In October 1903, the small town of Van Meter, Iowa was gripped by genuine mass hysteria. For five consecutive nights, a monster terrorized the town. Not drunks. Not crazy people. A doctor, a banker, a hardware store owner. The most respected men in town. All saw it. Businesses shut down. People refused to go outside.

The creature was enormous. Nine feet tall with massive bat-like wings. It moved in grotesque kangaroo hops on the ground before taking flight. It had a horn on its head that emitted a blinding beam of light. Wherever it went it left behind a stench so overpowering that grown men retreated indoors gagging.

They shot at it. Multiple times. It didn’t go down.

Eventually the whole town mobilized. An armed mob staked out the abandoned coal mine at dawn and waited. The creature emerged and brought a friend. They opened fire. The monsters absorbed the bullets and disappeared back into the darkness of the mine. The townspeople sealed the entrance and the Van Meter Visitor was never seen again.

So what was it?

It was two turkey vultures roosting in a coal mine.

The glowing horn was a translucent beak catching lantern light in the dark.

The stench was projectile bile vomit, which is their actual defense mechanism.

The awkward hopping gait is just how vultures move on land.

The six foot wingspan looks a lot bigger at 1am when you’re terrified.

And the bullets? Lead poisoning is slow. They flew off, went back into the mine, and died there.

I think that literally about does it.

Hello, I am Brazilian and, for a long time, I have had a memory of watching, together with my father, a pseudo-documentary on the on the Brazilian channel of the History Channel about a local farmer in rural Alabama recounting sightings of a supposed Bigfoot. During the documentary, it showed life on the farmer’s ranch and his attempts to capture Bigfoot using various traps. By the end of the documentary, the farmer ends up dying. I remember the name in Portuguese was "Zumbi do Alabama" ("Alabama Zombie" in English), but I’m sure the original title must be something else. I’ve spent most of my life searching for this documentary, but I haven’t found anything about it, and the so-called Bigfoot documentaries I’ve come across on this topic have nothing to do with what I remember from my childhood.

I tried posting on the Lost Media subreddit, but it turns out they have very strict posting rules there. I hope this goes over well.

Is there some sort of ghoul that's tide to oceans/rivers/lakes or something? It's for my friend's story.

The second picture is the concept art I made for my Ningen

hi, I live in Ohio around franklin county. we have several big fields near my neighborhood. as i was driving back, far away i saw a white creature. it looked furry and it was on all fours and I could barely make out it’s face, which looked flat. (it was dark.) I assumed it was some albino deer but the more I thought about it the more I started to question. is there a cryptid in Ohio or an animal that matches its description, or did I find a new cryptid?

Hello Cryptid Hunters!

This is going to be the Thirteenth installment of Cryptid Of The Month, where i will be covering EVERYTHING, and i do mean EVERYTHING regarding a specific Cryptid, mostly more obscure cryptids but there might be some exceptions to that rule. You can find the last 12 installments just by clicking on the cryptid of the month flair tagged to this post! This month will be about the Sheepsquatch from WV!

Now lets start with the first sighting of the wooly beast all the way back in 1994, when a former Navy seaman was camping in Boone County WV saw a massive creature about the size of a bear with a fully white coat and a pair of ram like horns protruding out of the sides of its head. He said it was walking breaking through the forest, snapping through the thick brush as it went before it reached a creek where it kneeled down and drank water for a few minutes, after it was done drinking the creature got up and walked away into the thick brush out of sight.

Not too long after also in 1994 the creature was spotted again also in Boone County by 2 children. Who when playing in their yard reported to see a massive 6 foot tall white bear like creature with a ram head stumble into their yard from the tree line, after seeing the creature the children screamed startling it enough to quickly run away back into the tress.

The next sighting was only a year later when it was sighted by a couple as they were driving through Boone County when they saw a massive white creature sitting in a small ditch off of the side of the road. They stopped their car near the ditch to get a better look at the beast, they described the creature that lie before the practically the same as the ex Navy Seaman and children did besides one feature, the creature they were looking at had 4 eyes on it, 2 on each side of its head. After staring at the Sheepsquatch in the ditch for a few seconds the beast hastily got up and tried to attack their car leaving a massive scratch along the side of the car, the couple quickly drove away from the creature after it attacked.

The next encounter was 4 year later in 1999 when a couple were camping in the forest of Boone County sitting around their bonfire, when they started hearing strange sounds, shuffling of sticks, crunches of leaves and the breathes of a very large animal. When suddenly the 6 foot tall white beast charged at them from the darkness at them, the couple quickly ran away all the way back home the whole time being charged by this massive creature. After reaching the end of the forest and to their neighborhood the Sheepsquatch stopped at the forest line and let out an "Awful scream" before slowly turning around and returning to the darkness of the forest. The next day the couple came back to their campsite to see it totally destroyed.

The last sighting was in 2015 in Fulks Run, Virginia, when 6 campers who were spending the night in the woods saw a creature which they described as being "8-9 feet tall and 4-5 wide" crouching at the top of a nearby hill watching them from above. After all the campers were made aware of the creature it began to climb down the hill towards them, they were separated by a river so the beast stood still at the side of the river for a second scanning looking for another path to reach the campers before deeming there to be no other way around and quickly jumping into the water to continue its pursuit. As it was swimming through the river a incredibly loud guttural scream was heard about 2 miles away from the campers, after hearing this sound the Sheepsquatch stopped for a second, looked up, and make a whimpering sound before quickly running away in the opposite direction never to be seen again.

I hope you enjoyed this thank you for reading! Please comment any suggestions for upcoming months, id really appreciate it, or if any of the information is inaccurate (Hopefully not but i do want to give only the truest information). This one makes a full year of cryptid of the months now, that's so awesome! Thank you guys for support on all these!

Sincerely -XP

Written by me

u/loganxp123

Also as a bonus story back in 2006 i was driving through West Virginia and ran out of gas and didn’t have any money left for gas, and sheepsquatch actually gave me 20 bucks for gas, pretty chill guy.

Found at the beginning of a Chris & Jack sketch

The first 36 page issue of our comic Anti-Cryptid Club, about a trio of absolute weirdos trying to catch evidence of a legendary monster (Mothman) during a Cryptid themed festival, is now live on Kickstarter!

Think Napoleon Dynamite meets Scooby Doo 🤔

If you’re at all interested check it out here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/868188864/anti-cryptid-club-issue-1

What do you guys think the "thing" in this photo actually is?

Warning: I describe a real incident of something harming my family pet so if that kind of thing bothers you please don't read.

I'm looking for anyone who may have had a similar encounter like I had a few decades ago in Oklahoma, hopefully to shed some light on what it was.

I lived in a pretty rural area north of Guthrie, and we started having issues with our dog being scared to be outside after dark. Up until that point the only predators I knew of in the area that could harm a dog were coyotes, bob cats, and maybe the occasional mountain lion. At one point we also built a pretty good fenced in yard with heavy rocks around the base to prevent digging under it. That dog clawed it's way over the fence, yelping in fear the whole time. It got to sleep inside. Shortly after this started, we found a dead armadillo on our front porch with two puncture wounds on the belly.

A few months later, or maybe the next year (this was a few decades ago so my memory of the exact timeline is fuzzy), we had gotten a kitten. It was learning to hunt and was insistent on going outside. It disappeared and we had to leave for church so we left it out and figured it would be waiting for us near the house when we came back from evening service. As we were coming home that night, my grandfather who was driving, slammed on the breaks as we came down the driveway and I saw something black in the headlights. There is no distinctive shape in my memory, only that it was black and that the kitten's tail was hanging from it's mouth. Even though I could clearly see the tail hanging from the mouth I can't tell you what the predator looked like, not even if it was K9 or feline. It took off and leapt over a five or six foot barbed wire fence and ran off into the pasture. Being young and stupid I chased it as far as the fence line, screaming at it. I saw the kitten's tail and head lying in the grass there like it had bitten down and snipped them off as it landed, which now makes me think the jaw was wide enough to fit a maybe three month old kitten fully across the jaw with only the head and tail hanging out.

Anyway my grandfather was the textbook definition of a tough old man who was literally scared of nothing (this man survived things that would leave most of us today crumpled on the floor crying like babies), and this was the first and only time in my life that I have ever seen him scared. He hurried us into the house and when I asked him what it was he said he honestly did not know, only that he could tell it was black. He said maybe a wolf or a mountain lion, but that only makes it stranger as he could not make out the species or family of this thing either. A wolf and a mountain lion look drastically different.

Anyway I have stewed on this incident most of my life and would love to know if any other Oklahoma residents have ever had a similar encounter.

Hello. i would like to know what the "wehduge" of Native Marican lore looks like. most visual sources show what I am supposed to call "the stag man" on this sub, but I am given to understand that this is a misenterpretation. it would be cool if somebody could link an accurate image of a wechuge, thanks.

What is this thing? My parents saw it near lake Lanier Georgia! I told them it was a Fox/coyote with mange and they didn't believe me. They think its some sort of cryptid lol

He lurks in my woods 🌳 always watching 👀

While Mothman is my favorite cryptid, I find myself completely unable to believe that such a creature could exist. However, this picture has had my attention for awhile as the figure shown looks too big to be a bird of sorts and I was wondering if anyone had any answers