Night Brings the Hag! For centuries, folklore, or what has become known as "the unexplained," has grown as a vast jigsaw, an immense puzzle made up of many differing, equally complex parts, whether in the form of monsters, ghosts, UFOs, crop circles, voodoo, spontaneous human combustion, telepathy, healing powers, or what have you. However, one of the most frightening enigmas to lurk deep within the network of weirdness pertains to the legend of the "Old......

More from the Surreal Menagerie Fishermen will always tell you about the "one that got away," rather than the one they caught, and how, "It was this big", and how, "It bent the rod right over..." Surely such fishy yarns are the stuff of folklore, right? Not in the case of Wolf Pond, in Dauphin County. It is here that the legend of a huge fish or reptile lurks, although the lore suggests it may......

More Beastly Legends! Philly may not be heavily populated by bizarre creatures, let alone by tales of such beasts, but those counties that surround the area have harbored some truly weird monsters, or at least the folklore surrounding them. In 1919 at Schuylkill County's Broad Top Mountain, legend persisted that a snake measuring more than forty feet had taken up residence. The creature was mentioned in Janet & Colin Bord's 1989 book Modern Mysteries Of......

Weird vapors, misty mists and blobby blobs! We at Phillyist have often been intrigued by quirky reports of strange objects and things falling from the sky over the years, whether it's rains of fish, falls of frogs, a bombardment of tennis-ball sized hail, giant pieces of ice and even metal. Such events (bizarre items, forms and liquids vomited from the zenith) seem relatively common the world over. On September 26th, 1950 two policemen were driving......

Although slightly further afield from Philly, one of the most sinister of monster legends which has fascinated us for years concerns Lancaster County, a place which, over the years, has been known for its reports of ferocious werewolves and also Bigfoot. In the past at Phillyist we've discussed these eerie legends with brief mention of one of the strangest spectres known to haunt the county: The Albatwitches. These spookily-named apparitions have been the belief and......

Hellhounds! The black phantom dog is one of the world's most sinister and intriguing legends. Several theories have been put forward to explain such ghastly spectres which take on varying forms, but always have the characteristics of huge, fiery-eyed dogs. Such manifestations have been observed headless and often roaming old cemeteries, whilst on other occasions they have been seen wearing heavy chains around their necks. Ghostly hellhounds also appear red, white, yellow and blue in......

Beneath the Remains During the 1800s in the town of Sayre, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, a group of antiquarians made a startling find. W.K. Morehead, Dr. G.P. Donehoo and A.B. Skinner of Philadelphia's American Investigating Museum unearthed giant skeletons said to originate from 1200AD. However, the most significant detail of these seven-feet tall frames was not the size but the skulls, upon which were situated horns above the eye sockets! If such skeletons were freaks of......

The Devil in Philly! Around 1735 one of the world’s most intriguing mysteries was born: that of the New Jersey Devil, alleged offspring of Satan himself. A mutated alleged thirteenth child to a Mrs Leeds or Shrouds of Smithville, said to have been cast out in the blackness of night in Leeds Point, destined to roam the depths of the Pine Barrens for centuries to come. The legend has remained potent, sightings have continued over......

An Urban Legend? Welcome to another installment of the eerily obscure and bizarrely sinister. The most common urban legend to haunt worldwide folklore is that of the phantom hitchhiker. The following tale borrows heavily from that theme. Whether the tale is true, only you can decide, because it happened so long ago... During the late 1800s a neurologist named Dr. Weir was relaxing at his Philadelphia home. The fire was crackling and the snow outside......

3. Bizarre Creatures Although the legend of the werewolf spans across the world, real incidents of such encounters are either very scarce or simply never documented, but they do in fact exist. Lancaster County may be an hour's drive from Philly but we simply couldn't resist the following tale of wolfen weirdness to howl, or indeed shudder at! Wisconsin author Linda Godfrey, in her fantastic book, Hunting The American Werewolf, comments that: With a Germanic......