As the full moon rises over South Mountain and the leaves fall to the ground, a shadowy figure moves through the woods. Well, that is if you believe in the lore of Washington County. With Halloween just days away, here are a few stories about mysterious Western Maryland.
South Mountain monster
The legend of the Snarly Yow first took shape in the early 1800s. Described in early documents as a “shadow dog,” the Snarly Yow was no mere canine. Witness reports have stated that it is larger than a man and seeing it can cause hallucinations. The most well documented account of the Snarly Yow came from Madeline Dahlgren’s “South Mountain Magic: Tales of Old Maryland “(1882), which published first person accounts of the creature’s sightings.
“It was black and bigger than any dog he had ever seen,” Dahlgren wrote in her book.”As the creature was attacked, it grew longer, and presently seemed to extend across the road, making no noise, but showing a very wide and very ugly looking red mouth.”
The residents of South Mountain believed so much in the legend that a sign was placed on the roadside on Alternate Route 40 warning travelers that they are not alone.
The dreaded ‘Snallygaster’
Quite possibly the most well-known legend in the region is that of the Snallygaster. There have been several descriptions of this mysterious cryptid which dates back to the 1800s. Wild descriptions of a large, winged dragon to a half reptile, half bird, the story of the Snallygaster is as wild as its name.
In the winter of 1909, an article in the Middletown Valley Register featured an article about a monster with wings that had been terrorizing the area and even claimed that a local man had been swept up and taken away into the mountains. The article caused a sensation in the area that residents of Maryland, Pennsylvania and even West Virginia began to report sightings of the Snallygaster. The area had its own cyrtid legend.
Wild stories began to circulate around the region. Rumors like the military sending in troops to kill the creature, the Smithsonian Institute being interested in capturing it and even world-famous hunter, President Theodore Roosevelt, became captivated by the stories. December 21, 1932, the Morning Herald in Hagerstown reported that the Snallygaster had been killed.
How it died was the wildest tale of all. The creature had swooped down into a vat of moonshine to get a drink and fell in and drowned. The moonshiners called in local law enforcement, and two police officers, George Danforth and Charles Cushwa, investigated the scene and saw the remains of the Snallygaster in the vat. They decided the best course of action was to blow it up. So, they strapped dynamite to the vat and brought an end to the legend of the Snallygaster.
Or did they?
Local lore has it that large eggs had been spotted in some parts of South Mountain, eggs too big for any local birds or reptiles. Were these the offspring of the Snallygaster? Are there more creatures still lurking in the woods?
Maryland’s werewolf
Stories of werewolves were made popular in European lore, but Washinton County has its own version of these terrifying creatures. After the presumed death of the Snallygaster in 1932, the region needed a new mysterious creature to scare children into coming home at night. In 1944, it got one, when the first reports of a large, “wolf-like” creature that stood on two legs was reported in the area around Frederick. It didn’t take long for the story to make its way into neighboring Washington County, and the beast was named the Dwayyo.
Reported sightings of the creature began to flood local police and newspapers, and the legend quickly took off. Suggestions that the creature was the offspring of the Snallygaster, which would be strange considering their descriptions are nothing alike. Still, the idea hit newspapers and fueled the fire of speculation.
A Dwayyo hunt was put together after a Fredrick man named John Becker claimed to have been attacked by a “6-foot wolf that stood on two feet and was covered in black fur.” Of course, no creature was ever found, but that did not quell the legend of the Dwayyo.
Is it still out there?
This is part four of a four-part series that was featured during the month of October looking back at the darker side of Washington and Franklin Counties history as well as the fun of Halloween around the region.
