Maryland is one of the most oddly shaped US states, located in the Mid-Atlantic region. The state is bordered with Virginia, West Virginia, District of Columbia, Pennsylvania and Delaware and also has access to the Atlantic Ocean. The state capital is Annapolis and the largest city is Baltimore.
Maryland has a very diverse environmental and topographical features, so much so that the state is known as America in Miniature. Such environment features sandy dunes and seagrass in the east, low marshlands and bald cypress around the Chesapeake Bay, which is an estuary that punctures into Maryland, with many tributaries and rivers branching off of it into the state, this area is also one of the most urbanized of the state. The Piedmont Plateau also stretches through the state including rolling hills and oak forests. The Valley and Ridge and the Blue Ridge Mountain ranges also stretch through the state as well as the Allegheny Mountains which stretch through the state’s panhandle, a part of the Appalachian Plateau in the West of the state.
Maryland has a highly diversified economy and one of the highest median household incomes out of the other states. Major sectors include manufacturing, services, higher education, government, transportation and biotechnology. The Maryland economy also benefits from being close to the federal capital city of Washington D.C. Medical research, defense and aerospace industries are also other large sectors. There is also a large food-production sector in the state, with large thanks to commercial fishing. Agriculture like in many states also plays a role, but it is being encroached on by urbanization. Tourism also plays a large role including entertainment services and historical and military sites and tours, Maryland has one of the highest numbers of historic landmarks per capita out of the other states.
And now we’re through that let us get on to the strange and unexplained of Maryland.
First of all is the legend of a Goatman said to be around the city of Beltsville. There are as always numerous stories to how it came about, and the first sightings are said to have begun in the 1950s and hit their peak in the 1970s. Some say it was a creature or cryptid that has long existed in the area while others say it was a human who turned into a Goatman, such as through experiments on themselves by combining goat and human DNA or instead done to a person by the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center and that it managed to escape, so practically all the usual legend tropes.
Quite humorously the United State Department for Agriculture came out to deny that the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center had done any such thing.
Some also say the Goatman is a former farmer who went mad for revenge after his livestock were killed by a group of troublesome teenagers.
The Goatman as can only be imagined looks like a goat but can walk on two legs like a human can and is very much larger than an average goat would be, as well as that it is meant to be aggressive and dangerous to anyone who comes across it, as the goatman is also said to carry an axe around as a weapon. Some describe the goatman as looking like a Satyr, a mythical creature that is half goat on the bottom and half man on the top, rather than a full on humanoid goat.
Common activities the Goatman is said to partake in is stalking people out in the nearby wilderness and farmland around Beltsville or jumping out at cars and trying to attack them. Some have even blamed the killing of animals, such as pets, on the goatman as well.
One such is in a 1971 article in the Prince George’s County News on a pet death, the Edwards family had lost their puppy called Ginger. It would eventually be discovered by a group of men; the corpse of the puppy was headless and was found on Fletchertown Road. The article goes on to say that the death of the puppy started being connected up with the Goatman as a group of teenage girls that also included the Edward’s 16-year-old daughter who is called April, claimed to hear strange noises and even seen a large creature on the night the puppy vanished. The article also mentioned that during that time locals had claimed sightings of an animal-like creature that walked on its hind legs being seen along Fletchertown Road. The men who discovered the deceased puppy also claimed to have seen the Goatman and believe in it.
Later on, a larger publication, the Washington Post, would also pick up the story bringing it to a wider audience and further spreading the legend, and can be attributed perhaps to the reason why the legend of the Beltsville Goatman peaked during that decade. The Goatman and the Fletchertown Road would become a sort of Boogieman used to scare children as well. Teenagers going out to hunt and look for the creature also became a popular activity, Goatman parties would even be held in such areas where the Goatman was said to frequent.
Some skeptics say that the legend may have come about due to the rising prevalence of teenage car culture, allowing them to go out and experience more of nature and may have led to such an invention of folklore, or that it may also be related to the teaching of Greek mythology in schools that started or was taking place during the time period.
Next up is an old cryptid or paranormal creature of the state known as the Snallygaster which goes as far back as the later 1700s and is said to have been brought over by German immigrant superstition and belief, with the name possibly originating from Schneller Geist which means ‘quick ghost’. It is a chimera-like creature meaning it is a mythical creature made up of various parts of real-life creatures, with such early descriptions including it being a mixture of a bird, siren, demon and ghoul. Another popular description is that of a reptile and bird mix with a metallic beak that was lined with razor-sharp teeth, with it sometimes also being described with octopus-like tentacles.
The creature was first documented in Frederick County, most prominently in South Mountain and Middletown Valley but would also spread to being seen across Central Maryland and also in the Metropolitan area of Washington D.C in neighboring District of Columbia.
Back when it originally first came about in the 18th Century it was described as swooping down to pick up its victims from the ground and fly off with them. It was also said to suck the blood of its victims as well. Scared residents of the time took to painting seven-pointed stars on to buildings, which they believed kept it away, this was most often done on barns, of which some of these symbols can still be seen from the time on such old barns to this day. Such was likely done due to religious belief and that many saw it as an evil demon.
During the 19th Century it was speculated that the legend of the snallygaster was exploited as a boogieman to scare freed slaves. In the 20th Century and beyond sensationalized newspaper reports of sightings helped to revive the legend and keep it within the public consciousness even until this day.
One such series of hoax articles came about from 1909 which sensationalized apparent local accounts of residents coming across a beast, with descriptions including huge wings, a long-pointed bill, claws that were like steel hooks, and also an eye in the center of its forehead. It was also said to make screeching noises. These articles led to the Smithsonian Institution offering a reward for the hide of such creature, and there was even rumour of U.S President Thoedore Roosevelt considering whether to postponing his African safari in favour of a hunt for the beast in Maryland.
But it would later come out that the editor of the Middletown Valley Register George C. Rhoderick and reporter Ralph S. Wolfe had hoaxed the sightings in an attempt to increased readership of the paper. To create their hoax they had borrowed themes from German folklore, such as dragon-like creatures snatching children and livestock, and they may also have been inspired by the Jersey Devil which had been sighted a few weeks before the hoax.
All of this and more has helped keep the legend of the Snallygaster alive and well in Maryland.
Next up we shall come to another of many water cryptids that are said to be across the United States in various bodies of water and also sometimes in the sea along the coasts as well. This one is known as Chessie, named after the Chesapeake Bay, a large estuary, in-fact the largest in the United States, that cuts into Maryland and provides most of the state’s waterways, Chessie is said to be living in this estuary.
The legend has existed for decades and many working and living on the shores of Chesapeake Bay have claimed to see the creature merely just staring at them from a distance in the waters, just simply watching them, perhaps in curious fashion. One of the earliest known sightings goes back to 1936, claimed to be seen by a crew of a military helicopter flying over Bush River, a tidal estuary that connects to Chesapeake Bay, describing it as some unknown reptilian beast.
It is most often simply described as a large and dark snake-like creature which could be as long as 30ft in length. The beast received further prominence in 1982 when a family allegedly caught footage of Chessie swimming along in the Bay, the footage was taken from the Bay’s largest island, Kent Island. The Smithsonian held a mini-symposium on the video and came to the conclusion that something was alive in the bay, but they could not determine what it was. Although the video does likely exist based on the information I found, I have been unable to find the footage itself, although there is a still shot from the video that shows a black mass in the waters.
The peak of the sightings took place around the 1970s and 1980s before leveling off though the odd report still comes in of a Chessie sighting from time to time.
Back to Frederick County now and this time we shall go over something known as the Dwayyo, which is said to be a wolf man and also a creature that is an arch enemy of the Snallygaster. One of the basic descriptions is of a dark hairy creature that stands tall and on two feet as a bipedal. It is found around similar areas to the Snallygaster, such as the Middletown Valley.
One of the first documented sightings comes from 1944 in West Middleton where strange screams were heard and unidentifiable footprints were found. It would not be until 1965 when the beast enters into the public consciousness thanks to an article from the Frederick News Post which details a sighting of the creature as well as a subsequent attack.
The sighting was made by a man under the alias of John Becker in his yard near to the woods of the Gambrill State Park. Becker had gone out to investigate a strange noise as evening and its darkness closed in. After initially finding nothing of significance he had begun to head back towards his house when he caught something odd in his sight, some kind of creature heading towards him.
He described it as large as a bear, with long black hair, bushy tail, and that it growled like an angry dog or wolf. The creature was at first heading towards Becker on all fours before it got within range of Becker and then rose up on to its hind legs, walking like a human, and then attacked Becker, who fought the creature until it eventually ran off into the woods. Becker named the creature the Dwayyo in his recount of it to the newspaper.
As is typical of an initial widely publicized encounter of a strange unknown creature, other reports soon flooded into the newspapers of similar or perhaps the same creature, and from there it spread quickly through the community and beyond.
Sightings of the creature continued through the 1960s and 1970s where it peaked and then thereafter calmed down.
Some believe that the creature could have originated from a similar mythical creature known as the Hexenwolf that had been possibly brought over from superstitions and folklore of immigrant German settlers to Pennsylvania, many of which moved on into areas of Maryland, including places where the Dwayyo came about.
Finally, there is one last cryptid to go over, a creature that is believed to either be a wildman or a bigfoot-type creature and which is known as the Sykesville Monster, where it is said to hang around and has been reported by many local residents.
The legend of the creature started around the early-1970s, with the creature being sighted in woods around Sykesville. Continued close encounters with whatever the creature was would lead to residents of Sykesville descending into a tumult of fear. Some have even accused authorities of attempting to cover up whatever is going on in the area with the creature, giving residents little reasoning behind its responses.
One such sighting in 1981 was observed by a Lon Strickler who was fishing at the time in the south branch of the Patapsco River. During his fishing he would soon notice a large stray dog on the opposite bank around about 50ft away from him. He then observed this dog growling and barking at a clump of brush close to the river, that’s when he witnessed a large humanoid shape emerge from the brush, describing it as around 7-8ft in height and covered in hair.
Strickler then saw the dog attack the creature, and Strickler said the creature made a strange ticking sound as it struggled with the dog, eventually the large humanoid got a hold of the dog and slammed it to the ground, causing it to back down and run away. The large humanoid then headed back into the woods, Strickler said shortly after he caught the scent of the beast, describing it as a heavy musk.
After the encounter Strickler got out of there and drove to a phone where he called the police. The authorities told Strickler to return to the scene of his sighting and wait, of which he did, but despite it only taking him 3-minutes to get back a police cruiser was already on the scene and he was instantly told to leave the area. Strickler did leave but then decided to return to the area an hour later, where this time he observed several state vehicles, a federal vehicle and also local authorities on the scene that was now taped off and he could see authorities combing the area, including with search dogs and a helicopter was also in the area, which seemed to be a rather overproportionate response to a simple unidentified sighting, he was quickly again told to leave by authorities of which he did. There was apparently also a curfew put in place.
Strickler said he attempted to get answers from the state for several days afterwards but never got any such answer. Strickler also said he called several Baltimore TV stations who he said seemed to be interested in the sighting, but after he called the stations back after several days each one rebuffed him, saying they had no idea of any incident and didn’t want to talk to him.
So just what was this all about? Was it simply just a coincidence? Or is something very odd afoot? It’s likely we shall never truly know. It certainly sounds like something right out of the X-Files.
Well, that will do for Maryland, it certainly had some very interesting things. Next up we shall go over the strange and the unexplained of the US state of Massachusetts.
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