Bear Lake Monster
In 1868 a Mormon leader wrote that a giant serpent swam in Bear Lake on the Utah-Idaho line. He later called it a lie. People kept seeing it anyway.
North America
Beast of Bray Road
A quiet country road outside Elkhorn, Wisconsin, gave America its most famous werewolf. Witnesses describe a wolf-headed thing that kneels over roadkill and sometimes stands up on two legs.
Bigfoot
A tall, hair-covered figure walking upright through the forests of North America. More people say they have seen it than any other cryptid, and science has yet to find a body.
Champ
America's answer to Nessie, said to swim between New York, Vermont and Quebec. Even P.T. Barnum wanted its hide.
Chupacabra
Dead goats with puncture wounds, a spiny creature seen in Puerto Rico, then hairless 'monsters' in Texas. The chupacabra is the youngest of the great cryptids, and it changed shape on the way north.
Dover DemonMassachusetts
Dover Demon
Three teenagers, two nights, one wealthy Boston suburb, and a pale creature with a watermelon head and glowing eyes. Then the sightings stopped.
Flatwoods Monster
A light falls from the sky, a group of kids climbs a hill, and a flashlight beam finds a ten-foot figure with a glowing face. September 12, 1952 still has West Virginia talking.
Fouke Monster
A hairy arm through a screen window on a spring night in 1971, and a small Arkansas town that became a movie set. The Boggy Creek legend helped invent the Bigfoot film.
Jersey Devil
Legend says it was born the thirteenth child, cursed by its own mother, and flew off into the Pine Barrens. In one week of January 1909, reports of it closed schools across South Jersey.
Kelly-Hopkinsville Goblins
On an August night in 1955, two families in rural Kentucky said small glowing creatures besieged their farmhouse for hours. Gunfire, they said, just knocked them over.
Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp
In the summer of 1988 a teenager said a seven-foot green thing with red eyes jumped on his car near a South Carolina swamp. Within weeks, the whole country knew the name Bishopville.
Michigan Dogman
A man's body, a dog's head, and a howl like a human scream. A radio DJ's 1987 prank song turned out to have listeners with stories of their own.
Momo, the Missouri Monster
In July 1972 three children in Louisiana, Missouri, said they saw a huge hairy thing at the foot of Marzolf Hill carrying a dead dog. For a few weeks the river town was the monster capital of America.
Mothman
Red eyes in the headlights, wings folded on its back, and a small river town that never forgot. Mothman reports ran through Point Pleasant for a year, then the bridge fell.
Pope Lick Monster
A half-man, half-goat said to haunt a towering railroad trestle outside Louisville. The legend is told as a warning, and the trestle itself has killed people who went looking.
SkinwalkerUtah
Skinwalker
A Navajo belief that many Diné people would rather outsiders left alone, and a Utah ranch that borrowed its name. This page covers the modern lore and treats the tradition with care.
Skunk Ape
Florida's swamp ape, named for a smell witnesses never forget. Its biggest champion runs a research headquarters and campground in the Everglades.
Snallygaster
Western Maryland's winged dragon: a German settlers' 'quick ghost' that a small-town newspaper turned into a sensation in 1909, and that has refused to go away since.
Thunderbird
A bird big enough to lift a child. The name comes from powerful Indigenous traditions, but the modern cryptid lives in tall tales, a lost photograph and one terrifying summer evening in Illinois.
Van Meter Visitor
For five nights in the fall of 1903, the businessmen of a small Iowa town said a winged, glowing creature came out of an old coal mine. They said they shot at it, and that it did not seem to care.
Around the world
Almas
Central Asia's 'wild man': a hairy, human-like figure from Mongolian and Caucasus folklore that Soviet scientists once went looking for in earnest.
Beast of Gévaudan
Between 1764 and 1767 something killed scores of people in the mountains of south-central France. The king sent his best hunters. It took three years and a local farmer's gun to end it, and nobody fully agrees on what it was.
Bunyip
Something bellows in the billabongs of southeastern Australia. Aboriginal tradition named it; colonial newspapers chased it; a mystery skull put it on display in Sydney in 1847.
Loch Ness Monster
A long neck, a hump in dark water, and a Highland loch deep enough to hide almost anything. Nessie is the world's most famous lake monster.
Mokele-mbembe
Deep in the Congo swamps, some explorers have gone looking for a living dinosaur. What they found were stories, blurry film and a long argument about where the legend came from.
Mongolian Death Worm
A worm under the Gobi sand that kills with venom or a jolt of electricity. That is the legend. Expeditions have used thumpers, explosives and patience, and come home empty-handed.
Ogopogo
A long, humped shape in Okanagan Lake, a music-hall name, and a much older Syilx spirit of the lake. Canada's best-known lake creature.
Orang Pendek
A small, powerful ape said to walk upright through the Sumatran rainforest. It is one of the few cryptids that serious field researchers say they have seen themselves.
Owlman of Mawnan
In 1976 two sisters on holiday in Cornwall said a huge feathered bird-man hovered over a village church tower. Britain's answer to Mothman was born, and so was an argument about who was behind it.
Sea Serpents and the KrakenOceans worldwide
Sea Serpents and the Kraken
For centuries sailors swore to giant serpents rising beside their ships and many-armed monsters pulling boats down. A navy captain's report in 1848 made headlines. A camera in 2004 finally caught one monster alive.
Thylacine Sightings (Tasmanian Tiger)
The last known Tasmanian tiger died in a Hobart zoo in 1936. People have been reporting striped dog-like animals in the Tasmanian bush ever since.
WendigoCanada
Wendigo
A being of winter, hunger and greed from Algonquian tradition, long before it became a horror-movie monster. Its real story is about how people survive hard winters together.
Yeti
Big footprints in high Himalayan snow, and a creature the Sherpa named long before Western climbers arrived. The Yeti is the mountain cousin of Bigfoot.
YowieAustralia
Yowie
Australia's hairy giant of the eastern ranges. Colonial papers called it the Yahoo; today it has a statue, a park and a footy team in Queensland.