- Beware the hoop snake, the dungavenhooter, and the nefarious social worker.
It’s World Folklore Day — which means it’s time for us to dive into the world’s strange folk tales and creatures. Last year, we featured a cavalcade of bizarre things from all over the globe.
This time, however, we decided to stay closer to home. We recently talked about some curses in U.S. folklore, but there’s more than that lurking in America’s woods.
At least if you believe the stories.
Here are nine weird beings you might run into both in the countryside and the city.
1. Hoop Snake
Let’s start with a critter you may have heard about. The hoop snake is a famous mythical creature that has supposedly been sighted at least in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
It seems like your regular everyday snake until it spots potential prey. At that point, the hoop snake bites onto its tail, forming a ring, and rolls after its victim.
At the last second, the venomous snake straightens out and lands on its prey to bite it. Some stories instead claim it has a venomous barb on its tail that it uses to skewer animals instead.
2. Gillygaloo
According to stories that often feature Paul Bunyan in some role, the gillygaloo is a type of plover bird that nests on steep hillsides. Their habitat, however, poses a problem for the birds — their eggs roll down the hill and break.
Or they would if they were normal eggs. What sets the gillygaloo apart is that its eggs are cube-shaped.
The legends say lumberjacks used to hard-boil gillygaloo eggs to use them as gambling dice. You know, we feel kind of sorry for the mother bird that has to lay the things.
3. Squonk
The squonk is the saddest creature in the world — literally. This beast, allegedly living in the hemlock forests of Pennsylvania, is so horrendously ugly that it’s permanently depressed.
Squonks are covered in moles and warts, their skin is flabby and coarse, and whatever hair they have is dry and blotchy. The animal habitually avoids water so it doesn’t have to see its own hideous face.
Tracking a squonk is supposed to be pretty easy — just follow the trail of tear puddles the perpetually crying creature leaves behind. If you corner it, though, it might start crying so hard that the whole animal dissolves into tears.
4. Hugag
From a distance, a hugag might resemble a large moose. Getting closer, however, this beast of America’s northern woods proves to be much clumsier.
The hugag has an enormous, flabby upper lip on its hairless head that keeps it from grazing. As such, the animal has to resort to clumsily eating twigs and barks off of trees.
Its legs also have no knee or ankle joints, so it can’t lie down. What is it lumberjacks and coming up with these depressing beasts?
5. Dungavenhooter
If you venture into the marshes of Maine and Michigan, you might run into the dungavenhooter. You’ll easily recognize this bizarre reptile because it has no mouth.
Instead, it has a ginormous nose with huge nostrils. The dungavenhooter hunts by tackling unsuspecting prey — like drunk lumberjacks — and then beating them into a fine powder with its muscular tail.
Finally, the creature snorts up the remains of its prey. You have to wonder what the person who invented the dungavenhooter had been snorting.
6. Fur-bearing Trout
In the water of the Arkansas River swims a peculiar kind of trout. It’s otherwise like your regular trout, except that it’s covered in thick, white fur.
Its luxurious coat supposedly keeps the fish warm in cold water. Perhaps so, but the wet shag must also make swimming a real pain.
Unlike with many other creatures, we probably know how the legend of the fur trout came about. There’s a type of fungus that, in severe cases, can leave the fish it infects looking like they’re sprouting fur.
7. Sidehill Gouger
Sidehill gougers are rumored to live in the mountains and hills of Southwest U.S. They’re so adapted to their hilly environs that their bodies are lopsided.
The legs on one side of a sidehill gouger are much shorter than on the other, allowing it to effortlessly move along steep hillsides. If a left-sided gouger meets a right-sided gouger, they will fight to the death since the animals can’t go around each other.
Yet, sometimes the two beasts might instead decide to move to another hill. In that case, they’ll lean against each other and stagger along like a pair of drunks until they find a suitable mountain.
8. Jersey Devil
The Jersey Devil is a famous creature supposedly haunting the pine forests of South Jersey. It’s one bizarre conglomeration of parts from different animals.
According to legends, the Jersey Devil has a bipedal, kangaroo-like body with hooved legs, a goat-like horned head, and tiny arms with clawed hands. On its back, it sports a pair of leathery wings, so it can probably fly.
The scream of the Jersey Devil is said to be so horrifying that it can drive people mad. Otherwise, tales don’t agree on what the thing does, but it has been blamed for killing cattle.
9. Phantom Social Workers
Not all folk tales are centuries old. In the early 1990s, people began telling tall tales of phantom social workers.
These supposed social workers allegedly showed up at peoples’ doors, claiming they had the legal right to take their children into custody. If the parents should surrender their children, the social workers would take them away, never to be seen again.
However, no actual evidence of such social workers (or people posing as such) has ever been found and they’re mostly the product of an urban legend. Still, they show that people will keep coming up with new things that go bump in the night — they’ll just change to fit with the times.