All places
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282 places
Roswell
On 8 July 1947 the army airfield at Roswell issued a press release saying it had recovered a "flying disc". Hours later the statement was withdrawn and the debris called a weather balloon. It would have been forgotten if participants had not started telling it differently in the late 1970s; by the 1990s Roswell was shorthand for cover-up. In 1994 the Air Force admitted the balloon was not meteorological but part of Project Mogul, listening for Soviet nuclear tests — a truth forty-seven years late, which by then convinced nobody.
Lake Iliamna and Its Monsters
Alaska's largest lake, where bush pilots have reported dark bodies over thirty feet long moving below the surface since the 1940s. The Dena'ina knew of them long before and warned against going onto the water alone. Unlike most lake monsters this one has a plausible explanation — belugas or giant sturgeon coming up from the sea — but no specimen has ever been landed.
Cadboro Bay and Caddy
The bay off Victoria that gave its name to the sea serpent Cadborosaurus — "Caddy". Accounts run from the 1930s: a long neck with a horse's head, a humped body, and a speed witnesses call impossible for a seal. In 1937 a carcass about three metres long was taken from a sperm whale's stomach at a whaling station, photographed, and then lost. The photograph is still argued over.
Harrison Lake, Where 'Sasquatch' Came From
The valley of this British Columbia lake gave the word itself: in the 1920s the schoolteacher J. W. Burns collected accounts of forest giants from the Sts'ailes people and rendered their local name as "Sasquatch". In 1957 the council of Harrison Hot Springs seriously voted on funding an expedition to catch one. Sightings are still logged here.
Whitehall, the Official Home of Bigfoot
In August 1976 several teenagers and two police officers independently described a figure over seven feet tall near this town on the Vermont line: covered in hair, red-eyed, and making a cry one officer called "a woman screaming mixed with a pig". The town council later passed an ordinance forbidding harm to Bigfoot within the town limits — legally pointless, and a fair measure of how seriously it is taken here.
Louisiana, Missouri: the Summer of Momo
In the summer of 1972 this town on the Mississippi went through a genuine panic: children said they saw a black hairy figure over six feet tall at the edge of the woods holding a dead dog, and the stench was such that one of their mothers smelled it from indoors. Enough reports came in within a week that the sheriff organised search parties, and the papers named the thing Momo, for Missouri Monster.
Loveland and the Frogman
The Loveland Frog is a bipedal amphibious or reptilian creature with webbed digits, inhabiting the area around the city of Loveland, Ohio. It first appeared at 3:30 a.m. in May 1955. A businessman was driving along a rural road near the Little Miami River in Clermont County, close to Loveland, when he spotted three bipedal, wrinkled creatures under a bridge. They had webbed hands and feet, as well as no teeth. One of the frogs held up a stick that emitted sparks and gave off the scent of alfalfa and almonds. On August 25 of that same year, Mrs. Darwin Johnson and Mrs. Chris Lamble were swimming in the Ohio River near Evansville, Indiana. Suddenly, Darwin Johnson began drowning and struggling for breath after a scaly hand grabbed her underwater and pulled her toward the bottom. When Chris Lamble swam closer, the mysterious attacker retreated, allowing Darwin Johnson to escape. Since the Ohio River flows through Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Illinois, it stands to reason that the frogs could reach any of these states. In March 1972, police officer Ray Shockey was driving along East Kemper Road when he noticed a four-foot-tall, bipedal, leathery creature with a head and face like a frog or lizard. The creature leaped over the railroad tracks and apparently jumped into the Little Miami River. Scratches were found on the guardrails, though this is hardly proof of the Loveland Frog's existence, as a human would have left identical marks. Two weeks later, Officer Mark Matthews saw a similar frog on the road—four feet long, not counting its tail (which, notably, none of the other reported frogs had). The tailed body was lying on the road as if lifeless, but then stood up, crouched, and moved toward the guardrail. The officer fired a shot, but rather than killing the four-foot amphibian, he merely frightened it away. In 2016, Sam Jacobs was playing Pokémon GO behind the Beth Adam synagogue on Loveland-Madeira Road when he saw a large frog in the nearby river. Jacobs stated he wasn't sure if it was a frogman or just an extraordinarily large frog, but it walked out of the water on its hind legs. He added that he understood how crazy it sounded, but swore to its truth on his grandmother's grave.
Honey Island Swamp and Its Monster
Standing over 7.5 feet tall and weighing between 400-500+ pounds, the Honey Island Swamp Monster — also known as the Louisiana Wookie — is said to be covered in a thick coat of matted gray or brown hair and swamp weed. Its yellow eyes are seemingly reptilian, and the smell it emits has been called the stench of death. This primitive creature has long been blamed for the deaths of livestock and the mysterious disappearances of children in adjacent areas. Popular lore in the region is that the Honey Island Swamp Monster might be the horrifying product of a union between a chimpanzee and an alligator. And in the darkly primordial swamplands that must look much the same now as they did thousands of years ago, the existence of almost any creature seems possible — no matter how ominous. One of the strangest legends surrounding the Honey Island Swamp Monster revolves around a train wreck which allegedly occurred near the Pearl River in the early part of the 20th century. According to this legend, the train was full of exotic animals from a traveling circus, which fled into the swamps after the train derailed. While most of the creatures would soon perish in the harsh swamp land, the legend goes on to tell us that a troop of chimpanzees managed to survive and even went as far as to interbreed with alligators. The result was a strange colony of reptilian like mammals. However, this is impossible, because monkeys and alligators cannot interbreed. The Honey Island Swamp Monster is alleged to have a foul stench like other cryptids specifically in the Hairy Hominids category (Bigfoot, Skunk ape, Missouri monster, etc.), possibly due to the marsh's natural smell.
Lake Worth and the Goatman
In the summer of 1969 several groups by the lake outside Fort Worth said, in one night, that a white hairy creature covered in scales jumped from a bluff onto their cars and threw a car tyre some fifty feet. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram put it on the front page and hundreds arrived at the lake with guns. Some of the reports were later traced to a student prank. Not all of them were.
Okanagan Lake and Ogopogo
A lake in British Columbia where the creature was known long before Europeans: the Syilx called it N'ha-a-itk and carried a small animal as an offering when crossing the water. Settlers began reporting a long dark humped body in the 1870s. The name Ogopogo comes from an English music-hall song of the 1920s and stuck so firmly that it displaced the original.
Lake Champlain and Champ
The lake between Vermont, New York and Quebec, where a creature called Champ has appeared in accounts since the nineteenth century and, by tradition, since Iroquois times. The best-known evidence is Sandra Mansi's 1977 photograph — a dark curved neck above the water — which experts could neither confirm nor call a fake. Both states have formally forbidden harming Champ, a rare case of a cryptid making it into law.
The Pine Barrens and the Jersey Devil
A million and a half acres of pine on sand, where a three-hundred-year-old legend of Mother Leeds's thirteenth child persists. In 1735, the story goes, she said in temper that the child could be the devil — and the newborn turned into a winged thing with hooves and a horse's head, went up the chimney, and has been here since. In January 1909 it was reported across the state for a solid week; schools closed, and tracks were found in the snow on rooftops.
Bray Road and the Wisconsin Werewolf
On a country road outside Elkhorn, drivers have reported the same thing since the late 1980s: a large creature covered in fur, standing or running on two legs, with a dog-like muzzle. A local paper gathered the accounts in 1991 and the Beast of Bray Road went national. What sets it apart from the usual Bigfoot story is the face — witnesses insist on a wolf's, not an ape's, and hold to it under ridicule.
Bluff Creek, Where the Patterson Film Was Shot
On 20 October 1967 Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin shot fifty-nine seconds of film here, showing a large hairy figure walking across a gravel bar and glancing back over its shoulder. That frame is the most recognised image of Bigfoot ever made, and the argument over it has not settled in half a century: some analyse the gait as impossible for a person, others look for the seams of a suit. The place itself is an ordinary creek in the remote forests of northern California, and people still come with cameras.
Fouke and the Boggy Creek Monster
In the area of Fouke, Arkansas in Miller County, southeast of Texarkana, allegedly lives the Boggy Creek Monster. In these sparsely populated, forested hills of the Ozarks, the Boggy Creek Monster, also referred to as the Fouke Monster, has been a legend of the area since the 1840s. This Bigfoot-like creature is said to be about seven feet tall, walks upright, has a smelly, animal-like odor, and is covered with hair. The Arkansas version of Sasquatch or Bigfoot, this hairy beast has a reputation for killing chickens, livestock, and dogs in the area, though has never been known to harm humans. In the late 1860s, the beast allegedly harassed two families living outside Fouke and the legend quickly spread. In 1973, the tale of the Boggy Creek Monster was made into an extremely poor low budget movie called The Legend of Boggy Creek. In 1997, there were more than 40 sightings of the Boggy Creek creature and in 1998, reports said that the hairy beast was seen walking along a dry creek bed about five miles south of town. Whether a legend or reality, the town of Fouke once capitalized on the legend, with signs throughout the town and a gift shop near Boggy Creek that provided Monster souvenirs. Today, Monster Mart continues to cater to tourists with souvenirs. We really had to search for the creek, which we finally found south of town, marked only by a small plaque on the bridge. Boggy Creek Bridge, Arkansas Boggy Creek Bridge, Arkansas, by Kathy Alexander. The Fouke Monster was allegedly last seen near the junction of the Sulphur and Red Rivers.
Flatwoods and the Braxton County Monster
On 12 September 1952 three boys watched something bright come down on the hill behind the Fisher farm. Going up with one boy's mother and a few neighbours, the group made out a figure some ten feet tall in a torchbeam: a dark pleated body like a skirt, and a red face shaped like the ace of spades, lit from within. It smelled, they said, of metal and burning, and half the party was vomiting by morning. The Air Force put it down to a meteor and an owl. The locals never did.
Point Pleasant, Home of the Mothman
Between November 1966 and December 1967, people in this town at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha reported a winged figure some two metres tall with glowing red eyes — dozens of sightings. The first came from two couples driving past a disused explosives plant at night: the thing, they said, kept pace with their car at a hundred miles an hour. The reports stopped on 15 December 1967, when the Silver Bridge collapsed and forty-six people died — a coincidence that tied the Mothman to premonition for good. A steel statue of it stands downtown.
Metro-2
A secret metro line that officially does not exist — Moscow's most durable urban legend. As the story goes, "D-6" links the Kremlin with bunkers, the ministry building on Smolenskaya and Stalin's Near Dacha, and an entrance sits in the basements of Moscow State University's main building, which is said to have as many floors below ground as above. Diggers have published maps for decades that do not agree with one another; the defence ministry has never confirmed anything and never clearly denied it either. The legend runs on that silence: the less that is said, the more detailed the map becomes.
The House on the Embankment
The grey housing block facing the Kremlin, built in 1931 for the Soviet elite. During the Great Terror people were taken from it at night: of roughly five hundred flats, more than a third were touched by the purges, and some changed occupants several times over. The legends follow from that — staircases with no numbers on the doors, rooms nobody moved into for years, footsteps along the corridors of empty floors. Residents said they heard furniture being moved in the flat next door at night, when nobody lived there. It is still considered the bleakest residential building in Moscow, and it is the case where the ghost story grew straight out of the documented history.
Ostankino and the Crone with the Staff
Ostankino was built on the ground of an old cemetery, and Moscow's most persistent legend attaches to that fact. In the sixteenth century, when the boyar Sotin set out to plough a field here, a hunched old woman with a staff appeared and told him not to disturb those lying in the earth — or misfortune would find whoever did. She has been "seen" before every disaster in the area since; staff at the television centre recalled her in the days before the tower fire of 2000. People mention her matter-of-factly, the way they mention an omen, and almost nobody can say where they first heard it.
The Site of the Sukharev Tower
The tower stood here from 1695 until it was demolished in 1934, but the legend outlived the building. It housed the School of Mathematics and Navigation, run by Jacob Bruce — Peter the Great's companion, astronomer and engineer, whom rumour turned into a sorcerer. He was said to keep an observatory at the top, to conduct experiments at night, and to have walled a "black book" into the masonry, one that granted power over everything. The book was looked for during the demolition and never found. Bruce's ghost is said to appear on Sukharevskaya Square since, waiting for the tower to be rebuilt.
The Bad Apartment on Bolshaya Sadovaya
Apartment 50 at 10 Bolshaya Sadovaya — the "bad apartment" of The Master and Margarita, where Woland's retinue takes up residence. Bulgakov lived here in the early 1920s, and the stairwell had its reputation before the novel: residents said people went missing from that flat. After the book was published the entrance stood covered in quotations and drawings for decades — the walls were painted over, the writing came back. There is a museum there now, but the habit of leaving a note for Woland has not gone anywhere, and locals describe the black cat in the courtyard in a tone that is not entirely joking.
Golosov Ravine
A ravine in Kolomenskoye that Moscow tells stories about as a place where time comes loose. In the best-known version, a detachment of Tatar horsemen vanished into it during Devlet Giray's raid of 1571 — and in 1621 riders in antique armour appeared at the tsar's gates. Questioned, they insisted they had gone down into the ravine to escape pursuit, hidden in a greenish fog on its floor, and stepped out of it a few minutes later. Fifty years had passed. Two enormous boulders lie at the bottom, the Goose and the Maiden Stone; people still come to make wishes on them, and the fog really does linger there longer than on the slopes.
Kuldhara
A village in the Thar Desert near Jaisalmer that its inhabitants abandoned in a single night around 1825 and never returned to. The story goes that the state minister demanded the village headman's daughter, and rather than hand her over the whole community of eighty-four villages walked out in the dark — quietly enough that none of their neighbours noticed them going. On leaving, the brahmins cursed the place: anyone who tried to settle there would not survive the night. The houses have stood empty for almost two centuries since, in the middle of otherwise inhabited land. The stone walls, staircases and doorways are intact — not ruined, simply left, as though the owners had stepped out and never come back.