What Are Cryptids? A Field Guide to America's Favorite Monsters
Quick Answer
What are cryptids? Cryptids are animals or creatures whose existence has been claimed but not confirmed by mainstream science. The term comes from the Greek "kryptos," meaning hidden, and was coined by cryptozoologist John E. Wall in 1983. Famous examples include Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Mothman, and the Chupacabra. Some cryptids, like the giant squid and the okapi, were eventually proven real. Most have not been. The study of cryptids is called cryptozoology, which exists somewhere between folklore, eyewitness testimony, and the persistent human belief that there is something out there we haven't found yet.
Cryptids are creatures that exist in the space between what science has confirmed and what people swear they have seen. The word itself is only a few decades old, coined in 1983, but the tradition it describes is ancient. Every culture on earth has them. America has an unusually large number, possibly because it has a lot of wilderness, possibly because it has a lot of people who trust their own eyes over official sources, and possibly because Bigfoot merchandise moves extremely well. All three of these things can be true at once.
Bigfoot
Bigfoot is the flagship cryptid of North America and one of the most investigated unconfirmed creatures in history. Reports of a large, bipedal, hair-covered creature in the forests of the Pacific Northwest go back centuries in Indigenous oral traditions before the term "Bigfoot" appeared in a 1958 newspaper story about large footprints found near a logging camp in Bluff Creek, California. The name stuck.
The most famous piece of Bigfoot evidence is the Patterson-Gimlin film, shot in 1967 at Bluff Creek by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin. The 59-second clip shows a large, upright figure walking through a clearing. It has been analyzed by primatologists, special effects professionals, and biomechanics researchers for nearly sixty years. No one has definitively proven it a hoax. No one has definitively proven it real. It remains exactly where Bigfoot evidence always ends up: inconclusive and fascinating.
By conservative estimates, there have been over 10,000 reported Bigfoot sightings in North America. The Pacific Northwest leads the count, but reports come from nearly every U.S. state. The FBI tested hair samples submitted by a Bigfoot researcher in 1976 and identified them as deer hair. This did not end the search. Nothing ends the search.
If you are the kind of person who finds the whole enterprise charming regardless of what you believe, the Bigfoot Hide & Seek Champion T-shirt is a fair summary of the situation. Undefeated since 1958.
Mothman
Mothman appeared in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, between November 1966 and December 1967, and then stopped. Over those thirteen months, more than 100 people reported seeing a large, winged, humanoid creature with glowing red eyes. The sightings clustered around an area called the TNT Area, an abandoned World War II munitions site outside town. On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge connecting Point Pleasant to Gallipolis, Ohio collapsed, killing 46 people. The Mothman sightings ended almost immediately after.
The connection between Mothman and the bridge collapse was made explicit by journalist John Keel in his 1975 book "The Mothman Prophecies," which framed the creature as a harbinger of disaster. This interpretation shaped how Mothman entered popular culture: not as a simple monster but as something stranger, an omen that arrives before catastrophe and disappears once it has occurred. Whether Mothman was a misidentified large bird, a mass psychogenic event in a stressed community, or something else entirely depends entirely on what you find more plausible.
Point Pleasant leaned into it. The town erected a 12-foot steel Mothman statue in 2003 and hosts an annual Mothman Festival that draws tens of thousands of visitors. The creature that allegedly terrified a town for thirteen months is now its primary economic asset. This is, depending on your perspective, either deeply American or deeply funny. Probably both.
The Mothman Retro T-shirt is for people who want to rep the most aesthetically interesting cryptid in American folklore. The red eyes alone are worth it.
The Chupacabra
The Chupacabra emerged in Puerto Rico in 1995 following a series of livestock deaths in which animals were found drained of blood with small puncture wounds. The name translates to "goat sucker." Eyewitness descriptions from Puerto Rico described a reptilian, bipedal creature around four to five feet tall with spines along its back and large, oval eyes. The sightings spread rapidly through Latin America and into the American Southwest, where the described creature shifted significantly: the mainland version tends to be a four-legged, hairless animal resembling a mangy coyote or dog.
Scientists who have examined captured "Chupacabra" specimens from Texas and other states have consistently identified them as coyotes or dogs with severe mange, a parasitic skin condition that causes hair loss and gives healthy animals a gaunt, alien appearance. This explanation satisfies biologists and almost no one else. The Chupacabra has since become a cultural fixture across Latin America and the American Southwest, appearing in music, television, film, and political cartoons.
The Loch Ness Monster
Technically Scottish rather than American, but too significant to omit. Reports of a large creature in Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands go back to the 6th century. The modern version of the legend began with a 1933 newspaper account, and the most famous photograph, taken in 1934 and known as the Surgeon's Photograph, showed a long-necked creature rising from the water. It was revealed in 1994 to be a hoax using a submarine toy with a sculpted head attached.
Loch Ness has been surveyed using sonar, underwater cameras, and most recently, environmental DNA analysis of water samples. The 2019 eDNA study found no evidence of a large unknown animal. It found substantial evidence of eels, which some researchers suggest could explain historical sightings if one imagined an unusually large individual specimen. The lake is 755 feet deep and covers 22 square miles. The absence of confirmed evidence has not resolved anything.
Why We Keep Looking
The persistence of cryptid belief is worth taking seriously as a cultural phenomenon even if you are entirely skeptical of the creatures themselves. Cryptozoology emerged as a formal pursuit in the 1950s partly as a response to the rapid shrinking of unmapped territory on earth. As the world became more documented and more known, the appeal of something that existed outside that documentation grew stronger.
Cryptids also tend to concentrate in places and among communities that feel overlooked by mainstream institutions: rural Appalachia, Indigenous territories, small towns in the rural South and West. The willingness to believe in something that official sources dismiss is not always simple credulity. Sometimes it is a reasonable posture toward institutions that have not earned unconditional trust. The history of what scientists and governments have dismissed, denied, and eventually been forced to acknowledge is long enough that a certain skepticism of official skepticism is defensible.
The giant squid was a sailor's myth for centuries. The okapi was dismissed as African folklore until 1901. The mountain gorilla was considered legend until 1902. The coelacanth, a deep-sea fish thought extinct for 65 million years, was found alive in 1938. Nature has a reliable history of surprising the people who thought they had catalogued it completely.
For everything else that lives in the space between documented reality and persistent rumor, the Paranormal collection has you covered. And if your obsession with unexplained things extends to human behavior as much as unknown creatures, the post on why we can't stop consuming dark, unsolved stories is directly relevant: Why Are We So Obsessed With True Crime?
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is a cryptid?
A cryptid is an animal or creature whose existence has been claimed through eyewitness accounts, physical evidence, or folklore but has not been confirmed by mainstream science. The term was coined by cryptozoologist John E. Wall in 1983 and comes from the Greek word for hidden. Cryptozoology is the study of cryptids. Some animals once considered cryptids, including the giant squid, the okapi, and the mountain gorilla, were eventually proven to exist. Most cryptids remain unconfirmed.
Is Bigfoot real?
No confirmed scientific evidence for Bigfoot exists. There are no verified bones, tissue samples, or clear photographs that the scientific community accepts as proof. The Patterson-Gimlin film from 1967 remains the most scrutinized piece of evidence and has not been definitively proven a hoax or confirmed genuine after nearly sixty years of analysis. Over 10,000 sightings have been reported across North America, and hair and other samples submitted for testing have consistently turned out to belong to known animals. The absence of conclusive evidence has not stopped the search.
What is Mothman?
Mothman is a large, winged, humanoid creature with glowing red eyes reported by over 100 witnesses in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, between November 1966 and December 1967. The sightings are associated with the collapse of the Silver Bridge on December 15, 1967, which killed 46 people, giving Mothman a reputation as a harbinger of disaster. Possible explanations include misidentified large birds such as sandhill cranes or barn owls, mass psychogenic illness in a stressed community, or an elaborate hoax. Point Pleasant now hosts an annual Mothman Festival and has a dedicated statue.
What is the Chupacabra?
The Chupacabra is a cryptid first reported in Puerto Rico in 1995, associated with livestock deaths in which animals were found with puncture wounds and reportedly drained of blood. The name means "goat sucker" in Spanish. Puerto Rican eyewitnesses described a reptilian bipedal creature. Mainland American sightings tend to describe a four-legged hairless animal. Scientists who have examined captured specimens from Texas and other states have identified them as coyotes or dogs with severe mange, a parasitic skin condition that causes dramatic hair loss and physical changes.
What cryptids have turned out to be real?
Several animals once dismissed as folklore or cryptids have been confirmed by science. The giant squid, described in sailors' tales for centuries, was first photographed alive in 2004 and filmed in 2012. The okapi, a forest animal related to the giraffe, was considered an African legend until 1901. The mountain gorilla was not confirmed by Western science until 1902. The platypus was initially dismissed as a hoax when specimens were sent to England in 1799. The coelacanth, a fish thought extinct for 65 million years, was discovered alive in 1938. These cases are why serious biologists do not entirely dismiss cryptozoology.
What is the difference between a cryptid and a monster?
The distinction is largely one of cultural framing. A monster is a creature understood to be fictional, mythological, or supernatural. A cryptid is a creature claimed to be a real, flesh-and-blood animal that has not yet been confirmed by science. Bigfoot is a cryptid because people claim to have physically seen, tracked, and photographed it as a living animal. Dracula is not a cryptid because no one is seriously arguing that an undead count exists in Transylvania. Some creatures occupy both categories depending on the tradition: the Loch Ness Monster is treated as a cryptid by researchers looking for a physical animal and as mythology by those who view the legend as cultural narrative.
