31 Days of Horror: Terrifying Cryptids and Where to Find Them

Horror isn’t just a genre; it’s an amalgamation of pop culture, cozy traditions, and things that go bump in the night. This year, we're taking our 31 Days of Horror across the entire cultural spectrum. We’ll be taking a look at movies that scare us, games that kept us paranoid, scary books we cozy up with under blankets, music that sets that spooky tone and seasonal food we’re craving–or strange food you’d have to tie us up and force feed us. Whether you’re looking for something truly terrifying or a cozy autumn haunt, come back every day this month for a new bite-sized review or spooky adjacent list.

You don’t always need a book, movie, or tv show to scare the hell out of you.There’s always a creepy house around the corner, a weird neighbor, a really big odd dog or any number of other things lurking around where we live and work every day, and you bet your butt on a dark night when you’re walking alone, those are the things that’ll send chills down your spine. 

Nothing beats a good urban legend, and while we can’t say for certain that cryptids like Bigfoot and his buddies don’t exist, we can certainly hope they don’t, because some of them are straight up horrifying. Let’s take a look at 7 of the scariest cryptids we’ve ever heard of.

The Dover Demon

This creepy dude hails from Dover Massachusetts, and was first sighted in 1977.  As the story goes, some teenagers were driving along a dark farm road when they saw a horrible creature. It was 4 feet tall, with a giant watermelon shaped head, glowing orange eyes and no nose or mouth. 

You could maybe say it’s just kids playing pranks, of course, but it was sighted the same evening by two completely different people in two other areas of the same town. All of the people who reported seeing it were teenagers, so naturally, though the news stations did pick up the story, no one believed them, despite one of the teens, Bill Bartlett submitting the following: “I, Bill Bartlett, swear on a stack of Bibles that I saw this creature” along with his sketch of the being.

People’s “rational” explanations include snowy owls, foals or a moose calf, but the legend persists to this day, even being featured in a few TV shows and comic books.  

The Chupacabra

Now, this one’s often brought up in a sort of comedic way of late, but have you ever stopped to look at drawings of the thing?  Hailing from the Southwest and/or Central and South America, the name actually means “goat-sucker” in Spanish, and well, that’s what the little guy supposedly does. 

Except…he’s not that little, according to reports. In fact, he’s the size of a small bear, has a row of spines on his back, and most troubling, sometimes accidentally attacks and well…sucks…other things. Reports mostly mention sheep and goats drained of blood, but this vicious dude has also been accused of nabbing pets, and in one report from 2000 in Chile, mass murdered 100 farm animals, who were all found drained of blood or mutilated under “unusual circumstances.”

Reasonable explanations include coyotes with something called “sarcoptic mange” and that holds some water, as ranchers have killed a few of these fellows and they very much resemble a chupacabra, sans the spines. But reports of chupacabra still persist, and while people always attribute it to mange,those who’ve taken videos and photos insist on something more sinister.

The Fresno Nightcrawler

Here’s a creepy one.  The Fresno Nightcrawler is described as a lanky, long legged pale thing that lacks a torso entirely, and is basically just legs walking around.  This creature was first seen in CCTV footage back in 2007, and some people describe it as a “walking pair of pants” which doesn’t seem so scary, I guess. Some people insist that it’s just a pair of pants out on a walk, but even that doesn’t really sit right with us.

No, actually, you know what? Disembodied legs just wandering around is pretty fucking scary. Even if I've been picturing it this whole time as a pair of jeans for some reason.

Explanations? We weren’t able to find any. Unless you count “self-propelling pants” as a logical explanation. 

The Grafton Monster

If you ever played Fallout 76 or lived on the East Coast then you know about this guy.  The Grafton monster is another very tall, very pale cryptid. Not only that, many report that he’s headless, and he’s also described as producing an unusual whistling sound.

He was first sighted on Rte 119 in June of 1964, and reported by journalist Robert Cockrell to be about 7 to 9 feet tall with a smooth “seal-like” appearance and of course, sans head.

This report sent tons of thrill seeking teenagers out looking for him, but it was pooh-poohed by people as simply someone’s wild imagination. Unless it isn’t.

The Goatman

Hailing from Maryland, this is a story of a scientist whose experiment backfired, mutating him into a half-man, half goat. Maybe. The thing that’s interesting about Maryland’s goat man is how many different origin stories he has, all from Maryland. The first mention came in May 1971 from an undergrad doing research on folklore, but it was also reported  in an entirely different location by a reporter who’d read his story, and also the scientist whose experiment backfired tale. Not only that, but long cold cases of dead dogs were later attributed to the Goatman, and so were aggressive car attacks.  But it might go back even further than that, with one University of Maryland professor the legend was even older than that, and just repeated and popularized in 1971 when the dog attacks needed a perpetrator to blame.

The Goatman attacks dogs quite often, it would seem, across decades, but has also been accused of attacking couples in lovers lanes in Maryland or lurking on bridges waiting for people to pass.

The Jersey Devil

The Jersey Devil is famous for good reason, and that’s because it’s a huge wyvern-like creature with a horselike head, leathery wings, horns, claws, hooves and even a forked tail. So that’s the whole package when it comes to scary things in the woods. 

Interestingly, there’s a very distinct origin story often attached to the devil. Apparently, a woman named Leeds had 12 children, and when she found out she was about to have a 13th, declared “Let the child be the devil” and so it was.  The child was born normally but grew wings, a tail and claws after birth, and flew away to the Pine Barrens where he’s rumored to live.

Some tell it slightly differently, with Leeds telling the stork to deliver a devil, but it matters less to the story than the horrifying result of her curse.  Some say Leeds was a real life woman named Deborah Leeds because of a 1736 will that named 12 children but it hasn’t been confirmed, of course.

This is the oldest legend we’ve mentioned so far, dating back to the 1700s initially, with waves of sightings in 1909 and the 1930s. While he sounds absolutely terrifying, there’s few reports of attacks other than a trolley attack and the requisite livestock killings, but more than a few people reported seeing a flying creature with red eyes that they shot at or saw lurking in the darkness, so you never know.

The Mothman

The mothman is exactly what he sounds like. A man sized moth. Or is he? Originally, when first mentioned in West Virginia between 1966-1967, he was actually described as birdlike in nature, with what has to be the coolest actual headline on Earth thanks to the Pleasant Register in 1966:

Eventually though, he was described over multiple sightings as less birdlike and more mothlike, which, interestingly enough has a lot to do with pop culture, as Batman’s Killer Moth villain, who’d appeared in the very popular Batman comics, may have been responsible for the switch from bird to bug.

Whatever he is, he’s blamed for a bridge collapse that killed 46 people, which would likely make him the deadliest in the group. 

Honestly, there’s something scarier to us about a giant moth, and as time has gone on, this tale’s only gotten taller and taller. He even has his own festival in his hometown of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Who are we to mess that up saying he’s not real and people were just seeing sandhill cranes?

Couldn’t be us.

We hope you enjoyed these tales of terrifying cryptids, and if you’ve got your own local legends to share we’d love to hear them … or see the evidence with our very own eyes. Feel free to post all manner of creepy cryptid creature in the comments…if you dare.