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Where the White Things Are: Sheepsquatch of Appalachia

The thing about stories told in Appalachia is that no one ever claims to be the one to invent them. We inherit them; they are passed down to us like Mammaw’s dishes. (That’s pronounced ma’am- maw for those non-locals.) It’s information we learn by growing up here just like we know which areas flood first in heavy rain, and which roads are most dangerous when it snows. That’s how stories of the White Things are. They’re only discussed when necessary, and even then, only in hurried, hushed tones.

The White Things go by many names. You might also know them as White Devils, The Morgan Ridge Monster, The Kanawha County Creature, or their more modern moniker: the Sheepsquatch. They are an unusual and elusive creature, and only a few encounters with them have been officially documented.

They are said to be the size of a large bear, and mostly quadrupedal but with the ability to stand and walk upright. They have shaggy, wooly-like, dirty white fur, a head shaped like something between a grizzly bear and a goat, and a mouth of razor-sharp fangs. Two sets of eyes sit low on the sides of its head, but less goat-like, and more like the eyes you’d see on a buffalo. Their heads are crowned with two large ram-like horns. They have dexterous racoon-like hands with claws similar to a bear, and a long hairless tail like an opossum. The only sounds they make are a guttural snarl or a shrill, high-pitched shriek. 

By most cryptid storytelling standards, the Sheepsquatch lore is quite young. The first sighting was reported in the Morgan Ridge area of Fairmont, West Virginia in 1929. Then again in Kanawha County, WV in 1954, Rivesville, WV in 1958, up into the Pennsylvania are in the 1970s, Point Pleasant, WV (yes, that Point Pleasant of Mothman notoriety) in 1973, Cross Lanes and Boone County, WV in the 1990s, and down into Breckenridge County, Kentucky in 2004.

All Sheepsquatch encounters take place in a similar fashion. Some began with hunters in the woods; some were drawn outside at their own properties; some were just unlucky enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. In all the encounters, the creature’s behavior was the same. If it was close enough to reach the humans, it attacked them, savagely biting and clawing them. All the victims said they felt the attack. They felt themselves being bitten. But when they finally fought and wriggled free and were able to get to safety, when they assessed the damage done to them, there was nothing there. No scratches, bites, or anything to validate what they had just lived through.

In cases where the creature was not close enough to attack the humans, it settled for hunting dogs and livestock. If the humans shot at the creature and hit it, it let out a terrible screeching howl to alert it had been struck. But when the shooters went looking for it, the only thing they found was the carnage of the mutilated animals it left behind. In some cases, the creature ran off, but the next day when the witnesses went out to look for signs of what had happened the night before, they would find other livestock, hunting dogs, or horses mutilated that had been alive the night before even after the encounter. 

The witnesses also describe a foul musky, almost sulphury scent that follows the creature.  This is thought to either be due to a gland like that of a skunk, or from polluted water sources it may frequent. It’s often reported to be seen near rivers or ponds, as well as in the TNT area of Point Pleasant, so pollution is not out of the question. 

This fantastical creature has many “explanations” of its origin. Could it be a biological creature we have yet to discover? An ancient curse (since it also is often said to be seen near, or even disappear into, cemeteries)? A government experiment gone wrong? A product of dark magic? All of these have been argued to be ways to explain the Sheepsquatch.

It is also widely thought that maybe the monster is actually multiple things. None of which, I’ll mention, is a Sasquatch. It is not thought to be a species in relation to the big-footed creature we all know so well. The “squatch” term here is used as a catch all name for any large, hairy, uncanny creature. Though no one has a solid argument for exactly what type of hominid some could be seeing, it is thought maybe the upright encounters are some kind of bipedal hominid creature, and the others could be misidentifying something like a bear with a genetic mutation (think how all white tigers are just genetically mutated orange tigers), or some kind of large wolf or wild cat. 

The Sheepquatch, once an obscure footnote of history, has found its way into the modern awareness with shows like Modern Mysteries of America in 2013, Mountain Monsters in 2014, the Fallout 76 video game in 2018, and even the Cryptid Mountain Mini Golf in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Rural stories have a way of taking on a life of their own like a game of telephone. A real moment, passed through the ears of hard living and harder country, changes slightly with each retelling. In the end, what’s left is something between memory and imagination. It’s not always proof of a monster, but it is proof that a creature doesn’t have to be real for the feelings it evokes to matter.

The hills here are full of wildlife and strange sounds. It doesn’t take much other than darkness and a fleeting encounter to feel supernatural. Stories of what lurk in the forests demand an amount of respect from those that live here which cannot be understated. Real or not, the White Things are a member of our mountain menagerie. They belong here. They belong to the land and to the people.

Whether or not we ever cage a White Thing, or get a crystal-clear photo, maybe it doesn’t matter. It exists in the same space as fog in a holler or an animal call carried over the hills at night. Real enough to be felt even if not seen. As long as the forests stand, there will always be eyes in there, watching us back.

Stories like the White Thing remind us that Appalachia has never been fully tamed. It reclaims roads, swallows towns after humans abandon them, and it resists every outside attempt to temper  it. No one questions that there are things in the woods here we can’t explain.  If you ever find yourself driving a mountain road at sunset and something just out of sight blurs into the shadows of the tree line, you might understand why folks here believe, and why some mysteries should remain unsolved.

Meet the author

Lacey Williams is a researcher from the Appalachian foothills in the United States, where she was raised on a farm and on tales of haints, hollers, and things that go bump in the woods. A certified cryptozoology investigator and historian specializing in regional folklore, she studies how myth and memory shape Appalachian identities. When she’s not digging through archives or interviewing locals about strange sightings, she’s writing, working a day job as a certified medical coder, and helping build the Cryptid Women’s Society community.
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