have the experience repeated. The have been frightened of late at the sight of Central American whin- tosser is always this monster following their vessels. As the looking for trouble or making it. In fact the creature appears to be able to exist partly out beast seems to be constructed for the purpose of passing through unusual 16

of the water it may be a more dangerous stuff like cow’s horn, except there ain’t no prodigy than is generally supposed. bone in it. This tail bein’ springy is great aid and help in more ways than one. He can jump along with it and clear the brush, and 39. The Chaw-Green he can land on it when he wants to jump off Resembling a bear, the Chaw-Green has a a cliff, and he don’t feel no bad effects from long tail striped like a barber pole. It is the jar.” known to steal tobacco and can be easily recognized as it chews and spits like a man. 41. The Columbia River Sand Squink >The Columbia River Sand Squink is a 40. The Club-tailed Gylptodont fearsome creature from the stories of North >“In that particular, they ain’t a-tall like the American sheep hunters and shepherds. He club-tailed glyptodont,” said Red, “which is lives in the mountains of Washington, and a very ferocious and vicious beast. I’ll tell leaves only at night. It has the body of a you, Lanky, when you’re ridin’ around in the canyons and meet one of them fellers, coyote in the shape of a lynx. It has the you’d better not git into any disputes with curved and bushy tail of a squirrel and long him about your highway rights. Just gve him ears like those of an American (known the whole road and don’t argue with him. as jackrabbit). The sand squink goes down And be careful you don’t hang around under the river and eats anything you can find the rim-rock when them critters is around.” swimming in the water. However, the >“I take it they are animals,” said Lanky. >”Yeah, I guess they belong to the kingdom Columbia river sand squink loves to eat of beasts.,” replied Red. “Some people call electric eels and consumes many throughout them wang-doodles, but they ain’t real its life. When he is hungry, he feels very wang-doodles, bein’ a ways more bigger weak and hides from other creatures. When and more ferocious. They’re perty scarce he has eaten, and feels himself in the now, but when we work the canyon fullness of his strength, he goes to the earth tomorrow, I can show you places where they have been, Yes, sir, I can show the very spot in search of larger prey than the fish he where one of them fellars took off one of the habitually eats. It will lurk solitary travelers very best friends I ever had in this world.” appearing before them touching their ears >”Mountain Lions, I suppose”, said Lanky. with their tail. Having eaten a lot of electric >”Some of them babies would make a eels, the alternating touch of their tail from mountain look like a kitten. Besides, ear to ear, throws a series of electrical they don’t belong to the feline species sparks. This distracts the traveler who nohow, bein’ more like a kangaroo in build, and about sixteen hands high when on all follows him and is never seen again, as well fours, though most of the time they walk as badly burns, even killing the prey with along on their hind legs and tail and keep electric shock, if the beast so desires. The their forepaws ready to biff anything that Columbia river sand squink builds nests and gits in their way. However, that ain’t their lays bakelite eggs. main method of combat, not the way they took off my dear friend Jack. The 42. Come-at-a-Body Glyptodant has got a big flat tail made out of 17

>Reported by Mr. B. B. Bickford of instance, that monsters exactly Gorham, the N. H. Not found outside the corresponding with the descriptions of the white mountains. A short, stubby, rather sea-serpent by people who claim to have small animal, resembling a woodchuck but seen it existed in, past ages. In the museum having very soft, velvety, kitten-like fur. Harmless, but surprising. Has the terrifying of College are the skeletons of many of habit of suddenly rushing directly at you these creatures, dug out of rocks and from from the brush, then stopping only a few the beds of dried-up seas, where they had inches away and spitting like a cat. A strong reposed for ages. mink like scent is thrown, and the Come-at-a-Body rushes away. 44. Commodore Preble’s Monster

43. A Composite Monster >The adventure of Commodore Preble, U. S. >She is not a pretty creature by any means. N., when he gave chase to a sea serpent took She has a head like a big bulldog and an place in 1779. He was then a midshipman, extraordinarily thick and long neck and when the sea serpent was sighted from measuring about twenty-six inches in the deck of the sloop of war he was placed circumference. Her body is like that of a in command of a boat manned by twelve huge rattlesnake, striped and spotted and seamen and sent in pursuit. The monster is tapering to a point at the tail. A colossal fin said to have been 100 feet long and runs the entire length of the vertebrae, and a possessed of a large head. Its motion was so similar fin underneath runs along the rapid that it could not be overtaken, but it stomach to the tail. She has great fangs like was observed by the officers and men for those of a tiger and heavy molar teeth. over an hour. Behind the gills are inside fins, and but for >Captain Little, U. S. N., swore that while in these she would never be recognized as Penobscot Bay, in 1780, on board of a bearing any kinship to the fish family. “public armed ship,” he saw a sea serpent at >If this sea serpent had not been captured sunrise one morning. He had a boat lowered, the fishermen who first saw it would and took the tiller himself, but before he doubtless be classed with what is generally could get near enough for the marines to termed the grand army of sea serpent liars. shoot, the animal sank out of sight. When the news of its capture reaches all >Abraham Cummings reported a sea serpent parts of the world it will doubtless cause in Penobscot Bay in 1802, and another in something of a sensation, as scientists have 1808. In the same year the Rev. Mr. fought and wrangled over what is called the Maclean, a clergyman, of Eigg, sent a sea serpent for many years. Yet on the careful description of a sea serpent, with “a books of the and British head somewhat broad,” that swam “with his head above water for about half a mile.” He navies are many records furnished by captains of warships of sea serpents which described the creature as about eighty feet had been seen. Furthermore, it is known, for long. 18

>In 1817 Captain Tappan, of the schooner lady, though they are impertinent to him. I Laura, and his whole crew told of seeing a more readily suppose the Cuba to be sea serpent off Gloucester. They said it peculiar to New England, not only from my never having yet seen the creature described, looked like a string of buoys, with a head but also on account of its perverse like a serpent and a long tongue that stuck observance of carnival and neglect of out of its mouth like a harpoon. Its motion careme. was more rapid that that of a whale. 47. Devil-Jack Diamond fish 45. The Cougar Fish >Even legendary naturalists like to have >This savage fish, armed with sharp claws, their fun. John James Audubon is best lived in the Big Onion River. It was the known today for his bird paintings and cause of the disappearance and death of descriptions, but in his heyday, Audubon many river divers, whom it clawed off the logs and beneath the water. Paul Bunyan studied pretty much every animal he could offered a big reward for their capture and find, and piles of drawings extermination, but the fish heard of it and accumulated in his Kentucky home. It was stayed away. None were taken. these drawings that would later serve as the vehicle for Audubon’s best-known (and 46. The Cuba possibly only) practical joke. >The Cuba I suppose to be a peculiar to New England. The male is of the size of a >As Allison Meier explains for large cat; has four long tushes sharp as a Hyperallergic, the hijinks began in 1818 razor; he is very active in defending himself, when Audubon welcomed fellow naturalist and, if he has the first blow, will spoil a dog Constantine Samuel Rafinesque into his before he yields. His lady is peaceable and home. Constantinople-born Rafinesque was harmless, and depends for protection on her an accomplished collector of specimens, a spouse, and, as he has more courage than prudence, always attends to moderate his seasoned traveler, and an author. temper. She sees danger, and he fears it not. >Rafinesque had a passion for discovering She chatters at him while he is busy new species. He dug enthusiastically into preparing for battle, and, if she thinks the Audubon’s stacks of sketches and notes, danger is too great, she runs to him and exclaiming each time he encountered a clings about his neck, screaming her species he’d never seen before. extreme distress; his wrath abates; and by >The travelling naturalist was staying with her advice, they fly to their caves. In like manner, when he is chained and irritated Audubon and his family for three weeks. At into the greatest rage by an impertinent dog, some point during that (possibly overlong) his lady, who is never chained, will fly about visit, Audubon decided to have a little fun at his neck and kiss him, and in half a minute his guest’s expense. He slipped a variety of restore his calmness. he is very tender of his new drawings into the stacks. They looked family, and never forsakes them till death like all the others, but they illustrated a fish dissolves their union. What further shows the magnanimity of this little animal, he species that did not exist. The phony field never manifests the least anger toward his notes described an “Ohio red-eye” 19

(Aplocentrus calliops), a “Flatnose violent encounters that go back to the first Doublefin” (Dinectus truncates), and, most human settlements in the valley of memorably, the “Devil-Jack Diamond fish” Middletown. (Litholepsis adamantinus), which Audubon claimed was four to ten feet long and 49. The Dew Mink covered with bulletproof scales. >The dew mink is one of the fearsome >Rafinesque fell for the scam species hook, creatures in the stories of American loggers. line, and sinker. Not only did he take The creature was seen and described in Audubon at his word, but he would even go General History of Connecticut, from its on to reproduce the drawings and ludicrous first settlement under George Fenwick, to its descriptions in his own field journals, citing latest period of amity with Great Britain them as fact. Still, as a man of conscience, prior to the Revolution; Including a Rafinesque did note that he had never seen description of the country, and many curious most of these fish with his own eyes. and interesting anecdotes. It seems to be a >It’s not known if Rafinesque ever species of mink that only feeds on the drops discovered that he’d been had. But the prank of dew. was not without consequences. Nine years later, Audubon published his landmark book 50. The Ding-ball >much to be dreaded is the ding-ball, a The Birds of America, which featured panther whose last tail-joint is ball shaped life-size paintings of 435 species. But five of and bare of flesh. With this weapon it cracks those species could not be confirmed. By its victim's skull. There is no record of a this time, word of Audubon’s fictional fish survival from the blow of a ding-ball. In had reached certain scholars, and they older traditions it sang with the voice of a wondered if his “mystery birds” were yet human, thus luring the incautious from their more fabrications. Audubon insisted that cabins to have their sconces broken in the dark. It is fond of human flesh, and will sing they weren’t, but his prank had cost him all night for a meal of Indians. some credibility. Let’s hope Audubon was a little nicer to house guests after that. 51. The Dingbat >One of the fearsome creatures of the 48. The Dewayo American loggers of the late nineteenth and >The dewayo or dwayyo is described as a early twentieth century. The dingbat is a bipedal with characteristics similar small flying creature, possibly a bird, which to those of a wolf, but the posture and had large wings and horns on its head. His stature of a human being. Dewayo sightings little body was covered with feathers. The occur mainly in West Middletown, dingbat had the unique ability to eat bullets Maryland, but sightings have also been in the air, and all those shots that failed their reported in Wolfsville, Maryland. It seems target was because of dingbats. that this creature is enemy of the snallygaster and these beings have had 52. The Double Rat 20

>I heard dat ole red nigger tell some lie three feet in circumference in the middle. ‘bout a rat. He say he been back on Lykes’s The folds in the snake left deep creases in plantation in de ole field by de river. He say the animals killed. It is supposed the reptile he was walkin’ ‘long ‘tendin’ to he business escaped from some menagerie. Premier is when he see sump’n crawl out from under a er straw. He say he stand up an’ look at well known and is believed, incredible as the it wrong. He say at first sight it look like a story appears. rat totin’ another rat on he back, but when he look good he see it be two rat, back to back, 54. The Duck-Footed Dum Dum growed together. All two on ‘em been full >“Not much fish in the lake this summer,” rat. Each on ‘em had he own head an’ he said the old guide sadly, as he rowed with own leg an’ he own tail. his party across the sun-flecked water where >An’ dat nigger say he make up he mind to guh and tray ketch ‘em for the boss. He say the glistening fish were supposed to be he know ain’ nobody see no sech rat as dat. waiting hungrilly for some one to offer them An’ he say when he make for him, dat rat bait. start ‘cross de field, an’ him an’ dat rat. He >“What's the matter?” asked the “chap from say he ain’ never been so outdone. He say the city,” on his first trip into the Big when he think he mighty nigh ketch him, lo Woods. an’ behold! Dat rat lay down an’ roll over >“Those know-it-all game wardens scared an’ de other rat start runnin’. >An’ he say day wey he quit. the duck-footed dum-dum away, that's what. Ever see a dum-dum? Funny animal. Comes 53. The Dubuque Monster Reptile around every spring. He has two tails like >The Slimy Beast is a Rod and a Half Long bass-drum sticks and swings them like and Big as a Barrel. lightning, beating on the tight drum-like skin >Nicholas Premier, a farmer living near on his back.” Sprecht’s Ferry, in Wisconsin, some miles >“Well, when the fish hear this they all above Dubuque, tells a most wonderful flock near the shore in shallow water and lay snake story. He says a monster snake their eggs. They wouldn't know it was appeared in his pasture and killed two of his spawning season if they didn't hear the cows by winding itself around them. He saw dum-dum. Then after they lay their eggs one of his cows in the folds of the snake but they go away and the dum-dum keeps watch was afraid to interfere and ran away. until all the little fish are hatched out.” Returning later, he found the cow dead and a >“So you see when those pesky game large hole in her flank. The same thing was wardens come spying around and scare off repeated the next day. A party was the dum-dum, we don't get any fish.” And organized to hunt the monster, but when the guide pulled glumly at his little black they came upon it they were also frightened pipe. and allowed it to escape. One man claims he saw it swallowing a cow. Premier describes 55. The Dungavenhooter the snake as about twenty-five feet long and 21

>Formerly quite common from Maine to down trees and throwing them as I come,” Michigan. Today only occasionally met with and were turned away again. The woods on the Upper Peninsula of the latter state. A now bright with flame behind them, they marsh-dweller, dangerous to human beings. came upon a mighty plantation, with scores Shaped a good deal like an alligator, but of negroes. But the master saw the curious as to equipment in that he has no brightness from behind them, and heard mouth. The nostrils are abnormally large, again “Bum, bum, Sally Lum, tearing down the legs short and the tail thick and trees and throwing them as I come”, and powerful. The only cry is a loud snort. turned them away for fear of his cotton. Concealing itself with Satanic cunning Lastly, they came up to a , who said, behind a whiffle bush, the Dungavenhooter “Do not fear, I will protect you.” “How?” awaits the passing logger. On coming within asked the boy. “Don’t worry, jus’ hide reach of the dreadful tail, the victim is behind that tree there. I will protect you.” knocked senseless and then pounded “Have you seen a man and his son?” asked steadily until he becomes entirely gaseous, the beast, in a blinding glow. whereat he is greedily inhaled through the “Chicky-Licky-Chow-Chow-Chow,” wide nostrils. Rum-sodden prey is sought mocked the rabbit. Again the beast asked, with especial eagerness. and again the rabbit taunted, jumping on his head, dancing and singing. The beast tried to 56. The Fire-Starter Beast butt the brains out his head against a >There was once a father and son out tree, the rabbit leaped, and the beat split his hunting in the woods, in want of fire to cook skull open. their catch. The boy looked up and saw what looked like fire in the tops of the trees. He 57. The Fish-Fox climbed up to fetch it, when the ‘THING’ >”Snowshoe Bill had a visitor. He was a asks “What do you want with me?” “Pop younger guide, with tanned skin, keen black said to come down and fetch you a slab of eyes, and a flashing smile. The two of them beef”, answered the boy. “I’ll come down after a while”, answered the fire. It came smoked and looked over the ripples that down and they gave him the skin from their danced in the sun. hunt, but it was not enough, then the man >“Catching many fish?” asked the visitor. gave it more and more until there was no >“Quite a few,” answered Bill. Then he beef left. When he asked for more, the man raised his voice loud enough for the nearby said they had none more. “Well, then give tenderfoot to hear. “By the Way, whatever me your little boy.” The man said to the boy they would have to drive the creature off, became of that fish-fox your father had and took off running, until darkness when you were a kid.” enveloped them. They came to a shack in >“Poor old foxy!” replied the young guide the woods, asking for sanctuary from the sadly. “He grieved himself to death after dad lady there. But as they begged, from the died. He was a dandy, all right. Why, all woods came “Bum, bum, Sally Lum, tearing father had to say, was ‘Foxy, old fellow, we down trees and throwing them as I come”, want fish for supper.’ and away he would go and she turned them away. They came upon a stone home, with a sturdy stone fence, but to the lake and dive in. Then he'd make a again came “Bum, bum, Sally Lum, tearing noise like an angleworm and the fish would 22

follow him right out of the water onto the the muskalonge, pickerel and pike until he shore and up to the cabin. All dad had to do spies a four pound bass. As my lake is full was to take a club and kill as many as he of fish, Nero is usually back within five minutes with the bass. In hunting animals, wanted and tell Foxy to take the rest back to Nero and his mate have the same uncanny the lake. Some fish we had then.” methods of capture. In appearance, the fish >The young fellow took a sidelong glance at hound resembles the ordinary fox hound, the open-mouthed listener. Then winked at from the tip of its nose to the end of the tail. Snowshoe Bill and said lazily, “Ho, hum. One side of this fish hound is covered with Those were the happy days.” feathers and the other side with the soft fur of the mink. Boys, if all goes well, this will 58. The Fish-Hound be my last winter cutting down pine, as I intend to go into the raising of fish hounds. >"In Siberia, Wisconsin, away from the Good night" beaten paths, on the edge of one of the most wonderful lakes, was a beautiful little cabin 59. The Flittericks with a ginseng garden adjoining it. The lake >The variety of flying squirrels which was filled with fish of every description and frequented the vicinity of lumber camps the woods were filled with a variety of were very dangerous because of the great game; moose, elk, deer, fox and bear. There rapidity of their flight. It was impossible to was a profusion of flowers and shrubbery, dodge them. One struck an ox between the and the monarch of the forest, the great pine, eyes with such force as to kill the animal. sang with a soughing sound, all through the year. If the angels ever saw this scene of 60. The Flying Serpents beauty, they might be tempted to leave their present place of habitation. >Columbus (S. C.), May 31st—A >Not wishing to boast, nature endowed me remarkable story of a flying serpent comes with a secret, which I shall carry to my from Darling county. The report is that on grave. My slightest thought is powerful and Sunday evening Miss Ida Davis and her two hypnotic. (I can't explain it, nor can anyone young sisters were taking a walk in the else). I can take a bird, beast or fish of any woods, when a huge serpent appeared above species and bring about a different breed. I them, moving through the air with the speed have proven this, as I have a wonderful pair of fish hounds at my cabin, under the care of of a slow-flying bird. It did not seem to be a faithful Indian. These were bred from a very high in the air, and moved without any water fowl, known as the hell diver, and visible effort. It appeared to be about fifteen crossed with a mink, producing this new feet long and ten inches thick. breed known as the fish hound. In the first >The girls stood spell-bound until the litter, there were five pups. One was killed formidable looking object was out of sight. by a wolf and two were drowned. The two which I now have, can, at the age of eight The flying serpent was seen by several other months, divine my thoughts. people in a different part of the county early >If I want a fish, all I have to do is to say, in the afternoon of the same day, and they "Nero, get me a four pound bass." He at tell all sorts of stories about its appearance. once dives into the water and swims among 23

>At, the village of Grasslands ten miles to wobbly, causing the terrashot to sway the southeast of where the aerial monster uncertainly from side to side and forward was seen by the Davis sisters, a panic was and backward as it travels along. >The strange beast was first reported by caused among the inhabitants by the some Mormon emigrants, who observed a approach of the creature. The steeple of the peculiar procession entering the desert from Methodist Church is crowned by a a certain mountain range, afterward named weathercock in the form of a gilded dove. the Funeral Mountains. They also witnessed The last rays of the sun caused this dove to the tragic fate of the creatures. One of the glisten bright, and the eyes of the serpent Mormons, aroused by his curiosity, made an were attracted by it. Descending in its flight, investigation which resulted in finding out about all that is known of the terrashot. It it soared to within a few feet of the dove, seems that the animal lives in the little and circled around it as if moved either by meadows and parks in the higher portions of curiosity or a desire for prey. Suddenly it the range, where it gradually increases in appeared to discover the inanimate and numbers, until by a strange impulse it is inedible nature of the dove, and with a seized by a desire to emigrate. They then furious mash of its tail, knocked the form long processions and march down into the desert, with the evident intention of weathercock from its fastenings and sent it crossing to other ranges that can be seen in to the ground below in a hundred pieces. the distance, but none of them ever gets Some of the fragments picked up are stained across. As they encounter the hot sands they with blood, showing that the monster’s tail rapidly distend with the heat, and one after came into contact with the stout iron rods by another they blow up with resounding which the dove was held in place. reports, leaving deep, grave-shaped holes in the sand. >Reverend Richard Medway, pastor of the church, vouches for the accuracy of the 62. The Gaasyendietha details here given. He was approaching the >According to Seneca mythology, the ​ sacred edifice at the time, on his way to hold Gaasyendietha is a meteor dragon that the evening service. His wife, who was on dwells in the deep areas of rivers and lakes his arm, fainted at the sight of the monster of Canada, especially Lake Ontario. Not hovering like an evil spirit over the church. only did the Gaasyendietha spew fire, it could also cross the heavens on a trail of Mr. Medway says there can be no doubt of fire. The name Gaasyendietha was offered the aphidian nature of the creature. His by native people to French explorer Jacques description of it agrees substantially with Cartier when he inquired about a creature that given by the Davis girls. briefly sighted by him and his crew in the St. Lawrence River. They described the creature 61. The Funeral Mountain Terrashot as a blue giant finned snake that moved like ​ >This animal explains the origin of the name a caterpillar. Some argue that Gaasyendietha of the Funeral Range, California. The is the product of meteors, while others claim creature has a casket-like body, six to eight that this is a meteor fire dragon. feet long, with a shell running the whole length of its back. Its four legs are long and 63. The Galliwampus 24

>"What is it, Mustang?" asked Poky specialist in unearthly zoology highly Rodgers, almost forgetting to smoke in his esteemed in that state, were found only ecstasy. "What do it live on?" along the Kennebec river, and were favorite delicacies of the Kennebec Indians and had >"It's a galliwampus, Poky," said Mustang. but two legs forward and only one aft, and "It's the thing that hollers 'willi-walloo' up in that it fed chiefly upon the Snydae, which ellum trees in the low grounds of nights. I were minute forms of marine life. The don't know if it bites." Snydae, in turn, fed upon the eggs of the >"No, it ain't, Mustang," volunteered Long Gazerium, so the two species gradually Collins. "Them galliwampuses has fins on exterminated themselves. He adds: "The their backs, and eighteen toes. This here is a Kennebec usually cooked the Gazerium in deep fat. It tasted something like hicklesnifter. It lives under the ground and French-Fried potato, with just a hint of eats cherries. Don't stand so close to it. It flavor of cocktail sauce imparted to it by its wipes out villages with one stroke of its died of Snydae. prehensile tail." 66. The Gazunk, or The Flute Bill 64. The Gallywampus >When night steals over the Big Woods, the >A great amphibious panther that swims cry of a prowling bird sounds like a ghostly like a giant mink.“In central Missouri there wail, and the crackling of a small twig are tales of the great gallywampus, resembles the sharp repport of a revolver. described as a kind of amphibious panther, The brush of a fluttering leap across his which leaps into the water and swims like a cheek brings the “greenhorn” to his feet with colossal mink. One man told me that his a startled cry. grandfather’s corn-patch near Jefferson City, >It is then, as they sit about the campfire, Missouri, was ruined by a gally-wampus the old guides like to spin the yearns that which ‘come down the creek so fast he have been handed down by generations of couldn’t stop at the Big Bend, an’ skidded their predecessors. right on down the valley through the >“What is that?” exclaims a tenderfoot cornfields.’ I said nothing, but evidently hoarsely, as one of the many strange aounds looked a bit incredulous, for the old man of the night strikes his ear.” “It sounds like hastened to explain. ‘Of course it was high some one whistiling away off in the water, or maybe a big wind, that flattened distance.” the corn thataway. But Grandpap always >“Why that,” explains the twinkling-eyed said it was the gallywampus done it. The old-timer, “must be the gazunk, or flute-bill gally-wampus was kind of a joke, in them bird. When the gazunk was a young bird, he days.’ went to sleep in a tree and a woodpecker, by mistake, drilled some holes in his long bill. 65. The Gazerium and Snydae Of course, it made him sore, until he found >From Maine comes news of two extinct he could play on his bill like a flute, using creatures, the Gazerium and the Snydae. his claws as stops. It almost tickled him to Both, according to Richard G. Kendall, a 25

death. So now he goes around playing like was seen several times by the ferry crew on that all night. Listen! Just strain your ears a the Old Grinter Ferry during the 1830s and bit. Yep, sure enough, that's the gazunk.” 1840s. Both the Shawnee and the Wyandot gathered a hunting party, but were 67. The Godaphro unsuccessful in tracking the bear down. >Sometimes it was described as a deer with rabbit ears and fangs while it has also been 69. The Gollywog described as a kind of giant lizard. It swung A giant mudpuppy or waterdog. It is from the trees with a powerful tail. It was eight-to-10 feet long and destroys fishing once a part of a wild animal show in a tackle. circus. Many people paid to see it but the circus entertainers warned that it had 70. The Goofang escaped. People fled in fear and the >This curious fish always swam backward entertainers were able to profit from all their instead of forward. This was to keep the water out its eyes. It was described as “about takings. Another tells of a farmer who was the size of a sunish, only larger.” able to breed the Godaphro with his sheep producing a pet that easily walked the hilly 71. The Goofus Bird farms but was slow on flat road. >One of the peculiar birds nesting near Paul Bunyan’s old time camp on the Big Onion 68. The Golden Bears River. It was the opposite of most other >According to the.legend, the Golden Bear birds-it always flew backwards instead of forwards. His curious habit an old was a large golden Ursus arctos. Members lumberjack explained: “It doesn’t give a of the Ursus arctos (brown bear) species can darn where it’s going, its only wants to reach masses of 290–1,540 lb. The grizzly know where it’s been.” It also built its nest bear and the Kodiak bear are North upside down. American subspecies of the brown bear. >A great Golden Bear was reported in the 72. The Giant Lobster area of Turner, . According to John >This fish story is about a lobster, but it’s all Gardiner in 1831, it was feared and admired right and its veracity is vouched for by Capt. by the local Indian population. The bear Emery Gray, one of the most hardy and lived south of the river in the hills west of daring fishermen on the island of the Methodist Mission. According to legend, Vinalhaven, off the Maine coast. In fact, it was the largest bear that any of the natives Capt. Gray is the of the story, or, at had ever seen. It would raid the settlements least, shares first honors with the lobster. of the area folks and feasted on the animals >One morning, so the tale runs, the doughty owned by the local population. Many of the captain was strolling along the shore near Indians wanted to kill the bear for the pride the mouth of Indian creek with a clam hoe in of such a feat and the capture of its hide (the his hands, when he caught sight of a lobster fur was most sought after). The Golden Bear claw protruding from the sand. The unusual 26

side to this discovery was that the claw was down. Taking the cue from him the other about a hundred times larger than any whole fish would bounce also. Presently all would crustacean the captain had ever encountered. bounce themselves out of the water onto the ice. There they were easily gathered up. Thinking it was but a lifeless relic of some species, belonging to ages agone, the captain 74. The Gigantic Feathered Creature gave the claw a sharp blow with the hoe. >Elias Midkoff of Hamilton, Lincoln >It proved to belong to the very active county, was in Charleston the other day and present, however, and snapping its claw on proposed to the State Historical and the offending weapon. the lobster nearly Antiquarian Society that if it would send wrenched it from Gray’s hand. The timely him a taxidermist to Hamlin the society appearance of another fisherman enabled the could secure a monster bird, of a kind never captain to dig up the giant beast from its seen before by any one in West Virginia. hole in the sand. Securing the lobster with The feathered monster is described by Mr. heavy fishline, the men dragged it home, Midkoff, from measurements taken by where it immediately became the center of a himself and V. W. Adkins of Hamlin, who group of astonished natives. The lobster was killed the bird at the mouth of Vannatters fastened to a pile supporting a dock, but the creek, with five bullets from his rifle, while following morning there was a pile missing; hunting deer on Monday. The bird is 7 feet 4 also the lobster, which had been named inches from tip to tip, 4 feet from tip of bill Hercules because of its immense size. A to tip of tail, flat bill 4 inches long and 3 search soon revealed the crustacean’s inches wide, somewhat similar to that of a whereabouts from the roily water caused by duck; web feet, neck 19 inches long, and dragging the heavy pile, and he was about 1½ inches through below the feathers; recaptured after another fierce struggle in plumage dark brown, relieved on the wings which the fishermen’s boat was nearly and breast by light-blue shading. The bird wrecked by the beast’s tremendous when first seen was circling high in the air, struggles. The animal died soon after being but came down very quickly and alighted in recaptured, however, not standing captivity the water, where Adkins got a good shot at well. A photographer secured the picture it, crippling its wing. Adkins attempted to herewith presented, in which Capt. Gray is capture the strange fowl alive, but it was so seen near by. vicious that he could not get near it without killing it, which required five bullets. 73. The Giddy Fish

>They were small and very elastic, like India rubber. They were caught through 75. The Gilaopolis holes in the ice during the winter. The >The Gilaopolis, which still roams along the method pursued were caught through holes more sequestered canyons of the upper Salt in the ice during the winter. The method and Gila rivers, belongs to the same general pursued was to hit one on the head with a family as the Gila monster, being a pinkish paddle. This fish would bounce up and 27

salmon in color with a tasteful over-pattern reverts to strong language every time he sees worked out with black markings, but there is a lizard. this great difference between the two, where the smaller lizard usually is not more than 75. The Gillygaloo fifteen to eighteen inches in length, the >This hillside plover nested on the slopes of Bunyan’s famous Pyramid Forty. Living in Gilaopolis is often as large as a big calf. such a locality it laid its square eggs so that >For most of the year it is gentle and they could not roll down the steep incline. inoffensive, but at the time of the spring The lumberjacks hardboiled these eggs and round-up it is attacked by a high fever which used them as dice. nothing seems to allay so well as canned fruit juice. For this reason, when in a 76. The Glass snake country frequented by these peculiar >Another curious snake that used to interest saurians, a chuck wagon is liable to be youthful students of herpetology was the raided by one of them almost any night glass snake. As far as its habits were known, when, breaking open a fruit case with its the glass snake seemed to exist for the sole powerful claws, it will melt the solder on the purpose of affording fun for the boys, who, cans with its fever-laden breath and greedily when they encountered one of them, hit it drink the juice. If molested it will retire across the back with a stick, whereupon his quietly, wholly cured for another year, but if snakeship broke into a thousand pieces, interfered with, particularly by a meddling more or less, according to the mathematical tenderfoot, it will fight with great ferocity. proficiency of the boy, and his brittle >As an illustration of how harmless a anatomy new in all directions. Yet this Gilaopolis may be under normal conditions, singular proceeding, while it interested the it may be said that Dick Bowersox larietted youthful experimenters greatly, never one once at his homestead in the Sierra discommoded the snake, or only Anchas and kept him with him for nearly a temporarily, for as soon as left to itself the year, where he used to follow him about like parts all united and the snake was whole as a dog and even do simple chores like before. This invariably happened, but carrying in wood or bringing up the cows. although boys have watched for hours to see The following spring, though, when its fever the mysterious process the reptile never “got came up, there being no canned fruit handy, together” until they had departed. Glass the big reptile broke into the cellar and snakes are not nearly so common now, nor imbibed three quarts of green paint and two are they so brittle as they used to be. gallons of home brew. Naturally "Heely," as they called the pet, acquired a beautiful jag. 77. The Glawackus He chewed up a week's wash that was out on >The Glawackus is a creature seen in the line, half killed Dick's white faced bull, Glastonbury, CT and Frizzelburg, MA and is pushed his flivver over a cliff and then ran in the traditions of lumberjacks. In the latter for the hills. Dick now uses a new recipe and incident it is reported to have attacked 28

livestock. It is said to have a strong creature twenty feet in length with two resemblance to a mix between a bear, tusks, large webbed feet ending in claws, a panther, and lion. An eyewitness report row of short horns along its back, and a long thin tail with a blade on the end. Randolph’s states that "I was working as a young sources suggested that the gowrow was a reporter on the Hartford Courant that year species of creature rather than an individual when World War II was in the wings. But monstrosity. The young hatched from we were preoccupied with the developing soft-shelled eggs as large as beer kegs, and story about this Glastonbury creature that the mother carried newly hatched infants in howled at night, slipped in and out of view a pouch. Randolph related a story about an and caused dogs, cats and small farm encounter with a gowrow by a spelunker exploring Devil’s Hole in Boone County. He animals to disappear. As the sightings grew also told of someone from Mena (Polk in number, so did the variety of descriptions. County) who claimed to have captured a First it was a huge cat. Then some people gowrow by inducing the creature to eat so reported what looked like a dog in back and many dried apples that it swelled to a size a cat in front. Others saw it vice-versa. One that prevented its escaping into its burrow. man called to say he had seen a big animal 79. The Great Leech in the pitch dark with eyes that glowed like >The spot where Valley river joins embers. Hiwassee, at Murphy, in , is

78. The Gowrow known among the Cherokees as Tlanusi'yï, >Fred W. Allsopp, who edited the Gazette at "The Leech place," and this is the story they the time, recounted the circumstances that tell of it: led to Smithee’s story. William Miller, a >Just above the junction is a deep hole in Little Rock businessman who had been Valley river, and above it is a ledge of rock traveling in the Ozarks of northwest running across the stream, over which Arkansas, told Smithee of a “horrible monster” known as the gowrow. Its name people used to go as on a bridge. On the came from the noise it made during its south side the trail ascended a high bank, nocturnal depredations. The creature had from which they could look down into the been slaughtering livestock and pets near water. One day some men going along the Blanco (Searcy County) in Calf Creek trail saw a great red object, full as large as a Township. Miller formed a posse that house, lying on the rock ledge in the middle tracked the gowrow to its lair, a cave littered of the stream below them. As they stood with animal skeletons and even some human remains. As they waited to ambush the wondering what it could be they saw it monster, they heard it emerge from a nearby unroll--and then they knew it was alive--and lake, causing the earth to tremble as it made stretch itself out along the rock until it its way toward them. The gowrow perished looked like a great leech with red and white after several volleys from the posse. Before stripes along its body. It rolled up into a ball its death, it ripped up several trees and tore and again stretched out at full length, and at off the leg of one of the posse members. An examination of the remains revealed a last crawled down the rock and was out of 29

sight in the deep water. The water began to preparing the line when the water suddenly boil and foam, and a great column of white and swept over the ledge, and would spray was thrown high in the air and came have carried off the child but that the mother down like a waterspout upon the very spot ran in time to save it. The great leech is still where the men had been standing,. and there in the deep hole, because when people would have swept them all into the water but look down they see something alive moving that they saw it in time and ran from the about on the bottom, and although they can place. not distinguish its shape on account of the >More than one person was carried down in ripples on the water, yet they know it is the this way, and their friends would find the leech. Some say there is an underground body afterwards lying upon the bank with waterway across to Nottely river, not far the ears and nose eaten off, until at last the above the mouth, where the river bends over people were afraid to go across the ledge toward Murphy, and sometimes the leech any more, on account of the great leech, or goes over there and makes the water boil as even to go along that part of the trail. But it used to at the rock ledge. They call this there was one young fellow who laughed at spot on Nottely "The Leech place" also. the whole story, and said that he was not afraid of anything in Valley river, as he 80. The Guerrero Serpent would show them. So one day he painted his >Dr. Watkins, the veteran missionary who face and put on his finest buckskin and has just returned from a four months’ started off toward the river, while all the evangelical trip through the outlying states, people followed at a distance to see what tells a strange story of a wonderful snake might happen. Down the trail he went and which he killed in an old, abandoned shaft out upon the ledge of rock, singing in high of a mine down in the State of Guerrero. spirits: >“My attention was attracted one day,” says >I'll tie red leech skins Mr Watkins, “by the horrified cries of an >On my legs for garters. Indian miner who came running toward me, >But before he was half way across the his face ghastly with fright and the water began to boil into white foam and a perspiration dripping like rain drops from great wave rose and swept over the rock and his brow. The man rushed up and cast carried him down, and he was never seen himself at my feet where he lay trembling again. and gasping. As soon as he was able to get >Just before the Removal, sixty years ago, his breath he told me that he had been seized two women went out upon the ledge to fish. by a horrible monster which had suddenly Their friends warned them of the danger, but sprung upon him from one of the hidden one woman who had her baby on her back recesses of the mine, and that he had said, "There are fish there and I'm going to narrowly escaped being drawn down into its have some; I'm tired of this fat meat." She embrace. laid the child down on the rock and was 30

>“My curiosity was aroused and proceeded head of a frightfully carved . to the mouth of the shaft with the man as Its body about the middle was as large as a soon as I could induce him to return. We man’s thigh, and its length was so great that looked down, but in the dense obscurity I dare not say how many feet it measured. I could see nothing. Drawing my revolver I very much regretted being unable to bade the man go down into the shaft a way, preserve the skin and bring it back for the assuring him that no harm would befall him, study of scientists, but I was compelled to as I would follow close with my cocked leave it behind.“ revolver ready for use. >“The miner did as I commanded and had 81. The Gumberoo gone down for a number of feet when >In the foggy region along the Pacific Coast from Grays Harbor to Humboldt Bay there suddenly from the dense blackness I saw a ranges a kind of creature that has caused huge and indescribably hideous head with much annoyance in the lumber woods. This wide-open mouth shoot up. The jaws of the is the gumberoo, which, luckily, is so rare creature were wide open, showing its that only once in a great while is one seen. It sharp-fanged teeth in its mouth looking large is believed to remain in hiding most of the enough easily to take a man down at one time in the base of enormous, burned-out gulp. cedar trees, from where it sallies forth occasionally on frightful marauding >“The miner screamed with terror and I expeditions. During these periods of activity feared he would lose his hold and fall, but he the beast is always hungry and devours clung desperately to the ladder while I thrust anything it can find that looks like food. A the barrel of the revolver full into the whole horse may be eaten at one sitting, creature’s mouth and fired. With a distending the gumberoo out of all tremendous hiss it dropped its head and then proportions, but failing to appease its hunger or cause it the slightest discomfort. we saw it was a huge serpent like unto >The specimens seen are reported to have nothing I had ever heard of before. been coal black, but that may have been due >As its struggling body came into my view I to their being smirched with the charred fired again, and the snake, slipping from the wood. In size the beast corresponds closely ledge on which it had stretched itself, fell to a black bear, for which it might be with a squashy thud to the bottom of the mistaken only for the fact that the gumberoo is almost hairless. To be sure, it has shaft, where we could hear it thrashing about prominent eyebrows and some long, bristly in struggles which momentarily grew hairs on its chin, but the body is smooth, weaker and finally ceased altogether. Then tough, and shiny and bears not even a we went below, fastened a rope about the wrinkle. The animal is a tireless traveler body of the reptile and hoisted it to the when looking for food, but is not swift in its surface. movements or annoyed in the slightest >“There was then unfolded before our eyes degree by the presence of enemies. The latter characteristic is easily accounted for the most hideous creature man could ever by the fact that no other animal within its dream of. Its head was like the huge stone range has ever found a successful method of 31

attacking a gumberoo or a vulnerable spot in and sometimes yet a tenderfoot gits in the one's anatomy. Whatever strikes the beast way of one of ‘em and don’t come back to bounds off with the same force. Its elastic chuck wagon at night. hide hurls back with equal ease the charging >“If one of them critters ever starts towards elk and the wrathy hornet. A rock or peavey you, Lanky, don’t for any-thing let him thrown at the creature bounds back at know you’re scered. If you try to run, he’ll whoever threw it, and a bullet shot against git you shore. Jest stand there and look him its hide is sure to strike the hunter between right in the eye like you was glad to see him. the eyes. He’ll be comin’ right toward you with his >It is believed that the scarcity of head down like a bat shot out of a cannon. gumberoos is due to their combustible Jist let the Gwinter alone till he gits two character and the prevalence of forest fires. steps to you, then take a couple steps down The animal burns like celluloid, with the hill. Ten to one he’ll be so mad about it explosive force. Frequently during and after that he’ll try to foller you, anyway, and a forest fire in the heavy cedar near Coos when he gits his short legs down the hill, Bay woodmen have insisted that they heard he’s a goner. Just step back and watch that loud reports quite unlike the sound of falling critter roll down the hill and break his fool trees, and detected the smell of burning neck. That’s why they’re so scerce, cowpolk ​ rubber in the air. learned that trick.”

82. The Gwinter 83. The Gyascutus >“They’re vicious brutes,” agreed Joe, “but >Also called the stone-eating Gyascutus. they ain’t got nothing on the gwinter.” The sordid beat has been described as >“I never heard of the Gwinter,” said Lanky, “about the size of a white-tailed deer. Has “and what sort of beat is he, then?” ears like a rabbit and teeth like a mountain >“Well, he’s a grass-eatin’ quadruped,” and lion. It has telescopic legs which enable it to Joe,”something like a cross between a easily graze on hills. It has a long tail which buffalo and a mountain-goat, only he’s a lot wraps around rocks when its legs feel to more ferocious. The peculiar thing about the telescope together. It feeds on rocks and gwinter is his legs. Instead of havin’ four lichens, the rocks enabling it to digest the legs of equal length like a critter ought to tough leathery lichens. It is never seen have, or two short legs in the front and too except after the case of a snake-bite.” long ones in the back, these brutes have two long legs on one side and two short ones on 84. The Haakapainiži the uphill side. This is mighty convenient for >Haakapainiži, the Grasshopper as he is ‘em, since they don’t live on level ground known to the Kawaiisu, is an unpleasant nohow. Some of ‘em has their right legs from Southern California, although he long, some of ‘em has their right legs short, dependin’ on which way they graze around lives on a rock in a Nevadan lake. His the mountains. This Chisos and the Davis counterpart in Chemehuevi folklore is and the Guadalupe mountains used to be full Aatakapitsi, and their tales are parallel. of ‘em. Up there, critters was thicker than Haakapainiži takes several forms, but the the buffalo or the antelope on the plains, but best known is that of a giant grasshopper they’re gittin’ mighty scerce now. Still, they walking on two canes, with a basket on his took off many a cow-hand in the early days, 32

back. His legs are armed with viciously to the discussion from the pen of Peter sharp spikes. His legs are long enough to Hansen, a Norwegian boatman on Puget allow him to walk the 20 miles between sound. Hansen is an old sailor of more than Inyokern and Onyx in one step. He also average intelligence, and his reliability is appears as a giant, a harmless-looking old vouched for by his neighbors at man, and a swarm of grasshoppers. Quartermaster, Wash. Here is his story: Haakapainiži sings as he walks, hiding his >On Feb. 24 I was in my boat towing a evil intentions.Children are Haakapainiži’s small raft of cedar logs from the opposite prey, and he stuffs them in his basket for shore to my ranch. The bay, or rather strait, devouring later. As such he is correctly is about three miles wide here, and I was classified as a bogey, and parents will quell within half a mile of the west shore, upon children with warnings of “Haakapainiži is which stands my cabin. The raft I had in tow coming!” contained six newly cut logs. Upon the middle of the raft I had built a small 85. The Hangdown platform of cedar shakes, and on this >Its latin name is unknown. This utterly platform were my tools—a double bitted foolish animal lives in big woods “where it chopping ax, a broadax and a loaded double hangs down from the limbs of trees, either with its fore or hind paws, either head down barreled shotgun. My Newfoundland dog or head on, either way making no difference was with me in the boat, standing high up in to digestion. It climbs along the bottom of a the bow, barking at the ducks and gulls. limb after the manner of a sloth. Its skin >Carl had just finished a prolonged fit of brings a high price. It is more easily hunted barking at the ducks when he suddenly at night when a tub must be placed over it. It fetched such an unusual growl of anger that is then killed with an axe.” I looked around to see what the matter could 86. The Hansen Monster of Puget Sound be. The sight that met my gaze paralyzed >Norwegian Boatman’s Extraordinary me, and the oars dropped from my hands. Adventure With a Marine Monster on Puget On my port quarter, about three-fourths of a Sound—It Was 150 Feet Long and Had the mile distant, there loomed the swaying head Head of a Serpent. and neck of some monster unlike anything I >The much discussed question as to whether had ever seen or dreamed of in all my life, the sea serpent is a reality or not is as much and I have been a seaman for more than 40 of a problem today as it ever was. Scientists years and visited every part of the navigable as a whole confidently state that no such globe. monster does or can exist. On the other >When first seen, the creature was making hand, every now and then persons of more straight across the bay, with his head 10 feet or less credibility report personal sight of in the air; but, as it seems, having heard such creatures, and in the main their Carl’s defiant and piercing cries, he changed descriptions agree. The San Francisco his course and swam directly toward us with Examiner prints an interesting contribution fearful velocity, the mighty throes of his 33

extended body emitting a sound not unlike frenzy that knew no bounds. Throwing back that caused by the pounding of a sidewheel his great hooded head in true serpentine steamer’s paddles. style, he began to strike at the boat. At one >My first impulse was to reach my trusty time, fastening his jaws upon the starboard shotgun, cartridge belt and hatchet. I gunwale, he wrenched off a piece of solid plunged into the sea and swam for the raft, timber 5 feet long and 2 inches thick as about 20 yards astern, calling to my dog to easily apparently as a man would bite into follow me. But I miscalculated the speed of the thin end of a shingle. Throwing his body the great snake, for while yet several yards into a series of great, vertical coils 8 feet in from the raft I heard a howl of agony from diameter, he completely encircled the boat, my brave Carl. Looking over my shoulder, I and with one constriction crushed it into a instinctively fetched a shriek of horror and shapeless mass. despair. >After crushing the boat the serpent did not >While I had been swimming 15 yards the immediately uncoil himself, but lay some snake had glided more than half a mile and minutes with the fragments still in his pounced upon Carl. The dog weighed embrace, while his ever restless tall whipped between 75 and 80 pounds, and his green the surface of the sea. eyed captor was holding him in his mouth >Curiously enough, in one of its gyrations 20 feet in the air. I do not know how I the end of the tail fell upon my raft, and with reached the raft, but in less time than it takes what must have been superhuman agility I to record it I had seized the gun and sent a seized my broadax and with one blow cut heavy of buckshot into the creature’s off five feet of the wiggling end. I was belly about where it emerged from the esteeming this a most valuable prize, but water. A visible tremor passed through his before I could secure it the slimy mass body, his head fell, and bringing Carl down wriggled into the water and was lost. with frightful velocity the poor dog was >From this time the great reptile evidently hurled against the side of the boat with a began to weaken from the loss of blood, force that killed him instantly. which was pouring in streams from his head >It now appeared that my shot had not only and the wound given him by the broadax. wounded the reptile, but it had angered him Slowly regaining his normal position in the to rather a dangerous and alarming degree. water, the creature withdrew toward the Instantly his head was again on high, open sea and was soon out of sight. deafening hissings came from his throat, and >When I first saw him swimming squarely the waters for a hundred feet seaward were abreast of me, I should judge that from the churned into foam by the horrid writhings of elevated head to where the sea was lashed his body. by the end of his tail the distance was 150 >Again I raised my gun and discharged the feet. The great flattened head was hooded other barrel. If my first shot had angered like that of an East India cobra, and from the him, my second shot worked him into a tip of the nose to the insertion of the neck 34

would have measured perhaps 8 feet. The alleged to have seen while on a pleasure trip head was fully 2½ feet wide, but appeared to in Northern waters. be deficient in vertical depth. The eyes were >“I’ll bet old Jim had a bully good time,” set just forward of the hooded appendage said the gentleman. “The serpent was 225 and were as large as the eyes of an ox. There feet long, so the account states. That ain’t so were no indications of a dorsal fin or long, after all. I’ve seen a few myself. But rudimental feet, as have been attributed by the darndest yarn I ever heard of is recorded some former observers to the so called sea as a fact by S. Baring-Gould, a fact which serpent. was well authenticated and which comes down to us unvarnished and unimpaired. 87. The Hibou blanc Remember, it as a fact. >where the French Canucks are employed at >Once upon a time, after a violent tempest, chopping, you must look to see them all quit which broke down the dykes in Holland and work if a white owl flies from any tree they are felling; and they must not look back nor flooded the lowlands, some girls in town of speak to it, for it is a and will trouble Edam in West Freisland, going in a boat, to them unless they leave that part of the wood milk their cows and rescue their poultry, for fully thirty days. observed a in shallow water and embarrassed in the mud. They took it out of 88. The Hidebehind the water, placed it in the boat and brought it >A very dangerous animal which undoubtedly accounted for many missing to the town, where they dressed it in female lumberjacks. It was always hiding behind attire and taught it, by dint of coaxing, to something, generally a tree trunk. spin and assist in household work. It fed Whichever way a man turned it was always with them and took part in all their behind him. From this position it sprang pleasures, but could never be taught to upon its human prey, dragged or carried the speak. body into its lair and there feasted on it in >It was afterwards brought to Harlem, solid comfort. Because of its elusive habits no satisfactory description of it has ever where it lived peaceably for several years, been obtained. Early accounts describe though still showing a strong inclination for ​ hidebehinds as large, powerful animals, water, it was instructed in its duty to God despite the fact that no one was able to see and made reverences before a crucifix. With them. such a well authenticated story story as that

we can not be surprised at Hill’s serpent. 89. Hill’s Sea Serpent

>While passing through the Rice hotel last 90. The Hodag night a Post reporter observed a portly oh >This animal has been variously described gentleman laughing heartily at something he by woodsmen from Wisconsin and had read in a newspaper. He pointed out the . Opinions differ greatly as to the article to a friend. It was an account of a sea appearance of the beast, some claiming it to serpent which railroad king J. J. Hill is be covered with horns and spines and having a maniacal disposition. The description 35

which seems most authentic and from which row to the deepest springhole and bore a the sketch of the animal has been made is as hole in the water with it. Then you row follows: size about that of a rhinoceros and ashore, hide in the bushes and make a noise somewhat resembling that animal in general like a mudworm. The hoopajuba comes out makeup. The creature is slow in motion, of the hole, grabs his tail in his mouth, and deliberate, and, unlike the rhinoceros, very starts rolling over the water towards you like intelligent. Its hairless body is mottled, a hoop. You stick out an arm, run it through striped, and checked in a striking manner, his hoop, and you have him! That’s the way suggestive of the origin of the patterns upon to catch a hoopajuba.” Mackinaw clothing, now used in the lumber woods. On the hodag's nose, instead of a 92. Hoop Snakes horn there is a large spade-shaped bony >A very poisonous reptile. It could put its growth, with peculiar phalanges, extending tail in its mouth and roll with lightning-like up in front of the eye, so that he can see only rapidity after its prey. The only way to avoid straight up. This probably accounts for the it was to quickly jump through its hoop as it deliberate disposition of the animal, which approached. This so confused the large wanders through the spruce woods looking serpent that it rolled by and could not get for suitable food. About the only living back. If you should not manage to leap creature which the hodag can catch is the through the ’s hoop, the last porcupine;indeed, it would appear that the defense left save a scrap is to run as fast as porcupine is its natural food. Upon sighting you can and hope to find a fence to leap one rolled up in the branches of a spruce the over. The hoop snake will have to uncoil to hodag begins to blink his eyes, lick his get through the fence, thereby slowing it chops, and spade around the roots and over down. Its sting was in its tail. A hoop snake goes the tree, knocking the breath out of the once stung a peavy handle. This swelled to porcupine in its fall. The hodag then such a great size that Paul Bunyan cut one straddles the fallen tree, front feet crush the thousand cords of wood out of it. helpless porcupine, and then deliberately swallows him head first. 93. The Hoot Pecker >In the autumn the hodag strips the bark off >The hoot pecker (which could literally be a number of spruce or pine trees and covers translated as "howling woodpecker" or himself all over with pitch. He then searches "howling whistle") is a species of bird from out a patch of hardwood timber where dead leaves lie thick on the ground. Here he rolls the tales of the American loggers, who live about until completely encased in a thick, in Michigan. These birds are a complete warm mantle of leaves, in which condition combination of North American tawn (strix he spends the winter. varia) and woodpecker. He works all day and night and, therefore, never sleeps. It is 91. Hoopajubas said to be extremely useful as it cleans >The Sea Serpent variant of hoopsnake, often sought after by fisherman for their forests of insects and other pests. delicate meat. ”Hoopajubas? Oh, they live like the golden trout in the deepest and 94. The Horn Snake coldest part of a lake. How to catch them? >It was in one of Uncle Davy Lane’s tall Well, you get hold of a water-auger. You tales, where he “...cum right up plum upon 36

one uv the curiousest snakes I uver seen in neck are leathery and hairless ; its strangely all my borned days.” He finds the serpent on corrugated ears flop downward; its four-toed a cliffside when out deer hunting, describing feet, long bushy tail, shaggy coat and it as “...at full length, ten foot long, its tail general make-up give the beast an strait out, right up the presserpis, head as big unmistakably prehistoric appearance. The as a sasser, right toards me, eyes red as hugag has a perfect mania for traveling, and forked lightnin’, lickin’ his forked few hunters who have taken up its trail ever tounge…” “...when I seen the stinger in his came up with the beast or back to camp. It is tail, six inches long and sharp as a needle, reported to keep going all day long, stickin’ out like a cock’s spur, I thought I’d browsing on twigs, flopping its lip around drapped in my tracks.” His account says the trees, and stripping bark as occasion offers, snake is so fast that, after jumping “forty and at night, since it cannot lie down, it foot down the mounting” and escaping to a leans against a tree, bracing its hind legs and tree, the snake impaled its stinger on the side marking time with its front ones. The most opposite of where he hid, just as he rounded successful hugag hunters have adopted the the bend. He tells of the noise it makes, practice of notching trees so that they are saying “Of all the hissin’ and blowin’ that almost ready to fall, and when the hugag uver you hearn sense you seen day-light, it leans up against one both the tree and the tuck the lead. Ef there’d a bin forty-nine animal come down. In its helpless condition forges all a-blowin’ at once, it couldn’t abeat it is then easily dispatched. The last one it.” The snake then spewed bile at Uncle killed, so far as known, was on Turtle River, Davy Lane. “...(it) spread its mouf and in northern Minnesota, where a young one, grinned at me orful, puked and spit quarts weighing 1,800 pounds, was found stuck in an’ quarts of green pisen at me, an’ made the the mud. It was knocked in the head by ar stink with his nasty breath.” When he Mike Flynn, of Cass Lake. tried to shoot the snake, “he kep’ sich a movin’ about and sich a plutteration that I 96. The Humility (Lane) couldn’t git a bead at his head, for I >The humility is so called because it speaks know’d it warn’t wuth while to shoot him the word humility, and seldom mounts high any whar else.” in the air. Its legs are long enough to enable it to outrun a dog for a little way; its wings 95. The Hugag long and narrow; body maigre and of the >The hugag is a huge animal of the Lake size of a blackbird; plumage variegated with States. Its range includes white, black, blue, and red. It lives on Wisconsin, northern Minnesota, and a tadpoles, spawn, and worms; has an eye territory extending indefinitely northward in more piercing than the falcon, and the the Canadian wilds toward Hudson Bay. In swiftness of an ; hence it can never be size the hugag may be compared to the shot, for it sees the sparks of fire even before moose, and in form it somewhat resembles it enkindles the powder, and by the extreme that animal. Very noticeable, however, are rapidity of its flight, it can get out in an its jointless legs, which compel the animal to instant. It is never known to light upon a remain on its feet, and its long upper lip, tree, but is always seen upon the ground or which prevents it from grazing. If it tried wing. These birds appear in New england in that method of feeding it would simply summer only; what becomes of them tramp its upper lip into the dirt. Its head and 37

afterwards is not discovered. They are wolf is at their door, and it is only at caught in snares, but can never be tamed. question of time how long they will be able to hold out against the ravages of a 97. The Hyampom Hog Bear new-discovered insect which eats ice with as >Ranging from mouth of the Columbia River southward to the Klamath, woodsmen much facility and enjoyment as a boy does report the existence of a bear known as the candy. This is startling on its face, and at Hyampom hog bear. This is a small, once accounts for the high prices sharp-nosed, curly-haired variety of the householders have been paying this summer black and brown bear of the Coast Ranges, for the congealed article, although it was a but must not be confused with the well-known fact that a rather fair crop was Peaked-heel cinnamon. >To appreciate the importance of this gathered last winter. The ice men have had a animal one must remember that hog ranches knowledge of the presence of this new are common in northwestern California. The enemy among them since April, 1878, when Country there is peculiarly adapted to hog a steamer of the Red Star line happened to raising, and the industry would be attractive strike an iceberg in mid-ocean, and some of and highly profitable were it not for the these newfangled worms or ice chewers, existence of the hog bear. The mountain clung to it and were carried to this country, slopes are covered with scrubby and creeping oaks, which bear prodigious crops where they have rapidly multiplied. of sweet and very nutritious acorns. These >A well-known scientist, Dr. Otto naturally ripen earliest upon the lower Hechelmeyer, says that these worms were slopes, where the young hogs begin to feed. clasified by scientific men under the As the acorns higher up the slopes begin to name—the worms, not the men—of ripen, the hogs ascend the mountain, each nematoxis eocena. When a worm with such week finding them a few hundred feet higher and many pounds fatter. About a name as this gets after a block of ice, there Christmas time the last of the acorns are is no hope for it, of course. Prof Pintori, of reached on the upper slopes, and the hogs the Smithsonian institution, has been have by that time become so fat that their looking into the history of this terrible legs scarcely reach the ground, and the worm, and he has discovered that it is the slightest jar is all that the hog bear gets in caterpillar of an insect which he calls the his destructive work. He "mooches" along the base of the mountain before the rancher vespa eocena, but which he allows plain, has time to rustle his pork, and finding hogs unlearned people to call the ice wasp. It so plentiful and so helplessly fat he takes seems that these ice worms abound up in the just one bite out of the back of each, leaving Arctic regions, where they are busily the porker squealing with agony and the engaged in clearing a passage to the north rancher swearing with rage. pole, and the professor thinks that in the

course of from two hundred and thirty to 98. The Ice Worm two hundred and fifty years more they will >The ice dealers all over the country are have so thoroughly gnawed away the ice in threatened with ruin. The gaunt form of the that region that a trip to the pole will 38

become simply a pleasant summer of Natural Sciences, with a request that he excursion. The formation of iceberge has furnish a statement of their habits and hitherto been something of a puzzle to most suggest a method for getting rid of them. people who could not understand why these Their bite is said to be poisonous, and when great frozen monsters should break away in the transition state from worm to insect from their native moorings and go cruisiog they are to be feared. Unless some means around the ocean until they get down south are taken to rid the country of these terrible and are thawed out of existence. But Prsf. nuisances, the ice crop may go short this Pintori and Dr. Hechelmeyer make this us season, or be totally destroyed next winter. plain as mud. The deadly nematoris eocena >Prof. Pintori suggests a plan to get rid of sets his jaws at work upon the Arctic these pests. He says the wasps do not get in glaciers and cuts off these big icebergs just their work until after the ice crop is as readily as a butcher cuts off the head of a harvested and stored away, and they cannot hog. The destroyer’s work does not end stand the smell of burning charcoal. He here. He follows the fated iceberg and, bit therefore recommends that, after an ice by bit, gnaws off the bottom of it until it house has been filled, it be surrounded by a becomes top-heavy and lurches over; then ring of charcoal fires, which must be kept he whittles down the top until it rights itself continuously burning until the next crop of again, and so systematically and relentlessly ice is ready to be harvested. pursues this course that the poor, harressed berge eventually succumbs to the appetite of 99. The Jimplicute the gorged monster, and entirely disappears >If one were to look up the topic of within its capacious maw. jimplicutes today, all that would be found >The nematoxis eocena, or ice fiend, is a are intriguing but inaccurate descriptions of peculiar worm, about six inches in length. It "ghostly dinosaurs" that sneak up behind is almost transparent and can conceal itself unsuspecting travelers and suck their blood. in a block of ice readily. Careless These Ozark legends are believed to have housemaids are apt not to notice its presence been concocted by ex-confederates for when cleaning the morning lump reasons of racial prejudice - that is, to preparatory to placing it in the cooler or manipulate by fear and intimidation the refrigerator. It is through the ravages of behavior of uneducated former slaves - but these worms that the ice melts so quickly, this modern dismissal is ignorant of a more and persons are apt to ascribe it to a profound and less discriminating reality. The defective manufacture of the ice-chest or to inspiration for such watered down folklore careless wrapping of the frigid lump. emanated from the deepest, most unsettled >Several of these ice wasps have been parts of the high hills. It therefore was based secured at the house of one of the largest on actual but formerly unrecorded companies in this city, and they were sent to experience, and real jimplicutes would Dr. W. S. Ruschenberger, of the Academy 39

readily devour anyone regardless of color or protuberances add further to this uneven creed. distortion of bodily shape. >Jimplicutes are not dinosaurs, ghostly or >Quite literally, jimplicutes stink. Their otherwise, but they are reptilian after a sort. vulgar ruminations produce an aroma which They do not suck blood but rather swallow at a distance blends with the smell of rotting their prey whole whenever possible. They logs and damp humus, but at close quarters, are at once more impressive and more they exhale the withering odor of mold and terrible to behold than the obscure legends ruinous decay. As foul as their breath may they have generated. If one can see them at be, however, their breathing can be one of all, they are nearly indistinguishable from the most deceptively soothing sounds ever to their forested habitat. Their scales, loose and fall on human ears. Loud as the most irregular, resemble leaves, and their forceful tempest when angered, jimplicutes underlying skin is like tree bark in both breathe inaudibly above the slightest breeze toughness and texture. Were it thicker, a when stalking or at rest. They mimic the jimplicute's hide would be nigh rustling of leaves in the wind, and many a impenetrable. So adapted are jimplicutes to victim has been overcome by drowsiness their environment that their scales change prior to the onset of an attack. color with the seasons, and their teeth are >There is no duplicity to the nature of reminiscent of long thorns. Upon seeing a jimplicutes, no contradiction of good mixed jimplicute, one might reasonably, albeit with bad. They are the physical mistakenly, assume that it had arisen manifestation of unabashed evil, drawing spontaneously from earth and twig, the vile strength from the imperfections of their offspring of nature itself. human victims and killing more for pleasure >Jimplicutes are beautiful owing to their than survival. Theirs is a world of stone, resemblance to fair forest and ugly due to wood, and moistened soil, of lying in wait that variation of form which is regarded as and devouring all that comes within striking comely in tree and vine but misshapen in distance. Like alligators or venomous higher animals. It is only when one is forced snakes, they can be blindingly quick, but in to recognize them as distinctly animal that spite of their size and prowess, they are they become so repugnant to the eye. Aside possessed of certain physical limitations. from a general anatomy which includes a >They are cold-blooded and as such can head and long neck, four legs, and a tail, move rapidly over only limited distances. there is little in the way of symmetry or Just as importantly,they must hibernate. grace to their general architecture. Their legs Were it not for the annual respite of winter, do not match lest such uniformity should their presence in Jacob's part of the Ozarks make them stand out against the might have compelled many a stout heart to inconsistency of their natural background, seek lodging in more hospitable regions. and their right and left sides complement Most significantly of all, jimplicutes can be each other but poorly. Assorted bumps and killed, but not by the rifles and shotguns 40

available to the hillfolk of Jacob's day. The bullets of these guns lacked sufficient 102. The Kangaroo cat explosive power on impact and simply left >Did you ever hear of a kangaroo cat? holes too small to do any good when it came >As you'll see from the picture, it’s really a to killing such large, tough-skinned cat. It has fur like a cat, it purs like a cat, and predators. Even a direct hit to a vital organ it can catch mine and rats. But it sits up on would bleed too slowly. This was why Jacob its hind legs like a kangaroo, has a long stout hunted with his harpoon... tail and jumps like a kangaroo. Its nose is long, almost like that of a shepherd dog. A 100. The Joint Snake man who lives in Oak Park bought a >The Joint Snake was reported all along the kangaroo cat when it was a kitten, and at the southern states of the United States. age of six weeks it could jump easily to the Supposedly, the snake can break itself (or be top of a high board fence. They are rather cut) into pieces and will reassemble itself. It is said that if a piece of the snake is taken rare in this country, and if you have one of and the pocket knife used to cut the snake is them you may consider yourself fortunate set down in the place of the snake's piece, the knife will join up with the whole of the 103. The Kickle Snifter snake. >Also known as a hickle snifter, the kickle snifter is about the size of a person's thumb. 101. The Jonah They live in the beards just as some species >A tradition among the poor whites of the South Jruns to the effect that the of lice do. They are seldom seen because sea-monster that swallowed Jonah—not a they are very shy. They are often heard after whale, because the throat of that animal is an old man has eaten. Because the beard hardly large enough to admit a hairs tickle them, they laugh out loud. herring—crossed the Atlantic and brought up at the Carolinas. His passenger was 104. The King Buzzard supplied with tobacco and beguiled the >My pa tell me dat ‘way back in slavery tedium of the voyage by smoking a pipe. time, ‘way back in Af’ica, dere been a The monster, being unused to that sort of nigger, an’ he been a big nigger. He been de thing, suffered as all beginners in nicotine er he tribe, an’ when dem white folks poisoning do, and expelled the unhappy man was ketchin’ niggers for slavery, dat ole with emphasis. On being safely landed, nigger nuse to entice ‘em into trap. He’d git Jonah attached himself to one of the tribes ‘em on boat wey dem white folks could that peopled the barrens, and left a white ketch ‘em an’ chain ‘em. White folks nused progeny which antedated Columbus's arrival to gee him money an’ all kind er little thing, by several centuries. God pitied the an’ he’d betray ‘em. An’ one time atter he helplessness of these ignorant and betray thousands into bondage, an’ de white uncourageous whites and led them to folks say dey ain’ guh come to dat coast no Looking-Glass Mountain, North Carolina, mo, dat was dey last trip, so dey knocked where He caused corn and game to be out dat nigger down an’ put chain on him created, and while this race endured it lived an’ brung him to dis country. An’ when he in plenty. 41

dead, dere were no place in heaven for him 106. The Lava Bears an’ he were not desired in hell. An’ de Great >When lava bears were first encountered in Master decide dat he were lower dan all the early 20th century it was speculated that other mens or beasts; he punishment were to they might be a unique species, possibly a wander for eternal time over de face er de earth. Dat as he had kilt de sperrits of mens grizzly. The diminutive bears an’ womens as well as dere bodies, he must resembled black bears in many ways, but wander on an’ on. Dat his sperrit should were much smaller with wooly fur that was always travel in de form of a great buzzard, light brown in color, similar to grizzly bears. an’ dat carrion must be he food. Specimens taken by hunters were a little >An’ sometimes he appears to mens, but he larger than a badger. They were doom is settled; an’ in he ain’ would er hurt Tad, kaze one er he punishment is dat he approximately 17 inches (43 cm) to 30 evil beak an’ claw shall never tech no livin’ inches (76 cm) long and between 12 inches thing. An’ dey say he are known to all de (30 cm) and 18 inches (46 cm) high. The sperrit world as de King Buzzard, an’ dat bears weighed between 23 pounds (10 kg) forever he must travel alone. and 35 pounds (16 kg). Gray hair on their muzzles along with well-worn claws and 105. The Kingdoodle teeth indicated that some of the specimens >The kingdoodle is another big reptile, were adult bears. doubtless related to the gowrow, the >One of the first lava bear specimens taken jimplicute and the high-behind. One of my in the wild was mounted and sent to United old neighbors in McDonald County, States Bureau of Biological Survey in Missouri, told his children that the Washington, District of Columbia. kingdoodle looks like an ordinary mountain Eventually, scientist determined that lava boomer, except for its great size. The bears were American black bears, stunted by mountain boomer or collared lizard seldom malnutrition caused by the austere attains a length of more than ten inches, environment where the animals lived and while the kingdoodle is ‘longer’n a foraged wellrope, an’ fourteen hands high.’ It is strong enough to tear down fences and pull 107. Leprocauns up saplings, but is not bloodthirsty. Near >During the early days of Upper Canada, Jane, Missouri, my wife and I stopped to before it became the Providence of Ontario, look at a small building which had fallen off there were brought into a logging camp on its stone foundation and rolled into a ditch. the Madawaska River several young Probably a high wind was responsible, but a leprocauns from the north of Ireland. This little boy who lived nearby didn’t think so. animal was even then rare and has since become extinct in its native land. It is said ‘I reckon the old kingdoodle must have that during the last famine hungry Irishmen throwed it down, in the night,’ he said killed and ate the few remaining specimens soberly. of this queer beast. >On its native bogs the leprocaun was a harmless creature, celebrated for its 42

playfulness and laughable antics. It would There were no fins or flappers to be seen, hop across the bogs, turn somersaults, and but the leviathan was proceeding along at leap over hillocks with wondrous agility. A the rate of five or six miles an hour by an favorite trick was to bore into a pile of undulating, wriggling motion. It was drying peat and then, with a sudden spring, send the clods of peat high in the air till the traveling in an opposite direction to that in commotion looked like a young cyclone. which the steamer was going, and it was These antics were all right enough in kept in sight for more than ten minutes. It Ireland, but when the animal was brought to was estimated that its length would be about Canada its disposition changed at once. The 200 feet. The water at the time was as pets on the Madawaska escape into nearby smooth as a mill pond, so that an tamarack swamps, increasing and spreading until an occasional one was seen on the unobstructed view of the monster could be upper Ottawa and even over in northern had. At one time it raised its enormous head Michigan. Sneaking through the tamarack and looked in the direction of the ship, and cedar , or leaping across the muskegs showing two tremendous green eyes. It was after whatever appealed to it as food, the broad daylight at the time, and when first leprocaun became a creature to be feared seen the creature was within easy distance, and avoided. Teamsters toting supplies being readily discerned by the naked eye, across swamp roads have been attacked by the animal, which would bound clear over and the glasses which were used only the load, snapping its teeth at the driver and confirmed the opinion that it was a sea reaching for him with its villainous claws. serpent. Hasty flight to thick timber, leaving the team to its fate, was the only choice of the driver, 109. The Log Gar who thanked his stars that in running >These big fish had a snout so well armed through tangled tamarack even the with large saw teeth that they could saw leprocaun is no match for a frightened man. right through a log to get at a juicy lumberjack. Once in the water they made 108. The Leviathan Sea Creature mince meat of him. >The mail seeamer Angola arrived at Liverpool Thursday with the biggest sea 110. The Lucive serpent story yet told. Either the one >The name of lucive derives from loup hundred or more officers, passengers and cervier (wolf cervero), a species of wolf and crew are a company of awful liars, or his deer cross. Popularly, loup cervier, is the majesty, the sea serpent, mysteriously name that was called the lynx. missing this season from the American coast, has emigrated to West Africa. This is 111. The Luferlang >A curious animal with dark blue stripe the story of the witnesses signed by running down the length of its back. Its everybody on board. brushy tail was in the middle of its back. Its >While the vessel was steaming between legs were triple jointed and it could run Bay Beach and Lagos, a long, moving mass equally fast in any direction. It attacked its was discerned about a mile from shore. prey with provocation and its bite was 43

certain death. “It bites but once a year, so if some of the mysteries of our own political one met one that had already bitten systems. someone, you had not fear for instant >It seems then, that each evening, those death.” mature males vying for dominance, will

112. Madrone Monkeys stand on a branch overhanging the river, and >Now, Madrone monkeys are not tinkle out into the river. Now, the monkey indigenous to the south coast. Where you which can tinkle farthest into the river, find them historically, is in the vast rain becomes by consensus then, the dominant forests, that is, the jungles of the Amazon male until supplanted by a contender. river basin, where they have flourished for >Now, not all the foam is from the monkeys eons, subsisting on the nutrient rich outer of course. Some of it’s just fish sweat. bark of the Madrone tree, until as of late – These salmon and steelhead working so hard where you read so much in the paper, and to get up river on their annual migrations – see on TV, about the heavy clear cutting – often times their sweat will collect on top the deforestation – of those wonderful and mix with what the monkeys have done. jungles, to the point that there is a real potential to lose this species to extinction 113. The Malacca Salamander through loss of habitat. >He is Clearly Seen—Fifty Feet Long and >Now, you don’t see the monkeys because Barred in Black and Yellow. they’re nocturnal. In other words, all their >In the Straits of Malacca, the sea monster work is done at night. But you certainly see so repeatedly seen, and so repeatedly the evidence of their participation in this declared to be mythical, appears at last to ecosystem as we travel up and down the have been carefully observed by competent river. witnesses. The creature was seen by the >...Look at the surface of the water. Do you passengers and crew of the ship Nestor, on see that foam line? Have you noticed how her voyage to Shanghai, and on her arrival at these foam lines develop from time to time Shanghai the master of the ship (Mr. John along the river? Well, this again indicates Keiller Webster) and the surgeon (Mr. the presence of Madrone monkeys. See, James Anderson) made a statutory Madrone monkeys are a highly developed declaration of what they had seen before a system of primates. And as is almost always magistrate, as a mode, we suppose, of the case, in upper level primates, they will formally attesting that they spoke in good identify for themselves – each group, each faith. community – a dominant male. And it’s >The creature (which resembled a huge kind of interesting how the Madrone salamander, only that instead of being about monkeys do this. In fact, they have studied six or eight inches long, these dimensions this, behavioral scientists have, back at must be multiplied by at least 73 or 100, the Cornell University, in hopes of unlocking body being from 45 feet to 50 feet in length, the head 12 feet, and the tail, it is said, no 44

less than 150 feet), was first seen at 10:30 on >The Milamo was a huge crane that was the 11th of September, fifteen miles reportedly so large that it would eat snakes northwest of the North Sand Light-house, in the size of a car’s tire. It was also known to the Straits of Malacca. The weather was live on a diet of giant worms that lived in fine, the sea smooth and the air perfectly giant wormholes. One story told a Milamo clear. The Chinese on deck were terribly that had difficulty trying to catch and eat alarmed, and set up a howl. The whole giant worms. When it pinched one in its watch and three saloon passengers saw the beak and pulled back, the worm would hold creature clearly, and observed its on tight in its hole and its body would movements. stretch like an elastic band. The bird pulled >It traveled for a lung time about us fast as some more and when the worm was really the steamer, appearing to paddle itself by the thin it let go and flew out of its hole like an help of “an undulatory motion of its tail in a arrow from a bow and it hit the Milamo bird vertical plane,” The body and tail wore in the eye. The Milamo loosened its grip in marked as those of the salamander are its shock of being hit and the worm dove marked—with alternate bands, black and back into its hole as faster than when it pale yellow in color. ”The head was come out. immediately connected with the body, without tiny indication of a neck.” Both 115. The Milk Snake witnesses state positively that the only >If a cow goes dry, it’s because a Milk resemblance was to some creature of the Snake had sucked it. One contributor frog or newt kind, while one of them (the testified that, “a milk snake was seen surgeon) says that the longer he observed it sucking a cow down in Pennsylvania, while the more he was struck with its resemblance the cow was in its stall. This is, I believe, to a gigantic salamander. Its back was oval not a superstition.” They are of great length, in form. No eyes or fins were seen, and it with large, gummy teeth that cows tolerate, did not blow or spout water in the manner of and can hold a gallon of milk within their a whale. The great part of its head its never body. If one is in want of nutrients while in seen, being beneath the surface. Probably the wilderness, he should catch one and cut the creature is of a race which survives from it open immediately, drinking its reserves. that very different world in which creatures of gigantic size seem to have been so much 116.. The Mi-ni-wa-tu commoner than now. There appears to no >The Mi-ni-wa-tu, or “sea monster”, is manner of reason for doubting the very known from the folklore of the Tetons, and express evidence so succinctly and soberly may be found in the Missouri River. A given. mi-ni-wa-tu is an amphibious creature with a body like that of a buffalo, and covered with 114. The Milamo red hair. It has a single horn in its forehead, and a single eye. Its back is notched like a 45

saw or gear. The mi-ni-wa-tu may be safely with a pistol. Oh, and the pig itself may have seen at night when it swims powerfully up started out as a farm pig before being sold to the river, churning the water and glowing a game preserve. like fire; in the spring, it breaks up river ice. Seeing a mi-ni-wa-tu during the day causes 119. The Monster Mosquito confusion and loss of sight. Madness sets in; >They have some pretty big mosquitoes in after a day of convulsions, the unfortunate New and on Long Island, but if report of ancestry is true, they have degenerated in victim dies. size and voracity; for the grandfather of all mosquitoes used to live in the neighborhood 117. The Mississippi Monster of Fort Onondaga, New York, and sallying >The monster seen in the Mississippi river out whenever he was hungry, would eat an above Memphis a few months ago by the Indian or two and pick his teeth with their captain and crew of a towboat reappeared ribs. The red men had no arms that could the other day near island ninety-five. This prevail against it, but the Holder of Heavens, hearing their cry for aid, came down and time the frightful creature was seen by some attacked the insect. Finding that it had met of the crew of a produce boat. The monster’s its match, the mosquito had flown away so body was shaped like a snake’s, his tail rapidly that its assailants could hardly keep forked like a fish’s and his bill formed like a it in sight. It flew around the great lake, then ’s. His bill was about six feet long turned eastward again. It sought help vainly and a flowing black mane stood out from his of the witches that brooded in the sink-holes, or Green Lakes near Janesville, New York, head, which was erected eight feet above the and had reached the salt lake of Onondaga water, as he swam majestically down the when its pursuer came up and killed it, the stream. One twist of his forked tail knocked creature piling the sand into hills in its dying off the steering oar of the produce boat and struggle. sent the crew in terror to the hold. The ill >As its blood poured upon the earth it starred craft now lies moored at Vicksburg, became small mosquitoes, that gathered about the holder of the Heavens and stung deserted by all the crew but one man, the him so sorely that he half repented the others believing that the monster is lying in service he had done to men. The tuscaroras wait for this particular boat to sink it out of say that this was one of two monsters that sight. stood on opposite banks of the seneca river and slew all men that passed. Hiawatha 118. The Monster Boar of Georgia killed the other one. On their reservation is a >Tales of gigantic wild boars remain a big stone marked by the form of the Sky Holder, that shows where he rested during the chase, thing in those parts of the South where wild while his tracks were until lately seen south pigs still roam free. Georgia had the of Syracuse, alternating with footprints of maybe-made-up tale of Hogzilla, which the mosquito, which were shaped like those weighed in at just over 1,000 lbs. Not to be a bird, and twenty inches long. At Brighton, outdone, an 11-year-old boy in Alabama is New York, where these marks appeared, reported to have killed a 1,051-lb. beasty 46

they were reverentially renewed by the new mountain of cotton bales, the chance Indians for many years traveler will see a negro furtively drop some tobacco over the railing into the yellow 120. Moskittos water. The Negro is not wasting his tobacco; >The naturalist in Paul Bunyan’s camp this is a ritual of sacrifice, to induce Old Al, classified these as birds. When Paul was the monarch, to smoke the kingly pipe he is logging the Chippewa River region the always carrying. For when Old Al smokes mosquitos were particularly troublesome. his pipe there comes a thick fog as the fumes They were so big that they could straddle the rise through the water; the boat can no stream and pick the passing lumberjacks off longer travel, and the roustabout may rest. the log drive. Sometimes a logging crew would find one of this position, quickly tie 122. Old Joe, The Legendary Catfish his legs to convenient trees and use him for >The old-time fishermen who lived near the a bridge across the river. Paul imported from falls of the Brazos, tell many yarns about Texas a drove of fighting bumblebees to “Old Joe”, a legendary catfish whose home combat the mosquitoes. They fought for a is in the Sumpter Hole, a deep and while, then made peace and intermarried. dangerous whirlpool just below the falls. He The result of this crossing made the situation is the oldest, biggest, and the most dreadful worse than ever before for the loggers. The catfish that ever lived in the river. No man offspring had stingers on both ends. has ever seen him, but in the silence of the night, many folk have heard his thunderous 121. Old Al, the River King splash, and in the morning they see >On certain late afternoons, say the negro undisputed evidences of his work. roustabouts, when the sun is sinking towards >The locals’ favorite fishing tackle is the the horizon, and the water becomes a throw line, a long, strong line with a weight mysterious purple, there will rise up before a and two or three hooks fastened to one end, steamboat a glistening alligator of a vastness and the other tied to the top of a small beyond description, carrying in one of its willow pole stuck upright into the ground, scaly paws a great pipe of tobacco, and with a small bell fastened on the top so that bearing on his enormous head a shiny it will ring when a fish is caught. The golden . For a moment this bizarre fishermen baits his hooks and throws them creature will remain before the vessel, far out into the river. Then he waits patiently surveying the river and the sandbars and the for the fish to bite. Some-times the bell rings cypress swamps beyond, then will flap his loudly and the fisherman runs only to find tail lazily, and disappears beneath the his line, pole, bell, and all gone. Whereupon surface, to sink back into the mud of the he mumbles to himself, “Old Joe done gone bottom from which he arose. And the and got my line.” roustabouts aboard the steamboat will >Often when a party is out late at night on shudder, and touch their good luck charms, the river, something strikes the boat with a or if the churchly Negroes, will breath a great. They’ll see boat sized spin sticking prayer; for they have seen Old Al, the River out of the water with fist sized scales King. At another time, in the cotton season, swimming away. After the frightened when the negroes have been toiling without fishermen right it, with much effort, they ceasing as the vessel moves from plantation shout “Old Joe is after us! Old Joe is after to plantation, picking up at each landing a us!” 47

>In a dangerous place like this where many >“There's a raspberry ratch a little further inexperienced people come to fish, there are down,” remarked the guide, “and I think many accidents. So whenever anyone is there's another nest near it. Want to take a drowned, the fishermen all remind each look?” other solemnly, “Old Joe done got ernother man.” >The tenderfoot followed him eagerly. There was the nest, sure enough, but all the 123. The Old Fire Dragaman eggs were gone—only a few shells left. The >Old Fire Dragaman is about the wickedest guide shook his head sadly. “It's the oomph's and biggest giant that ever roamed these work,” he explained. “He's a hard-looking hills. Some people believe he dug right up animal, the worst enemy the birds have in from the center of the earth bringing fire and nesting season. There's a big bounty on the brimstone with him. Nothin’ or nobody oomph, but he's sly and hard to get.” could stop him, and no one would live in the >“In case you see an animal about as big as places where he hung out. He was famous a dog, but looking like a cross between a big for takin’ people’s money and daughters. A lizard and a toad with long claws and with giant lizard, he roars fires and eats sharp spines all along his back and big spots everything to kip that inner fire burning. all over him, get him quick. He's an oomph. Nothing much can pierce his scaly hide, and He goes around hunting birds' nests, and his teeth could cut through iron. when he finds one he makes a noise deep down in his throat that sounds like ‘oomph, 124. Old Spider Legs oomph.’ That's how the old boy gets his >Old Spider Legs, also known as name.” Eight-legged Horse, was a strange creature that was sighted in America during the 19th 126. The Ozark Great Cats century by a lumberjack. As he traveled >In many parts of the ozark country one through the forest, he heard a sound of fast hears of the enormous wildcats; there are and numerous gallops. He then had a clear men who swear they have killed cats five vision of a horse that had eight legs placed feet high, weighing 200 pounds! A bobcat like the legs of a spider. The man mounted shot by Del Taylor, near Galena, Missouri, his horse and chased the beast, but could not in January, 1945, was the biggest I ever saw keep up and lost sight of it. Many have in the Ozarks. But it was very thin and heard it since, but no one has seen it again. probably weighed less than forty pound. >Marvel cave, near Notch, Missouri, was 125. The Oomph regarded with superstitious awe by man of >Down by the old logging road Mrs. the old-timers, who used to warn tourists Partridge was sitting on her nest. At the away from the place. A schoolteacher in approach of danger she scuttled off the nest Walnut Grove, Missouri, declared that one and hid in the underbrush. The intruders subterranean room was literally full of the counted fourteen pretty eggs. bones of panthers and great bobcats. All of 48

these animals for miles around, according to over in the Big Bend section of Haywood the old story, made their way into the cavern County that did that. Usually the shivering before they died, to leave their bodies with woman arrives home "devoid of linen," or those ancestors in the “cat room.” It is true ends up neck-deep in a mountain pool where that the bones of panthers and wildcats, she is rescued by her husband/father who along with those deer, elk, bears, and other shoots the painter. Mountain folk in western animals, have been found in Marvel Cave. North Carolina often tell stories that have >Many of the old settlers believe that been "passed down in the family" about how panthers (or painters) and wildcats have a their triple great-grandmothers had saved great appetite for human infants and will go their families from a painters. Drawn to the to almost any length to obtain one. It is said house by the smell of a newly butchered hog that they locate babies by smelling the (or a new-born child), the painter would mother’s milk as the babe gets fed. Wayman attack the cabin door and scream. The Hogue tells several stories of panthers resourceful woman would either pull her devouring babies. At Hogue’s own home, in spinning wheel close to the door and begin Van Buren county, Arkansas, a painter to spin or she would play a fiddle or other fought their dog to a standstill and came stringed instrument. The sound woul down the chimney after a five-day-old disconcert the painter, who would remain in infant. The beast was driven off Hogue’s a state of confusion until the husband or a mother, who tore open a straw mattress and neighbor arrived and killed the "charmed threw the straw on the fire, producing a beast." great blaze through which the painter could >Wilbur Zeigler and Ben Grosscup relate a not descend. frightening personal encounter with mountain painters in an abandoned cabin 127. The Painters alleged to be "hanted" by local hunters. The >There is nothing imaginary about the narrator of this story awakes in the night to painters that once lived in the Appalachians the sound of terrifying screams, thumps and and the Ozarks. In fact, a lot of folks tell me crashes. In the light of of a dying fire, the that they are still around. (See "Notes") author watches shadows move, and tries to However, the folklore associated with the create a rational explanation for the super-natural powers of the mountain gore-splattered floor. Eventually, he learns panther has more to do with imagination that several painters were in the cabin with than fact. The average native of him. While devouring a fresh kill, the can tell a "painter story," usually about their painters are frightened by a snow-slide great-great-great grandmother, who, when which strikes the cabin, cascades down the pursued through the woods by a painter, chimney and extinguishes the fire. Bolting distracted the beast by throwing articles of for the door, the painters (and a badly clothing behind her. There is a good one frightened companion) brush against the about a little woman named "Granny Pop" author and escape. Shortly after this 49

experience, four painters are found living in three Colors composing the Picture. the rock cliffs above the cabin and are Moreover, these 2 monsters are so well killed. painted that we cannot believe that any >All of these stories, whether true or not, savage is their author; for good painters in sound factual. It seems conceivable that a would find it difficult to reach that hungry mountain panther would behave in place Conveniently to paint them. Here is this matter. However, many tales describe approximately The shape of these monsters, painters as gigantic creatures with As we have faithfully Copied It." preternatural intelligence and senses; they can "smell the flesh of a new-born baby," or 129. The Phillyloo Bird the milk of a nursing mother. Driven to a >It had a long beak like a stork and long frenzy by these smells, the painters descend legs. It had no feathers to spare. It flew chimneys and murder entire families. In upside down the better to keep warm and some tales, they walk upright. Where is the avoid rheumatism in its long limbs. It laid line between and fact?. Probably Grade D eggs. somewhere around the point where the painter stands erect and begins knocking on 130. The Pinnacle Grouse doors with its paw. >This bird has only one wing. This enabled it to fly in only one direction about the top 128. Piasa of conical hill. The color of its plumage >The Piasa is a Native American dragon changed with the seasons and with the depicted in one of two murals painted by condition of the observers. Native Americans on bluffs (cliffsides) above the Mississippi River. In 1673 Father 131. The Poopampareno Jacques Marquette saw the painting on the >A man who was a great hunter got to limestone bluff and stated this "While thinking that he could do without the faithful Skirting some rocks, which by Their height dogs that had always helped him. He left a and length inspired awe, We saw upon one bowl of milk out for the hounds, but they of them two painted monsters which at first were too upset about being left behind to go made Us afraid, and upon Which the boldest near it. When they did, they found it turned savages dare not Long rest their eyes. They to blood. Now, the hunter was walking are as large As a calf; they have Horns on boldly through the woods when suddenly he their heads Like those of a deer, a horrible found himself face to face with a look, red eyes, a beard Like a tiger's, a face Poopampareno! There was only one place it somewhat like a man's, a body Covered with could be hurt, and that was right under its scales, and so Long A tail that it winds all chin. Anywhere else and the bullet would around the Body, passing above the head bounce off its skin like a rubber ball. He and going back between the legs, ending in a dropped his gun and ran up a tree. Fish's tail. Green, red, and black are the 50

>He didn’t stop climbing until he reached monster that is borne out by a score of the tip-top. When he looked down, his blood reputable citizens, who say they have seen ran cold. The Pooppampareno’s lips were the beast. The monster first made its drawn back from his terrible saw teeth and appearance here about a week ago. he was grinning at the hunter like this, and Wednesday Smith and Harty spied it close began to saw with his teeth. Through the to shore in shallow water. The creature is as bark he sawed, and into the wood. Then the big as an ox, is built like a kangaroo hunter called to his dogs as loud as he could: with-out legs, has a fluked tail, a long neck, >”Here, Sambo! And Ringo! Your master’s and a small head, with two horns. Smith almost gone! And a poo-pam and a poo, and emptied his rifle at the beast, but the bullets a poo-pam and a poo!” rattled off the hide. Then he and Harty >The voice echoed across the woods, and chased it and managed to fasten it with a the hounds heard their master’s call clearly. noose about the neck to a piling weighing a They came bolting, reaching just in time as ton. The monster dragged the piling into the the tree fell, and took the Poopmapareno by water as though it were a feather and swam the neck, slaying the beast. off.

132. The Powder Snake 134. The Purington Lake Monster >The powder snake was a giant serpent >Wright Marks and Plummer Purington living deep in the swamplands, praying on went down to Airwood Lake last Monday any and all that come near, cutting off the night hunting ducks and had an adventure village from any near by folk. It was named which they will long remember. The fact such because it would spray its victims in a that both of them had their heads shaved a black poisonous powder that would kill short time ago is all that saved their hair them quickly and painfully. When the snake from turning gray. They had found a good was sleeping in the marshland, a young boy place to lie down in the grass on the west searching for grass for his cattle to eat side of the lake and were waiting for the chanced upon the slumber beast. Using his ducks to come and be killed, when they grass cutting machete, he cut the beast’s were suddenly startled by a roaring and head off, with the body writhing and flailing hissing and a terrific splashing of water. and spewing the powder every which way, >They started to their feet and the sight that slaying the monster, but polluting the marsh met their gaze almost froze the blood in their for some time. veins. There, not a hundred feet away, wallowing about in the lake, was a ferocious 133. The Prudence Ilse Sea-Beast looking monster about fifteen feet long with >Charles Smith, watchman for the a horrible looking alligator-like head Narragansett Bay Oyster company at covered with scales and the jaws armed with Prudence island and Thomas Harty, a long, curved tusks. The body was also fisherman, tell a strange tale of a weird sea covered with huge scales of a dirty yellow 51

color. The creature had four legs and two uniform highway-sign-green. No one has long arms terminating in cruel looking claws ever lived to report a battle between a that looked as though they were sharpened Rhinelapus and a Hodag -- the monster that up for business. lives woods around an nearby town. >As the boys leaped from their place of concealment the monster spied them and 136. The Roperite immediately disappeared in the water only >In the foothills of the Sierras, where the to appear in a few minutes close to the Digger pine grows, dwells one of the most shore. Two guns were immediately leveled peculiarly specialized animals to be found and fired at the monster but he did not pause anywhere on the American continent. No a second. one knows its life-history, even >Emitting terrible blood-curdling roars he approximately, and many a discussion has made for the boys and they were obliged to been based upon the question as to whether turn and fly for their lives. After a chase of the beast is born, hatched from eggs, or half a mile the monster gave up and returned comes into existence spontaneously from to the lake while the boys made the best of some mountain cavern. The Digger Indians their way home. There is talk of organizing say that roperites are the spirits of early a party to thoroughly search the lake for the Spanish ranchers, and blood-curdling are the monster and capture him if possible. tales they tell of hapless creatures pursued Airwood Lake is about seven miles by the beast, snared with its marvelous southwest of Kensal and is quite a popular rope-like beak, and dragged to death through resort for picnic parties during the summer. thorny chaparral. No man or animal can hope to outrun it. It steps upon road-runners 135. The Rhinelapus or kicks them out of the way, and no >A rare triped, the three massive obstacle appears sufficient to stop its appendages of the Rhinelapus, each ending progress or even slacken its speed, as it in a three-clawed foot, form an arch-like seemingly half flies, half bounds across the tripod. This trio provides great stability, and rugged country which it inhabits. Its leathery enables the creature to scuttle in any skin is impervious to thorn and its direction like a titanic spider. Its lizard-like flipper-legs uninjured by the sharpest rocks. head is slung low, beneath its body, According to A. B. Patterson, of Hot allowing it to feed close to the ground. Its Springs, California, who saw the last one, massive horn, jutting over two feet roperite authentically reported, the animal from the neck above its skull, is a has a large set of rattles on its tail, which it frightening weapon. More frightening is its vibrates when in pursuit of game, thus rear end, thrust skyward in most gaits, a producing a whirling sound like that of giant sphincter of unknown power and intent. rattler. The effect of this upon an animal >It was originally reported to be yellow, but closely pursued may be imagined. this specimen has transmogrified into a Lumbermen operating in the region between 52

Pitt River and the southern end of the Sierras mink. The body is oddly are urgently requesting to make every effort flattened—somewhat the way old Hank to secure a living specimen of the roperite. McGinnis looked after he’d rolled off the porch roof following the annual firemen’s 137. The Rubberado dinner, and sort of spread himself out so fiat >Rubberado is one of the fearsome creatures we just slid him edgeways between a couple from the folklore of late-nineteenth- and of shed doors for a cofin. This shape makes early-twentieth-century American it possible for the Rumtifusel to drape lumbermen from Wisconsin and Minnesota. himself closely over a stump, or about the The rubberado is a species of porcupine butt of a tree standing near a tote-road, in whose flesh and thorns are extremely elastic, such adroit fashion that he may be mistaken making a skilful use of these corporal for a fine-fired fabric or coat that was characteristics, so that it could rebound by mistakenly discarded. Naturally, the the earth, moving by her. If a rubberado was passer-by, comes over to have a closer look. cooked, its meat became inedible.Bullets With a lightning-fast flick of its blanket-like ​ bounce right off of them. It's also advised body the Rumtifusel completely envelops its not to serve the meat on its own as it will victim. The numerous minute, sucking pores simply bounce around inside your mouth. lining the inner ventral surface are promptly Instead you need to prepare it in a stew. But brought into action, and in no time at all the be warned. Rubberado flesh imparts its bones are sucked clean. resiliency to whomever consumes it. You'll find yourself bouncing around and laughing 139. The Santer for a couple of days before the effect wears >One of the few marauding varmints off. reported below the Mason and Dixon line. Common in western North Carolina. Rarely 138. The Rumtifuself dangerous to mankind, but a frequent >A very ferocious animal of large size and predator on livestock. His body is long, strength. When at rest it wraps its thing body covered with reddish long hair, his head is about the trunk of a tree, a clever stratagem large, round, and bald. His legs and feet are for securing is prey. A lumberjack mistakes long, and his eyes are small with a mean it for a fur robe, approaches it and is look. His tail is almost as long as his body, thereafter missing. In luring a victim within and has eight hard knots in it. Looks like a its reach, this animal employs one of the string of beads. He can swing this flail with oldest strategic devices known—that of plenty of power and skill—enough to knock playing on the cupidity of its prey. Being a out a cow or a hog with one slap. And rather slow-gaited beast, it has to resort to obviously this tail can be effectively used in some form of low cunning. The Rumtifusel combat. But he can travel so fast he seldom is large, strong, and ferocious. The pelt is has to put up a scrap. Lives mostly in fine, long, and thick with a rich color like a wooded swamps in the neighborhood of 53

small villages where cattle and hogs are and people in the kingdom. Catorce wasn’t kept. A remarkably fast animal, but rarely interested in the prize the hand of the king’s seen. Its cry is a piercing, baby-like wail. daughter, since food was his only interest. Dogs will seldom run one. A calf known to But Catorce went to the sierra, killed the vile have been killed by one of these varmints dragon by cutting off its seven heads; then near Statesville, showed eight distinct removed the twin fangs of each head and bruises, seven on the body and one on the pocketed the, skinned the dragon and broken foreleg. The hair about each bruise stretched it over some trees to make a was severely singed. shelter. When someone else claimed the reward, bringing in the seven heads that 140. “The Serpent” Catorce had left behind, Catorce went to the >About twenty-five feet long, with a tail fiesta, and asked if the serpent heads had which tapers until within about five feet of fangs-and produced them when the time the end, where it broadens out to look much came. He didn’t want to marry a princess like a whale. Its head is approximately four who came up only to his knee, but had to feet long and triangular in shape. Its mouth obey the king. “So Catorce married. He is very long and was armed with two rows killed other serpents and and had to of triangular white teeth as sharp as those of marry other princesses, and he had his a shark, but in shape more like those of a rations every fourteen days as long as he . Its body is covered with a lived.” horny substance which is as much like the carapace of a terrapin which is brown in 142. The Side-hill winder color and of a greenish tinge. Its eyes are >More odd than this animal is the side-hill round like those of a fish. winder, a rabbit-like creature so called because he winds about the steep hills in 141. The Seven Headed Dragon only one direction; and in that his back >Another tale displays many of the Juan may be kept level, the down-hill legs are Oso stories’ motifs, and although it was longer than the uphill pair. He is seldom collected down in the state of Chihuahua, it caught; but the way to kill him is to head demonstrates the spread and variety of the him off with dogs when he is corkscrewing story from the borderlands. It is the tale of up a mountain. As the winder turns, his long Catorce, a man who ate fourteen of legs come up on the uphill side and tip him everything-indeed, he lived his life by over, an easy prey. His fat is the cure for fourteens. He was a terrific worker, but one diseases caused by will-am-alone, but to eat of his meals would wipe out his employer’s its flesh is to die a hard and sudden death. provisions-and livestock as well. His prowess earned him fame, until a king sent 143. The Skeeteroo for him to kill a seven-headed >Kwasin, the old Indian, stalked into the dragon-serpent that was destroying cattle camp to see his friend, the guide. The 54

tenderfoot was introduced to the red-skinned side were sharp spikes. The big cat would sit visitor. on a limb waiting for a victim. When one >“By the way,” remarked the guide to the passed beneath it would knock him down tenderfoot, “do you see those big scars on with the hard side then pick him up with the Kwasin's arms and neck? That's the work of spikes. Paul Bunyan’s crews suffered the billed mosquito. Tell us about it, continual losses from depredations of these Kwasin.” The Indian grunted, but remained big cats. silent. >“Long time since I've see any skeeteroos,” 145. The Silurian Salamander continued the old guide, “but years ago this >A snake haunts Wolf Pond, Pennsylvania, country used to be full of ’em. They grew as that is an alleged relic of the Silurian age. It big as and had a bill ’bout six or was last seen in September, 1887, when it eight inches long and as hard as steel. They unrolled thirty feet of itself before the eyes kept ’em sharper ’n needles, with two little of an alarmed spectator—again a fisherman. two-handed grindstones they had rigged up The beholder struck him with a pole, and in on the banks of the creek. Tell hint about the revenge the serpent capsized his boat; but he time a whole flock tackled you, Kwasin.” forbore to eat his enemy, and, diving to the >“No, you tell um,” requested the Indian bottom, disappeared. The creature had a gravely. black body, about twelve inches thick, >“Well, one time when Kwasin was coming ringed with dingy-yellow bands, and a down Fish Creek in his canoe a flock of ’em mottled-green head, long and pointed, like a come at him so he hurried to the banks of pike's. the stream, hauled his canoe out: turned it over, and got under it. The skeeteroos lit all 146. The Snallygaster over the canoe and pierced it full of holes >The snallygaster is a mythical beast with their sharp bills. Kwasin, to save resembling a dragon that inhabits the Blue himself, took a rock and clinched their bills Ridge Mountains near Braddock Heights, underneath, until, all of a sudden, the Maryland. This area was colonized by skeeteros flew away with his canoe! Isn't German immigrants around 1730. The that so, Kwasin” earliest stories describe that community >The Indian grunted solemnly being terrorized by a monster called Schneller Geist, which in German means 144. The Sliver Cat "quick spirit." The first incarnations of this >This fierce denizen of the pineries was a creature mixed the bird characteristics of a huge car with tasseled ears. Its fiery red eyes mermaid with the nightmare characteristics were in vertical instead of horizontal eye of a demon, ghouls or vampire. The slits. It had a very long tail with a snallygaster was described as a ball-shaped knob at its end. The lower side half-reptilian, half-bird, with a metal beak of this knob was bare and hard, on its upper lined with sharp teeth, and from time to time 55

were given tentacles similar to those of an that two calves and several head of young octopus. He silently jumps from the sky to stock are mysteriously missing, and the catch and take away his victims. Early opinion is general that they have been killed reports claim that this monster sucked the and eaten by the big snake. There appears to blood of its victims. The seven-pointed stars, be some truth in the story. The eleven feet which supposedly kept the snallygaster at portion of the skin of last year that was bay, can still be seen painted in the local found during a hunt for the reptile is now on stables. It has been suggested the legend was exhibition at the Court House at Eldora, and resurrected in the nineteenth century to scare R. H. McBride has organized a body of men the freed slaves. to prosecute the hunt until the monster is >News stories throughout February and taken. March 1909 describe encounters between local residents and a beast with "huge wings, 148. The Snawfus a good pointed bill, claws like steel hooks, >It is a white deer with huge horns that lives and an eye in the center of the forehead." It in the tops of the trees, jumping from branch was said that he emitted Squeaks "like a to branch like a monkey. When he does this locomotive whistle." A lot of publicity he shouts "Halley-loo! Halley-loo! " In the surrounded this series of appearances, with a autumn of the snawfus there exhales a blue Smithsonian Institution offering reward for smoke from his mouth, which slides up, its capture. President Theodore Roosevelt towards the sky, forming clouds of blue allegedly considered postponing a safari in haze. Africa to personally hunt the beast. 149. The Snoligoster 147. The Snake Monster >In the cypress swamps of the South, and >A FARMER living near Eldora, in , particularly in the region about Lake had three large valuable farm horses recently Okechobee, Florida, woodmen tell of a destroyed by a monster snake. When strange and dangerous animal known as the discovered they were literally crushed into a snoligoster. This creature is of enormous jelly. The farmer’s name is given as Gabriel proportions and is credited with a voracious Stout, and a neighbor of his, S. Carlin, lost a appetite. Worst of all, its appetite is only fine two-year-old colt that was killed by the appeased by the eating of human beings. In same snake. The whole neighborhood have form the snoligoster resembles a huge turned out in search of the monster, but all crocodile, but it is covered with long, glossy that they have been able to discover so far is fur and has no legs or fins, except one long a portion of his snakeship’s last year’s skin, spike on its back. A person wonders how an eleven feet in length, which is supposed to animal can manage to travel through the be only about a third of its entire length. water and mud of the swamp region where it Another farmer writes from the lives, but nature has provided it with a neighborhood of the monster’s whereabouts means for driving itself along. On the end of 56

its tail are three bony plates much turns green and it curls up in a cranberry resembling the propeller on a steamboat. marsh. During the summer it has These revolve at a terrific rate, driving the rudimentary legs, which enable it to creep animal like a torpedo boat through mud. slowly around and remain in the shade. They serve other purposes as well, for when >After the first snowstorm the wasset sheds a snoligoster catches an unfortunate its legs and starts south , dipping about in pickaninny, or even a fullgrown negro, the snow. It soon attains remarkable skill in which it delights to feed, it tosses the victim this method of travel, which enables it to up and backward so as to impale him upon surprise skulking varmints of many kinds. the spike fin, where several may be carried Later in the winter, when food becomes until sufficient for a meal have been scarce and more difficult to obtain, even collected. The snoligoster's tail is then wolves are snowdrifts. According to driven into the mud and revolved until a woodsmen, the tragedies of the far North are hole is scooped out and the victims scraped more numerous beneath the crusted snow off the spike and tossed in, whereupon the than above it. There is no telling how many snoligoster beats them into batter with its creatures are pulled down and eaten by the rapidly revolving propeller and inhales wasset, for this animal has a voracious them. appetite, comparable only to that of the wolverine, but since it is four times as big 150. The Snow Snake and forty times as active as the wolverine it >These reptiles came from over Siberia by must eat correspondingly more. frozen Bering Strait during the very cold >The only specimen of this beast ever year of the two winters. Being pure white in examined by white men was an imperfect color they were always more plentiful one on James Bay, where a party of during the winter time. They were very surveyors found an Indian in a peculiar poisonous and savage. Tanglefoot oil was canoe, which, upon exami-nation, was the only remedy for their bite. shown to be made from one wasset hide greatly stretched. There being no leg holes 151. The Snow Wasset in the white winter pelt, it is peculiarly >On the most northern logging camps of adapted to the making of shapely one-man Canada we hear of the snow wasset. This is canoes, which are said to be used also as surely an animal of the Boreal Zone. It is a sleds by the Indians. A whole battery of migratory animal, wintering in the dead-falls are believed to be used in trapping lumbering region between the Great Lakes a wasset, since it is impossible to tell in what and Hudson Bay and spending its summers direction the animal's body may extend. The far north in Labrador and the Barren trigger is set so that a dozen logs fall in from Grounds. Unlike most wild creatures of the all sides toward the bait, pinning the animal North, the wasset is said to hibernate during under the snow wherever he may be. only the warmest weather, when its hair 57

152. The Shoofly branches bounds down and across toward >Shoo flies are large aquatic flies native to a the tree it wishes to destroy. Striking shallow warm lake fourteen miles northeast squarely with its hard face, the splinter cat of Mud Lake in Washoe County, . passes right on, leaving the tree broken and They were discovered and appropriately shattered as though struck by lightning or named by prospectors. A shoo fly is black in snapped off by the wind. Appalling color, four inches long and with an abdomen destruction has been wrought by this animal three inches in circumference. The in the Gulf States, where its work in the transparent wings resemble those of a shape of a wrecked forest is often ascribed horsefly and produce a ten-inch wingspan. to windstorms. Shoo fly larvae are deep green in color, six inches long and four inches wide, and feed 154. The Split Dog on rushes; after roasting they look like sweet >Well, I saw him fall apart and I ran and potatoes and have a vegetable taste, making slapped him back together. I had jerked off them prized food commodities. Swarms of my shirt, so I wrapped him up in that right shoo flies buzz over the waters of the lake quick and ran to the house. Set him in a box and under it. The flies can go underwater and poured turpentine all over the shirt. I and produce an air bubble that forms around kept him near the stove. Set him out in the their heads. With this organic scuba gear, sun part of the time. Oh, I could see him still the flies can stay underwater indefinitely. breathin’ a little, and I hoped I wouldn’t lose him. And after about three weeks I could see 153. The Splinter Cat him tryin’ to wiggle now and then. Let him >A widely distributed and frightfully stay bandaged another three weeks, and then destructive animal is the splinter cat. It is one morning I heard him bark. So I started found from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, and unwrappin’ him and in a few minutes out he eastward to the Atlantic Ocean, but in the jumped, spry as ever. Rocky Mountains has been reported from >But, don’t you know, in my excitement, only a few localities. Apparently the splinter blame if I hadn’t put him together cat inhabits that part of the country in which wrong-way-to. He had two legs up and two wild bees and raccoons abound. These are legs down! Anyway, turns out he was twice its natural food, and the animal puts in every as good a rabbit dog after that. He’d run on dark and stormy night shattering trees in two legs till he got tired, and then flip it over search of coons or honey. It doesn't use any and just keep right on. judgement in selecting coon trees or >Aa Lord! That little dog could run goin’ trees, but just smashes one tree after another and comin’, and bark at both ends! until a hollow one containing food is found. The method used by this animal in its 155. The Squasholiger destructive work is simple but effective. It >Across the lake was a neat little cabin climbs one tree, and from the uppermost where an “old-timer” lived all the year 58

round. He raised quite a crop of vegetables, to be fairly common in the hemlock forests which he sold to campers. of that State. The squonk is of a very retiring >The old guide took the tenderfoot over disposition, generally traveling about at with him on a vegetable buying trip. “We'd twilight and dusk. Because of its misfitting like a couple of those fine squashes of yours, skin, which is covered with warts and moles, I've noticed lately they're coming along it is always unhappy ; in fact it is said, by great,” remarked the guide. people who are best able to judge, to be the >The wrinkled old woodsman shook his most morbid of beast. Hunters who are good head. “Sorry, but they're gone those were the at tracking are able to follow a squonk by its squasholiger variety, you know.” tear-stained trail, for the animal weeps >“Oh, sure,” nodded the guide, “That's the constantly. When cornered and escape walling kind ain't it?” seems impossible, or when surprised and >“Yep. They grow just like any other squash frightened, it may even dissolve itself in on vines, only heaps larger. And as they tears. Squonk hunters are most successful on ripen their eyes and legs come out and their frosty moonlight nights, when tears are shed month opens, and just before they're ready slowly and the animal dislikes moving about to walk, a piece of the vine turns into a tail, ; it may then be heard weeping under the and —presto! Off they go!” boughs of dark hemlock trees. Mr. J. P. >Don't you ever get them?” asked the Wentling, formerly of Pennsylvania, but tenderfoot. now at St. Anthony Park, Minnesota, had a >Nope. You see their green color helps them disappointing experience with a squonk near hide in the underbrush. But I don't Mont Alto. He made a clever capture by understand losing them, because they stay mimicking the squonk and inducing it to hop around the place and live on bugs and into a sack, in which he was carrying it insects, so you see they're considerable help. home, when suddenly the burden lightened They're a rare variety, though. Isn't often I and the weeping ceased. Wentling unslung raise any of 'em.” the sack and looked in. There was nothing but tears and bubbles. 156. The Squidgicum-Squee >Like the Wunk of the same area, the 158. The Stone County Monster Squidgicum-Squee is very shy, not wanting An upright standing tan-colored panther to ever be seen. When it hears or sees with a long tail and enormous teeth. someone or something approaching, it takes a deep breath and swallows itself. 159. The Stone Spirit Dragon >Spirit Canon, a rocky gorge that extends 157. The Squonk for three miles along the Big Sioux River, >The range of the squonk is very limited. Iowa, was hewn through the stone by a spirit Few people outside of Pennsylvania have that took the form of a dragon. Such were its ever heard of the quaint beast, which is said 59

size and ferocity that the Indians avoid the nose tight in the hole until the boat can be place, lest they fall victim to its ire. beached.

160. The Sturgeon 162. The Swan Valley Monster >Michael Pauw, brave fisherman of >The Swan Valley Monster made its Paterson, New Jersey, hero of the fight with appearance on August 22, 1868, in the the biggest snapping turtle in Dover Slank, otherwise tranquil locale of Swan Valley, wearer of a scar on his seat of honor as Idaho. Its presence was witnessed and memento of the conflict member of the reacted to by an unnamed old-timer crossing Kersey Reds-he whose presence of mind the river at Olds Ferry. The first thing he was shown in holding out a chip of St. saw of the monster was an elephant’s trunk Nicholas’ staff when he met the nine rising from below the surface and spouting witches of the rocks capering in the mists of water. This was followed by a snake-like Passaic Falls-gave battle from a boat to a head the size of a washtub, with a single monster that had ascended to the cataract. horn that kept moving up and down, and One of the Kersey Reds, leaning out too far, long black whiskers on both sides of the fell astride of the horny beast, and was face. It had ten-inch-long fangs and a red carried at express speed, roaring with fright, forked tongue that spewed green poison. until unhorsed by a projecting rock, up When it hauled its massive body onto the which he scrambled to safety. Falling to shore, the old-timer noted that it must have work with bayonets and staves, the company been twenty feet long, and it stank to high despatched the creature and dragged it to heaven. A pair of wing-like fins – or fin-like shore. One of the Dutchman, who was quite wings – came out of the sides of its neck. Its a traveler, having been as far from home as forward half was like a snake, the thickness Albany, said that the thing was what the Van of a calf, greenish-yellow with red and black Rensselaers cut up for beef, and believed spots; this in turn led into a fish-like section that they called it a sturgeon. with hand-sized rainbow scales shining in the sun; finally, the tail was a drab, scaly 161. The Swamp Auger gray like a lizard tail. Shiny black barbed >This boy, often mistaken for an old snag, is spines, like those of a porcupine, lined its found in fresh-water lakes. He carries a back from head to tail. Finally, it had twelve swivelled proboscis especially adapted to stubby legs that were easily missed at first boring three-inch holes in the bottoms of glance; the first pair under the fins had boats, and will do so unless stopped. But his hoofs, followed by two pairs of legs with work can be easily halted either by tickling razor-sharp claws, then a pair of hoofed feet, his snout or by sprinkling it with cayenne a pair of clawed feet, and another pair of pepper. Either procedure will make the hoofed feet near the tail. Of course, the Auger sneeze violently, which he hugely old-timer’s first reaction to the abomination enjoys, and he will then hold his expectant slithering up the bank was to fire a slug into 60

its eye. The monster reared up, hissing, had not long to wait. I heard a sound as if bellowing, and spurting poison over its the dead limbs of trees, willows and alders surroundings. Everything its poison had that grew in the canyon were being broken touched, whether trees or grass or other and crushed. Soon the monster appeared, living beings, withered and died. As the slowly making his way in the direction monster was too large to be carried off by where I was hidden in the tree-top, and one man, the old-timer returned to town to passed on to the lake within fifty feet of fetch a wagon and six strapping lads to help where I was, and as his snakeship got by, him, as well as a tarp to protect them from and I partly recovered from my fright, I the poison. They could smell the odoriferous began to look him over and to estimate his creature a hundred yards away. immense size. After his head had passed my tree about seventy feet, he halted and reared 163. The Sysladobosis Monster his head in the air fifty feet or more, and I >Sysladobosis Lake, in Maine, has a snake was thankful that the large pine hid me from with a head like a dog's, but it is hardly his sight, and I dared to breathe again as he worth mentioning because it is only eight lowered his head to the ground and moved feet long-hardly longer than the name of the on. lake. More enterprise is shown across the >His monstrous head was about fourteen border, for Skiff Lake, New Brunswick, has feet wide, and the large eyes seemed to be a similar snake thirty feet long. about eight inches in diameter, and shining jet black, and seemed to project more than 164. The Tahoe half this size from the head. The neck was >The horrid lake monster of . about ten feet, and the body in the largest All this did not occupy much time, and I portion must have been twenty feet in began to wonder what was up. My dog kept diameter. I had a chance to measure his looking up the canyon and was evidently length, for when he halted his tail reached a alarmed, and I began to feel shaky myself. fallen tree, and I afterward measured the All at once the dog set up a howl and started distance from the tree, where I was hidden for home, eight miles away, running as fast to the fallen tree and it measured 510 feet, as dog could run, and going under the cabin and as seventy or eighty feet had passed me, staid there two days and nights and no it made his length about 600 feet. The skin amount of coaxing could get him to come was black on the back, turning to a reddish out sooner, and never after would the dog go yellow on the side and belly, and must have in the direction of the lake. I began to feel been very hard and tough, as small trees two that some unknown danger was near, and and three inches in diameter were crushed looking about me, saw a spruce tree with and broken without any effect on his tough very thick limbs, standing near a very large hide. Even bowlders of 500 or 600 pounds pine. I climbed un about sixty feet from the weight lying on the surface of the ground ground and began to look up the canyon. I were pushed out of the way. His snakeship 61

slowly made his way to the lake, glided in nocturnal activities. Its claws are its main and swam toward the foot. weapon. The Tailypo can speak like a man, >This serpent has been seen by several of and demands the return of its tail (the actual the old settlers at the lake since that time, phrase varies between versions, but is but it was generally agreed that it would be always repeated, usually three times): useless to tell the world the story, knowing "Taily-po, Taily-po...who has my that it would not be believed. I will give a Taily-po..." few names of the early settlers that have seen his snakeship at different times since I 166. The Teakettler first saw him. Wiliam Pomin, now living in >A small animal which obtains its name San Francisco; John McKinney, Ben McCoy from the noise which it made, resembling and Bill McMasters, all at that time living that of a boiling teakettle. Clouds of vapor on Sugar Pine Point; Homer Burton, now issued from its nostrils. It would often living in Sacramento; Captain Howland of retreat backwards, enveloping himself and the old steamer Governor Blaisdell, Tony his surroundings in a thick fog. The hot and Burk, fishermen living near Friday’s steam it bellows can also be used as a station; Rube Saxton, now at the lake, and weapon, scalding those that come after it. several others could be named. But few woodsmen have ever seen one. >I know many will doubt this story, but sooner or later his snakeship will be seen by 167. The Teelget so many that all doubt will be removed. I >As one of the Anaye, the “Alien Gods” of was induced to write this description by Navajo folklore, Teelget was born from a reading an article in THE CALL of last human woman who resorted to unnatural Sunday, stating that there was a living and evil practices. In this case, his “father” mastodon in Alaska and that it had been was an antler. The creature born was round, seen by the natives. Believing that I have hairy, and headless, and was cast away in seen a more wonderful sight and, as in time horror; it was this creature that grew into the my story is sure to be verified, venture to monster known as Teelget. The origin of give this to the public. Teelget’s name is not known with certainty, but the “tê” makes reference to his horns. He 165. Tailypo is like an enormous, headless elk or >Tailypo is a frightening ravenous cat-like antelope, rounded in shape, hairy like a creature of North American folklore, gopher, with antlers he uses as deadly particularly in Appalachia. The Tailypo is weapons. Coyote was his spy, and between usually described as being the size of a dog, him and the other Anaye they laid waste to with yellow or red eyes, pointed ears and a the land, slaughtering many. long tail. In some versions of the folktale, it has tufted ears like a bobcat. It is covered in 168. The Terrible Blue Racer black or dark brown fur to camouflage its 62

>The blue racer was an ophidian calculated >This creature, the banalorous three-tailed, to cause the hair of the small boy to stand on is half bird, half mammal. While its front is end like the quills of the fretful porcupine. covered with feathers, its back was covered Nothing could exceed the fiendish malignity with fur. It has the legs of a cow or a buffalo of this snake, whose powers of locomotion and a horned head in the shape of a were incredibly swift and whose appetite for corkscrew. This being has three tails: one is boy was forever on edge. And it was only by flat and uses it as a seat, another is prickly relieving himself of all impediments, such as with a pointed end and uses it as a weapon, the bucket containing his small store of and the other is a peacock tail used to ward berries or his fishing tackle and can of bait, off flies that a boy was able to avoid capture. It was the current belief that when the blue racer 170. The Timmerdoodle came up with his prey be swiftly infolded >The timmerdoodle is a small mammal that the unlucky wight in his deadly coils, was said to have lived in the United States crushed the life out of him and then of the nineteenth and early twentieth devoured him at his leisure. So far as history centuries. The timmerdoodle bounds goes and the mortuary records show no boy towards unfortunate souls that wander into was ever cut off in the bloom of his youth by its hunting grounds, and bites then with his a blue racer, but disasters of this kind were fierce jaws, not letting go until he hears only avoided by the remarkable fleetness of thunder. Once a man named Sam McSneed foot displayed on such occasions. was bitten by a timmerdoodle; Two months >His terror gave him strength passed before a storm struck in the vicinity and added wings to his feet, and the blue and the beast released him. racer was incontinently left in the shade. The blue racer, according to a cloud of youthful 171. The Tonnage Rat witnesses who have testified thereto, was a >The tonnage rat is one of the creatures of snake ranging from 11 to 16 feet long, the the old tales of American loggers. It lives in average length being about 15 feet. Its the mountains and leaves during the rocky aspect was threatening in the extreme, and landslides. After a rocky detachment, gather its eyes gleamed with a baleful and hungry the rocks and place them back in their light. As it reared its ugly head four or five location. The female lays large square eggs. feet above the surface in search of the trembling youngsters his underside was seen 172. The Tote-road Shagamaw to be of a bright blue color, and from this >From Rangeley Lakes to Allegash and fact and his swift movements be received his across in New Brunswick loggers tell of an apt and distinguishing name. Blue racers are animal which puzzled many a man, even as scarce as hens’ teeth now. those who were not strangers in the woods. Frequently the report is circulated that the 169. The Three-tailed Banalorous tracks of a bear have been seen near camp, 63

but a little later this is denied and moose five inches long, and folding by three joints. tracks are reported instead. Heated His body is about as big as the first joint of a arguments among the men, sometimes man's thumb. Under his throat is a wind bag, resulting in fist fights, are likely to follow. It which assist him in singing the word I-sa-ac is rightly considered an insult to a all the night. When it rains, and is very dark, woodsman to accuse him of not being able he sings the loudest. His voice is not so to distinguish the track of either of these pleasing as that of a nightingale; but this animals.To only a few of the old timber would be a venial imperfection, if he would cruisers and rivermen is the explanation of but keep silence on Saturdays nights, and these changing tracks is known. Gus Demo, not forever prefer I-sa-ac to Abraham and of Oldtown, Maine, who has hunted and Jacob. He has more elasticity than any other trapped and logged in Maine woods for 40 creature in known existence. By this means years, once came upon what he recognized that he can leap over 6 yards up a tree, and as the tracks of a moose. After following it can hop successfully from tree to tree. It is for about 80 rods it changed to moose by its singing that the Americans have tracks. It was soon observed by Mr. Demo acquired the name of little Isaac. that these changes took place precisely every quarter mile, and that these whatever made 174. The Tree Octopus these tracks followed a tote road or a blazed >You will find the Pacific Northwest Tree line through the woods. Coming within sight Octopus high in the trees of Washington of the animal, Gus saw a 20-foot-tall State's Olympic National Forest. They spend creature with the fore-legs of a bear, and the their early lives in the water of Puget Sound, hind legs that of a moose. He observed it but as they mature they move upwards, marching carefully with its long legs, adopting an arboreal existence. They use stepping precisely at a yard a step, then their eight arms to swing from branch to stopping on a pivot, and switching to from branch, as well as to grab small prey such as its fore to its hind legs. He concluded that insects and frogs. During their mating Tote-Road Shagamaw must have been season they return to the water, but soon originally a very imitative creature, after resume their life in the forest. The tree developing to fool hunters. He reasoned that octopus population is under great pressure the Shagamaw can only count to 440; from the encroachments of the modern therefore it must invert itself every quarter a world: logging, roads, pollution, and mile overhunting by trappers eager to sell the octopuses as ornamental decorations for 173. The Tree-frog hats. >The tree-frog cannot be called an insect, a reptile, or one of the winged host; he has 175. The Treesqueak four legs, the two foremost shit, with claws >Like the argopelter, the treesqueak is a as sharp as those of a squirrel; the hind legs master of arboreal camouflage. As one 64

might guess from the name, these shy >A hunter was in the woods one day in creatures are heard but not seen. Their winter when suddenly he saw a panther preferred nesting areas and singing spots are coming toward him and at once prepared to where the branches of two trees cross, and defend himself. The panther continued to they are particularly vocal when the wind is approach, and the hunter was just about to blowing. Owing to the difficulty of catching shoot when the animal spoke, and at once it a treesqueak, it was a logical object for the seemed to the man as if there was no 'snipe hunts' that credulous green loggers difference between them, and they were were sent on - competing with the snipe both of the same nature. The panther asked itself, which varies widely (variously him where he was going, and the man said reported as feathered, furred, or both, on that he was looking for a deer. "Well," said two, three, or four legs) but is universally the panther, "we are getting ready for a uncatchable and rarely resembles the Green-corn dance, and there are seven of us shorebird of the same name. out after a buck, so we may as well hunt together." 176. The Tripodero >The hunter agreed and they went on >The Tripodero lives in areas of dense brush together. They started up one deer and and undergrowth, hunting for birds and another, but the panther made no sign, and other small animals that are its main source said only "Those are too small; we want of food. When it sees some prey, the something better." So the hunter did not tripodero slowly extends its legs, just as the shoot, and they went on. They started up legs of a photographer's tripod can be another deer, a larger one, and the panther extended, thereby raising its body above the sprang upon it and tore its throat, and finally brush. When it has a clear line of sight, the killed it after a hard struggle. The hunter got tripodero then shoots a mud pellet (a supply out his knife to skin it, but the panther said of which it stores in its left cheek) out of its the skin was too much torn to be used and blowgun-like snout. It rarely misses. Once they must try again. They started up another the prey is stunned, the tripodero can large deer, and this the panther killed consume it at its leisure. The tripodero is without trouble, and then, wrapping his tail usually reported as having two legs, rather around it, threw it across his back. "Now, like a bird, and a kangaroo-like tail that it come to our townhouse," he said to the uses to balance itself while aiming. hunter. However, four-legged varieties of the >The panther led the way, carrying the Tripodero have also been seen. These lack captured deer upon his back, up a little the long tail. When its legs are not extended, stream branch until they came to the head the Tripodero can move quite rapidly spring, when it seemed as if a door opened through the brush. in the side of the hill and they went in. Now the hunter found himself in front of a large 177. The Underground Panther townhouse, with the finest detsänûñ'lï he had 65

ever seen, and the trees around were green, the size of a sausage dog, but is not even and the air was warm, as in summer. There distantly related to the canine family. The was a great company there getting ready for wapaloosie, according to lumberjacks, lives the dance, and they were all panthers, but upon shelf fungus or conchs exclusively, somehow it all seemed natural to the hunter. and he is able to get them with ease, no After a while the others who had been out matter if they are growing on the tip top of a came in with the deer they had taken, and hundred-foot dead tree. It is a pleasure for the dance began. The hunter danced several one of these animals to climb, for he has feet rounds, and then said it was growing late and toes like those of a woodpecker, and he and he must be getting home. So the humps himself along like a measuring panthers opened the door and he went out, worm. Even his tail is spiked at the tip and and at once found himself alone in the aids him as he mounts the lofty firs in woods again, and it was winter and very of food. cold, with snow on the ground and on all the >One of the most peculiar features of the trees. When he reached the settlement he animal was discovered only recently. A found a party just starting out to search for lumberjack in one of the camps on the him. They asked him where he had been so Humptulips River, Washington, shot a long, and he told them the story, and then he wapaloosie, and upon examining its velvety found that he had been in the panther coat decided that it would make an attractive townhouse several days instead of only a and serviceable pair of mittens, which he very short time, as he had thought. proceeded to make. The hide was tanned >He died within seven days after his return, thoroughly and the mittens made with care, because he had already begun to take on the fur side out, and as the lumber jack went to panther nature, and so could not live again work he exhibited them with pride. Imagine with men. If he had stayed with the panthers his surprise upon talking hold of an ax to he would have lived. find that the mittens immediately worked their way up and off the handle. It was the 178. The Upland Trout same with whatever he took hold of, and, >These very adroit fish built their nests in finding that he could not use the mittens, the trees and were very difficult to take. they were left in a skid road, and were last They flew well but never entered the water. seen working their way over logs and litter They were fine panfish. Tenderfeet were across the slashing. sent out into the woods to catch them. 179. The Wamp 178. The Wapaloosie >“How's the deer hunting this year?” asked >In the damp forests of the Pacific coast and the new arrival at camp importantly, as he eastward as far as the St. Joe River, in north leaned on his shiny new gun and looked Idaho, ranges a quaint little beast, known proudly down at his well pressed, unspotted among loggers as the wapaloosie. It is about hunting suit. 66

>The old guide looked him over slowly half-woman. This terrifying creature is the before he drawled, “Pretty good. Pretty Wampus Cat. Generally on the prowl in good. And I've seen the tracks of a wamp northeastern , the creature has also around here lately, too, and that means more been spotted in eastern Kentucky, Virginia, deer than ever. Yes. sir!” West Virginia and, intriguingly, at the >“The wamp?” asked the newcomer University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Some politely. claim it lives in Knoxville's fetid sewers. >“Every deer hunter knows about the Despite innumerable reported sightings, no Wamp,” replied the guide witheringly, “He's photos of the creature exist. There are about the size of a coon, with a gray body, several stories about how the Wampus Cat shaped like a salt sack and a hollow tail with came to be. Here are two. One says a a salt shaker on the end of it.” Cherokee wife hid beneath the skin of a >“A salt shatter?” repeated the tenderfoot mountain lion to spy on her husband and his doubtfully. buddies while they were hunting. They >“Sure. Don't you know how crazy deer are discovered her and, as punishment, the about salt. Well, the wamp goes around tribe's medicine man said she had to wear shaking salt at the roots of trees every few the lion's skin forevermore, turning her into miles, and the deer lick it up and run to tell a cat-woman. Anguished, she roams around their friends about it.” bemoaning her fate. Another tale says a >The hunter looked at the guide Cherokee warrior went on the hunt for a thoughtfully, but the old woodsman, with beast that was terrorizing his tribe. When he solemn face, was looking out across the tracked it down, it looked him straight in the bronzed woods, as though at any minute one eye, causing the warrior to go insane. The of his weird animals might come slinking in warrior's wife wasn't happy about this, so between the I tall trees, or peer at them from she hid under the skin of a mountain lion behind a flaming bush. and stalked the beast to exact revenge. When she found it, the beast took one look at her 180. The Wampahoofus and fled, petrified. To this day, the woman's >A Vermont variation of the sidehill winder spirit still wanders the area, dressed as a is known as the Wampahoofus. It was mountain lion. reported that farmers crossbreed them with their cows so they could graze easily on 182. The Whapperknocker mountain sides. >The Whapperknocker is somewhat larger than a weasel, and of beautiful brown 181. The Wampus Cat colour. He lives in the woods on worms and >It smells awful, like skunk spray and wet birds; is so wild that no one can tame him, dog. It has glowing yellow eyes and fangs. It and, as he never quits his harbour in the kills animals, kidnaps kids and terrifies all it day-time, is only to be taken by traps at meets. Creepiest of all, it's half-cat, night. Of the skins of these animals-- which 67

are covered with an exceedingly fine fur-- notice of a storm. It never deceives the are made muffs, at the price of thirty or forty people with false news,. If the tempest is to guineas apeice; so that it is not without continue long, the augurs appear in flocks, reason the ladies pride themselves on the and nothing can be heard but Pope! pope! possession of this small appurtenance of The Whippoorwill is about the size of a female habiliment. cuckoo, has a short beak, long and narrow wings, a large head, and mouth enormous, 183. The Whangdoodle yet not a bird of prey. Under its throat is a >A whangdoodle is a creature of pocket, which it fills with air at pleasure, indefinite and indeterminate nature, whereby it sounds forth the fatal word Pope appearing in certain popular phrases or in the day, and Whip-her-I-will in the night. songs, whose figure would be further The superstitious inhabitants would have popularized through children's literature. It exorcised this harmless bird long ago, as an seems that the origin of these beings is emissary from Rome and an an enemy to the American, situating it around the year 1856, American Vine, had they not found out that being popularized by appearing in a paródy it frequents New England only in the sermon attributed to William P. Brannan summer, and prefers the wilderness to a that read "Where the lion roareth and the palace. Nevertheless, many cannot but whangdoodle mourneth for her first-born,” believe it a spy from some foreign court, an published in" The Harp of a Thousand agent of the antichrist, a lover of Strings: Or, Laughter for a Lifetime"(1858). persecution, and an enemy of the Whangdoodle was an earlier term used to Protestants, because it sings of whipping and designate something fantastic or imaginary the Pope, which they think portends misery or to designate a thing whose correct name and a change of religion is unknown. 185. The Whiffenpoof 184. The Whippoorwill >A tasty fish, found only in perfectly round >The Whippoorwill has so named itself by lakes. Hence quite rare. To catch him, row its nocturnal songs. It is also called the Pope, to the exact center of the lake, using the by reason of its darting with great swiftness hogyoke to determine position, and bore a from the clouds to the ground and bawling square hole in the water. Bait the edge of out Pope, which alarms young people and this hole with a bit of cheese, preferably the fanatics very much, especially as they Brie, Stilton, Liederkranz, or best of all; know it to be an ominous bird. However, it Limburger. The Whiffenpoof will quickly has hitherto proved friendly, always giving scent the bait and come for it. When he travelers and others notice of approaching emerges, spit tobacco-juice in his eye. This storm by saluting them every minute by will make him so swell with rage that he Pope! Pope! It flies only a little before won’t be able to withdraw into the hole, and sunset, unless for this purpose of giving you can easily net him. 68

the whing-whang leaves his resting place 186. The Whiffle-Pooffle and devotes himself to writing his name in >”But they ain’t near as shy as the the sand again and again. As the night lights whiffle-poofle. Why, them things so bashful up and the sun begins to rise, whing-whang they don’t feel comfortable unless they’re erases everything he has written and then hid in the bottom of a bottomless lake,” says quickly disappears. Joe. >“Are they a fish?” asked Lanky. 189. The Whirling Whimpus >”Not exactly a fish,” explained Joe, “a sort >Occasionally it happens that inexperienced of cross, I reckon, between an eel and a gila hunters and others wandering in the woods monster.” disappear completely. Guides are unable to >”Are there any ariund here?” asked Lanky. locate them, and all kinds of theories are >”Well, maybe,” replied Joe; “maybe a few. offered to explain the disappearances. Still I doubt it. You see right around here the >From the hardwood forests of the lakes go dry sometimes in the dry season, Cumberland Mountains, Tennessee, comes and the whiffle-poofle wants water, and the rumor of an animal called the whirling plenty of it, mucha agua. Still there may be a whimpus, the existence of which may throw few. They have teeth that’ll tear through some light upon the fate of those who fail to buffalo hide like it were nothing at all, and come back to camp. According to crawl up on shore when one of them fellars woodsmen who have been “looking” timber gets too close to the waterin’ hole. Thing is, in eastern Tennessee, the whimpus is a they won’t ever strike unless they’re certain blood-thirsty creature of no mean that there ain’t nobody else around proportions. It has a gorilla-shaped head and body and enormous front feet. Its unique 187. The Whimpering method of obtaining food is to station itself >The whinging or whimpering is a upon a trail, generally at a bend in the trail, miserable beggar who sobs so pathetically where it stands on its diminutive hind legs that once he knocked down a whole and whirls. The speed is increased until the population of wolves who died of pure grief animal is invisible, and the motion produces upon hearing it. a strange droning sound, seeming to come from trees overhead. Any creature coming 188. The Whing-Whang along the trail and not recognizing the sound >Whing-whang is a very peculiar creature, a is almost certain to walk into the danger separate case among fearsome creatures zone and become instantly deposited in the from the folklore of American loggers. It form of syrup or varnish upon the huge paws goes unnoticed during the day and lives near of the whimpus. the beach. For most of the time he lives his life without being seen or heard. However, 190. Whirligig Fish on those nights when the moon turns , 69

>Related to the Goddy Fish. They always held true. That summer when the deer came swam in circles. They were taken in the with a fawn as white and graceful as herself, winter months through holes in the ice like it was a year of great abundance. On the their relatives. The loggers smeared the outbreak of the French and Indian War a edges of the holes with ham or bacon rind. young officer named Montalbert was Smelling this fish would swim around the despatched to the Berkshire country to rims of the holes, faster and faster, until they persuade the Housatonic Indians to declare whirled themselves out on the Ice. hostility to the English, and it was as a guest Thousands were thus taken. in the village of Onota that he heard of the white deer. Sundry adventurers had made 191. The Whistling Whoo-Hoo valuable friendships by returning to the A huge wildcat with supernatural French capital with riches and curiosities intelligence and a talent for making from the New World. Even Indians had been beguiling sounds. Some species can whistle, abducted as gifts for royalty, and this young and lure hapless hunters and woodsmen to ambassador resolved that when he returned their doom by whistling at them from "dark to his own country the skin of the white deer cedar thickets." Lumberjacks often explain should be one of the trophies that would win the disappearance of a fellow worker by him a smile from Louis. saying, "I guess the Whistler got him." In >He offered a price for it—a price that addition to whistling, some wampus cats would have bought all their possessions and give calls - usually "Hoo-Hoo" or miles of the country roundabout, but their "Whoo-Hoo." The combination is deer was sacred, and their refusal to sacrifice supposedly irresistable, something like the it was couched in such indignant terms that call in Greek mythology. The folklore he wisely said no more about it in the of other regions have some fascinating general hearing. There was in the village a near-kin of the "Whistling Wampus." drunken fellow, named Wondo, who had come to that pass when he would almost 192. The White Deer of Onota have sold his soul for liquor, and him the >Beside quiet Onota, in the Berkshire Hills, officer led away and plied with rum until he dwelt a band of Indians, and while they promised to bring the white doe to him. The lived here a white deer often came to drink. pretty beast was so with men that So rare was the appearance of an animal like she suffered Wondo to catch her and lead this that its visits were held as good omens, her to Montalbert. Making sure that none and no hunter of the tribe ever tried to slay was near, the officer plunged his sword into it. A prophet of the race had said, "So long her side and the innocent creature fell. The as the white doe drinks at Onota, famine snowy skin, now splashed with red, was shall not blight the Indian's harvest, nor quickly stripped off, concealed among the pestilence come nigh his lodge, nor foeman effects in Montalbert's outfit, and he set out lay waste his country." And this prophecy for Canada; but he had not been many days 70

on his road before Wondo, in an access of on him so rapidly that, if the dog had had misery and repentance, confessed to his half the meanness in his nature that some share of the crime that had been done and people have, the spectacle would have was slain on the moment. warmed his heart, for it was a prompt and >With the death of the deer came an end to severe revenge for his sufferings. And to the good fortune. Wars, blights, emigration last the hunter could not decide whether the followed, and in a few years not a wigwam beating that he received was prompted by was left standing beside Onota. indignation or vengeance. >There is a pendant to this legend, incident to the survival of the deer's white fawn. An 193. The White River Monster English hunter, visiting the lake with dog >Some believe the White river monster may and gun, was surprised to see on its southern have affected the Civil War. The river was bank a white doe. The animal bent to drink used for transportation, and the monster was and at the same moment the hunter put his supposedly responsible for overturning a gun to his shoulder. Suddenly a howl was boat. Several accounts have been recorded, heard, so loud, so long, that the woods describing it “as wide as a car and three cars echoed it, and the deer, taking alarm, fled long," and having "the skin of an elephant, like the wind. The howl came from the dog, four or five feet wide by twelve feet long, and, as that animal usually showed sagacity with the face of a catfish, . . . lolling on the in the presence of game, the hunter was surface of the water," and "It looked as if the seized with a fear that its form was thing was peeling all over, but it was a occupied, for the time, by a who lived smooth type of skin or flesh," said one, and alone in the "north woods," and who was it made strange noises that sounded like a reputed to have appeared in many combination of a "cow's moo and a horse's shapes—for this was not so long after witch neigh." Other accounts of the White River times that their influence was forgotten. Monster described three-toed tracks, 14 >Drawing his ramrod, the man gave his dog inches in length. such a beating that the poor creature had something worth howling for, because it 194. The Will-am-alone might be the witch that he was thrashing. >The Will-am-alone is a quick little animal, Then running to the shanty of the suspected like a squirrel, that rolls in its fingers in woman he flung open her door and poison-lichens into balls and drops them into demanded to see her back, for, if she had the ears and on the eyelids of sleeping men really changed her shape, every blow that he in the camp, causing them to have strange had given to the dog would have been dreams and headaches and to see unusual scored on her skin. When he had made his objects in the snow. It is the hardest drinkers meaning clear, the crone laid hold on the in the camp who are said to be most easily implement that served her for horse at night, and most often affected by the poison. Can and with the wooden end of it rained blows 71

be fatal when mixed with those liquors made creature makes a moan like the sound of the in prohibition states wind.

195. The Windigo 197. The Wunk >But the worst of all is the windigo, that >Most of us have been outdoors at night and ranges from labrador to moosehead lake, seen a dim shape with bright glowing eyes. preferring the least populous and thickest Sometimes this turns out to be a cat, skunk, wooded districts. A Canadian Indian known or raccoon - but if it turns and disappears as Sole-o'-your-foot is the only man who before you can make out details, what ever saw one and lived-- for merely to look you've seen is, indubitably, a wunk. Unlike upon the windigo is doom, and to cross his many , the wunk is track is deadly peril. There is no need to common in populated areas and even cross the track, for it is plain enough. His ventures into cities from time to time. Its footprints are twenty-four inches long, and method of eluding predators is similar to in the middle of each impress is a red spot, that of the wombat of Australia, which showing where his blood oozed through the quickly digs a burrow with its powerful hole in his mocassin; for the windigo, dark claws and plugs the entrance with its and huge and shadowy as he seems, has yet armored backside. The wunk does the a human shape and many human attributes. wombat one better - not content to leave any That belief in this monster is so genuine that part of itself exposed, it reaches back and lumbermen have secured a monopoly of pulls the hole in after it, leaving no trace. certain jobs by scaring competitors out of (As if this were not enough, rumor has it that the neighborhood through simple device of the wunk could change its shape if it wished, tramping past their camp in fur covered even to the point of passing for a human - snow shows and dropping a bead of beef but it never does.) blood in each footprint. The stealthy stride of the monster makes every lumberman's blood run cold as the Androscoggin under its ice roof, and its voice is like the moaning of the pines.

196. The Windyo >The windyo is a mysterious creature that appears in the humorous and strange histories of the American northwest, in the lumberlands. The windyo is said to have large feet but other than that there is no other description of the animal. This dark 72

1. The Arctic Giants terrible hot, Big Black jumped into the >Some papers are exploiting photographs of ocean. And in a minute, a lot of them a race of giants said to have been discovered Her-girls, that’s half women, half fish, by Dr. Frederick A. Cook, who has just grabbed him and pulled him down to the returned from an exploring expedition to the bottom. They sit him up on a big rock, and south polar regions. The existence of such a then they all yelled at him: “Greenville race has always been denied by scientists, Nigger, do you like fish?” but Dr. Cook, it is said, has not only seen >Big Black was awful scared, and he didn’t and talked with them, but brings back know what to answer. But he’d been getting photographs to prove beyond argument that too much catfish at Greenville, so he says the biggest race of human beings in the mighty quiet: “If it’s something to eat you world is to be found in the frozen south. The wants to give me, if you’ll please ‘scuse me, monstrous forms of both the men and I’d mighty like some pork chops or a nice women are clad in furs. The men arm wing. I jest hate fish.” And then all themselves with bows and arrows and them Her-girls clapped their hands. “If wooden clubs. Their strength and endurance you’d a-said you like fish, we’d a-throwed are remarkable. The men can outrun any you to the sharks,” they told him. “You’re horse on a long stretch. They can cover 50 the prettiest man we sure ever seen. We’re miles in a few hours. To see a company of going to make you our king.” And they these wild men crossing a plain is like swum in a big gold throne. He was their watching a herd of antelope skim over the king for a mighty long time. Twice a year he ground. Only their upright position, with used to back to Greenville, and give his their scanty goats’ skins flying in the wind mammy and pappy all the gold money they and the flourish of their clubs and bows and could carry and the finest pearls in the sea. arrows, shows that they are men instead of But once he walked in the house, and there belonging to the lower animals. Dr. Cook is was a can of canned salmon laying on the going to write a full scientific account of table. He never come back no more. these people. 3. The Burrokeet and Sou-Marie 2. Big Black and the Her-girls >The Burrokeet, or Burroquite, borokit, >Big Black was a Greenville nigger borokite, bourriquite, is a "donkey-man" a-rousting on the Tennessee Belle, but he character traditionally portrayed in Trinidad got tired of the river and went on one of and Tobago Carnival. The name derives them ships that goes out of New Orleans to from the Spanish word burroquito, the the sea. The weather kept getting hotter and character's costume being constructed so as hotter. And the mate seen him looking at the to give the illusion of a dancer riding a small water and said, “Don’t you go in ther burro or donkey. This was swimming, Big Black.” He didn’t tell him brought to Trinidad by Venezuelan settlers. why, though, and one day, when it was 73

>The burrokeet costume is a well-decorated 4. Catskill Witch donkey's head made from coloured paper >Out in Dutch lands, the Katzberg and attached to a bamboo frame. The mountains had the Indian name of masquerader enters through a hole at the “Mountains of the Sky.” In one tradition of back of the "donkey"'s neck and carries the the red men these hills were bones of a reins in his hands, with the animal's body monster that fed on human beings until the fitted around his hips, thereby creating the Great Spirit turned it into stone as it was illusion of being the donkey's rider. The floundering toward the ocean to bathe. donkey's body is covered in a long satin These peaks were the home of an Indian skirt and has a sisal rope tail, sometimes witch, who adjusted the weather for the decorated with flowers. The bit and bridle Hudson Valley. It was she who let out the are made of coloured cord. The "rider" day and night in alternation, holding back wears a satin shirt and a large matador straw the one when the other was at large, for fear hat and dances in a way that mimics the of conflict. She was often seen perched on antics of a donkey, making it caper and bow. Round Top and North Mountain, spinning A dance called Burriquite with origins in clouds and flinging them to the winds. Woe Venezuela is also performed. betide the valley residents if they showed >The burrokeet masquerade, associated with irreverence, for then the clouds were black the South American mainland and and heavy, and through them she poured Venezuelan Spaniards, has become linked floods of rain and launched the lightnings, with the "Sou-Marie" character that derives causing disastrous freshets in the streams from East Indian culture brought to Trinidad and blasting the wigwams of the mockers. In by indentured labourers. The Sou-Marie (or a frolic humor she would take the form of a Sumari / Soomaree) mas, performed to tassa bear or deer and lead the Indian hunters, drum music and today only seen rarely in exposing them to tire and peril, and the rural areas, features what is called the vanishing or assuming some terrible shape harrichand dance: "The costume consists of when they had overtaken her. Sometimes an ornately decorated bamboo frame in the she would lead them to the cloves and would shape of a horse with a hole in the 'horse′s' leap into the air with a mocking "Ho, ho!" back. The masquerader enters this hole and just as they stopped with a shudder at the is attached to the frame by a series of straps. brink of an abyss. Garden Rock was a spot He holds the reins of 'the hose' and dances. where she was often found, and at its foot a He moves the 'horse' forward and backward lake once spread. This was held in such awe to give the illusion of riding on horseback. that an Indian would never wittingly pursue Drums and singing in Hindi usually his quarry there; but once a hunter lost his accompany the dancing." In the Tamil Nadu way and emerged from the forest at the edge (Madras) state of South India, this dance is of the pond. Seeing a number of gourds in known as "Poikkal Kuthirai Aattam" crotches of the trees he took one, but fearing the spirit he turned to leave so quickly that 74

he stumbled and it fell. As it broke, a spring his arms and legs. They showed him the welled from it in such volume that the money they had taken and asked where had unhappy man was gulfed in its waters, swept concealed the rest. He vowed that it was all to the edge of Kaaterskill clove and dashed he had. They insisted that he had more, and on the rocks two hundred and sixty feet seizing a knife from the table the elder below. Nor did the water ever cease to run, Wright slashed off one of his toes “to make and in these times the stream born of the him confess.” No result came from this, and witch's revenge is known as Catskill Creek. six toes were cut off,-three from each foot; then, in disgust, the unhappy peddler was 5. The Crab-Claw Zoarites knocked on the head and flung through a >The valley of Zoar, in western New York, trap-door into a shallow cellar. Presently he is so surrounded by hills that its arose and tried to draw himself out, but with discoverers-a religious people, who gave it a hatchet and knife they chopped away his name from the Scripture said, “This is Zoar; fingers and he fell back. Even the women it is impregnable. From her we will never shared in this work, and leaned forward to go.” And truly, for lack of roads, they found gaze into the cellar to see if he might yet be it so hard to get out, having got in, that they dead. While listening, they heard the man did not leave it. Among the early settlers invoke the curse of heaven on them: he ask here were people of a family named Wright, that they should wear the mark of crime whose house became sort of an inn for the even to the fourth generation, by coming infrequent traveler, inasmuch as they were into the world wretched, deformed, and not troubled with piety, and had no scruples mutilated as he. And so it was so. The next against the selling of drink and the playing child born in that house was a miserable of cards at late hours. A peddler passed creature, with round, hoof-like feet, with through the valley on his way to buffalo and only two long toes, and hands that tapered stopped at the Wright house for lodging, but from the wrist into a single long finger. And before he went to bed he incautiously in time there were a tribe of people so showed a number of golden trinkets from his deformed in the valley: The “crab-clawed pack and drew a considerable quantity of Zoarites” they were called. money out of his pocket when he paid the fee for his lodging. Hardly had he fallen 6. Detroit Werewolves asleep before his greedy hosts were in the >Long were the shores of Detroit vexed by room, searching for his money. Their lack of the Snake God of Belle Isle and his children, caution caused him to awake, and as mhe the witches, for the latter sold enchantments found them rifling his pockets and his pack and were the terror of good people. Jacques he sprang up and showed fight. Morand, the coureur de bois, was in love >A blow sent him to the bottom of the stairs, with Genevieve Parent, but she disliked him where his attempt to escape was intercepted, and wished only to serve the church. and the family closed around him and bound Courting having proved of no avail, he 75

resolved on force when she had decided to hisself: “Ef I kin git a hunk o’ co’n-pone and enter a convent, and he went to one of the slice o’ bakin’, I doan kur what I pays!” On witches, who served as devil's agent, to sell dat here come a yaller-’ooman spankin’ his soul. The witch accepted the slight out’n de cabin. She wuz spry on her foot ez commodity and paid for it with a grant of a catbird, an’ her eyes wuz sof’ an’ shiny. power to change from a man's form to that She ax de man fer ter light an’ come in de of a were-wolf, or loup garou, that he might cabin, an’ git some supper. An’ Lawd! How the easier bear away his victim. he mouf do water when he cotch a glimpst Incautiously, he followed her to Grosse er de skillet on de coals! He luk it so well Pointe, where an image of the Virgin had dat he stay; an’ he sot eroun’ in dat cabin been set up, and as Genevieve dropped at ontwel he git so fat dat de grease fa’r run the feet of the statue to implore aid, the out’n he jaws when he look up at de sun. De wolf, as he leaped to her side, was suddenly yaller-’ooman she spen’ her time cookin’ fer turned to stone. him, an’ waitin’ on him wi’ so much oberly, >Harder was the fate of another maiden, dat at las’ de man, he up and marry dat Archange Simonet, for she was seized by a yaller-’ooman. were-wolf at this place and hurried away >At fus’ dey git erlong tollable well, but while dancing at her own wedding. The a’ter erwhile he gin ter notice sump’n curus bridegroom devoted his life to the search for ‘bout dat yaller-’ooman. She ain’ never in de her, and finally lost his reason, but he cabin when he wake up in de night time! So, prosecuted the hunt so vengefully and he mek up his min’ fer ter spy on her. He lay shrewdly that he always found assistance. down one night on de fo’ pos’ bed in de One of the neighbors cut off the wolf's tail cornder, ‘ten luk he sleep. De yaller-’ooman with a silver bullet, the appendage being for watch him out’n de een o’ her eye, an’ when many years preserved by the Indians. The she hear him gin a sno’, she jump up an’ pat lover finally came upon the creature and a juba in de middle of de flo’. Den she reach chased it to the shore, where its footprint is down a big gridi’on fum de wall, an’ rake still seen in one of the bowlders, but it out some coals, an’ haul de big leaped into the water and disappeared. In his spinnin’-wheel close ter de ha’th. Den, she crazy fancy the lover declared that it had got herself down on dat gridi’on, an’ soon ez jumped down the throat of a catfish, and that it wuz red hot she ‘gin to spin her skin off’n is why the French Canadians have a her body on de spinnin’-wheel. “Tu’n an’ prejudice against catfish as an article of diet. spin, come off skin, tu’n an’ spin, come off skin.” An’ fo’ de Lawd, de skin come off’n 7. De Witch-’oonman an’ de dat witch-’ooman’s body, berginning at de Spinnin’-Wheel top o’ her head, ez slick es de shush come >One time dey wuz a man whar rid up at off de ear o’ corn. An’ when it wuz fa’r off, night ter a cabin in de eedge o’ de swamp. dan she wuz a gret big yaller cat. Den, she He wuz dat hongry an’ ti’d dat he say ter tuk her skin an’ chuck it onder de bed. “Lay 76

dar, skin,” she say, “wi dat fool nigger darkened flame-wood lamp at a meteor sno’in in de bed, ontowel I come back. I spark. The bows, and without a word gwine ter ha’ some fum, I is.” slowly descends the rocky steep, for his >Wi’ dat she jump out’n de winder an’ lope wing is soiled and has lost its power; but off. Soon ez she wuz gone de man, he jump once at the river, he tugs amain at a mussel out’n bed an’ tuk out skin an’ fill it plum full shell till he has it afloat; then, leaping in, he o’ salt an’ peppa’, un’ th’ow it back onder paddles out with a strong grass blade till he de bed. Den he crope out an’ watch throw’ comes to the spot where the sturgeon swims, dey key-hole ontwel de witch-’ooman come though the watersprites plague him and toss home. She laugh whilse she wuz rakin’ out his boat, and the fish and the leeches bunt de skin fum onder de bed, an’ shakin’ and drag; but, suddenly, the sturgeon shoots herse’f inter it. But when she feel de salt an from the water, and ere the arch of mist that peppa’, she laugh on de yther side her mouf. he tracks through the air has vanished, the She moan an’ groan so you kin hear her a has caught a drop of the spray in a tiny mile! But she ain’ able ter git out’n dat skin, blossom, and in this he washes clean his an’ de man watch her thoo de key-hole twel wings. she fall down an’ die on de flo’. >The water- torment him no longer. They push his boat to the shore, where, 8. The Fay alighting, he kisses his hand, then, even as a >The wood-tick's drum convokes the elves bubble, he flies back to the mountain top, at the noon of night on Cro' Nest top, and, dons his acorn , his corselet of clambering out of their flower-cup beds and bee-hide, his shield of lady-bug shell, and hammocks of cobweb, they fly to the grasping his lance, tipped with wasp sting, meeting, not to freak about the grass or he bestrides his fire-fly steed and off he goes banquet at the mushroom table, but to hear like a flash. The world spreads out and then sentence passed on the fay who, forgetting grows small, but he flies straight on. The his vestal vow, has loved an earthly maid. ice- leer from the topmost clouds, and From his throne under a canopy of tulip the mists surge round, but he shakes his petals, borne on pillars of shell, the king lance and pipes his call, and at last he comes commands silence, and with severe eye but to the Milky Way, where the sky-sylphs lead softened voice he tells the culprit that while him to their queen, who lies couched in a he has scorned the royal decree he has saved palace ceiled with stars, its dome held up by himself from the extreme penalty, of northern lights and the curtains made of the imprisonment in walnut shells and cobweb morning's flush. Her mantle is twilight dungeons, by loving a maid who is gentle purple, tied with threads of gold from the and pure. So it shall be enough if he will go eastern dawn, and her face is as fair as the down to the Hudson and seize a drop from silver moon. the bow of mist that a sturgeon leaves when >She begs the fay to stay with her and taste he makes his leap; and after, to kindle his forever the joys of heaven, but the knightly 77

elf keeps down the beating of his heart, for they admit no strangers to their territory, and he remembers a face on earth that is fairer by stubborn resistance they have compelled than hers, and he begs to go. With a sigh she Chili to let them alone. Fabulous treasures of fits him a car of cloud, with the fire-fly steed gold and silver are believed to be stored chained on behind, and he hurries away to away in their mountains, but prospectors the northern sky whence the meteor comes, who have ventured thither have always been with roar and whirl, and as it passes it bursts driven away. They commonly adorn to flame. He lights his lamp at a glowing themselves with rich and heavy ornaments spark, then wheels away to the fairy-land. of these precious metals. The greater part of His king and his brothers hail him stoutly, Patagonia belongs now to the Argentine with song and shout, and feast and dance, Republic, Chili holding by treaty the strip and the revel is kept till the eastern sky has a along the Pacific coast, which continues its ruddy streak. Then the cock crows shrill and shoe-string-like territory for nearly half the the fays are gone length of South America. >Most of the country is a desert waste, cold 9. The Florida Pigman of climate and contrasting strongly with the >The pigman is a half man half pig who richly productive pampas or plains of the lives in the Florida everglades, who hunts southern Argentine. These pampas are and kills and hog or pig that gets brought to remarkable for the strange illusions which the area. Reports say even more salacious beset the eye of the traveler who journeys acts are committed on the poor creatures. over them. On any bright day a distant Some stories say the creature carries an axe, thistle field is as like as not to be some say that he tears them apart with his transformed seemingly into a forest, while a hands and tusks. However, it is consistent few clumps of grass will take on the that it is cited as the reason why there are no appearance of a troop of horsemen. Mirages pigs in the everglades. How true this are constantly in view, frequently offering a statement is, will never be known. delusive prospect of water, by which men are often deceived but their horses never. 10. The Giants of the Cordilleras >They Guard Fabulous Treasures of Gold 11. Gnomes of Catskill and Silver in their Mountains. >Behind the New Grand Hotel, in Catskill, >In western Patagonia, among the is an amphitheatre of mountain that is held Cordilleras mountains, dwell the giants of to be the place which the Mohicans spoke whom so many big stories have been told. when they told of people who worked in As a matter of fact these Arancanians, as metals and had bushy beards and eye like they are called, are rarely under six feet in pigs. From the smoke of their forges in height and sometimes reach eight feet, seven autumn, came the haze of Indian summer; foot men being not infrequent, says the and when the moon is full, it was their Philahelphia Press. Though mildly disposed, custom to assemble at the precipice above 78

the hollow and dance and caper until the the doors of their houses, and now look their night was nigh worn away. They had liquor stock in the barns after nightfall. that had the effect of shortening bodies and >Gunning parties have searched in vain for swelling heads of all who drank it, and when the lair of the monster, whose tracks were Hudson and his crew visited the mountains, plainly visible in the snow of yesterday and they held a carouse in his honor and invited Sunday. The trail led to the soft swamp land him to drink their liquor. The crew went and could not be followed. At a meeting of away, shrunken and distorted by the magic some of the bravest farmers yesterday it was distillation, and thus it was that Rip van decided to form a gunning party of fifty on Winkle found them on the eve of his famous Thanksgiving Day and surround the Great sleep. Bear Swamp to hunt the monster to his death. 12. The Great Bear Swamp Frankenstein's Monster 13. The Hairy Kentucky Monster >The thinly populated district known as the >Over in Washington county, near the line Great Bear Swamp, twelve miles west of of Mercer, reigns a being which, man or New Brunswick, has a well-developed beast, mystifies all the neighborhood. For sensation on hand, which promises to make months the housewives have missed their things interesting for the farmers. It appears chickens, eggs, milk, meat from meathouses that a misshapen monster, half human and and half grown pigs and young lambs. At half animal, has been devouring sheep, first all efforts and schemes to catch the carrying off pigs and rending young cattle in guilty one proved of no avail. Joseph Ewalt the neighborhood. arose one morning before day and went to >There are less than half a dozen people the springhouse, a hundred yards distant who have seen the monster, and each from his dwelling. His wife and son, described him differently. One Thompson, becoming alarmed at his continued absence, who lost several head of sheep, believes the went in search of him and found him at the strange visitant to be is cross between a door of the springhouse in a faint. They kangaroo and a panther. William Simpson, restored him to consciousness, and he told who had a pig taken out of a pen at the rear them he had seen a man beast, and that he of his farm, found the half-munched bones ran out of the springhouse as he opened the of the porker lying in the woods next day. door; that he had great, long white hair Nen the bones were huge tracks in the soft hanging down from his head and face that soil, indicating that the wonderful beast had was as coarse as a horse’s mane. His legs been the thief. Farmer Peter Dolan claims to were covered with hair, and the only article have seen the strange animal that startled the of clothing ho wore was a piece of sheepskin farmers in that section one year ago, and over the lower portion of his body, reaching believes it to be the same beast on a return nearly to his knees. When it became noized trip. Many of the neighbors have barricaded around that Ewalt had seen a man beast, 79

sober headed men began to set a plan to dozen other men, went to the cave and made catch the monster in the neighborhood, near a partial survey, proceeding in several the mouth of Deep creek, is a cave of hundred yards. They saw fresh indications considerable proportions, and the natural of habitation by bones, feathers, pieces of conclusion was that there would be the place calf and sheep skin being strewn around. to find their game. The passages grew smaller and dwindled, >Early Sunday morning Eph Boston and his and no one of the party would enter alone, sons, Tom and James, saw the object of their though one, Joe Smith, went in 80 or 40 feet, watch walking in a half gallop, half run for when the most unearthly yell the men ever their barn. Notwithstanding the men were heard greeted them. They were good, stout armed, they were badly frightened, and after men, but they cowed before that yell and they saw the object enter the barn all three beat a hasty retreat to the main pasage of the were afraid to enter to try to capture the cavern, but after consultation they agreed it terrible looking creature. They kept hid and would not do to kill or be killed, and they were not seen by the monster, standing in a gave up their search fur another half erect position nearly 6 ½ feet. His feet time.—Louisville Courier Journal. were like the paws of a bear or brute, with long claws. His hands also were like those 14. The Hairy Man of a feline more than a human. Before the >The Hairy man is a dominant, hairy men could come to some action or get over conjurer with cloven hooves and a sack of their fright the creature came out of the barn which to carry those who fall to his in the same half gallop run gait and made for machinations. He is physically imposing, the creek. By this time the men started in with a deep and hardy voice to complement safe pursuit. Tom Boston foolishly shot at it, it, often bearing a wicked smile on his and the creature half turned and glanced at notably ugly countenance. His eyes burn them, increasing his gait, but never dropping like fire and spit drools all over his big teeth. the three large chickens he held in his claws. He has the ability to change physical forms, The Bostons managed to keep in sight of the his own or others, but seemingly not of creature for only a half mile or so, they those he tries to claim, although his vowing he ran swifter than a horse. Just as conjuring is among the greatest of all, so he they got to the top of a hill about 500 yards may have powers beyond this. He is drawn off they were rewarded by seeing the brute towards those with magic ancestry, like that man turn, with a wild, scared look, glance of a witch or an Indian medicine man. He is around and enter the cave. unable to climb trees thanks to his hooves, >The men went to the mouth of the cave, which may be used to escape him but would not enter. They saw feathers, temporarily, and has a hate for hound-dogs, bones, etc., scattered around the entrance. running scared if any come near. He will They returned home and reported what they continue to come after his mark until he’s had seen, and Tuesday they, with a half killed, unless you manage to outsmart the 80

hairy man three times, which afterwards he 16. Kuku, the Giant can never bother you again. Many times in >The Kuku or Gougou is a kind of the story, he tried to entice his victim with man-eating giant, usually (but not always) promise of tutelage of conjuring. described as female. Gougou is so huge that she carries the people she catches in a bag 15. The “Hairy Toe” over her shoulder the way human hunters >Once there was a woman went out to pick carry rabbits. The Mi'kmaq name Kuku may beans, and she found a Hairy Toe. She took derive from their word for "earthquake," the Hairy Toe home with her, and that night, kiwkw, since she is so large her footsteps when she went to bed, the wind began to shake the earth. According to some legends, moan and groan. Away off in the distance Gougou is a sea monster covered in scales she seemed to hear a voice crying, “Who’s who preys mostly on people paddling canoes got my Hair-r-ry To-o-oe? Who’s got my or walking along the beach. In other Hair-r-ry To-o-oe?” legends, Gougou lives in the mountains and >The wind rose and began to screech around is often mistaken for a boulder until it is too the house, and the woman covered her head late. with quilts. The voice seemed to come nearer: “Who’s got my Hair-r-ry To-o-oe?” 17. The Maryland Goatman >The woman scrooched down, ‘way down >According to , the Goatman is under the covers, and ‘bout that time the an axe-wielding half-animal, half-man wind ‘peared to hit the house, swoosh, and creature that was once a scientist who the old house creaked and cracked like worked in the Beltsville Agricultural somethin’ was tryin’ to get in. The voice had Research Center. The tale holds that he was come nearer almost at the door now, and it experimenting on goats until one experiment said, “Who’s got my Hair-r-ry To-o-oe? backfired, and he was mutated, becoming Who’s got my Hair-r-ry To-o-oe?” goat-like himself. He then began attacking >The woman scrooched further down under cars with an axe, roaming the back roads of the covers and pulled them tight around her Beltsville, Maryland. A variation of the head. The wind growled around the house legend tells of the Goatman as an old hermit like some big animal, and r-r-um-m-bled who lives in the woods, seen walking alone over the chimbley. All at once she heard the at night along Fletchertown Road. One door cr-r-a-ack open and Somethin’ slipped variation of the story has it that the Goatman in and began to creep over the floor. The was the result of a (very early) DNA floor would cre-e-eak, cre-e-eak at every experiment conducted by a scientist named step that Thing took toward her bed. The Stephen Fletcher, though other variations woman could almost feel it bending over her suggest a more supernatural origin involving bed. Then in an awful voice it said, “Who’s the Devil got my Hair-r-ry To-o-oe? You’ve got it!” 18. The Michigan Dogman 81

>The Michigan Dogman is a folkloric that the girl experienced when the sailor creature allegedly first reported in 1887 in clasped her in his arms restored her erring Wexford County, Michigan. The creature is senses. When Moll Pitcher died she was described as a seven-foot tall, blue-eyed, or attended by the little daughter of the woman amber-eyed bipedal canine-like animal with she had so afflicted. the torso of a man and a fearsome howl that sounds like a human scream. According to 20. Nain Rouge legends, the Michigan Dogman appears in a >In 1701, legendary founder of Detroit ten-year cycle. Sightings have been reported Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac met a in several locations throughout Michigan, fortune-teller, who warned him to beware of primarily in the northwestern quadrant of the the Nain Rouge (known to the English Lower Peninsula. In 1987, the legend of the speakers as "The Demon of the Strait"), a Michigan Dogman gained popularity when red dwarf, born of the Stone God, that had disc jockey Steve Cook at WTCM-FM appeared to Cadillac in a dream. She warned recorded a song about the creature and its him that the the little red is the reported sightings. embodiment of his ambition, anger, pride, envy. The Nain Rouge is the harbinger of 19. Molly Pitcher doom. If Cadillac chose to settle near the >Moll Pitcher, a successful sorcerer and straits between Michigan and Ontario, the fortune-teller of old Lynn, has figured in fortuneteller said, it might pay off one day, obsolete poems, plays, and romances. She but it would be a long uphill slog fraught lived in a cottage at the foot of High Rock, with setbacks. where she was consulted, not merely by >Despite this sound counsel, when Cadillac people of respectability, but by those who first saw the fiend in person, the Nain had knavish schemes to prosecute and who taunted him mercilessly, drawing a switch wanted to learn in advance the outcome of wrapping the Frenchman, until Cadillac their designs. Many a ship was deserted at chased the evil creature. The fortune turned the hour of sailing because she boded evil of out to be true and Cadillac died penniless the voyage. She was of medium height, after he left Detroit for France. The city he big-headed, tangle-haired, long-nosed, and founded, however, fared better, endured and had a searching black eye. The sticks that prospered, against the fiendish efforts of the she carried were cut from a hazel that hung Nain Rouge. athwart a brook where an unwedded mother >The Red Dwarf was seen during Pontiac's had drowned her child. A girl who went to Rebellion following the French and Indian her for news of her lover lost her reason War. The united tribes had attacked a when the witch, moved by a malignant number of settlements, and laid siege to Fort impulse, described his death in a fiercely Detroit. The British had attempted to end the dramatic manner. One day the missing ship siege with a sneak attack on Pontiac's came bowling into port, and the shock of joy encampment, but their plan was betrayed to 82

the rebel leader. Pontiac defeated the British have had a spell cast upon them. Sometimes in the Battle of Blood Run, which took place such an individual would die in the streets at a creek two miles north of the fort. during an attack, and when this occurred Several survivors of the battle claimed to Negroes were certain the Needle Men had have seen the Red Dwarf running along the been at work. Mamie believes in protecting shores of the lake shortly before the battle herself from these corpse-hunting “students” began. >”Sure, I carries my gun,” she said. “I >The imp was spotted once again in 1805, always got it with me. I don’t fool around! racing through the streets of Detroit just Any of them Needles Mens come after me before the city burned to the ground. And they gonna be makin’ stiffs of theirselves. during the War of 1812, when the forces of Oh, yes, I goes to church. I been on the British General Brock began bombarding board ‘leven years now. I jest been ‘pointed the American forces within Fort Detroit, head of the toilet committee. My duties is to General Hull acceded to a demand for show the new members where the toilets is.” unconditional surrender after he saw the Red >It was reported that these “fiends” slunk Dwarf leering at him through the fog. about the darkest streets, sprang from behind the trees or from vacant lots 21. The Needle Men and the Black Bottle overgrown with weeds, jabbed women with Men their needles and fled. Cruel skeptics >”No, sir!” declared Mamie Smith insinuated the “victims” were suffering from emphatically, her eyes huge and white on a combination of imagination and her fat black face. “I sure don’t go out much prohibition gin. at this time of year. You takes a chance just >Similar to the Needle Men, at least in walkin’ on the streets. Them Needle Mens is intent, are the Black Bottle Men. The Black everywhere. They always comes round in Bottle is reputed to be a potent dose the fall, and they’s round to about March. administered to the innocent and unknowing You see, them Needle Mens is medical on entry to the Charity Hospital. Instant students from the Charity Hospital tryin’ to death is certain to follow, the body is then get your body to work on. That’s ‘cause rendered up to the students for carving. stiffs is very scarce at this time of the year. Possible explanation is doses of cascara But them mens ain’t workin’ on my body. administered at the hospital, which in its No sir! If they ever sticks their needles in pure state is black. your arm you is jest a plain goner. All they gotta do is jest brush by you, and there you 22. Old Ferro is; you is been stuck. ‘Course I believes it!” >Ye know Eph’ Tucker, that used to live on >Hundreds of New Orleans Negroes believe the Hashion. Well he wuz allis counted a it. Fear of the Needle Men, which dates back mighty and truthful man and he used to tell to early days, could possibly be traced to me a sight o’ tales about witches. He said voodooism. Then epileptics were thought to when he lived down in Ashe there wuz a 83

man named Ferro who shore could bewitch jump right out o’ the ring and run from that people. Eph said he wuz a talkin’ with Ferro place as hard as he could. He didn’t turn his one day and Ferro told him there wuz a man head to look back. After that Eph said he lived clost him that had done him some never tied to be a witch anymore. mean tricks and he wuz a goin’ to make that man see some trouble that night. “Ax him in 23. Old Mammy Redd the mornin’,” Ferro says,”and he’ll tell ye >"Old Mammy Redd, of Marblehead, Sweet that he’s seed a heep o’ trouble last night.” milk could turn to mould in churn." >Well, EPh met the man next day and shore >Being a witch, and a notorious one, she ‘nough he told Eph he hadn’t slep’ a bit the could likewise curdle the milk as it came night afore. Eph axed him what wuz the from the cow, and afterward transform it matter and he went on to tell about seen’ a into blue wool. She had the evil eye, and, if big thing like a bear a walkin’ the jist over she willed, her glance or touch could blight his bed all night; the man said he tried to like palsy. It only needed that she should shoot the thing but his gun wouldn’t shoot, wish a bloody cleaver to be found in a cradle and he had to set there and watch that ole to cause the little occupant to die, while the bear, or whatever it wuz, all night a walking whole town ascribed to her the annoyances on the jist backards and forrids right over his of daily housework and business. Her bed. Well, after that Eph sayd he knowed ole unpleasant celebrity led to her death at the Ferro shore wuz a witch and decided he’d hands of her fellow-citizens who had been like to be a witch too, so’s he could "worrited" by no end of queer happenings: aggervate people that he didn’t like. One ships had appeared just before they were day, he says to Ferro says he, “I want to wrecked and had vanished while people learn to bewitch people like you can.” looked at them; men were seen walking on >Ferro kindly agreed to show him how to be the water after they had been comfortably a witch. He says, “You come with me out in buried; the wind was heard to name the the road.” They went out’n the wagon road sailors doomed never to return; footsteps and Ferro tuck a stick and made a ring in the and voices were heard in the streets before dirt. “Now you git in that ring,” says Ferro. the great were to die; one man was chased Eph he got in the ring. “Now squat down,” by a corpse in its coffin; another was says Ferro. Eph squatted down. “Now,” says pursued by the devil in a carriage drawn by Ferro, “put one hand under right foot and four white horses; a young woman who had t’other hand on to o’ year head.” Well Eph just received a present of some fine fish did what he’s’toll. “Now, you say after me,” from her lover was amazed to see him melt says Ferro, “ ‘Devil take me, ring and all’.” into the air, and was heart-broken when she And about that time the ground begin to sink learned next morning that he had died at sea. right underneath him. Eph says he felt So far away as Amesbury the devil's power hisself a goin’ right down an’ down. He was shown by the appearance of a man who shore wuz skeered by this time and give up a walked the roads carrying his head under his 84

arm, and by the freak of a windmill that the Meg had fallen and broken her leg at the miller always used to shut up at sundown moment when the crow was fired on, and but that started by itself at midnight. that she died quickly after. An examination Evidently it was high time to be rid of of her body was made, and the identical Mammy Redd. buttons were extracted from her flesh that had been shot into the crow at Louisburg. 24. The Old Man of the Sea >“Old Man of the Sea,” long famed, or 26. Old Tush something extremely like him, has been >Old Tush is a monstrous character from the discovered. A hileous marine monster fish, old Jack Tales, stories revolving a young but with almost a human head, has been boy hero besting various powerful foes. The captured by the crew of the barque Duque tale of Jack and Old Tush follows in the d'Aotsa off the Brazilian coast. The Saxon tradition of Beowulf, with a monster creature’s head has a well-defined nose, ears making a raid a feast, then the hero and gaping month. Its general appearance descending into another world to slay the being that of an old man. One spike projects him. He is covered entirely in greasy hair, from the monster’s forehead. It is probable with black beady eyes, and two long tusks. that early mariners, who told wild tales of He is physically imposing, with a hunched having seen , mermen and demons back and long limber arms, described as when in tropic seas, had in reality seen some being “old and slobbery”. Old Tush made such rare creature of the ocean depths. his home in a “cave-of-a-place” at the edge of the briars and corn fields, being long and 25. Old Meg very deep, only having one small hole as its >Margaret Wesson, "old Meg," lived in entrance. In the story, his cave is “...like Gloucester until she came to her death by a another world down there.” Down there, shot fired at the siege of Louisburg, five there was a pretty girl bearing a sword, a hundred miles away, in 1745. Two soldiers wishbone, and fresh clothes to jack, which of Gloucester, while before the walls of the he took, slaying Old Tush by cutting off his French town, were annoyed by a crow, that head, and using the wishbone to wish them flew over and around them, cawing harshly to the surface. and disregarding stones and shot, until it Partridge Witch occurred to them that the bird could be no >Two brothers, hunted at the head of the other than old Meg in another form, and, as Penobscot until their snow-shoes and silver bullets are an esteemed antidote for moccasins gave out, and cried, "Would that the evils of , they cut two silver there was a woman to help us!" The younger buttons from their uniforms and fired them brother went to the lodge that evening at the crow. At the first shot its leg was earlier than the elder, in order to prepare the broken; at the second, it fell dead. On supper, and great was his surprise on returning to Gloucester they learned that old entering the wigwam to find the floor swept, 85

a fire built, a pot boiling, and their clothing partridge. But the younger did not forget the mended. Returning to the wood he watched good she had done and sought her in the the place from a covert until he saw a wood, where for many days they played graceful girl enter the lodge and take up the together as of old. tasks of housekeeping. When he entered she >"I do not blame your father: it is an affair was confused, but he treated her with of old, this hate he bears me," she said. "He respect, and allowed her to have her own will choose a wife for you soon, but do not way so far as possible, so that they became marry her, else all will come to an end for warm friends, sporting together like children you." The man could not wed the witch, and when the work of the day was over. But one he might not disobey his father, in spite of evening she said, "Your brother is coming. I this adjuration; so when the old man said to fear him. Farewell." And she slipped into the him, "I have a wife for you, my son," he wood. When the young man told his elder answered, "It is well." They brought the brother what had happened there—the elder bride to the village, and for four days the having been detained for a few days in the wedding-dance was held, with a feast that pursuit of a deer—he declared that he would lasted four days more. Then said the young wish the woman to come back, and presently man, "Now comes the end," and lying down she returned, bringing a toboggan-load of on a bear-skin he sighed a few times and his garments and arms. The luck of the hunters spirit ascended to the Ghosts' road—the improved, and they remained happily milky way. The father shook his head, for he together until spring, when it was time to knew that this was the witch's work, and, return with their furs. They set off down the liking the place no longer, he went away and Penobscot in their canoe and rowed merrily the tribe was scattered. along, but as they neared the home village the girl became uneasy, and presently "threw 27. The Popelick Monster out her soul"—became clairvoyant—and >Numerous urban legends exist about the said, "Let me land here. I find that your creature's origins and the methods it father would not like me, so do not speak to employs to claim its victims. According to him about me." But the elder brother told of some accounts, the creature uses either her when they reached home, whereon the hypnosis or voice mimicry to lure father exclaimed, "I had feared this. That trespassers onto the trestle to meet their woman is a sister of the goblins. She wishes death before an oncoming train. Other to destroy men." stories claim the monster jumps down from >At this the elder brother was afraid, lest she the trestle onto the roofs of cars passing should cast a spell on him, and rowing up beneath it. Yet other legends tell that it the river for a distance he came upon her as attacks its victims with a blood-stained axe she was bathing and shot at her. The arrow and that the very sight of the creature is so seemed to strike, for there was a flutter of unsettling that those who see it while feathers and the woman flew away as a 86

walking across the high trestle are driven to from the rocks by fire, they believed them to leap off. be manitous and went away, not wishing to >Other legends hold that the monster is a resist their possession of the land. There was human-goat hybrid, and that it was a circus treasure here, for High Tor, or Torn freak who vowed revenge after being Mountain, had been the home of Amasis, mistreated. In one version, it is said the youngest of the magi who had followed the monster escaped after a train derailed on the star of Bethlehem. He had found his way, trestle. Another version commonly told by through Asia and Alaska, to this country, locals of the area claims that the monster is had taken to wife a native woman, by whom really the twisted reincarnated form of a he had a child, and here on the summit’s had farmer who sacrificed goats in exchange for built a temple. Having refuse the Satanic powers. sunworship, when the Indians demanded he >The legends have turned the area into a site take their faith, he was set upon, and would for legend tripping. There have been a have been killed had not an earthquake torn number of deaths and accidents at the trestle the ground at his feet, opening a new since its construction, despite the presence channel for the Hudson and precipitating of an 8-foot (2.4 m) fence to keep into it every one but the magus and his thrill-seekers out. daughter. To him had been revealed in >There is a common misconception among magic vision the secrets of wealth in the amateur paranormal investigators that the rocks.” trestle is abandoned and no longer used; in >The Leader in the German colony, one reality, the bridge carries a major rail artery Hugo, was a man of noble origin, who sired into Louisville. Heavy freight trains cross two children: a son of his name, and a the bridge several times daily, so it is easy girl,-Mary. Though it had been the custom for someone to get caught atop it while an in that land to let out the forge fires once in oncoming train barrels down on them. seven years, Hugo opposed that practice in Southern Railway urged citizens not the forge he had built as needless. But his climb the trestle, saying if caught they men murmured and talked of the would be arrested. salamander, large and terrible, that once in seven years attains its growth in unquenched 28. The Ramapo Salamander flames and does terrible mischief. On the >”A curious tale of the rosicrucians runs to day when that period was ended the master the effect that more than two centuries ago a entered his works and saw the men gazing band of German colonists entered the into the furnace at a pale form that seemed Ramapo valley and put up houses made of made from flame, that was nodding and stone, like those they had left in the Hartz turning in the fire, occasionally darting its Mountains, and when the Indians saw how tongue at them or allowing its tail to fall out they made knives and other wonderful and lie along the stone floor. As he came to things out of metal, which they extracted the door he, too, was transfixed, and the fire, 87

seemed burning his vitals, until he felt water you and put a crown of gems on your head: on his face, and saw that his wife stood that was because I was the power of the behind him and was casting holy water into earth spirit. Then I had power only over fire, the furnace, speaking an incantation as she that either consumes or hardens stone; but didso. At the moment a storm arose, and a your grace has given me water and life to rain that put out the fire; but as the last glow me. Behold! Wear these, for thou art faded the lady fell dead. worthy.” And touching the tears that had >When her children were consecrated, seven fallen from her eyes, they turned into lilies years later, those who stood outside of the in his hands, and he put them in Mary’s church during the ceremony saw a terrible brow. flash, and the nurse turned from the babes in >”Shall we meet again?” asked the girl. her fright. The child was gone. Twice seven >”I do not know,” said he. “I tread the years had passed and the daughter remained darkness of the universe alone, and I peril unspotted from the world, for, on the night my redemption by yielding to this love of that her father had led her to the top of high earth. Thou art redeemed already, but I must tor mountain and shown her what Amasis make my way back to God through had seen, earth spirits in their caves heaping obedience tested in trail. Know that I am one jewels and offering them to Hugo if he of those that left heaven for love of man. We would speak the word that binds the free to were of that subtle element which is flame, the earth forces and bars his future for a burning and glowing with love, and when thousand years- it was his daughter's prayer they mother came to me with power of that him to his senses and made the scene purity to cast me out of the furnace, I had below grow dim, though the baleful light of lost my shape of fire and took that of a the salamander clinging to the rock down human, a child. I have been often with thee, below, sending a jet of fire to the sky. and rushing to annihilation, because I could >Many nights that fire was seen on height not withstand the ordeal of the senses. Had, I and Hugo was missing from his home, but yielded, or loved another, I would have for lack of a pure soul to stand as interpreter regained my place among the spirits of the he failed to read the words that burned in the earth. I was led away by want of power, triangle on the salamander’s back, and such as I have in my grasp, and forgot the returned in rage and jealousy. A knightly mission to the suffering. I became a man had late appeared in the settlement, and wanderer over the earth until I reached this between him and Mary a tender feeling had land, the land that you call new. Here was to arisen, that was unexpressed until after be my last trial and here I am to pass the rescuing her from the attack of a panther, gate of fire.” allowing her to fall into his arms. She >As he spoke voices arose from the would’ve likely declared love that moment, settlement but he placed her gently and regretfully from >”They are coming,” said he. The stout form him and said, “When you slept I came for of Hugo was in advance. With a fierce oath 88

he sprang on the young man. “He has ruined Louisiana at Lafayette in America, the tale my household,” he cried. “Fling him into the of the rougarou is a common legend across furnace!” The young man stood waiting, but French Louisiana. Both words are used his brow was serne. He was seized and in a interchangeably in southern Louisiana. few moments, disappeared into the mouth of Some people call the monster rougarou; the burning pit. But looking up, Mary saw a others refer to it as the loup-garou. shape clothed in silvery light, and drifted >The rougarou legend has been spread for upward from the darkness. A peace came to many generations, either directly from her that endured until the end. French settlers to Louisiana or via the French Canadian immigrants centuries ago. 29. Razor-shins >In the Cajun legends, the creature is said to >An unpleasant person is the Razor-shins, a prowl the swamps around Acadiana and deathless red man who works for such as are Greater New Orleans, and possibly the fields kind to him, but mutilates that larger number or forests of the regions. The rougarou most of the ignorant who neglect to pay tribute. often is described as a creature with a human Keep Razor-shins supplied with firewater, -a body and the head of a wolf or dog, similar jug every full moon,- and he will now and to the werewolf legend. then feel a tree for you with his sharp >Often the story-telling has been used to shin-bones, if nobody is around, or will clear inspire fear and obedience. One such up a bit of road. But fail in this, and you example is stories that have been told by must be prepared to give up your scalp, elders to persuade Cajun children to behave. which he can slice from your head with a According to another variation, the wolf-like single kick, or he will clip off your ears and beast will hunt down and kill Catholics who leave cuts on you that will look like saber do not follow the rules of Lent. This strokes. When a green hand arrives in a coincides with the French Catholic lumbercamp it is his duty to slake the thirst loup-garou stories, according to which the of razor-shins. He puts a jug of virulent method for turning into a werewolf is to Bangor whiskey at the door. The best proof break Lent seven years in a row. that the Indian gets it is shown in the odor of >A common blood sucking legend says that breathed alcohol that pervades the premises the rougarou is under the spell for 101 days. all night and the emptiness of the jug in the After that time, the curse is transferred from morning. person to person when the rougarou draws another human’s blood. During that day the 30. The Rougarou creature returns to human form. Although >Rougarou represents a variant acting sickly, the human refrains from pronunciation and spelling of the original telling others of the situation for fear of French loup-garou. According to Barry Jean being killed. Ancelet, an academic expert on Cajun >Other stories range from the rougarou as a folklore and professor at the University of rabbit to the rougarou being derived from 89

witchcraft. In the latter claim, only a witch they must be distilled within five days, for can make a rougarou—either by turning into fermentation and decay would set in if he a wolf herself, or by cursing others with delayed longer. Gathering the herbs and lycanthropy piling his floor with fuel, he began his work, alone; the furnace glowed, the retorts 31. The Salem Alchemist bubbled, and through their long throats >In 1720 there lived in a turreted house at trickled drops—golden, ruddy, brown, and North and Streets, in Salem, a silent, crystal—that would be combined into that dark-visaged man,—a reputed chemist. He precious draught. gathered simples in the fields, and parcels >And none too soon, for under the strain of and bottles came and went between him and anxiety he seemed to be aging fast. He took learned doctors in Boston; but report went no sleep, except while sitting upright in his around that it was not drugs alone that he chair, for, should he yield entirely to nature's worked with, nor medicines for passing appeal, his fire would die and his work be ailments that he distilled. The watchman, spoiled. With heavy eyes and aching head he drowsily pacing the streets in the small watched his furnace and listened to the hours, saw his shadow move athwart the constant drip, drip of the precious liquor. It furnace glare in his tower, and other was the fourth day. He had knelt to stir his shadows seemed at the moment to flit about fire to more active burning. Its brightness it—shadows that could be thrown by no made him blink, its warmth was grateful, tangible form, yet that had a grotesque and he reclined before it, with elbow on the likeness to the human kind. A clink of floor and head resting on his hand. How hammers and a hiss of steam were cheerily the logs hummed and crackled, yet sometimes heard, and his neighbors how drowsily—how slow the hours devoutly hoped that if he secured the secret were—how dull the watch! Lower, lower of the philosopher's stone or the universal sank the head, and heavier grew the eyes. At solvent, it would be honestly come by. last he lay full length on the floor, and the >But it was neither gold nor the perilous long sleep of exhaustion had begun. strong water that he wanted. It was life: the >He was awakened by the sound of a bell. elixir that would dispel the chill and "The church bell!" he cried, starting up. decrepitude of age, that would bring back "And people going through the streets to the youthful sparkle to the eye and set the meeting. How is this? The sun is in the east! pulses bounding. He explored the My God! I have been asleep! The furnace is surrounding wilderness day after day; the cold. The elixir!" He hastily blended the juices of its trees and plants he compounded, essences that he had made, though one or night after night, long without avail. Not two ingredients were still lacking, and drank until after a thousand failures did he them off. "Faugh!" he exclaimed. "Still conceive that he had secured the ingredients unfinished-perhaps spoiled. I must begin but they were many, they were perishable, again." Taking his hat and coat he uttered a 90

weary sigh and was about to open the door wailing sound close by. In the light of a new when his cheek blenched with pain, sight moon he saw a hideous old woman seemed to leave him, the cry for help that brandishing a tomahawk over the head of a rose to his lips was stifled in a groan of younger one, who was kneeling, begging for anguish, a groping gesture brought a shelf of mercy, and trying to shake off the grip from retorts and bottles to the floor, and he fell her throat. The sight of the women, forty writhing among their fragments. The elixir miles from the village, so surprised the chief of life, unfinished, was an elixir of death. that he ran toward them. The younger woman made a desperate effort to free 32. The Salt Witch herself, but in vain, as it seemed, for the hag >A pillar of snowy salt once stood on the wound her left hand in her hair while with Nebraska plain, about forty miles above the the other she raised the axe and was about to point where the Saline flows into the Platte, strike. and white men used to hear of it as the Salt >At that moment the chief gained a view of Witch. An Indian tribe was for a long time the face of the younger woman-it was that of quartered at the junction of the rivers, its his dead wife. With a snarl of wrath he chief a man of blood and muscle in whom leaped upon the hag and buried his own his people gloried, but so fierce, withal, that hatchet in her brain, but before he could nobody made a companion of him except his catch his wife in his arms the earth had wife, who alone could check his tigerish opened and both women disappeared, but a rages. pillar of salt stood where he had seen this >In sooth, he loved her so well that on her thing. For years the Indians maintained that death he became a recluse and shut himself the column was under the custody of the Salt within his lodge, refusing to see anybody. Witch, and when they went there to gather This mood endured with him so long that salt they would beat the ground with clubs, mutterings were heard in the tribe and there believing that each blow fell upon her was talk of choosing another chief. Some of person and kept her from working other evil. this talk he must have heard, for one morning he emerged in war-dress, and 33. The Serpent Queen without a word to anyone strode across the >Hutton Lake, Wyoming, is the home of plain to westward. On returning a full month the Serpent Queen, whose breathing may be later he was more communicative and had seen in the bubbles that well up in the something unusual to relate. He also proved centre. She is constantly watching for her his prowess by brandishing a belt of fresh lover, but takes all men who come in her scalps before the eyes of his warriors, and he way to her grotto beneath the water, when had also brought a lump of salt. she finds that they are not the one she has >He told them that after travelling far over expected, and there they become her slaves. the prairie he had thrown himself on the To lure victims into the lake she sets there a earth to sleep, when he was aroused by a decoy of a beautiful red swan, and should a 91

hunter kill this bird he will become chicanery or mere force is not recorded, he possessed of divine power. Should he see got his hands upon her property. “the woman,” as the serpent queen is called, >The charge of witchcraft was not pressed, he will never live to tell of it, unless he has because the man had obtained what he seen her from a hiding place near the wanted, but the poor, houseless creature laid shore-for so surely as he is noticed by this a ban on the place and told the thief that he Diana of the Depths, so surely will her spies, would never have pleasure nor profit out of the land snakes, sting him to death. In it. Walton laughed at her, bade her go her appearance she is a lovely girl in all but her way, and moved his family into the widow's face, and that is shaped like the head of a house. It was Sunday night, and the family monster snake. Her name is never spoken by had gone to bed, when at ten o'clock there the Indians, for fear that it will cost them came a fierce shock of stones against the their lives. roof and doors. All were awake in a moment. A first thought was that Indians 34. The Stone Throwing Devils were making an assault, but when the >There is an odd recurrence among occupants peered cautiously into the American legends of tales relating to moonlight the fields were seen to be assaults of people or their houses by of deserted. Yet, even as they looked, a gate darkness. The shadowy leaguers of was lifted from its hinges and thrown Gloucester, Massachusetts, kept the garrison through the air. of that place in a state of fright until they >Walton ventured out, but a volley of were expelled from the neighborhood by a stones, seemingly from a hundred hands, silver bullet and a chaplain's prayers. was delivered at his head, and he ran back to Witchcraft was sometimes manifested in shelter. Doors and windows were barred and Salem by the hurling of missiles from shuttered, but it made no difference. Stones, unseen hands. The "stone-throwing devil" of too hot to hold a hand upon, were hurled Portsmouth is the subject of a tradition more through glass and down the chimney, than two centuries of age, but, as the objects in the rooms themselves were picked stone-thrower appears rather as an avenger up and flung at Walton, candles were blown than as a gratuitously malignant spirit, he is out, a hand without a body tapped at the ill treated in having the name of devil window, locks and bars and keys were bent applied to him. In this New Hampshire port as if by hammer-blows, a cheese-press was lived a widow who had a cabin and a bit of smashed against the wall and the cheese land of her own. George Walton, a neighbor, spoiled, hay-stacks in the field were broken wanted her land, for its situation pleased up and the hay tossed into branches of trees. him, and as the old woman had neither For a long time Walton could not go out at money nor influential friends he charged her night without being assailed with stones. with witchcraft, and, whether by legal Bell, book, candle, and witch-broth availed 92

nothing, and it was many a day before peace went out with a lantern, but its rays lit up a came to the Walton household. field of untrodden snow, and there was no >In 1802 an epidemic of assault went sound except that made by the wind as it through the Berkshire Hills. The whistled past the barn and fences. Toward performance began in a tailor's shop in dawn another inspection was made, and in Salisbury, Connecticut, at eleven of the the dim light the snowballs were seen rising clock on the night of November 2, when a from the middle of a field that had not a stick and lumps of stone, charcoal, and footprint on it, and flying toward the mortar were flung through a window. The spectators like bullets. They ran into the moon was up, but nothing could be seen, field and laid about them with pitchforks, and the bombardment was continued until but nothing came of that, and not until the after daylight. After doing some damage sun arose was the pelting stopped. Young here the assailants went to the house of Kirk, who was badly hurt, died within a Ezekiel Landon and rapped away there for a year. week. Persons were struck by the missiles, >The men of Sharon, Connecticut, having and quantities of glass were destroyed. wheedled their town-site from the Indians in Nothing could be seen coming toward the 1754, were plagued thereafter by whoops windows until the glass broke, and it was and whistlings and the throwing of stones. seldom that anything passed far into a room. Men were seen in the starlight and were No matter how hard it was thrown, it fired upon, but without effect, and the dropped softly and surely on the sill, inside, disturbances were not ended until the as if a hand had put it there. Windows were Indians had received a sum of money. broken on both sides of buildings at the >Without presuming to doubt the veracity of same time, and many sticks and stones came tradition in these matters, an incident from through the same holes in the panes, as if the writer's boyhood in New England may aimed carefully by a gunner. be instanced. The house of an unpopular >Forty-seven years ago, in the township of gentleman was assailed—not in the St. Mary's, Illinois, two lads named Groves ostentatious manner just described, yet in a and a companion named Kirk were pelted way that gave him a good deal of trouble. with snowballs while on their way home Dead cats appeared mysteriously in his from a barn where they had been to care for neighborhood; weird noises arose under his the stock for the night. The evening had shut windows; he tried to pick up letters from his in dark, and the accuracy of the thrower's doorstep that became mere chalk-marks at aim was the more remarkable because it was his touch, so that he took up only splinters hardly possible to see more than a rod away. under his nails. One night, as a seance was The snowballs were packed so tightly that about beginning in his yard, he emerged they did not break on striking, though they from a clump of bushes, flew in the were thrown with force, and Kirk was direction of the disturbance, laid violent considerably bruised by them. Mr. Groves hands on the writer's collar, and bumped his 93

nose on a paving-stone. Then the considered valuable, and is used when manifestations were discontinued, for practicing black magic. several nights, for repairs. 36. Uncle Kaler, the Windjammer 35. Soucouyant >one of these earlier characters, who’s story >The soucouyant is a shape-shifting borders on the marvelous, was an old man, Caribbean folklore character who appears as called “Uncle Kaler,” who lived on London a reclusive old woman by day. By night, she Hill. Uncle Kaler had Finnish blood in his strips off her wrinkled skin and puts it in a veins and was reputed to be a “wizard.” By mortar. In her true form, as a fireball she his magical art, Uncle Kaler could make flies across the dark sky in search of a amulets that would bring good luck to a victim. The soucouyant can enter the home sailor, love philters for despairing swains of her victim through any sized hole like and forlorn damsels, and efficacious potions cracks, crevices and keyholes. Soucouyants to cure the cattle that were bewitched. This suck people's blood from their arms, legs weird enchanter could also make good and soft parts while they sleep leaving weather or bad weather to order, although he blue-black marks on the body in the sometimes overdid the matter, as the morning. If the soucouyant draws too much following tradition shows. blood, it is believed that the victim will >Uncle Kaler lived in an old house just either die and become a soucouyant or below the millbrook, and the road from perish entirely, leaving her killer to assume Cobbossee to hook ran close by his door. her skin. The soucouyant practices black One warm misty evening in May, Uncle magic. Soucouyants trade their victims' Kaler heard some horses speeding up the hill blood for evil powers with Bazil, the demon and stopping at his door. He opened it, and a who resides in the silk cotton tree. To man’s voice came in from the darkness: “Is expose a soucouyant, one should heap rice this Mr. Kaler?” around the house or at the village cross >”It is, at your service” roads as the creature will be obligated to >”Well, my name is ____, and this lady with gather every grain, grain by grain (a me is Miss ____ of Pownalboro. We are on herculean task to do before dawn) so that our way to Hallowell to be married. Her she can be caught in the act. To destroy her, relatives don't like the match and are after us coarse salt must be placed in the mortar hot foot. Listen!” containing her skin so she perishes, unable >away down the river could be heard the to put the skin back on. Belief in long-drawn bay of hounds. “You hear, old soucouyants is still preserved to an extent in man! Now our horses are about used up, and some Caribbean islands, including if something isn’t done they’ll overtake us; Dominica, St. Lucia, Haiti, Suriname and then there will be murder. You have the Trinidad. The skin of the soucouyant is reputation of being a windjammer and a wizard. Here are a hundred spanish milled 94

dollars for the worst weather you have got, choked up with uprooted trees and brush; and if it does the business, another hundred the mill was gone and the big boulder that when I come back.” formed part of its foundation had been swept >The old man made no reply, but went to a away far out into the river, and now forms chest and taking out a small leather bag have that impediment to navigation known as mill it to the stranger, saying, “Go back a little on rock. If anyone will take notice at low tide the road, cut the bag open , squeeze out its they will see quite a large point stretching contents, throw the bag away, then come out into the river from the mouth of the back and resume your journey.” brook; it is the debris of the cloudburst. >The man did as he was told, and returning in a short time said: “If you have played us 37. The Water-Devils false, something will happen to you.” >Crater Lake, Oregon, was a haunt of >Rest easy,” said Uncle Kaler. “Hark!” and water-devils who dragged down into it and away in thee southwest heard a low drowned all who ventured near. Its rumbling of distant thunder. It increased and discoverers saw it in the work of the Great deepened momentarily till it seemed as if a Spirit, but could not guess its meaning. All cyclone was tearing through the forest. but one of these Klamaths stole away after >”What was that?” asked the stranger. they had looked into its circular basin and >”A cloud-burst in the hills. It will be a sheer walls. He fancied that if it was a home sharp hound who follows your track in five of gods they might have some message for minutes. Go in peace, and good luck go with men, so camping on the brink of the lofty you, from a man who can give good luck.” cliffs he waited. In his sleep a vision came to >Away they dashed through the gathering him, and he heard voices, but could neither storm and darkness, speeding to happiness, make out appearances nor distinguish a or the contrary, as the case may be with word. Every night this dream was repeated. married people. Under the roaring thunder, He finally went down to the lake to bathed, and nearly deafened by the roar and crash of and instantly found his strength increased the raging torrent he had conjured, the old and saw that the people of his dreams were man went into the house saying to himself: the genii of the waters-whether good or bad “I am afraid I made that bagful too strong, he could not guess. One day he caught fish but I don’t know as I am sorry, for it would for food. A thousand water-devils came to never do to have the young people caught.” the surface, on the instant, and seized him. >The next morning the day broke clear and They carried him to a rock on the north-side beautiful; but where, the day before, a of the lake, that stands two thousand feet peaceful little brook had flowed through a above the water, and from that they dashed green pasture, and the little mill had him down, gathering the remains of his clattered merrily grinding the few grists the shattered body below and devouring them. neighbors brought, there was now a fearful Since that taste they have been eager for gorge gullied down to the bedrock and men’s blood. 95

When she asked me what Goatman was, I 38. The Wisconsin Goatman was hard pressed to answer her. >The countryside surrounding Holy Hill has >She continued with her description: more than it’s fair share of anomalous >“It’s elbow was set low on the arm. Legs activity. In 2006, a large bearlike animal seemed to bend back at the knee like a with canine characteristics dragged a dead dog’s. Muscles very defined. Thighs deer from the back of a county contractor’s especially. I couldn’t make out the hands pick up truck. The authorities recorded the because of the way it was running. I encounter as a “yeti sighting” and started a couldn’t see the feet as I couldn’t see past minor media frenzy, attracting the car hood. Hunters from as far away as California. >“Instantly I knew this was something Following the Bigfoot clamor, numerous incredible. We were shocked and confused eyewitnesses came forward with sightings of trying to figure out what the heck we just various strange animals ranging in witnessed. We don’t live far from that rural description from the infamous Bigfoot, to area so we are pretty much freaked out to odd bear/wolf hybrid creatures. venture outside when its pitch black. It’s >Also nearby is Hogsback Road, an area something we’ll never forget. It was a that local teenagers claim is haunted by an monumental moment. The vision of this even stranger cryptid, Goatman. Goatman is thing is etched in our lives. exactly what he sounds like, a strange >“I really want to know what that was. It humanoid with caprine characteristics. To was tangible. Not our imagination. I wish my eye, this creature, while almost assuredly I’d seen the face but it braced itself and not a human/goat hybrid, could put someone tucked its head down. I wish i would have in mind of the legendary creature, hit it. Not to cause harm, [but just so people particularly with those very unsettling legs won’t think I’m crazy].” which seem to have backwards bending >Those who have seen the drawing so far knees. have remarked that it looks extraterrestrial to >Stories about Goatman have been told them, likely because of that large head that around Washington County campfires and in resembles the classic “grey alien” parked cars since about the late-1960s.While description given by alleged UFO abductees. the creature seems to be mostly urban >I’ve pondered the drawing all weekend, legend, creatures with a blend of human and and the only rational explanation I can think goat attributes have been reported of isn’t rational at all. It looks vaguely like a sporadically across the United States, with tailless kangaroo or wallaby, but just how the oldest I’m aware of occurring in 1830s did one of those make it’s way to Minnesota. Southeastern Wisconsin? One can’t solve a >When I told Mindy that it reminded me of mystery by introducing a second, equally Goatman, she’d never heard of the creature. puzzling mystery. 96

>Interestingly enough, I talked with a man farmers cut off an ear from a pig that was two weeks ago following a Downtown West walking on its hind legs, and an eccentric Bend Ghost Walk who described a creature old body of the neighborhood appeared similar to one Mindy saw outside of his presently with one of her ears in a muffle, house in Southern Kewaskum. A few thus satisfying that community that she had winters ago he heard gunshots outside. He caused the troubles. When a woman was peered out his window, expecting to see making potash it began to leap about, and a coyotes running down the snowmobile path rifle was fired into the pot, causing a sudden near his home. He instead saw a 4-foot tall, calm. In the morning the witch was found grey-brown creature with a horselike head dead on her floor. Yet killing only made her running extremely fast down the worse, for she moved to a deserted house snowmobile trail before it dashed away into near her own, and there kept a mad revel the woods. The only major difference every night; fiddles were heard, lights separating the thing he saw from the one flashed, stones were thrown, and yells gave sketched above was that it was covered in people at a distance a series of cold shivers; shaggy fur. but the populace tried the effect of tearing down the house, and quiet was brought to 39. The Witch of New Haven the town. >As a citizen of New Haven was riding home—this was at the time of the goings on 40. Wizard Dimond at Salem—he saw shapes of women near his >John, or Edward, Dimond, grandfather of horse's head, whispering earnestly together Moll Pitcher, was a benevolent wizard. and keeping time with the trot of his animal When vessels were trying to enter the port of without effort of their own. "In the name of Marblehead in a heavy gale or at night, their God, tell me who you are," cried the crews were startled to hear a trumpet voice traveller, and at the name of God they pealing from the skies, plainly audible above vanished. Next day the man's orchard was the howling and hissing of any tempest, shaken by viewless hands and the fruit telling them how to lay their course so as to thrown down. Hogs ran about the reach smooth water. This was the voice of neighborhood on their hind legs; children Dimond, speaking from his station, miles cried that somebody was sticking pins into away in the village cemetery. He always them; one man would roll across the floor as repaired to this place in troublous weather if pushed, and he had to be watched lest he and shouted orders to the ships that were should go into the fire; when housewives made visible to him by mystic power as he made their bread they found it as full of hair strode to and fro among the graves. When as food in a city boarding-house; when they thieves came to him for advice he charmed made soft soap it ran from the kettle and them and made them take back their plunder over the floor like lava; stones fell down or caused them to tramp helplessly about the chimneys and smashed crockery. One of the streets bearing heavy burdens 97

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An Aoty production

Dedicated to a certain writing group full of special people who are very important to me, and at least one homosexual who goes by Noided