I was not familiar with that but it makes me think of the Sol Firth Spaceman.
A while back I'd heard a report that West Virginia was one of the best places to retire, and as we drove through it this summer, I can see because it's pretty and mountainous. But with the amount of cryptids, I don't know. Count amongst them today's Monster of the Day.
It all started on June 16th, 1965, as a reporter for the Grafton Sentinel by the name of Robert Cockrell was making his way home. Around 11 PM he reported seeing a white creature by the right-hand side of the road. By his account he reported the creature had slick “seal-like” skin and no visible head and was between seven to nine feet tall and four feet wide. He sped off and returned later with friends who helped him search the area. Nothing was discovered except a worn spot in the grass where he said the creature was spotted.
Being a journalist Cockrell decided to tell his story and a small write up appeared in the Grafton Sentinel on June 18th 1965. This report plunged the small town into a flurry of monster madness and resulted in hundreds of citizens scouring the town armed with pitch forks and guns. Some reported seeing the creature but only Cockrell's initial testament remains as a recorded eyewitness account. He would later investigate the case himself and work with Gray Barker who intended to write an article in a UFO magazine claiming the creature was possibly of extraterrestrial origin but it would go unpublished.
More than twenty sightings were reported from this monster hunt, which Robert Cockrell interviewed in detail. Below are two of those alleged sightings:
"I have seen the creature called 'The Grafton Monster' several times when I was a young man and it is very real. My first encounter I was with my Father cutting wood. We had finished and we're loading the truck, when our two dogs started barking. We stood there and listened, something was walking, getting closer. My Dad told me to get the gun from the cab Whatever it was had picked up its pace and continued toward us. All we knew for sure was, it was big and wasn’t scared of us, the dogs or the chainsaws. It stopped about 50-55 yards from us in the tree’s and went quiet. My Dad pulled both hammers back and stood in front of me, told me to be ready. The next thing that happened I’ll never forget. It stepped out, looked at us, took 3 strides in our direction, turned and walked back into the tree line. That was my first sighting of the beast and I’ll never forget it. My 2nd encounter was about 2 months later at night, fishing alone. I spotted him on the opposite bank and I got the hell out of the area"
The Grafton Sentinel posted on Jun 19th that the alleged monster was simply from an individual who had been pushing a handcart loaded high with boxes along Riverside drive on Tuesday night. The newspaper claimed that due to the dim lighting and the "wildly imaginative" teens, this handcart was the most likely cause for the story and sightings. The paper then stated: "It's fairly certain that "monsters” don’t go around pushing handcarts loaded with boxes."
Real or not? It's hard to prove a negative, and though the creature wasn't portrayed as menacing, I wouldn't like to come across him. Unless of course it was at the annual Grafton Monster Festival.