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On May 12, 1979, the front page of The Washington Post carried an article entitled,“The Mount Vernon Monster.” For nine months, in 1978 and 1979, a strange creature wailed and screamed nightly in the woods just a mile from historic Mount Vernon. Some people called it “The Mount Vernon Monster”, others “Bigfoot”. Whatever the creature may have been, it was elusive, frustrating capture attempts by the police, flyovers by a U.S. Park police helicopter, searches by volunteer youth patrols, and the determined efforts of the Fairfax County game warden to track it down. And thus an urban legend was born.
The story made its’ way into oral history projects, which are now being cited by monster hunters as historical authentication of the creature’s existence, “…one of the game wardens, said ‘The thing seems to know when you leave the woods, then it starts to holler.’ One resident said she spotted the monster. She described it as a creature about six feet tall, which lumbered into the woods after being sighted.”
The howling stopped as abruptly as it began, but the story lives on.
The story made its’ way into oral history projects, which are now being cited by monster hunters as historical authentication of the creature’s existence, “…one of the game wardens, said ‘The thing seems to know when you leave the woods, then it starts to holler.’ One resident said she spotted the monster. She described it as a creature about six feet tall, which lumbered into the woods after being sighted.”
The howling stopped as abruptly as it began, but the story lives on.
Mind bending stories from the Old Dominion. A
collection of Virginia’s most notable Urban Legends, many include the true
stories behind them.
3 comments:
I know about the Enfield Horror but have never heard of the Mt Vernon Monster, thanks for the story.
It was a prank by a young boy with stereo speakers. Truth.
Ummm, no this WAS NOT A PRANK. I actually heard it one night around 1978-79 but it was all the way over on the west side of Huntley Meadows Park and Ft. Belvoir (i.e. Hayfield). I lived right near the tree line and it was the most bizarre vocalization I've ever heard coming out of the woods. No, it wasn't a fox in heat or in distress or a barred owl - I know what those sound like. About three years before that, a friend who also lived near the tree line had his rabbit hutches ripped apart one night with a blood trail going back into the woods. This really freaked us out because there are no bears in that area and there was no way a fox could have done that. A year later a group of kids were back in those same woods one night when something massive came crashing through the woods and knocked a rotted tree over. There was no moon that night so they didn't see it but they said it sounded like a bull dozer coming through the woods. I spent a lot of time in that wilderness area in those years and saw in two separate areas what I now believe to be this cryptid's habitat. One of these areas was way over by the old Beulah Road pass through near Davidson Army Airfield. An MP recently came forward and said one night he had an encounter with this thing around 1978 out near the guard shack in a densely wooded area. But by far, the scariest thing that happened was a deer that was IMPALED on a metal fence post not 50 yards from my house in 1979. There is no other possible explanation for how this deer was impaled and it's more than coincidental that it happened in 1979 right when the U.S. Park police and Fairfax county police were investigating this thing. You tell me how a deer gets impaled on a flat top 4' metal fence pole near the tree line w no gunshot wounds. It was as if something with incredible brute force grabbed it, broke its neck and slammed it on top of that post. I believe it was a cryptid marking its territory. It's easy to think that these things are only in thousands of square miles of wilderness areas but they are more prevalent than you realize in wooded suburban America.
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