Investigated report Logged and followed up by an investigating group.On the record In a newspaper, police, government or court record, or from a named public witness.Told story Folklore, oral tradition or a story passed along.Proven hoax Proven or confessed hoax.
Winged · TNT area, Point Pleasant, Mason County · first reported November 15, 1966
The red-eyed winged figure of Point Pleasant, reported from November 1966 through the December 15, 1967 Silver Bridge collapse. See the main Mothman dossier.
Full story: Mothman →
Visiting: Mothman Museum and statue, 400 Main Street, Point Pleasant; Mothman Festival each September.
Humanoid · Flatwoods, Braxton County · first reported September 12, 1952 · also called Braxxie, Braxton County Monster, Phantom of Flatwoods
The towering, spade-hooded figure that a group of Flatwoods boys, a mother and a young National Guardsman met on a hilltop farm in September 1952. See the main Flatwoods Monster dossier.
Full story: Flatwoods Monster →
Visiting: Flatwoods Monster Museum, 208 Main Street, Sutton; giant Flatwoods Monster chairs around Braxton County.
Humanoid · Riverside Drive along the Tygart Valley River, Grafton, Taylor County · first reported June 16, 1964 · also called Headless Horror of Grafton
Late on June 16, 1964, young reporter Robert Cockrell was driving along the Tygart Valley River in Grafton when his headlights caught something standing near the water. He described a figure seven to nine feet tall, broad, with smooth, pale, seal-like skin and no visible head, and said it made a whistling sound. He published his account in the Grafton Sentinel two days later. Search parties and carloads of curious visitors poured in, and the paper soon brushed it off as spring fever. Cockrell later worked with paranormal writer Gray Barker on an article that was never published. The creature's 2018 appearance in the video game Fallout 76 revived interest, and Grafton held its first Grafton Monster Festival in June 2024.
Visiting: Grafton Monster Festival (first held June 2024); Riverside Drive is a public road.
Beast · Boone, Kanawha and Mason counties · first reported 1994 · also called White Thing (in part)
Sheepsquatch is exactly what the name promises, something between a ram and a Sasquatch. Witnesses put it at bear size or larger, covered in thick, dirty-white wool, with curling horns, a long dog-like head, clawed hands some call disturbingly human, and a sulfur smell in nearly every account. Reports cluster in Boone, Kanawha and Mason counties from 1994 to 1999: a figure crossing a road, a horned animal that clawed at a couple's car in 1995, and campers fleeing something huge and white that screamed. Later reports came from Virginia. The name is modern and likely coined by enthusiasts, laid over older White Thing stories from the coal counties. It became a Fallout 76 monster in 2019.
Beast · Kanawha Valley and the Fairmont-Rivesville coal country · first reported 1929 (story); recorded by 1965 · also called White Things, Devil Dogs
Long before Sheepsquatch, West Virginia's coal towns told of the White Thing, a pale, hairy creature that might be dog-like, cat-like or almost human, with huge fangs and a scream like a woman's. Folklorist Ruth Ann Musick preserved such stories in her 1965 collection The Telltale Lilac Bush. In one, a miner leaving a Fairmont-area mine in 1929 was chased by a white beast he struck with his lunch bucket, which passed right through it, and it would not follow him into a cemetery. In another, a woman walking home from church heard a scream and was chased, and a horse was found mostly stripped of flesh the next morning. These are ghost-beast tales, often treated as omens.
Humanoid · Grant Town, Marion County · first reported July 1968 · also called Veggie Man, Spinach Man
One of West Virginia's strangest stories. In July 1968, Jennings Frederick, out hunting woodchucks near Grant Town, said he met a thin green being shaped like a plant stalk, with long ears, slanted yellow eyes and suction-cup fingers ending in thorn-like tips. He said it pricked his arm and drew blood while speaking to him in his mind, asking for help, then bounded away in huge leaps. The account comes almost entirely through paranormal writer Gray Barker, who published it in his newsletter, and later Brad Steiger. Barker was known for hoaxes, which leaves the case hard to judge. Fairmont has adopted it as a quirky local celebration, and it also appears in Fallout 76.
Water monster · Monongahela River near Rivesville, Marion County · first reported 1700s (legend); 1983 sighting · also called Rivesville River Monster, Winifred the Waterhorse
The Ogua is a river monster of the Monongahela, described as a giant snapping turtle-like animal, sometimes with two heads and a long tail, that waits near the bank to drag deer, and occasionally people, to an underwater den. One frontier tale says a family lost a son to it in 1746 and moved away after seeing something larger than a sow outside their window. A related modern report comes from May 1983, when coal miner John Edward White said he saw a twenty-foot, reddish-brown serpentine creature with sharp teeth near Paw Paw Creek; locals nicknamed it the Rivesville River Monster. Skeptics suggest big snapping turtles and tall tales.
Humanoid · Interstate 77 near Parkersburg, Wood County · first reported November 2, 1966 · also called The Grinning Man
Two weeks before the first Mothman reports, sewing machine salesman Woodrow Derenberger said a gray craft blocked his way on Interstate 77 near Parkersburg on the evening of November 2, 1966. A smiling, dark-haired man in a shiny coat stepped out and spoke to him without moving his lips, calling himself Indrid Cold. Derenberger went public, claimed ongoing contact and visits to a planet called Lanulos, and wrote a 1971 book. Writer John Keel tied Cold to a grinning figure reported in New Jersey and to the Mothman wave. Skeptics, including Brian Dunning, note that Keel's sourcing is weak. The figure appears in the 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies.
Beast · Harpers Ferry and the Upper Potomac Valley, Jefferson County · first reported 1800s (legend) · also called Snarly Yow
The phantom black dog of the Upper Potomac roams both sides of the river, from South Mountain in Maryland to Harpers Ferry in West Virginia. Travelers describe a big dark dog with glowing eyes and a threatening red mouth that shots cannot touch, and that sometimes seems to change shape. Stephen Dorman Brown collected Harpers Ferry versions in his 1976 book on the town's haunted houses. Harpers Ferry, with John Brown's raid and Civil War battles nearby, has no shortage of ghost stories, and the Snarly Yow is its best-known animal spirit. See also the Maryland Snarly Yow entry for the South Mountain tales.
Visiting: Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.
Humanoid · Caves near Seneca Rocks, Pendleton County · first reported June 23, 1992
Bat Boy is pure invention, and proudly so. On June 23, 1992, the supermarket tabloid Weekly World News ran a story about a half-human, half-bat child found in a West Virginia cave, with huge eyes and big pointed ears. The creature, created by the paper's staff, became its mascot, escaping and being recaptured in story after story for years. It inspired a stage show, Bat Boy: The Musical. Since it was fiction from day one, it is listed here as a hoax, but it has become part of West Virginia's monster pop culture anyway, alongside real local legends like Mothman.
Ape-like · Monongahela National Forest and central West Virginia · first reported 1919 (in print) · also called Yahoo, Wood Booger, Beast of Gum Hill
Mountain folks in West Virginia have older names for Bigfoot, among them Yahoo and Wood Booger. Reports span the Monongahela National Forest, Pendleton, Pocahontas, Braxton, Nicholas and Fayette counties. The earliest printed mention cited by researchers is a 1919 newspaper item. Notable later reports include a father and child near the Greenbrier River in 1969, a motorist in the Seneca Valley in 1998, a cluster on Pendleton County highways in 2007, a hunter near the New River Gorge Bridge in 2007, and a couple in their backyard in Danese in 2019. A wildlife biologist has suggested sandhill cranes and other misidentified animals for some cases. A West Virginia Bigfoot museum opened in 2021.
Visiting: A West Virginia Bigfoot Museum opened in 2021.
Water monster · Monongahela River · first reported French and Indian War era (legend) · also called Monongahela River Monster
Monongy is a lesser-known river being of the Monongahela, sometimes described as a mermaid-like creature. Stories tie it to Indigenous lore and to reports going back to the French and Indian War, with later sightings said to come from the Pittsburgh stretch of the river in the 1930s to 1950s. A 2003 photograph was supposedly taken and then lost. In 2010, the name was used to promote a swim race, a sign of how the legend has turned into local fun. Very little of this is documented. It overlaps with the Ogua, the other Monongahela monster, and the two may be blended versions of the same river lore.