98 Fun Facts About Cryptids and Urban Legends

The Jersey Devil of American folklore is said to haunt which region of New Jersey?

Pine Barrens: in one week of January 1909, newspapers printed hundreds of Jersey Devil sightings from across South Jersey, and the scare closed schools and kept workers at home.

The Goatman urban legend is most associated with which US state, especially Prince George's County?

Maryland: one version of the tale makes the Goatman a scientist at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center whose experiment on goats backfired, leaving him half man, half goat.

The modern jackalope legend, a jackrabbit with antlers, was popularised in which US state?

Wyoming: Douglas Herrick and his brother mounted deer antlers on a jackrabbit in Douglas, Wyoming, and the town's Chamber of Commerce now issues joke jackalope hunting licences good only on June 31.

Ogopogo, the serpentine lake monster of British Columbia folklore, is said to inhabit which lake?

Okanagan Lake in British Columbia is Ogopogo's reputed home; Syilx elders use an older name for it and describe a sacred being in the water rather than a monster.

By legend, the Jersey Devil was the cursed 13th child of a woman known by what surname?

Leeds: 'Mother Leeds' is said to have cursed her unborn 13th child; historian Brian Regal traces the tale to almanac-maker Daniel Leeds, whom Quaker rivals accused in a 1700 pamphlet of working for the devil.

The Yeti goes by which other name in Western popular culture?

Abominable Snowman: the name comes from a 1921 newspaper report that mangled the guides' phrase; 'snowman' was right, but the word rendered as 'abominable' meant something closer to 'man-bear'.

The 1955 'Hopkinsville Goblins' farmhouse encounter took place in which US state?

Kentucky: on 21 August 1955 the Sutton family fled to Hopkinsville police, saying 'little men' had besieged their farmhouse at Kelly; the area now marks the date with a Little Green Men Days festival.

Old West campfire tall tales credit the jackalope, the horned rabbit of folklore, with what ability?

Mimicking human voices was its party trick: cowboys singing by the fire could hear jackalopes singing along, usually as a tenor.

La Llorona, the 'Weeping Woman' of Mexican folklore, is said to wander riverbanks crying for whom?

Her lost children: in most tellings La Llorona drowned them herself, and she is condemned to wander the waterways searching for them, weeping as she goes.

In which region is Bigfoot most often said to roam?

The Pacific Northwest: reports cluster so thickly in its forests that Skamania County, Washington, passed a 1969 ordinance making it a crime to kill a Bigfoot.

Who coined the word 'Bigfoot' in 1958?

Logging crew members in Humboldt County nicknamed their unseen track-maker 'Big Foot' after bulldozer operator Jerry Crew found giant prints at the work site, and the Humboldt Times put the name in print.

What did Ray Wallace's family reveal in 2002 about the 1958 Bigfoot tracks?

He had carved wooden feet and faked them: after Wallace died in 2002, his children said he had stomped the giant tracks into the mud himself and that it was all just a joke.

Patterson and Gimlin shot the famous 1967 Bigfoot footage at which Northern California site?

Bluff Creek in Northern California drew Patterson and Gimlin in October 1967 because of its track finds; the 1958 prints that gave Bigfoot its name had turned up near the same creek.

Which 1987 comedy follows a family who take home a Bigfoot after hitting him with their car?

Harry and the Hendersons: the family think the creature is dead and drive him home, where 'Harry' wakes up and turns out to be so gentle that hiding him becomes the real problem.

Loch Ness Monster sightings surged in 1933 after the completion of what?

A road finished along the loch's shore in 1933 gave drivers clear views of the water; that spring a local couple reported an enormous animal rolling in it, and the newspapers took it from there.

The earliest 'monster' report near Loch Ness appears in a 7th-century life of which Irish-born saint?

Adomnán's 7th-century Life of St Columba has Columba banishing a water beast in the River Ness in 565; water-beast tales were common in saints' lives.

Nessie's head in the 1934 'surgeon's photograph' was mounted on what?

A toy submarine carried the sculpted head and neck: Christian Spurling confessed in the 1990s that big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell staged the picture, which surgeon Robert Kenneth Wilson fronted.

Believers most often picture the Loch Ness Monster as a surviving member of which group of prehistoric reptiles?

Plesiosaurs, long-necked sea reptiles, became Nessie's popular image through the 1934 photograph and Sir Peter Scott's paintings; the loch froze solid in the ice ages, which sinks the idea.

What does 'chupacabra' literally mean?

'Chupacabra' is Spanish for 'goat-sucker' (chupar, to suck; cabra, goat), named for its supposed habit of draining the blood of goats and other livestock.

The chupacabra legend began with 1995 reports of drained livestock in which place?

Puerto Rico: investigator Benjamin Radford found that witness Madelyne Tolentino's influential description of the creature matched the alien in the 1995 film Species, which she had recently seen.

What have investigators found the 'chupacabras' of the American Southwest to actually be?

Canids with severe mange: DNA tests and necropsies showed the hairless, fanged 'creatures' were coyotes and dogs whose fur had fallen out from sarcoptic mange.

Mothman, the winged humanoid of American folklore, was reportedly seen around which West Virginia town in 1966 and 1967?

Point Pleasant embraced the legend: the sightings ran from November 1966 to December 1967, and the town now has a Mothman statue, a museum and a festival every September.

Which disaster did John Keel's 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies link to the sightings?

The Silver Bridge collapse killed 46 people on 15 December 1967; Keel's book tied the 13 months of sightings to the disaster, and the idea of Mothman as an omen stuck.

What does the 'crypto' in cryptozoology mean?

Hidden: cryptozoology is the search for 'hidden' animals, a field traced to zoologists Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson, who argued that creatures known only from rumour deserved a rigorous hunt.

'Bessie' is the serpent-like monster said to live in which Great Lake?

Lake Erie: after a burst of 'South Bay Bessie' sightings in 1990, a marina owner offered a $5,000 reward for her live capture and put up a sign naming his marina her future home.

How is cryptozoology classified by mainstream science?

Mainstream science classes cryptozoology as a pseudoscience because it does not follow the scientific method, though its fans like to note that some real animals were once dismissed as rumour.

A journalist's mistranslated report on a 1921 expedition to which mountain gave the Yeti its lurid Western nickname?

Everest: guides on the 1921 British reconnaissance blamed large footprints on a 'metoh-kangmi', and journalist Henry Newman, misreading 'metoh' as 'filthy', then swapped in a grander word.

DNA tests in 2011 showed that a 'Yeti finger' from a Nepalese monastery had come from what?

A human: the finger was taken from the monastery in the 1950s and is said to have been smuggled out of India by film star James Stewart, in his wife's lingerie case.

The Honey Island Swamp Monster is a legend of which US state?

Louisiana: Harlan Ford said he first met the tall, hairy creature in 1963, and in 1974 he and a friend reported its tracks beside a wild boar with a gashed throat; its nicknames now include the Wookiee.

The Kraken legend is thought to have originated from sightings of which real animal?

Giant squid, rare deep-sea animals that can grow more than eight metres long, are thought to lie behind the kraken; until specimens were studied, they were known mainly from sailors' monster stories.

Off the coast of which country is the kraken said to appear?

Norway: Bishop Pontoppidan's 1750s history of Norway described the kraken from fishermen's tales, warning that the whirlpool it made as it sank could drag down the largest ships.

The skunk ape, Bigfoot's smelly 'cousin', is most associated with which US state?

Florida: the skunk ape, named for its appalling smell, is said to haunt the Everglades, where tour operator Dave Shealy has led the hunt since the 1990s, leaving bait in the swamp.

The wendigo is a spirit with an endless hunger for what?

Human flesh: in most Algonquian traditions a person turns wendigo when greed or winter starvation corrupts the spirit, so the tale warns against selfishness as much as cannibalism.

The bunyip, said to lurk in waterholes, comes from the mythology of which country?

Australia: the bunyip comes from Aboriginal traditions of the south-east, and by the 1850s colonists were using 'bunyip' to mean an impostor or humbug.

Cryptozoologists often describe Mokele-mbembe of the Congo River Basin as a surviving what?

Sauropod dinosaur: the idea dates to 1909, when showman Carl Hagenbeck mused in Beasts and Men that long-necked dinosaurs might survive in Africa, with only legend and rumour to go on.

What did investigator Joe Nickell conclude the 1952 Flatwoods monster of West Virginia was?

A barn owl seen after a meteor: Nickell concluded the 'crashed saucer' was a meteor and the tall hissing figure an owl perched in a tree, its shape filled in by shadows and fright.

The Dover Demon was reported in 1977 in a New England town near which city?

Dover, Massachusetts, about 15 miles from Boston: teenagers gave three separate accounts of the creature over two April nights, and Bill Bartlett, later a painter, still stands by his sketch.

The Fouke Monster of Arkansas inspired which low-budget docudrama horror film?

The Legend of Boggy Creek, a low-budget 1972 pseudo-documentary shot in Fouke with local people in the cast, carried the 1971 monster scare to audiences across the country.

The coelacanth, thought long extinct, was famously found alive off which country in 1938?

South Africa: Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer spotted the fish in a trawler's catch at East London, South Africa, in December 1938; the genus Latimeria is named for her.

Which animal, unknown to Western science until 1901, is the giraffe's only living relative?

The okapi was familiar to the people of the Ituri Forest for generations, but scientists learned of it only in 1901, from skins and a skull obtained by Sir Harry Johnston.

Herobrine, a ghostly figure with blank white eyes, is a legend among players of which video game?

Minecraft: Herobrine began as a 2010 creepypasta about a white-eyed double of the default character haunting single-player worlds, and the developers played along by listing 'Removed Herobrine' in update notes.

The Beast of Bodmin Moor is an example of what kind of British legend?

A phantom big cat: a leopard skull pulled from a river near Bodmin in 1995 looked like proof, until Natural History Museum scientists showed the animal had not died on the moor.

The olgoi-khorkhoi, or death worm, is alleged to live in which Asian desert?

The Gobi is its alleged home; Roy Chapman Andrews's 1926 book carried the tales west while noting that nobody who described the worm had ever seen one, and a sand boa may lie behind the legend.

Which showman offered a reward in 1873 for Champ, the monster of Lake Champlain?

P. T. Barnum offered the reward for the hide of 'the great Champlain serpent', which he wanted to add to his travelling show.

Slender Man was created in June 2009 by a user of which internet forum?

Something Awful ran a contest for doctored 'paranormal' photos in June 2009, and Eric Knudsen, posting as Victor Surge, entered two black-and-white pictures of children shadowed by a tall, thin figure.

Jan Harold Brunvand named his 1981 book on urban legends after which tale?

The Vanishing Hitchhiker, the tale of a roadside passenger who disappears from a moving car, gave the 1981 book its title; the book carried urban-legend study to a wide public, and The Choking Doberman followed.

The Beast of Gévaudan, blamed for about 100 deaths in the 1760s, stalked the highlands of which country?

France: the attacks struck Gévaudan in the south from 1764 to 1767; Louis XV sent soldiers and his own huntsmen, and local hunter Jean Chastel's kill is credited with ending them.

In which state was the 4-foot Loveland frogman allegedly first spotted in 1955?

Ohio: a businessman's 1955 report near Loveland started the tale and officer Ray Shockey's 1972 sighting revived it; a second officer later said he shot the 'creature' and found a tailless iguana.

The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp belongs to the folklore of which state?

South Carolina: the 1988 scare around Bishopville took off when teenager Chris Davis said a scaly green creature chased his car by Scape Ore Swamp, while other locals reported cars scratched and chewed overnight.

Eugene Shepard's 1893 hodag hoax made it the official symbol of which Northwoods city?

Rhinelander took the hodag as its mascot after local prankster Eugene Shepard spread tales of a fierce horned beast in 1893 and staged its capture; the town still rallies around its most famous hoax.

Despite its name, the 1842 sideshow 'Fiji mermaid' was probably made by fishermen in which country?

Japan: fishermen there stitched such 'mermaids' together from monkeys and fish, and an American sea captain paid $6,000 for this one in 1822, twenty years before it reached a New York sideshow.

The 10-foot Cardiff Giant 'petrified man' dug up in 1869 was carved from which material?

Gypsum: George Hull had a block of gypsum quarried in Iowa and carved into a giant after an argument about the giants of Genesis, spending about $2,600 on a hoax that then made him a fortune.

What did the Smithsonian conclude the 1960s 'Minnesota Iceman' exhibit was made of?

The Smithsonian judged the Iceman a carnival gaff of latex rubber and hair; promoter Frank Hansen said it came from Siberia, and the figure sold on eBay in 2013 to Austin's Museum of the Weird.

The 'Montauk Monster' that washed up on Long Island in 2008 was a water-degraded what?

A raccoon: palaeozoologist Darren Naish matched the teeth, skull and long-fingered paws to a raccoon stripped of fur by the sea; rumour had blamed the nearby Plum Island animal disease lab.

The 1977 'New Nessie' carcass hauled up by a Japanese trawler was probably a rotting what?

A basking shark: tissue from the carcass matched elastoidin, a protein known only from sharks and rays, and rotting basking sharks lose the lower head and fins first, leaving a small skull on a long 'neck'.

In urban legend, how did alligators get into New York's sewers?

As flushed pets: the tale has unwanted baby alligators sent down the toilet to grow up below the streets, and it got a boost in February 1935 when boys really did haul a live alligator out of a New York sewer.

Despite the cryogenic-freezing legend, what became of Walt Disney's body after his death?

It was cremated two days after his death in December 1966 and the ashes interred at Forest Lawn in Glendale; the first real cryonic freezing, of James Bedford, came a month later.

'Paul is dead' theorists saw a funeral procession on which Beatles album cover, where McCartney walks barefoot?

Abbey Road: fans cast John in white as the preacher, Ringo in black as the undertaker and a barefoot, out-of-step Paul as the corpse; the rumour swept US campuses in autumn 1969.

The 'Hook' lovers'-lane legend reached a national audience in 1960 through which advice column?

Dear Abby printed a reader's letter retelling the tale in 1960, when it was already doing the rounds among American teenagers; the writer said it didn't matter whether it was true, because it had served its purpose.

In the old Bloody Mary divination ritual, what did girls hope to glimpse in the mirror?

Their future husband's face was the prize in old divination rituals, in which unmarried girls gazed into a mirror in a darkened house. The modern dare to summon a ghost may have grown out of those games.

Resurrection Mary, a ghostly hitchhiker in white, is said to haunt Archer Avenue near which city?

Chicago: since the 1930s drivers on Archer Avenue have told of a young woman in a white dress who accepts a ride, then disappears near the gates of Resurrection Cemetery in suburban Justice.

Gef the 'talking mongoose' of the 1930s lived with the Irving family on which island?

The Isle of Man: from 1931 the Irving family said a talking mongoose called Gef lived in the walls of their lonely farmhouse; ghost hunter Harry Price investigated, and sceptics put the voice down to ventriloquism.

The last known thylacine died in 1936 at a zoo in which city?

Hobart's Beaumaris Zoo: the last captive thylacine died there on 7 September 1936, the date now marked as National Threatened Species Day; its remains were rediscovered in a Tasmanian museum cupboard in 2022.

Spring-heeled Jack, the leaping, flame-spitting bogeyman of the Victorian era, was first reported in which city?

London: the first reports came in 1837; soon the Lord Mayor was hearing complaints from across the city, and one victim told magistrates her attacker wore a helmet and a tight white suit.

The wolf-like Beast of Bray Road was reported near Elkhorn in which state?

Wisconsin: sightings around Elkhorn peaked in the 1980s and 1990s, and a Walworth County weekly sent reporter Linda Godfrey to look into them; sceptical at first, she came to believe the witnesses and wrote books on the beast.

'Oscar', the 500-pound Beast of Busco hunted in 1949 in Churubusco, Indiana, was what?

A snapping turtle, nicknamed Oscar: in 1949 farmer Gale Harris pumped Fulk Lake nearly dry to catch the giant as crowds looked on, but it was never found.

The Pope Lick Monster of Louisville is said to lure victims to their deaths on what?

A railroad trestle over Pope Lick Creek: the goat-man is said to lure people onto the span, which carries active freight tracks, and several people looking for the creature have really been killed there.

Which US president reportedly considered hunting the snallygaster himself?

Theodore Roosevelt reportedly considered postponing his 1909 African safari to hunt it; the flap was a circulation stunt by two Middletown Valley Register newsmen, borrowing from German 'Schneller Geist' lore and Jersey Devil sightings weeks earlier.

The squonk of Pennsylvania lumber lore is said to do what when cornered?

Dissolve into tears is all a captured squonk can do: it weeps constantly over its warty, ill-fitting skin, so hunters track it by the trail of tears it leaves.

The Bunny Man legend grew from two 1970 incidents involving a costumed man wielding what?

An axe or hatchet: in October 1970 a man in a bunny suit threw a hatchet through a car window in Burke, Virginia, then was seen days later chopping at a new house's porch with an axe.

The film Cropsey ties a boogeyman legend to kidnapper Andre Rand on which NYC borough?

Staten Island: the film-makers grew up there on tales of 'Cropsey', a boogeyman in the woods by an abandoned hospital; then in 1987 a girl vanished near Willowbrook and Andre Rand stood trial.

The Bermuda Triangle legend grew out of the 1945 disappearance of five Navy bombers known as what?

Flight 19: the five Avenger torpedo bombers left Fort Lauderdale on a training flight on 5 December 1945 and never came back; in 1964 writer Vincent Gaddis folded the loss into a 'deadly Bermuda Triangle'.

In the Philadelphia Experiment legend, which US Navy ship was made invisible in 1943?

USS Eldridge, a destroyer escort, is the ship the legend says vanished from Philadelphia in October 1943; the tale rests on 1950s letters from ex-merchant seaman Carl Allen, and the Navy says its records show no such experiment.

The 1992 film Candyman moved Clive Barker's story to which Chicago housing project?

Cabrini-Green: English director Bernard Rose moved Clive Barker's short story 'The Forbidden' to the Chicago housing project, where Candyman is summoned by saying his name five times into a mirror.

The creepypasta 'Ben Drowned' centres on a haunted cartridge of which Zelda game?

Majora's Mask: Alex Hall's 2010 creepypasta 'Ben Drowned' describes a haunted second-hand cartridge of the Nintendo 64 game, posted with doctored gameplay videos on 4chan's /x/ board.

Which fact-checking website began in 1994 as David and Barbara Mikkelson's hobby of investigating urban legends?

Snopes began as a mom-and-pop hobby site for testing urban legends, hoaxes and folklore, and grew into one of the web's oldest fact-checkers as demand for online debunking rose.

Casts of Loch Ness 'monster footprints' found by Marmaduke Wetherell came from what?

A hippo-foot umbrella stand: Natural History Museum researchers found the 1933 tracks had been pressed with a dried hippopotamus foot, humiliating the big-game hunter the Daily Mail had sent to find the monster.

Operation Deepscan swept Loch Ness in 1987 using a line of boats equipped with what?

Echo sounders: the flotilla swept the loch with a curtain of sonar and logged three underwater contacts that nobody could explain at the time.

A 2018 DNA survey of Loch Ness found no reptile DNA but plenty from which animal?

Eels: Prof Neil Gemmell's team found so much eel DNA in the loch that he said a giant eel could not be ruled out, while sturgeon, catfish and a wandering Greenland shark were all discounted.

Which name for Bigfoot was coined by J.W. Burns from a word in a Coast Salish language?

Sasquatch is Burns's English spelling of sasq'ets, a Halkomelem word usually glossed as 'wild man' or 'hairy man'; he collected Sts'ailes stories of the giants for Maclean's magazine.

The 1924 'Ape Canyon' rock-throwing 'ape-men' incident took place near which volcano?

Mount St. Helens: a gorge on the volcano's flank is still called Ape Canyon after the 1924 tale, in which gold prospectors said 'ape-men' bombarded their cabin with stones.

Some Bigfoot proponents argue it is a relict population of which extinct giant Asian ape?

Gigantopithecus blacki, an orangutan relative that lived in southern China until roughly 300,000 years ago, is known only from jaws and teeth, none of them found in the Americas.

When the 2008 'Georgia Bigfoot' body was thawed, what were its feet found to be?

Rubber: once the ice melted, the complete frozen Bigfoot that two Georgia men said they had found on a hike turned out to be a rubber gorilla costume.

Sceptics say the 2000 'Skookum cast' body print from Washington state was left by what?

An elk: the September 2000 print at Skookum Meadows was taken during filming of Animal X, from mud where researchers had left fruit as bait; sceptics say an elk lay down in it to reach the fruit.

Which mountaineer led a 1960 expedition that borrowed a 'Yeti scalp' from a Himalayan monastery for testing?

Edmund Hillary took the helmet-shaped 'scalp' away for study, and scientists found it was the hide of a serow, a goat-like Himalayan animal; he went on to dismiss Yeti reports as unreliable.

Little Mikey of the Life cereal ads was falsely said to have died from Pop Rocks and what?

Coca-Cola: the rumour had Mikey's stomach bursting from Pop Rocks and Coke; the FDA set up a hotline to calm Seattle parents, and maker General Foods wrote to school principals to deny it.

Bryan Sykes's 2014 DNA study matched two 'Yeti' hair samples to what?

An ancient polar bear: Sykes matched two hair samples, from Bhutan and India, to a Pleistocene polar bear jawbone; other geneticists re-ran the data and found ordinary brown bears.

Which consumer-goods giant's moon-and-stars logo was branded satanic by a rumour that spread in the 1980s?

Procter & Gamble's 13 stars honoured the original colonies; in 2007 a jury awarded the company $19.25 million against four Amway distributors who had revived the rumour.

A 1977 rumour claimed Bubble Yum was so soft because it contained what?

Spider eggs: the 1977 rumour blamed Bubble Yum's softness on them, and maker Life Savers took out full-page newspaper ads to deny it.

In 1986 Sweden's Jämtland county gave what status to Storsjöodjuret, its lake monster?

Protected endangered species: in 1986 Jämtland's county board declared Storsjöodjuret, its eggs and its nest protected; the county withdrew the order after the Parliamentary Ombudsman found in 2005 that it had no legal force.

A kappa is severely weakened if what happens to the water-filled 'dish' on its head?

It spills or dries out, and the kappa is helpless, because the dish holds its power; a kappa feels obliged to return a bow, so a deep bow tips the water away.

In 1988 a Nara Prefecture village launched a hunt, with a cash bounty, for which snake-like cryptid?

Tsuchinoko: a fat-bellied snake said to be a great jumper and, in some tales, to swallow its own tail and roll like a wheel; several other Japanese towns went on to offer cash bounties of their own.

What does Japan's Kuchisake-onna hide behind her mask?

A slit mouth, cut from ear to ear: she stops lone walkers at night, asks whether she is pretty, then pulls the mask away and asks again.

To summon Hanako-san, the Japanese toilet ghost, you knock on which stall?

The third: knock three times on the third stall of the third-floor girls' toilet and ask if Hanako-san is there; she is usually pictured as a schoolgirl with bobbed hair and a red skirt.

Popobawa, whose 1995 panic swept Zanzibar, has a Swahili name that literally means what?

Bat-wing: popo is Swahili for bat and bawa for wing; during a scare, many people stay awake all night or sleep in groups outside their homes rather than risk a visit.

Drop bears, a hoax told to frighten tourists, are a predatory version of which animal?

Koala: the drop bear is a fictional carnivorous koala said to fall on tourists from trees; the Australian Museum's deadpan entry names it Thylarctos plummetus and suggests forks in the hair and Vegemite behind the ears.

Michigan Dogman lore took off after DJ Steve Cook played 'The Legend' in 1987 as what?

An April Fools' joke: Cook wrote and recorded 'The Legend' for Traverse City's WTCM in 1987 and says he made it all up, yet listeners began calling in with sightings of their own.

The Polybius legend describes a mind-bending arcade game appearing in 1981 in which state?

Oregon: the legend places the cabinets in Portland arcades in 1981, yet the earliest known mention is a coinop.org page dated 1998, and no Polybius machine has ever been found.