Snallygaster: Eldritch Horror HAUNTS and HUNTS Maryland Town (It Gets Messy)

The term “eldritch horror” has seen a lot of popularity in the darker corners of the internet. Monstrous beings like Cthulhu have cemented themselves in popular culture. But what if H.P. Lovecraft, the founder of Cosmic Horror, wasn’t the first to create such artistic works? What if Lovecraft borrowed inspiration from something far more tangible than we ever hope to admit? Well, according to Maryland locals, the Snallygaster, a beast depicted as a massive, part bird-part reptilian beast with huge wings, metallic talons that resembled steel hooks, one single eye right in the center of its head, and a long, pointed, razor-sharp beak that was lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth and has been rumored to uncurl a set of long tentacles from out of its throat and then wrap around its victim’s wounds and begin to use the suction cups along those tentacles to drain it’s victims dry. And yes, it is as scary as it sounds.

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H.P. Lovecraft might love it, but no one else has. 

The term “eldritch horror” has seen a lot of popularity in the darker corners of the internet. Games like Elden Ring, voted Game of the Year in 2022, heavily lean on these themes in both style and writing. Monstrous beings like Cuthulu have cemented themselves in popular culture, going as far as to inspire a sudo-religion called “Pastafarianism,” – Where acolytes worship the “flying Spaghetti Monster,” or Cuthulu in disguise. – With all the modern attention, it’s easy for the “Lovecraftian” style to feel fresh and new, but H.P. Lovecraft cooked up this tangled mess of monsterdom back in 1917 with his published short story, Dagon. 

Now, to be frank, Lovecraft wasn’t exactly as popular back then as his works are now. Sci-fi horror was a redundant mix of silly tropes and rehashed echoes of the same old stories. I mean, honestly, some of that hasn’t changed either. We still love a good rendition of Frankenstein’s monster, whether it be Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming take due out in 2025 or the version produced by Edison Films in 1910. And yeah, I am referring to Thomas Edison there. However, when Lovecraft came on the scene, his take was significantly different. His themes played more on the idea of space and time. The earth is but a spec in the infinite universe, and we are just ants crawling about, playthings to beings that lord over us as if we were next to nothing. We are less than pawns in a bigger game than life itself. 

But what if the founder of Cosmic Horror wasn’t as original as we always thought? What if Lovecraft borrowed inspiration from something far more tangible than any of us ever hope to admit? What if the Eldritch beings captured in the pages of H.P. Lovecraft’s works were more than nightmare-fueled fiction? What these things were…real? 

The Snallygaster took his life

They found his lifeless body face down in a ravine. Okay. Pause. Now, I get that we are a cryptid show, but man, that opening line there feels like it is as true crime as it gets. So. If gore isn’t your thing, hop a chapter marker ahead. Okay, let’s try that again. 

They found his lifeless body face down in a ravine. Bill Gifferson, a local to Middletown, Maryland, typically took the same route home every single day. Nothing unusual, just your standard walk about the countryside heading back home after a hard day’s work. But that was all about to change. 

Witnesses rushed into town to inform the authorities and press alike. Something massive had swooped down from the hillside above, blocking out the sun with its 14-foot wingspan, snatched a man up by his shoulders, and effortlessly hauled him back up to the top of the hill. Flashes of red began to shimmer in the sun as blood poured out in puddles around the mysterious monster. Some people ran. Some people turned away, sick to their stomachs, while others stood watching in frozen horror as the echoes of Bill’s screams mixed with the tearing of flesh reverberated across the countryside. 

The police thought the talk crazy, but with the press already en route to the scene, they quickly followed suit. As they drew near the hillside, they were swarmed by a group of passersby who quickly filled them in on the rest of the gruesome details. “It had a razor-sharp beak! It whipped its head sideways and slashed the man’s jugular clean through,” one witness recounted. Another chimed in, “Yeah, and as the man started gushing blood, it looked like some kind of tentacles came out of its beak and started drinking the blood from where it cut him!”

Police and press alike began making their way up to the now barren hillside – well, almost barren. Just shy of the hill’s crest, they all made out the gory crime scene: a puddle and splatter of red, broken earth from the claws of something struggling to hold back its prey, and a trail of red dripped splatters leading down the back side of the hill and off the edge into the crag below as if something had carried the body away. 

Slowly, rescue officers followed the trail of blood down into the ravine, where at the bottom, lifeless and mangled, they found him. It was just as the witnesses had described. Bill Gifferson lay there covered in crimson, neck gashed open, and seemingly drained dry of what blood would have been left. 

What is a Snallygaster? (The Snallygaster Panic of 1909)

Word spread quickly. It’s not every day someone is attacked by a monster, much less one as terrifying as this. Bus as February of 1909 dragged into March, so too did the sightings. 

Encounters with what locals were calling the Snallygaster were seeping in from every crack in society. The beast had been seen soaring across the sky over the town, crawling amidst the hills, and creeping through moonlit farms. Numerous farmers began reporting encounters with a creature seen feeding on cattle in the same tradition as its feeding on our good buddy, Bill –  before flying off into the night. Witnesses described the Snallygaster as a massive, part bird, part reptilian beast with huge wings, metallic talons that resembled steel hooks, one single eye right in the center of its head, and a long, pointed, razor-sharp beak that was lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth. And if that depiction isn’t scary enough, It was said that when the Snallygaster opened its teeth-lined beak, it would uncurl a set of long tentacles from out of its throat that it would then wrap around its victim’s wounds and begin to use the suction cups along those tentacles to drain its victims dry. It would then look up into the sky and roar a bellowing screech that sounded reminiscent of train whistles of the time. And as a side note, this is where watching the videos of this show really pays off because, well, artistic depictions of this thing are just as terrifying as they sound.

So, obviously, people were scared. The media was on alert. Oh, and current president, Theodore Rosevelt, he was excited!- An avid hunter, President Roosevelt had planned on canceling an upcoming African Safari to instead go and hunt the Snallygaster but ultimately ended up keeping his original plans due to sightings all but fizzling out by the end of summer that same year.

The final 1909 sightings of the Snallygaster happened in July when a team of scientific researchers was attempting to find the creature’s lair and, in part, no doubt, to secure that large financial reward the Smithsonian Institute had offered to anyone who could bring back a hide from one. The Valley Register later reported that the scientific researchers, upon stumbling across a large cave, saw a massive, winged beast matching the descriptions of the Snallygaster quickly take to the air and soar off toward the hills of Virginia. 

And just like that, as quick as the Snallygaster came, it was gone, leaving behind a season of tragedy and fear in its wake.Things slowly settled back into their normal pace, and the creature had forgotten the time. But if you’ve ever seen a good horror flick, you already know that just like Freddy Krueger, IT, or Jeepers Creepers, a good monster is never truly gone, only resting until they slip back into the realm of folklore – patiently awaiting the arrival of a new generation to begin feasting upon their fears once again.

The Snallygaster is back in action

Twenty-three years passed with nothing but hearsay and whispers of tales from past encounters. Fear had turned to curiosity had turned to forgotten events and Middletown Valley had gone back to normal… But an entire town can only burry their head in the sand for so long.

Charles typically took the same route every single morning. Nothing unusual, just your standard drive about the countryside heading back into town. Does this sound familiar? 

It was a chilly November morning when Charles Main, a local ice cream shop owner, along with his friend, Edward Lighter, were on their way back to Middletown from Frederick. But that Tuesday, as they traveled along just east of Braddock Heights, they saw something approaching fast just ahead. “The beast appeared suddenly from

the south,” Charles told reports for the Cumberland Evening Times. Flying about 25 feet in the air, it made a sharp turn in the sky and began flying right towards the men before changing directions again just before reaching them and flying off. 

Both men described a monster with a massive wingspan that was easily wider than 12 feet. It had all the same characteristic descriptions of the Snallygaster: The claws, beak, teeth, even the Tentacles that the men said seemed to be cast out like long streamers and then drew back in. But strangely enough, this time, the Snallygaster had an entirely new trick up its tentacle-filled sleeve: It changed colors! Charles stated that when he first saw the creature, it was white, but as it approached, it shifted to black. 

Many called his story ridiculous. Leslie N. Coblentz, Local attorney and president of the Frederick board of education, went on record to openly rebuke Main and Lighter’s tale, calling it, and I quote, a bunch of “hooey.” But their account wasn’t the last. 

Two boys, Junior Fulmer and Buddy Haupt were out playing in the Middletown Commons when they witnessed a strange creature flying in from the South Mountain. They quickly ran home to tell their parents and pass along what they witnessed. 

Local papers mention how many local African American corn huskers witnessed the Snallygaster early in the morning hours, going as far as to create the term “Snallygasted” to describe those who had seen it overhead. And as a side note, I am being delicate here. But we are coming back to this point in a bit because there’s a lot to unpack about this little sentence, so just tuck this away for now and bear with me. Thanks. 

Over the next half a year, Snallygaster sightings kept coming right. The Montgomery County Sentinel that December stated how two scores (or 40) people had witnessed the Snallygaster in the last month alone. It goes on to report that ten men armed with rifles and “snooze berries,” which sounds like something straight out of Pokemon, mind you, approached a cave in the mountains to hunt the creature, but it had retreated too far back into the cave system for them to safely hunt it. 

Later an article was released detailing how Scientists believed that Snallygaster Eggs should take on average 20-25 years to hatch so this current snallygaster must be an offspring of the previous one back in 1909. 

And then there were the sightings of the baby snallygaster that lead people to believing more of these things were hatching! But according to Harry Wachtel at least, this was just a bunch of paranoia. There was no Baby Snallygaster, he knew for certain because he had one in his possession. 

A Baby Snallygaster is Captured

Harry Wachtel watched as people from across the Valley poured in to see his baby Snallygaster in the flesh. Its wings were haunting with a mix of grey and white. Its talons are razor sharp, and its eyes wide. Its wings were an impressive 3 feet wide, even for a baby. Harry managed to capture the beast with a well-placed bullet to the wing as he watched the monster soar overhead. When it spiraled to the ground, he grabbed it and caged it for the world to see. Except what Harry caught wasn’t a Snallygaster – it was an owl. Now, to his credit, it was a big owl. But it was just an owl. 

Now, of course, Harry knew this. He wasn’t trying to pass this off as something more than it was. He was simply trying to calm the people. There was no baby Snallygaster. It was just a big, kinda creepy owl who nestled up a bit too close to society for everyone’s comfort. But what about the big Snally? Can I call it that? I think I can. 

Where was Momma Snally hiding out, and how long would her reign of tentacle terror last? Luckily, it seems that question was about to be answered, too. 

Not far over the South Mountain, supposed home to ole Snally herself, lies a little place called “Frog Hollow.” And there in Frog Hollow, hidden away from prying eyes, was a rather large, 2500-gallon moonshine distillery. You see, moonshine was big business. Especially in 1933, the last leg of prohibition. And it seems, like many Americans, the Snallygaster couldn’t keep its mouth-parts off the bottle. The report states that as the Snallygaster flew over the distillery, it was overcome by the fumes. It spiraled uncontrollably out of the sky and plummeted directly into the steaming hot vat of alcohol. Five men supposedly witnessed the beast crashing down, but none of their names were given due to them all leaving the state, crossing the Potomac into West Virginia – out of fear of the creature and not because they were running an illegal moonshine business, I’m sure. 

That following day, George T. Danforth, Chief of Hagerstown Prohibition Office, along with Agent Charles E. Cushwa, the man who received the um, hot tip, made their way to investigate both the distillery and the monster. Upon arriving that Thursday morning, they were shocked to learn that all of the operators who gave an anonymous tip were nowhere to be found; go figure! But what shocked them the most was when they peered off into that vat of moonshine and found nothing but the skeleton of some large, winged monster floating about – flesh mostly gone, eaten up by the hot alcohol. 

What a load of Snallygaster

Snallygaster, a mispronunciation of the words “Schneller Geist’ – meaning “quick ghost” in German. In the early 1700s, this term would have been used for things that caused more haunting types of encounters. Got a wild wind? Schneller Geist! – Creaky floorboards? Schneller Geist! – Mysterious being lurking about? You guessed it: Schneller Geist! So when a Lovecraftian eldritch horror starts causing a ruckus in your town, well, Schneller, my Geist, if I do say so myself! But the more you read into these stories, I mean, let’s get honest. There are obvious external forces at play here. And no, this time, I don’t mean Schneller Geist!

Remember that bit I told you we’d come back to earlier? The one about African American’s getting “Snallygastered”? I think it’s time we address the Elephant and Donkey in the room on this. (And that’s a political joke for those not in the USA.)

The Snallygaster: A Tool for Financial Gain

The Snallygaster is a lot of hearsay and verbal folklore. The story has grown from age to age. Grandparents love to tell their grandkids how if they don’t behave, the Snallygaster’s gonna get ya! But other than stories, there really isn’t much to go on here. If you want to boil it down to its bones (not unlike how the snallygaster died, I guess… I digress), then the snallygaster stories were pretty much all one of three things: Folklore fun, financial and political gain, and racism. 

Papers at this time were neck deep in Yellow Journalism, a term you might have heard hear before that means basically – stuff they make up to sell papers. Just a month prior in New Jersey papers were running a story about a bizarre footprint that showed up leading to a mass interest in the Jersey Devil of the Pine Barrens, a cryptid that if you are into cryptids, you probably know at least a bit. 

So when George Rhoderick, son of the owner of the newspaper, the Valley Register, he often would keep an eye on the competition. So when he saw the Jersey Devil start to make its rounds, he went above and beyond to drum up some local lore of his own. Schneller Geist!

And well, it worked! Article after article began to go into even more elaborate stories of the Snallygaster’s sightings and tales. Some of these stories even began to portray the Snallygaster as some kind of Civil War reincarnate being where supposedly, after the creature landed and drank an entire 100-gallon cattle trough of water, exclaimed in perfect English, “My, I’m dry, I haven’t had a good drink since I was killed in the Battle of Chickamauga,” 

But as the papers sold more, so did the story adapt and grow. It soon wasn’t enough to just sell papers. No, the Snallygaster was about to take on a new life in politics and population control. 

The Snallygaster: A Tool for Racism

Here at Cryptids Across the Atlas, our mission is to make history fun through the lens of cryptids. We love to present the juxtaposition of what might lurk out there in the shadows while simultaneously bringing history and culture to light.  But when you start flipping over rocks, sometimes something far more scary crawls out than a winged creature with a cyclops eye and a tentacle mouth. 

On February 12th, 1909, The Valley Register published an article titled “The Colored People Are in Great Danger”. This article goes into great detail about how African American men were the prime food source for the Snallygaster, especially if they are out after dark with women of color being next up on their preferred foods list. And I am sure it is a complete coincidence that this article came out the EXACT same day the NAACP, or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was formally established…

Later articles go on to detail how the Snallygaster comes around every election cycle to, um… well, eat all the African Americans who “cast their ballot for a Democrat.” And no, we don’t get involved in politics here. This is just verbatim what the paper said.

Other articles claim that the Snallygaster came over as a result of African slavery, and so it eats what it is used to eating. So yeah, the snallygaster was obviously a tool for promoting racism, at least for a segment of its existence. “Weaponized Superstition” was but one of the many tactics used to strip the black population of their freedoms. By placing fears upon a group of people that after certain hours or by voting certain ways, they would be hunted by a monster, it kept that population well within the control of white racists who couldn’t stand to see someone of a different color have God help Us, Equal Rights”. Equal rights that wouldn’t come for another 55 or so years, mind you. But while this was by far the worst, it wasn’t the only politically motivated moment in Snallygaster folklore. 

The Snallygaster: A tool for Political Gain

Even when the tales of the Snallygaster cropped back up 23 years later, there was, of course, a motive for the madness.Think it’s a coincidence that the Snallygaster died in a vat of moonshine months before prohibition was lifted? Or was it perhaps more so a tool to promote an ideology, a way of reaching the people and implanting a set of ideas?

After all, ideological and political gain has been the Snallygaster’s bread and butter for decades now! One of the final stories sums this up best: 

A supposed photo of the snallygaster riding away on, I kid you not, a bicycle was published stating that the creature was spotted riding through DC before flying off into the sunset screaming in that signature train whistle scream, “Balance the budget! Balance the budget!”. Supposedly, the monster was going to make a grand reappearance on December 5th, which just so happened to be the same day the Eighteenth Amendment prohibiting alcohol was set to be overridden… Oh, and this photo that was supposedly taken of the creature? Yeah, the image was said to have been recovered by a photographer who noticed it burned into the retina of a politician – a politician who dropped dead right there at the scene as he heard the Snallygaster’s menacing promise to return.

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