The Awful
By Cole Herrold
Flying cryptids are perhaps one of the
most mysterious entities reported. Be it the strange flying invertebrate-style
organisms such as the Sky Amoebas or Atmospheric Jellyfish or the seemingly Predator
teched-out Hampton Sky Rays or the colossal Thunderbirds, they have captured
the imaginations of millions and expanded the perspectives and mindsets of
those lucky enough to have encountered them. Yet of these creatures, perhaps
the most unique is the chimeral critters that appear to of been pulled straight
from the pages of Myth. One such creature in the dawn of the 20th
century was said to frequent the skies and roofs of countless buildings in
Richford and
Berkshire, Vermont, and proceeded to strike terror and eldritch-style
nightmares onto the towns' populace. The wave of terror this creature caused
was added in strangeness only by the description of this creature which, just
like its name to those who had the fortunate or unfortunate enough chance of
encountering it, was just plain Awful.
Rumors of the Anomalous airborne
apparition first gained fruition in the early 1900s and was initially sighted
at dusk by two to three sawmill workers who, upon crossing Main Street Bridge
near the Canadian border, noticed a strange figure spotted atop the Boright
building at the corner of Main and River street. As the group looked up at the
building, expecting to see a robber at worst or a maintenance man at best, they
were instead greeted by a strange-looking avian abomination that they would
describe thusly "a very large Griffin-like creature with grayish wings
that each spanned ten-feet." The creature possessed "a serpent-like
tail that equaled its wing length" and "huge claws that could easily
grip a milk can's girth." The creature, from its perch, stared down at the
men as the men stared up at the creature, and it was at that moment that panic
ensued. The men had no words for the creature except that it was Awful; as they
stared in utter terror at the monstrous mutant, one of the men felt a sharp
pain issue up his arm and chest, ultimately collapsing to the ground. This
alerted his companions, who, upon looking at their friend, realized he was
suffering from a heart attack. The group, no longer concerned for the strange
creature which was still leering at them from the top of the building, reached
down and proceeded to lift up their friend and, as quickly as possible,
returned to his home. The man managed to survive the heart attack, but he had
not escaped from that moment near the Boright Building. For weeks afterward,
his wife and children woke up in the middle of the night to hear him screaming
in his sleep as though his dreams were being terrorized by some sort of
eldritch abomination. What these dreams were about, no one really knows as
either the man never spoke of them, or they were lost over time.
Right after this encounter, the creature
was seen by countless farmers and villagers, and it was during this time that
the creature officially received its name, The Awful. The villagers were in
utmost terror by the sight of this creature and its strange, bizarre behaviors.
The creature frequently flew over the farmer's fields and would land on the
farmer's roofs and watch them as they worked throughout the day or would look
through windows at those who were not out doing chores or errands.
Two weeks later, after the initial
sighting, the Awful was seen flying about 50 feet above a Berkshire field near
Lost Nation road. As those lucky or unlucky enough to have seen the creature
this time noted, they heard a strange crying sound accompanying it that they
knew was not from the creature. The creature during this flight was not alone,
for there, wrapped in the creature's talons, was a small wailing baby. An
immediate search of the area for a missing child in the area, however, turned
up empty, and so the villagers felt that they must have been mistaken and what
they most likely heard and saw was a small animal of some sort; most felt a
sheep.
The Awful's reign of terror would not end
there, however, as the next major sighting of the creature would occur just a
short time after this potential child abduction. Farmwife Oella Hopkins was out
hanging her laundry out to dry in her yard when she began to hear her dog bark
madly behind her. Curious at just what was disturbing the animal, she looked up
to see what her dog was barking at, and upon looking towards the direction of
where the dog was faced, she saw the Awful perched on her porch roof gazing
down at her. Terribly frightened by the horrid visage of the grinning Griffin,
she ran into her house and proceeded to, in childlike and slasher victim style
to, hide under her bed. When her husband came home, the creature was gone, and
having discovered his wife under the bed, he attempted to coax her out, but she
refused to come out for several hours. After this sighting, the Awful seemed to
make itself scarce, and sightings that were once so rampant started to slowly
dwindle away to a mere trickle.
In 1925 while reports of the Awful were
practically nonexistent, word of the flying freak of nature spread and
eventually reached the ears of non-other than the infamous cosmic horror writer
H.P. Lovecraft. H.P. Lovecraft heard about the monstrosity while visiting with
some friends in Southern Vermont and, upon hearing about the creature during
this visit, decided to go and take a quick road trip up to Richford and
Berkshire to investigate the claims. While there, he managed to talk to many of
the eyewitnesses, and he was convinced that the locals he had interviewed were
"not in the least mistaken about what they had witnessed." Lovecraft
would later return to his friends in the southern portion of the state but
hearing about this bizarre beast was enough to put his imagination and writing
prowess into overtime. Lovecraft would later write, "The Awful became
ample sustenance for my imagination" and "over time, the creature
became the basis for many of my own fictional inventions." In 1927
Lovecraft wrote, "entering Vermont for the first time, there is a sense of
mystic revivification." He continued, "Something in the contours,
something in the setting, has the power to touch deep viol-strings of feeling
which are ancestral if one be young and personal if one be old.". It's
from this that Lovecraft, upon pondering the beast, felt that there certainly
was some sort of esoteric reason for the creature being there, be it a
pre-concept Keelian Window area or some other supernatural methodology not
unlike that which he would write about extensively. Yet while the creature
gained the attention of one of the greatest minds in horror literature, it had
almost immediately after 1925 vanished, there were no more sightings of the
creature for countless years, and many had thought that the creature had either
died, moved on, or if this was mass hysteria that the towns had returned to
their senses. None of which would forever be the case, as, at the beginning of
the 21st century, sightings of the creature would return with a fury
not seen since the original 1900-1925 flap.
On October 19, 2006, H.P. Albarelli wrote
an article entitled "Has the Awful Returned to Berkshire &
Richford," and in it, he detailed a second flap of sightings of a similar
or the same flying monstrosity that was reported almost 80 years prior. Most of
these witnesses had startlingly similar interactions with the creature as it
seemed once again primarily focused on flying around local buildings and
watching any in its path. A few weeks prior to the publication of the article,
a man Albarelli claimed was a "solid citizen" who chose to remain
anonymous out of fear that people would have thought him insane “reported
seeing an unbelievable-looking winged monster. The thing swooped down from
nowhere and plucked a huge black crow from the upper branches of a tall pine
tree. I didn’t believe my eyes, but when the thing circled my house…well, then
there was no denying it." On this occasion, the creature reenacted its
most famous habit of being an observer, at best a stalker, at worst a predator
of humans as once this witness returned to his home and the creature began to fly
around his home, the creature continued to do so at least three times as though
it was looking for the man. Yet another witness to the creature said, "I
remember my grandfather once talking about that thing, but I thought it was
just a story, a tall folk yarn…What I saw was no yarn. Yarns don't fly, and
stories don't look like that. What I saw was real. And I hope to high heaven I
never see it again."
A follow-up article entitled "The
Awful sighted again; relic produced" was then released on November 30, 2006,
with even more sightings, some modern and some which took place years in
between the original flap and this sudden resurgence in Awful sightings. Lisa
Maskell, a former resident of Montgomery Center, said that when she was 10 or
11 years old, she saw it near the Trout River while out with friends. The
colossal cryptid creature, she said, was nestled in the boughs of an old tree
near the river, and as the group approached it, they noted that the creature
was looking right at them. They described the creature initially as being
incredibly large with huge wings and a long, strange beak. She also would go
and describe the creature as “Big, Scary, and Fascinating” She says when she
saw a picture of a pterodactyl a few years later, she immediately thought it
resembled The Awful.
An unnamed "60-something-year-old
man" claims it has been seen often and recently in the Gibou area of
Montgomery. He says that the creature had been seen in the area for about 25
years and was well known to residents. The man also felt that the creature was
not particularly aggressive towards humans as the residents of the area
developed a unique approach to the creature stating, "We don't bother it,
and it don't bother us, maybe with a few exceptions."
Edith Green, a dowser in Richford who
approached Albarelli after the initial report, told him that the Awful was
reported well before the article and after the initial sightings from the early
1900s and 1920s and that "folks were very nervous about it." Another
longtime resident of Richford also came forward about the creature; this
witness claimed that he had seen the creature recently around Slide Road and
said the following about the beast "You can usually hear the thing before
you see it. It makes a low screaming sound. When it's close enough you can hear
the flapping of its huge wings which sounds like fat blankets being shook
out".
Unlike other chimeral cryptids, the Awful
potentially does have some evidence for its existence. A logger from Richford
approached Albarelli upon reading his article and proceeded to hand him what
the logger claimed to be a petrified jawbone of an Awful. While no photos of
the jawbone were released, Albarelli stated that the object was stone hard and
appeared to have several large teeth. While nothing conclusive has been
released about the object so far, nor has any further development been made on
it, Albarelli did state that he is attempting to have an "expert from the
University of Vermont" to come and study the object but as far as we know
this has not occurred yet.
Now sightings of the Awful once again have
seen to of dropped off to nothing. There have been no reports of the creature
since 2006, at least to my knowledge, and so we are left to wonder just what
was flying around the towns of Richford and Berkshire. Breaking down this case,
the best way to start is to look at the possibility of a hoax and go from
there. In this case, the hoax possibility is certainly likely as while rumors
of the creature are claimed to of existed going back all the way to the 1900s,
there has been, at least to my knowledge, no written record of the creature in
newspapers or in journals since Albarelli wrote about the creature in 2006. The
fact that Albarelli wrote about and seems to be the only person to of written
about the creature in some 106 years tends to lend to the idea that the Awful
was nothing more than a kind of hoax, specifically a piece of yellow
journalism. This would make sense when looking back at the colossal history of
news-oriented cryptid and monster sightings; even the most mundane creatures
made the papers going all the way back to the 1700s as monsters of any sort
were big news, and if the Awful was as rampant as Albarelli claimed it was it
should have at least once been included in some document before 2006. Albarelli
also claimed Lovecraft wrote about the creature in the mid and late 20s again;
I have been unable to find the original source, so there are two ways to
interpret this one either there is such a source, and its just difficult to
find, or viewed as the most likely it was just yet another layer to the story
to give the creature more background and what better way than to have a famous
horror writer track down and investigate a unique monster.
Now with all that said while the
possibility of a hoax does seem likely. An email interview with Albarelli
claimed that he did not perpetrate a hoax and that he, outside of the fact that
Lovecraft did mention the creature, had no reason to include him. Which, if
he's being truthful, means that the Awful was kept very much under wraps in the
local area; this is something we do see with local folklore, so I'm willing to
entertain that possibility.
So if Albarelli did write about actual
accounts, just what exactly was the Awful. Now going the Cryptozoology route,
Griffins have been reported elsewhere, so the Awful is not exactly original.
The most famous example of this is the Brentford Griffin which I had recently
covered and has many of similar traits to the Awful, but unlike the Awful, it
was primarily seen in the 80s with some possibilities of being around much
earlier. There have been other flying quadrupeds that one would compare to a
griffin or a hippogriff reported over the years, such as a flying lion reported
in West Orange, New Jersey, in the 1920s. Another similar creature would be
Scotland's tri-legged Beast of Barrisdale.
Now I must say that some of the reports of
the Awful and some details do not seem to indicate a Griffin-like cryptid, but
other species of cryptids reported. There are two to be specific; the first
would be the Jersey Devil, and the reason I include it into the fold of
possibilities is the following details. The Jersey Devil during January 1909
plagued New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and also allegedly New
York though sightings are slim. Now the timing of this colossal flap of
sightings is in a perfect window of time for when the original Awful sightings
took place since they started in the early 1900s and continued into the 1920s.
Interestingly enough, when looking at Jersey Devil reports matches the amount
of sightings of other flying creatures seen in other states, almost following a
pattern. There are also details in behavior such as the watching people from
rooftops and the landing on rooftops in general that is a frequently described
Jersey Devil behavior. Even some of the descriptions of the Awful, which would
be strange for a Griffin, would make sense when comparing it to the Jersey
Devil, such as a serpentine tail, since this is something that we hear in those
reports and even the pterodactyl imagery is something that occurs with Jersey
Devil sightings as well.
The other cryptid also that could be what
the Awful is, is a classical Thunderbird. The classic Thunderbird, which is a
colossal eagle or condor-looking creature, is a common cryptid reported in
almost every state, yet the name now also has come to take in pterodactyl and
pterosaur sightings too. Yet, for the sake of the Awful, with the exception of
Lisa Maskell's sighting, most if not all of the sightings involve more
traditional bird-like features such as talons, beak, grayish feathers, and
aside from the serpentine tail and assumed secondary set of legs there's
nothing to indicate anything more extraordinary than a colossal bird. Even the
abduction of a small child or animal, depending on your viewpoint, is something
that has been reported countless times in Thunderbird encounters and legends, so
perhaps the Griffin description was a more exaggerated telling of just what the
witnesses saw.
As for other Fortean possibilities, the
next major possibility is that if the witnesses are accurate in their
description that this creature is a Griffin is that it could have come from
another dimension or be a faerie animal. These possibilities are sort of
catch-alls to explain the absolutely strange description of the creature, and
with these possibilities, just a simple answer as to the countless
esoteric/magical and/or evolutionary lineages in which this creature could have
been created from. For if this creature is a faerie animal, there are countless
appearances such creatures appear as, and flying creatures are exceptionally
common, whereas with other dimensions, evolution is infinite, and some of the
restrictions that exist in our world's evolutionary lines are completely removed
in others.
Now there's one final possibility, and I
touched on this with the Brentford Griffin as well, and that is a demonic
connection to Griffin-like creatures. Now in one case, a man by the name of
John Luck had cursed himself and, upon doing so, was assaulted by two colossal
griffin apparitions which lifted him into the air before promptly dropping him
on the ground upon which he was taken into the home of a neighbor to heal. As
the day continued, however, he became wild and aggressive and began to growl,
and this grew into such a violent outburst that a priest was called in to
exorcise whatever evil had attached itself to Mr. Luck. This did not end the
same way as how films like the Exorcist or the Conjuring would
depict such an action, and the next morning Mr. Luck had died, his body
contorted into countless positions and his face in a state of absolute terror.
Now I mention all this not just because of the entities in Luck’s case
description are almost identical to Griffins but also that in the Awful case,
the man who suffered the heart attack and survived had continuously been
plagued for weeks by nightmares seemingly caused by his interaction with the
Griffin something that might be evidence of the creature's supernatural and
nefarious origin.
Griffins and Griffin reports, in general,
are fascinating and perhaps the most bizarre as they are just a portion of
encounters with creatures ripped from the pages of Myth. What are we to make of
these sightings as the Griffin is part of a full pantheon of other mythological
beings like dragons, Cyclops, Minotaurs, Centaurs, Satyrs, and Pegasus that
have been frequently reported not only in the United States (though there does
seem to be a higher concentration) but around the world? Is it that what we are
seeing is some lifting of the veil and that such creatures are denizens of the
faerie realm, or are we seeing some window into another dimension where the old
gods, titans, and monsters live and breathe? It's hard to believe that these
could be cryptids from our world as with Griffins; they defy the natural
evolutionary processes that we build the foundations of organisms on, yet
science is an ever-changing medium for what once was considered laughable, or
heresy was soon discovered to not only be possible but a fact and perhaps if
Albarelli is truthful and the jawbone of the Awful is real we just might be on
the verge of a whole new understanding of how our earth and its fauna can be
and is something that I look with great interest for.
Quick Facts:
Species/Potential Species: Mammal or Avian
Location: Richford and Berkshire, Vermont
Sighted: 1900s to 2006
Works Cited:
Chasing American Monsters By Jason Offutt
A Guide to Sky Monsters By T.S. Mart and
Mel Cabre
The Vermont Monster Guide By Joseph A.
Citro
The Weiser Field Guide to Cryptozoology By
Deena Budd
H. P. Albarelli “Has the Awful returned to
Berkshire & Richford?” The County Courier October 19, 2006
H. P. Albarelli "The Awful sighted
again; relic produced" The County Courier November 30, 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment