Winged Monsters in Old Newspapers: Strange Reports Before Cryptids Had a Name
Long before anyone used the word cryptid, American newspapers were already printing stories about strange things in the sky.
Some sounded almost familiar: enormous birds circling over farms and towns, their wingspans seemingly far beyond anything witnesses recognized. Others were much harder to classify. There were reports of leathery wings, long tails, glowing lights, bizarre tracks, creatures that seemed to swim through the air, and monsters that looked more at home in a nightmare than a field guide.
Today, many of these old accounts are discussed alongside Thunderbirds, living pterosaurs, and other winged cryptids.
But the newspapers themselves tell a more complicated story. Sometimes reporters preserved a mystery. Sometimes they tried to explain it. Sometimes they openly questioned it. And in a few cases, newspapers appear to have helped transform a local scare into a monster legend that survived for more than a century.
The result is not one hidden species appearing again and again. It is something stranger: a historical record of Americans repeatedly looking into the sky and seeing things they could not immediately explain.
At a Glance
- American newspapers were reporting giant and unidentified flying creatures well before modern cryptozoology existed.
- An 1890 Arizona newspaper claimed a winged creature had an estimated wingspan of roughly 160 feet.
- The 1891 Crawfordsville Monster was followed within days by a proposed natural explanation.
- Contemporary newspapers documented both the Van Meter mystery and the huge 1909 Jersey Devil scare.
- The Snallygaster shows how sensational newspaper coverage could become part of a monster legend itself.
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Before Cryptids Had a Name
The word cryptid is relatively modern. The strange animals now collected under that label were not always treated as members of one mysterious category.
A nineteenth-century newspaper reader might encounter a report about an unknown animal beside stories about escaped livestock, unusual weather, curiosities from distant countries, sea serpents, strange lights, scientific discoveries, or local gossip. There was no neat boundary between folklore, entertainment, eyewitness reporting, and serious natural history.
That matters when reading these accounts today.
An old newspaper can establish something important: a story was being told at a particular time and place. What it cannot automatically establish is that every detail in that story was accurate.
Reporters sometimes repeated claims without independent verification. Newspapers copied material from one another. Sensational stories attracted readers. And once a good monster story entered circulation, details could shift as it traveled.
Still, historical newspapers preserve something later retellings often lose: what people were actually saying when the mystery was still new.
1890: Tombstone's Enormous Winged Monster
Few historic newspaper monster stories are as outrageous as the account printed in Arizona's Tombstone Epitaph on April 26, 1890.
The headline announced:
Found in the Desert: A Strange Winged Monster Discovered and Killed on the Huachuca Desert.
The story claimed that two ranchers traveling through the desert between the Whetstone and Huachuca mountains encountered an enormous flying creature.
The newspaper did not simply describe a huge bird. According to the report, the animal resembled an enormous alligator with an extremely long tail and an immense pair of wings. Its skin was reportedly smooth and hairless, while the wings were described as thick membranes rather than feathers.
Then came the measurements.
The body was supposedly around 92 feet long. One partially extended wing was said to measure about 78 feet, leading the ranchers to estimate a full wingspan of roughly 160 feet.
Such dimensions would dwarf any known flying animal, living or extinct.
The story claimed the ranchers chased the exhausted animal, shot it, and eventually killed it. They supposedly removed part of one wing and planned to return later with equipment to recover more of the carcass.
No verified specimen ever followed. There is no known preserved wing fragment, scientific description, or museum specimen connected to the report. Although later versions of the legend often mention a photograph showing cowboys standing beside the carcass, no such photograph appeared with the original newspaper story.
Over time, the account became associated with the idea that pterosaurs might somehow have survived into modern times. The comparison is understandable because of the reported long tail and membranous wings, but the original article never called the creature a pterodactyl.
Whether the report began with a genuine encounter, exaggeration, a frontier tall tale, or deliberate newspaper entertainment, the surviving 1890 article is stranger than many later summaries.
Read the complete story in our Tombstone Winged Monster case file.
The Tombstone story is also part of a much wider collection of Southwest cryptids, including mysterious desert beasts, hairy humanoids, and other strange creatures associated with Arizona and its neighboring states.
1891: The Crawfordsville Monster Swims Through the Sky
One year after the Tombstone story, newspapers in Indiana reported something completely different.
Early on September 5, 1891, two ice delivery men in Crawfordsville claimed they encountered a bizarre object or creature moving through the night sky. The local Daily Journal described an apparition approximately 18 feet long and 8 feet wide.
It was said to be white, with no obvious head or tail. Instead of ordinary wings, the strange form appeared to have fin-like appendages that helped propel it through the air.
Later retellings sometimes make the Crawfordsville Monster sound like an enormous flying jellyfish. The contemporary description was just as surreal: something resembling a huge white shroud twisting and moving through the darkness.
The ice men were not the only people who reportedly saw it. Rev. G. W. Switzer and his wife were also connected with a sighting, and the Daily Journal returned to the story on September 7 under the headline Mr. Switzer Saw the Spook.
For a few days, Crawfordsville had a genuine local mystery.
The Spook Explained?
Then the newspaper did something especially useful for anyone researching the case today.
On September 8, the Daily Journal published another follow-up under the headline The Spook Explained.
According to the report, two men investigating the strange apparition concluded that the supposed monster was actually a large flock of killdeer flying closely together. Seen at night, the shifting group of pale birds could have created the appearance of one much larger form moving through the sky.
Crawfordsville's relatively new electric lighting has also been suggested as part of the circumstances surrounding the sighting, either by affecting the birds or by changing how the flock appeared against the nighttime sky.
More than 130 years later, there is no way to recreate the exact conditions well enough to prove that explanation. But Crawfordsville is valuable because the skeptical interpretation did not appear decades later. It was printed while people in the town were still talking about the sightings.
Within days, the sequence had gone from strange encounter, to newspaper sensation, to attempted explanation.
That makes Crawfordsville an unusually clear example of how an unfamiliar animal, an odd flock, poor visibility, or some combination of those factors could briefly become a monster. Similar problems of distance, scale, lighting, and unfamiliar wildlife still appear in discussions of winged cryptid misidentifications.
Giant Birds and the Thunderbird Question
Not every historical flying-creature report involved something as bizarre as Crawfordsville or Tombstone. Other accounts described enormous birds: dark silhouettes over farms and towns, animals circling overhead, and wingspans witnesses believed were far beyond those of familiar eagles, cranes, vultures, or other species.
Modern cryptid literature often groups such stories under the name Thunderbird.
That label requires some care. Thunderbird beings appear in the traditions of multiple Indigenous peoples across North America, but those traditions are not one single story and should not simply be treated as old reports of an undiscovered biological species.
The modern cryptozoological "Thunderbird" is something different. It combines reports of unusually large birds, twentieth-century eyewitness stories, older newspaper accounts, and Indigenous traditions that later writers often grouped together under one familiar name.
Even without making that connection, giant-bird reports raise a genuine problem of perception. Birds high overhead can be extremely difficult to measure, especially when there is nothing nearby for comparison. A condor, eagle, pelican, heron, or crane encountered unexpectedly can appear enormous.
Some historical claims, however, describe dimensions far beyond any known North American bird. That gap between what witnesses believed they saw and what known wildlife can actually do is one reason giant-bird stories have remained part of the cryptid landscape.
1903: The Van Meter Visitor Brings a Light to Iowa
In late September and early October 1903, Van Meter, Iowa became the setting for one of America's strangest newspaper monster stories.
The basic reports were already unusual. Town residents claimed to have encountered a large winged being associated with a powerful light. As the story developed, witnesses described bat-like wings, a strange odor, unusual tracks, and a brilliant beam or glow apparently coming from the creature's head.
Unlike many legends reconstructed from much later retellings, the Van Meter story can be traced directly into newspapers from 1903.
October 4: A "Fishy Story"
On October 4, 1903, the Des Moines Daily News ran the case under a headline that already hinted at skepticism:
Town of Van Meter Wrought Up over a Fishy Story
The report collected the extraordinary claims coming out of the town, including encounters with a winged creature and the strange light associated with it.
The wording of the headline matters. The newspaper was reporting the story, but it was not presenting the monster as an established fact.
October 5: The Mystery Was Still Not Solved
The following day, October 5, the same newspaper returned to Van Meter under another telling headline:
Van Meter Mystery Not Solved
The continuing coverage shows that there was enough local excitement to keep reporters interested while also demonstrating that the press was not treating every spectacular detail as settled.
Another Iowa newspaper, the Des Moines Daily Capitol, followed on October 6 with Van Meter Hot under the Collar. By October 11, the story had traveled beyond Iowa, appearing in Minnesota's St. Paul Globe under the much more dramatic headline A Winged Monster.
The progression itself is revealing. A strange local report had become newspaper material outside the town within days.
The Abandoned Mine
The most dramatic version of the story centered on an abandoned coal mine outside Van Meter.
Residents reportedly traced the activity toward the mine and gathered there armed with guns. According to the accounts, not one but two strange creatures eventually appeared near the shaft. The men opened fire, but the creatures escaped or descended into the mine.
Afterward, the reported encounters ended.
Modern retellings often present this as the climax of a continuous series of monster attacks. The contemporary newspaper trail supports something more limited but still fascinating: Van Meter residents were reporting extraordinary events, newspapers considered those claims newsworthy, and the story spread rapidly enough to receive coverage in multiple states.
What the record does not provide is physical confirmation. There is no surviving specimen, photograph, authenticated footprint cast, or biological evidence that can be examined today.
That leaves two separate historical facts that should not be confused. The Van Meter story unquestionably existed in 1903. The creature described in that story remains unverified.
Explore the complete case in our Van Meter Visitor investigation.
1909: When the Jersey Devil Became a Newspaper Panic
By January 1909, newspapers around Philadelphia and South Jersey were documenting something much larger than a single strange sighting. Reports of mysterious tracks and a bizarre winged animal were spreading from community to community.
Some tracks supposedly crossed yards or appeared on rooftops. Witnesses described an assortment of animal features that rarely agreed from one report to the next.
One person might describe a horse-like face. Another compared the head to a dog. Other versions added wings, claws, hooves, glowing eyes, or a body resembling a kangaroo or large opossum.
The inconsistency did not slow the story down.
On January 21, the Philadelphia Inquirer put the mystery prominently before readers under the headline WHAT-IS-IT VISITS ALL SOUTH JERSEY. Reports described hoof-like tracks around Burlington and armed residents following trails in search of the animal.
Other newspapers joined in, and the developing scare became tangled with the much older folklore surrounding the Leeds family and the Pine Barrens creature that would become known as the Jersey Devil.
Then Someone Put One on Display
As the frenzy grew, a supposed Jersey Devil was displayed at a Philadelphia dime museum. The animal was later described as a kangaroo fitted with artificial wings, and former newspaperman and publicity man Norman Jeffries became closely associated with the stunt and with promoting the craze.
That does not automatically explain every reported footprint or every witness who claimed to see something strange during January 1909. It does demonstrate how quickly folklore, publicity, newspaper competition, genuine uncertainty, and opportunism could mix together.
A strange track could become a local report. That report could prompt more people to search the skies and fields. New witnesses generated new stories, newspapers kept the mystery in front of readers, and the attention created opportunities for publicity stunts.
The 1909 Jersey Devil scare is therefore valuable for more than the creature descriptions. It shows how a monster story could become a regional event while newspapers were documenting and amplifying it at the same time.
1909: The Snallygaster Grows in the Newspapers
The same year produced another extraordinary flying monster, this time in western Maryland.
The Snallygaster would eventually become one of the strangest creatures in American folklore, and its early newspaper history helps explain why.
On March 5, 1909, newspaper readers encountered the headline Emmitsburg Saw the Great Snallygaster. Early stories described a creature with a long bill, enormous wings, and a single eye in the center of its forehead. Its cry was compared to the sound of a locomotive whistle.
As coverage continued, descriptions became even more elaborate. Later witnesses added features including claws and tentacle-like appendages.
That progression is revealing. Rather than becoming clearer as additional reports appeared, the creature became increasingly fantastic.
A Monster Made for the Newspaper Age
Historian and author Patrick Boyton, whose research into the Snallygaster has included examination of the original newspaper material, has noted how common sensational stories were in newspapers of the period. The Snallygaster coverage fits comfortably into that environment.
A frightening creature flying over local farms made excellent copy, and each new report gave readers another reason to follow the developing story.
That does not require every person associated with a sighting to have been knowingly participating in a hoax. Once a monster story begins circulating, genuine misidentifications, jokes, rumors, exaggerations, and invented details can all become part of the same tradition.
The Snallygaster therefore presents a different research problem from asking what animal witnesses might have mistaken for a monster. The newspaper coverage itself may be part of the explanation for why the monster acquired such extraordinary anatomy.
The distinction is important throughout historical cryptid research: a newspaper proves that a report was circulating. It does not, by itself, prove the creature described in that report existed.
Five Monsters, Five Very Different Stories
Placed side by side, these cases reveal something that tends to disappear when every mysterious flying creature is simply labeled a Thunderbird or winged cryptid.
They barely resemble one another.
The Tombstone monster was supposedly enormous, reptilian, smooth-skinned, and equipped with membranous wings. Crawfordsville's apparition resembled a white shroud or strange airborne animal with fin-like appendages. Van Meter produced a winged being associated with an unexplained light. The Jersey Devil accumulated hooves, wings, animal features, and wildly inconsistent descriptions. The Snallygaster developed a huge bill, giant wings, one eye, claws, and eventually tentacle-like appendages.
If all of these stories represented repeated observations of one undiscovered North American species, the descriptions would be remarkably difficult to reconcile.
As a history of American monster reporting, however, the differences are part of what makes the subject interesting. Different communities had different landscapes, local folklore, expectations, wildlife, and newspaper cultures. A strange experience did not enter an empty world. It entered one already filled with stories about monsters, strange animals, scientific discoveries, religious imagery, and unexplored places.
Why Did Newspapers Print Monster Stories?
It is easy to treat an old newspaper as though everything between its pages carried the same level of verification. Newspapers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were much messier than that.
They could be serious, politically influential, informative, humorous, openly partisan, and sensational within the same issue. Editors needed material, and readers enjoyed curiosities. A strange animal reportedly seen by respected townspeople could be considered worth printing even when nobody knew what it was.
Stories also traveled.
Newspapers routinely reprinted material from other publications. A compelling account originating in one town could appear days later hundreds of miles away.
That creates an important trap for modern research. Finding the same monster story in ten newspapers does not necessarily mean ten independent investigations confirmed it. Sometimes several papers were repeating essentially the same source.
Tracing a story back toward its earliest known publication is therefore much more useful than simply counting how many newspapers eventually printed it.
Were Giant Birds Being Misidentified?
Some probably were.
Large birds can be surprisingly difficult to identify under poor conditions. Distance distorts size, darkness hides feathers and body shape, and a bird flying toward or away from an observer can produce an unfamiliar silhouette.
Scale presents an even bigger problem. A bird high in an empty sky has no nearby tree, building, vehicle, or person to provide a reliable comparison. Witnesses may be sincerely convinced that an animal was enormous while having little objective information from which to calculate its size.
The Crawfordsville explanation presents another possibility. A tightly grouped flock can briefly appear to be one larger moving form, particularly under unusual lighting conditions.
North America also has genuinely impressive birds. Condors, pelicans, cranes, eagles, vultures, and herons can be startling when encountered unexpectedly, and wandering individuals sometimes appear well outside the places where observers expect to see them.
Any of these factors could produce a sincere eyewitness report without requiring an unknown giant species.
Explore more possible explanations in our guide to winged cryptid misidentifications.
What About Living Pterosaurs?
The more reptilian accounts create a different problem. Modern readers sometimes interpret leathery wings, long tails, and prehistoric-looking silhouettes as evidence that pterosaurs survived into recent times.
The Tombstone story is probably the best-known American example, but resemblance alone is weak evidence.
Pterosaurs disappear from the fossil record at the end of the Cretaceous Period, around 66 million years ago. A surviving breeding population persisting into modern times would represent an extraordinary zoological discovery and should leave more than scattered eyewitness reports.
We would reasonably expect physical remains, bones, nesting sites, biological material, clear photographs, or other traces accumulated over generations. No verified evidence of that kind has established the survival of pterosaurs into the modern era.
That does not make the historical stories uninteresting. It simply means that describing something as "pterosaur-like" is very different from demonstrating that it actually was a surviving pterosaur.
Our deeper look at the question is available in Could Pterosaurs Still Be Alive?
What the Old Newspapers Actually Preserve
Historical monster cases are often frustrating because the evidence modern researchers would most like to examine is missing. There is usually no body, DNA sample, clear photograph, preserved footprint, or museum specimen.
What newspapers sometimes preserve instead is the development of the story itself.
In Crawfordsville, a strange sighting became a local monster story and received a proposed natural explanation within days.
In Van Meter, an Iowa mystery moved through several newspapers, with headlines ranging from a "fishy story" to the much more dramatic "A Winged Monster."
During the Jersey Devil scare, mysterious tracks, older folklore, eyewitness reports, armed searches, newspaper attention, and publicity became tangled together almost immediately.
With the Snallygaster, the creature's anatomy seems to become more fantastic as the newspaper story develops.
Those histories remain valuable even if none of the creatures ultimately prove to represent an unknown species. They show how people interpreted strange experiences and how those experiences changed once they entered print.
The Newspaper Record Is Stranger Than One Monster
There is a temptation to search for one explanation behind old winged-creature stories: a surviving pterosaur, an undiscovered giant bird, a Thunderbird, or a widespread hoax.
The historical record does not fit neatly into any one of those boxes.
Some reports may have involved known animals seen under unusual circumstances. Some were likely exaggerated. Some may have been entertainment from the beginning. Others grew as newspapers and communities repeated them. A few remain difficult to reconstruct because the witnesses, locations, and physical evidence disappeared more than a century ago.
What connects the stories is not anatomy. It is a recurring human experience: someone looked into the sky, saw something they could not immediately identify, and told somebody about it.
Sometimes that somebody was a neighbor. Sometimes it was a newspaper reporter. And once the story reached print, the mystery could travel far beyond the place where it began.
For more mysterious creatures reported above towns, forests, mountains, and isolated landscapes, explore Flying Cryptids Around the World.
Sources
- Library of Congress — Tombstone Epitaph, April 26, 1890, “Found in the Desert”
- Crawfordsville Daily Journal, September 5, 1891 — “A Strange Phenomenon”
- Crawfordsville Daily Journal, September 7, 1891 — “Mr. Switzer Saw the Spook”
- Crawfordsville Daily Journal, September 8, 1891 — “The Spook Explained”
- Des Moines Daily News, October 4, 1903 — “Town of Van Meter Wrought Up over a Fishy Story”
- Des Moines Daily News, October 5, 1903 — “Van Meter Mystery Not Solved”
- Des Moines Daily Capitol, October 6, 1903 — “Van Meter Hot under the Collar”
- St. Paul Globe, October 11, 1903 — “A Winged Monster”
- The Philadelphia Inquirer — historical review of the January 1909 Jersey Devil scare
- PBS Outdoors Maryland — Snallygaster history and 1909 newspaper coverage
- Emmitsburg Chronicles — historical Maryland newspaper archive
- Library of Congress — Chronicling America Historic Newspaper Archive
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