Monsters of West Virginia: Mysterious Creatures in the Mountain State

By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Wild and wonderful West Virginia takes a turn for the weird with these accounts of Mothman, the Grafton Monster, Sheepsquatch, and more.
 
Every state and region has its own stellar cast of supernatural creatures, and West Virginia is no exception. Rosemary Ellen Guiley, the pioneering paranormal investigator, has spent a great deal of time in the Mountain State on the trail of entities, creatures, and all sorts of phenomena. These are her findings, featuring accounts of Mothman, the Grafton Monster, the Wampus Cat, the White Things, and other bizarre creatures, including Bigfoot, lizard people, and out-of-place panthers.
 
“Featuring tales of Mothman, the Sheepsquatch, and a host of lesser known West Virginia weirdness, Monsters of West Virginia is the perfect book for anyone with even a passing interest in West Virginia cryptozoology . . . a quick read by one of the most knowledgeable researchers of the paranormal in the country.” —Theresa’s Haunted History of the Tri-State

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9780811745772

Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Rosemary Ellen Guiley is an expert on visionary, mystical and paranormal topics. She specializes in dreamwork, intuitive development, angel work and “miracle mind consciousness” to help others achieve their goals and find fulfillment in life, creativity, work and spiritual understanding. Rosemary is president of her own company, Visionary Living, Inc., based in Maryland, USA.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

My introduction to the supernatural side of West Virginia began well over a decade ago through my research of ghosts, witches, Mothman, and Fortean phenomena. Fortean phenomena , or Forteana , are so named after Charles Fort (1874-1932), an American journalist who made a second career of cataloging thousands of paranormal or anomalous phenomena, such as rains of frogs, fish, stones, dead birds, flesh, and snakes; mystifying religious experiences; floating balls of light in the night sky; spontaneous human combustion; UFOs; ghosts and poltergeists; and mysterious creatures and monsters. Fort never attempted to explain these phenomena, but used these examples to point out the limitations of scientific knowledge and the danger of dogmatic acceptance of natural laws, which the phenomena seemed to contradict.

Today researchers look for explanations of the phenomena. First we must eliminate natural explanations and then consider paranormal ones. For many years, I have considered monsters and mysterious creatures, as well as UFOs, ghosts, and unknown entities, to originate in parallel dimensions and break through into our dimension in certain places and at certain times.

I have spent a great deal of time in the Mountain State on the trail of entities, creatures, and all sorts of phenomena. Every state and region has its own stellar cast of supernatural creatures, and West Virginia is no exception. The country roads, rolling mountains, and mysterious vibe of the landscape have a constant allure. I have interviewed many people in the state about their various supernatural experiences, and I have had the pleasure of meeting many of the foremost researchers who also have been intrigued by the activity there. I was privileged to have known John A. Keel, an outstanding Fortean researcher and ufologist, famous for his work on Mothman in West Virginia. John’s visionary explanations were ahead of their time and now make increasing sense from the perspective of physics.

Those who are already familiar with my work—forty-seven books and counting—know that I like to cover the whole spectrum of paranormal activity, for everything winds up being interrelated in some way. Even though the focus of this book concerns monsters and mysterious creatures, we must from time to time spill into the related topics of UFOs, extraterrestrials, ghosts, spirits, and witches and sorcerers. The paranormal is never a neat little pie chart cut up into colored, separate slices. Rather, it is a sliding landscape where one thing often blurs into another. While the term monsters conjures up horrific shapes and frightening experiences—and there are plenty of those in West Virginia—some of the mysterious creatures are shape-shifters, fairies, banshees, and creepy spectral beings who are not the ghosts of the dead.

Those of us researching the field depend on eyewitnesses for reports and data. Hard evidence of monsters is rare, but anecdotal accounts are valuable for their consistencies and patterns. If you have an experience, in West Virginia or anywhere, please send me a report at [e-mail]. Meanwhile, enjoy your visit on the spooky paranormal byways of West Virginia!

Mystery in the Mountain State

As states go, West Virginia is one of the smallest, ranking forty-first in size in the United States, with about 24,230 square miles. It may be small, but it is packed with lore and accounts of apparitions, poltergeists, witches, shape-shifters, Bigfoot, mysterious birds and creatures, strange lights in the sky, demon dogs, weird cats, and a host of unique entities that have both amazed and terrified many a witness. There are a number of factors why.

West Virginia is almost entirely mountainous—hence the name the Mountain State—and is the only state fully within the Appalachian region, with the Allegheny Mountains also in the north. The Appalachians are some of the oldest mountains on earth, dating back more than three hundred million years. The mighty Ohio River forms the state’s western boundary against Ohio. Other states along its borders are Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. The remote, densely wooded mountains and hills and lonely hollows, called hollers, offer the ideal habitats and hiding places for all things strange. The state is full of small towns and hamlets, many of which still retain an aura of insulation and leeriness of outsiders. Even the cities are small—Charleston, the state capital and the largest, has about fifty-three thousand residents.

The supernatural folklore is a blend of beliefs brought by immigrants primarily from England, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, and Italy, mixed with diverse Native American lore, and accounts of the face-to-face encounters with unknown creatures that have been passed down through the generations and reported in the media.

Prior to the arrival of the European settlers, the lands along the Ohio River were favorite hunting grounds for Native Americans. The early Native Americans were the Eastern Woodlands. Diverse bloodlines have included the Shawnee, Mingo, Cherokee, Delaware, Seneca, Wyandot, Ottawa, Tuscarora, Susquehannock, Huron, Sioux, and Iroquois, as well as Lakota, Blackfoot, Apache, Navajo, Choctaw, Cree, and Aztec. Although the Native Americans hunted there, they made no permanent settlements in West Virginia. They considered the land cursed and full of bad spirits. Perhaps they sensed thin boundaries between dimensions, or had experiences with frightening creatures.

In terms of paranormal activity and reports, West Virginia is quite an active state, according to cryptid researcher Lon Strickler of Baltimore, Maryland, who runs the PhantomsandMonsters.com website and monitors worldwide stories of the strange. Most West Virginia reports made to the website concern sightings of Mothman, the state’s most famous creature, but also cover the gamut of the unexplained.

West Virginia’s Paranormal Profile

Mysterious creatures are usually encountered in remote areas, and as mentioned, West Virginia is full of lonely pockets. There are exceptions, of course—Mothman is one of the most notable, for its appearances in the town of Point Pleasant. The entire state forms what I have christened the Appalachian Doorway, a paranormal hot zone of ongoing activity.

In my investigations over the years, I have found what many other researchers have noticed as well—there are certain geophysical traits that characterize most paranormal hot zones. Mountainous areas are one trait, and large waterways are another. The Ohio River Valley has a long history of paranormal activity. What is it about water that attracts or enhances the paranormal? Is it the ionization in the air? The energy generated by the rush of water? Large rivers, and even large lakes, usually have a paranormal pedigree.

West Virginia is an important coal-mining state, and coal-rich areas are riddled with tunnels—another marker of paranormal activity. Old folklore holds that openings from inner earth, such as mines, tunnels, and wells, provide pathways to the surface for all kinds of spirits and entities.

While none of these factors prove paranormal activity, of course, they are nonetheless part of a profile built by paranormal investigation. I believe that geophysical profiles contribute to something else: the opening of interdimensional doorways known as portals.

According to quantum physics, our dimension is but one of eleven that exist in a multidimensional reality. We are not in a universe, but a multiverse. Most of the time, the boundaries between dimensions prevent us from having bleed-through experiences, which is quite a good thing, considering the potential for disorientation and chaos.

However, there seem to be certain places where the boundaries are thin or even permeable—places where entities and the gods, so to speak, can be accessed. Caves, holes, subterranean passages, mountains, the roots of sacred trees, and reflective surfaces such as lakes and ponds have long histories as entry points to invisible realms. The ancients understood these places, and built temples, shrines, standing stones, and monuments at them. Certain places were known to foster good energy and some were full of bad energy that would bring illness, bad luck, and misfortune. Certain other places were guarded by beings and spirits of the land—the Romans called any such guardian a genius.

Throughout history, human beings have experienced visions, meetings with entities, and distortions of time and space at these unusual places, which were regarded as doorways to the underworld, or to the land of the gods. A person could create an opening between worlds at these places by conducting the right rituals, making the right offerings, and being in the right state of consciousness.

People have also fallen through time and space accidentally. When they encounter a mysterious creature, an alien, or a spirit, they may be having an interdimensional experience. The creature may not exist in our world, but in another dimension. Under certain conditions, a portal opens and a sighting or an encounter occurs.

Other dimensions may explain the odd and sudden appearances of mystery beings and their ability to vanish in the blink of an eye. Most mysterious creature and paranormal experiences are brief, and some are so fleeting that the experiencer is left to wonder if it was only imagination.

Paranormal researchers have considered the other-dimensional explanations for several decades. Ufologist Jacques Vallee and folklorist Thomas E. Bullard were among the first to compare extraterrestrials to fairies and other unknown entities. Space beings may not be from outer space, but from inner space, part of our own multiverse.

John A. Keel, one of the greatest pioneers in research of UFOs and mysterious creatures, coined the term ultraterrestrial todescribe these beings. Keel made history as the leading investigator of the Mothman sightings during the original wave in 1966 and 1967 in the Point Pleasant area.

Interdimensional portals make a great deal of sense in explaining the paranormal. If we are in the right place at the right time, and in the right state of consciousness, a portal can break open. West Virginia seems to be full of portal pockets, places where the boundaries between realms are thin or even open most of the time.

Speaking of being in the right place, here is a curiosity about encounters with mystery creatures. They are often seen late at night while someone is driving along a country road—and they go around a bend. Suddenly, there in the middle of the road, is a beast that is clearly not of this world. Sometimes the creatures are on the side of the road, but frequently they are smack in the middle, and often around a bend, not on a straightaway. Is there some peculiarity of portals and bends in interdimensional space that translates to bends in a road? Also, the creatures are often standing in the road, not moving or walking, as though they were dropped down a tube. When the vehicle comes into sight, they begin moving away, sometimes with astonishing speed.

There are many exceptions, of course, but I have noticed this characteristic reported frequently in eyewitness accounts.

Evaluating the Evidence for Creatures

One of the most vexing aspects of research into mysterious beings and phenomena is the difficulty in obtaining hard evidence. Beings that do not seem to belong in this reality elude capture in photographs and videos, and even capture of themselves. They seldom leave behind trace evidence, and what little is found is often tantalizing, but seldom convinces the scientific establishment.

Cryptozoologists tend to look for natural explanations, often believing that extraordinary creatures do exist, but are remnants of earlier species thought to be extinct. Survivors of the ancient past cannot be ruled out, but how do they remain so well hidden? Remote parts of mountains and forests have been cited as the habitats and resting places of monsters, but how long can such places remain remote and unexplored?

What about their feeding habits? Some creatures, such as Big-foot, are seen foraging for food. Others, such as monster birds, seem to hunt for live prey, and dogmen have been seen eating roadkill. Why do we not see such hunters more often, not only from the ground but from the air?

Why do we find no carcasses or bones? Excrement and hair tufts associated with mysterious creature sightings have been found and analyzed—sometimes with the conclusion of unknown—and casts have been made of mysterious foot, paw, and claw prints.

The physical evidence for mysterious creatures is slim to none. We are left primarily with eyewitness accounts. While many are indeed compelling and difficult to refute, they are rarely backed up with hard evidence. The small amount of photographic evidence captured is continually debated, debunked, and dismissed, especially by the scientific community.

The lack of evidence makes sense if we consider these creatures to originate in another dimension. They are in our world for a fleeting time,