Legend tells of a beast that flies over Middletown, Maryland looking for prey to drag back to its lair on Catoctin Mountain. The creature, a half-bird half-reptile, had “huge wings, a long pointed tail, occasionally a horn, one eye in the middle of its forehead and, strangest of all, octopuslike tentacles that trailed behind it like streamers and retracted like a cat’s claws.”1 The creature haunting the area was described as a cross between “a vampire, a tiger, and a bovalopus.”2 It came to be known as the Snallygaster and supposedly, it had a taste for human flesh…and a particular group of people above all others. 

On February 12, 1909, the first sighting of the Snallygaster was reported in The Valley Register under the headline “The Colored People Are in Great Danger.” The story included an eyewitness account of the creature killing an African American man named Bill Gifferson by sucking the blood from his neck like a vampire. The eyewitness, James Harding, described the creature as having “enormous wings; a long, pointed bill; four legs armed with claws like steel hooks; one eye in the center of its forehead; and [it] screeches like a locomotive whistle.”3 

The article claimed the beast “only attacks colored people [since it was a] native of Senegambia, where only colored people live, and so it has never acquired the taste for white persons.”4 It preferred the taste of Black men to Black women and children. The creature’s hide was worth $100,000 per square foot as it was the only known substance that could polish punkle shells used by the African tribes of Umbopeland. It was wanted alive by the Smithsonian and dead by the US government, who planned to deploy a gatling gun to kill it. Even President Theodore Roosevelt considered canceling a hunting trip to Africa to instead hunt the beast in Maryland. One man claimed the creature laid a barrel-sized egg near Burkittsville, a town with a substantial Black population at the time.5

This initial report is entirely fictional. Punkle shells and Umbopeland never existed. The Smithsonian Institution and the US government never claimed to have hunted the Snallygaster. There is no evidence of Roosevelt ever commenting on the monster, let alone wanting to hunt it. But rumor has a way of spreading quickly.

The story was followed up the next week with another account that the creature was spotted in Casstown, Ohio, carrying off “the only Black man of Casstown," as it headed towards Middletown.6 Another Black man working a kiln spotted the creature drinking 100 gallons of boiling water. The man fainted after hearing it exclaim, “My, I’m dry! I haven’t had a good drink since I was killed in the Battle of Chickamauga!”7 The Battle of Chickamauga, fought during the Civil War near Chattanooga, Tennessee, led to over 16,000 Union and 18,500 Confederate casualties.8 Some have speculated its exclamation to mean that the Snallygaster was the spirit of a Confederate soldier reincarnated, given its targeting of Black people.9

Sightings of the creature increased week by week, culminating in a March 5, 1909, Register report that local residents Ed Brown, Dan Shorb, Bill Snider, and sheriff deputy Norman Hoke fought the Snallygaster while it breathed fire at them for 90 minutes before it was driven into nearby Carroll County.

“The monster seized [Ed] Brown and was about to fly off with him, when Bill Snider, who dashed up in his automobile, grabbed Brown by the foot, which broke his suspenders and he dropped to the ground. Ghost-like wings beat the air and fire singed the pike. Dreadful bristles stuck from the monster’s snout and its hide the color of the down side of a catfish. ‘It looked like a giraffe on roller-skates,’ said Mr. Snider. ‘Its beak was serrated with great tusks and between them lay the partially consumed flesh of a colored man nearly putrid. Its snout resembled a silo and from the corners of its mouth leaked a fluid like melted brimstone.'" 10

The “news” of the Snallygaster in Maryland followed a familiar pattern to those that paid heed. In January 1909, sightings of a demonic dragon in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, known then as the “Leeds Devil” or “Go-Devil,” captured the public’s attention. More commonly known as the “Jersey Devil” today, it had the features of a horse but it was bipedal with bat wings and a forked, glowing tail.11 The Jersey Devil gained notoriety and increased newspaper sales. Just weeks later, the editors of Middletown’s newspaper, The Valley Register, set about creating a creature that would boost their sales, too. And to do it, they recruited their friend T.C. Harbaugh.12

Thomas Chalmers Harbaugh was an American novelist and poet who wrote more than 650 “nickel novels” – short stories – throughout his life, many of them based on the Middletown Valley. His 1910 book, Middletown Valley in Song and Story, mentioned the Register by name and featured a poem dedicated to the death of his friend, the previous head editor of the paper, George Carlton Rhoderick I. After Rhoderick’s death, his son George C. Rhoderick II (often referred to as Rhoderick Sr.), fellow editor Ralph Wolfe Sr., and Harbaugh pieced together the story of the Snallygaster, and Harbaugh penned several accounts for the Register.13

If the Snallygaster was a mythical creation to sell newspapers, it also reflected real tensions between Black communities and Whites who held power in Maryland. Jim Crow segregation ruled race relations in the state and there had been four reported lynchings in Frederick County (where Middletown is located) between 1879-1895.14 Black fear was real, as were White attempts to limit – or eliminate – African Americans’ political voice.15

In the early 20th century, Maryland’s legislature was primarily led by Democrats who still held sympathies for the Confederacy. The 1903 Maryland Democratic Platform proclaimed:

“the political destinies of Maryland should be shaped and controlled by the white people of the State...[the Black vote was] ignorant, corrupt, the blind instrument of unscrupulous and selfish leaders...[and] posed a perpetual menace to the prosperity and peace of Maryland.”16

With this platform, several amendments were proposed to the Maryland State Constitution that sought to disenfranchise Black voters, including the Poe, Straus, and Digges Amendments. These propositions were dismissed by Maryland’s governor and the public.17

Some, like Middletown area resident Emmanuel Myers, an African American himself, saw the reports of the Snallygaster as an unrealistic attempt to scare Black Marylanders. As he remarked in 1909, he was more afraid of the “Democratic amendment Go-Devil this fall,” (referring to the Straus Amendment) than any monster.18 Effective or not, rumors of a beast that preyed upon Black citizens proved resilient.

The Snallygaster returned to the headlines in the 1930s. By this time, George C. Rhoderick II had died, leaving The Valley Register to his son, George C. Rhoderick III, who revived the story with help from his uncle, Charles K. Rhoderick.19 On November 18, 1932, the paper reported that the initial Snallygaster’s hatchling was now terrorizing the county. Supposedly it included retractable tentacles protruding from the creature’s mouth as well as the ability to change its size, shape, and color. Again, the Register warned Black citizens that the beast was on the loose, and, again, there was a clear link to politics:

“Some persons who saw the monster…believe that it is an omen of evil as a result of the recent election. One man…stated that he believed the beast was an omen of ill for colored voters who deserted the Republican party in the Presidential election and voted for Roosevelt. Of course, it is needless to say that this man was an ardent Hoover supporter.”20

African American men primarily voted for Republicans after the 14th Amendment granted them the right to vote in 1868. In 1932, however, most African Americans began voting for Democrats who promised to introduce labor protections and opportunities championed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal.21 This shocked many Republicans who believed Black citizens owed them their vote for Emancipation.

As the Montgomery County Sentinel – a Democratic newspaper – remarked in 1932, “some say that [the Snallygaster] appears after every election when the result shows that the colored voter cast his ballot for a Democrat. Others say that it is just a G.O.P. fairytale.”22 Some of these papers included fantastical drawings passed off as photographs, including a Baltimore Evening Sun article in November 1932, that pictured the beast as a spotted dinosaur riding a bicycle and wearing waterwings. In that same article, The Evening Sun – a Democratic newspaper – claimed the beast was cursed to scream “Balance the Budget!” for eternity, mocking Republicans who lauded FDR’s unbalancing of the budget.23

On November 25, 1932, Charles F. Main and Edward M.L. Lighter claimed the Snallygaster swooped down on them, buzzing off Main’s hair forever.24 Some enjoyed the new Snallygaster stories that emerged, such as one woman who wrote a letter to The Valley Register, “[t]his wonderful story of the ‘snallygaster’…is truly interesting, I assure you…we find it very humorous as well.”25 However, other readers, including one R. Austin Stine, wrote letters to the paper to express their displeasure.

“Whatever the purpose of this item, whether it is intended to be funny, to scare a certain class of people for some hidden reason, or for any other purpose, it seems to me to be of questionable merit…Anything that may have the effect of creating fear in the heart of any man, white or black, in my humble opinion should be condemned, and where there is a chance that it may scare a child, then it is sad indeed…Although this great monster would not prey on women and children…it is impossible to know to what extent this fear may extend. However, the colored race being naturally superstitious, the item no doubt will have the desired effect.”26

Despite such criticism, Main and Lighter’s encounter was published in papers across the country. Several others continued to “report” on Black men who ran from the creature in an attempt to survive.27

On December 1, 1932, the beast was supposedly killed – at least according to The Evening Sun. The Snallygaster fell into a 2,500 gallon vat of boiling moonshine, which dissolved the creature’s flesh. The skeleton was found by two Prohibition agents who blew up the corpse and the vat of moonshine with 500 pounds of dynamite.28

However, other papers, particularly the Montgomery County Sentinel, were not as willing to part with the story. For the next several years, the Sentinel reported the creature was still alive and targeting residents of The Run, a Black community in Rockville, Maryland.29 In 1933, it was driven to South America in fear of FDR’s New Deal policies.30 In 1935, the Sentinel claimed the Snallygaster had returned, leading African Americans to forge armor from old scraps of iron.31 Later, the Sentinel claimed that Benito Mussolini had amassed “forty to fifty Snallygasters” for use against Ethiopians during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.32 Finally, in 1937, the paper claimed that any Snallygasters have “quitted these parts,” apparently proclaiming an end to the Maryland Snallygaster craze for good.33

Still, the legend of the Snallygaster continued to be retold sporadically in the 1940s-1970s, with several other strange animals in the area identified as kin to the Snallygaster, coinciding with the national Bigfoot craze of the late 1960s-1970s. While the creature would remain in the corners of pop-culture, its lasting impact on Maryland lore can be seen today in the annual Maryland beer festival bearing its name and several murals painted in Sykesville, Maryland.34

The story’s intended purpose from the start was to exploit Frederick County’s Black communities for profit. Folklore scholars Trevor J. Blank and David J. Puglia summarized the intentions of The Valley Register perfectly when they said it relied on its institutional authority to dupe people into believing in monsters; “the impetus behind the Snallygaster’s creation was ultimately manipulative and self-serving.”35 Sadly, few Black perspectives on the monster’s sudden appearances and what they meant to these communities were reported. However, while the creature itself was not real, the Jim Crow worldview from which it grew was frighteningly real during the first half of the 20th century.